This version corrects the Cartesian difference structure of the Kleisli category, compared to the one found in the conference paper version. The proposed difference combinator in the conference was based on a result from another paper. Unfortunately, we have found that the result in said other paper is incorrect, and therefore so was the proposed difference combinator in the conference paper
Cartesian differential categories are categories equipped with a differential combinator which axiomatizes the directional derivative. Important models of Cartesian differential categories include classical differential calculus of smooth functions and categorical models of the differential lambda-calculus. However, Cartesian differential categories cannot account for other interesting notions of differentiation such as the calculus of finite differences or the Boolean differential calculus. On the other hand, change action models have been shown to capture these examples as well as more "exotic" examples of differentiation. However, change action models are very general and do not share the nice properties of a Cartesian differential category. In this paper, we introduce Cartesian difference categories as a bridge between Cartesian differential categories and change action models. We show that every Cartesian differential category is a Cartesian difference category, and how certain well-behaved change action models are Cartesian difference categories. In particular, Cartesian difference categories model both the differential calculus of smooth functions and the calculus of finite differences. Furthermore, every Cartesian difference category comes equipped with a tangent bundle monad whose Kleisli category is again a Cartesian difference category.
Most often, in a categorical semantics for a programming language, the substitution of terms is expressed by composition and finite products. However this does not deal with the order of evaluation of arguments, which may have major consequences when there are side-effects. In this paper Cartesian effect categories are introduced for solving this issue, and they are compared with strong monads, Freyd-categories and Haskell's Arrows. It is proved that a Cartesian effect category is a Freyd-category where the premonoidal structure is provided by a kind of binary product, called the sequential pr…
Seely's paper "Locally cartesian closed categories and type theory" contains a well-known result in categorical type theory: that the category of locally cartesian closed categories is equivalent to the category of Martin-Löf type theories with Pi-types, Sigma-types and extensional identity types. However, Seely's proof relies on the problematic assumption that substitution in types can be interpreted by pullbacks. Here we prove a corrected version of Seely's theorem: that the Bénabou-Hofmann interpretation of Martin-Löf type theory in locally cartesian closed categories yields a biequivalence…
A non-self-contained gathering of notes on category theory, including the definition of locally cartesian closed category, of the cartesian structure in slice categories, or of the pseudo-cartesian structure on Eilenberg-Moore categories. References and proofs are provided, sometimes, to my knowledge, for the first time.
We propose a semantics for permutation equivalence in higher-order rewriting. This semantics takes place in cartesian closed 2-categories, and is proved sound and complete.
Locally cartesian closed (lcc) categories are natural categorical models of extensional dependent type theory. This paper introduces the "gros" semantics in the category of lcc categories: Instead of constructing an interpretation in a given individual lcc category, we show that also the category of all lcc categories can be endowed with the structure of a model of dependent type theory. The original interpretation in an individual lcc category can then be recovered by slicing. As in the original interpretation, we face the issue of coherence: Categorical structure is usually preserved by func…
The present paper gives a generalization of cartesian closed categories, called cartesian closed categories with dependence, whose strict version induces categories with families that support 1-, Sigma- and Pi-types in the strict sense. Consequently, we have obtained a new semantics of dependent type theories that is both categorical and true-to-syntax.
Cartesian differential categories come equipped with a differential combinator that formalizes the directional derivative from multivariable calculus. Cartesian differential categories provide a categorical semantics of the differential lambda-calculus and have also found applications in causal computation, incremental computation, game theory, differentiable programming, and machine learning. There has recently been a desire to provide a (coordinate-free) characterization of Jacobians and gradients in Cartesian differential categories. One's first attempt might be to consider Cartesian differ…
Cartesian difference categories are a recent generalisation of Cartesian differential categories which introduce a notion of "infinitesimal" arrows satisfying an analogue of the Kock-Lawvere axiom, with the axioms of a Cartesian differential category being satisfied only "up to an infinitesimal perturbation". In this work, we construct a simply-typed calculus in the spirit of the differential lambda-calculus equipped with syntactic infinitesimals and show how its models correspond to difference lambda-categories, a family of Cartesian difference categories equipped with suitably well-behaved e…
The axioms of iteration theories, or iteration categories, capture the equational properties of fixed point operations in several computationally significant categories. Iteration categories may be axiomatized by the Conway identities and identities associated with finite automata. We show that in conjunction with the Conway identities, each identity associated with a finite automaton implies the identity associated with any input extension of the automaton. We conclude that the Conway identities and the identities associated with the members of a subclass $\cQ$ of finite automata is complete …
In this thesis I lift the Curry--Howard--Lambek correspondence between the simply-typed lambda calculus and cartesian closed categories to the bicategorical setting, then use the resulting type theory to prove a coherence result for cartesian closed bicategories. Cartesian closed bicategories---2-categories `up to isomorphism' equipped with similarly weak products and exponentials---arise in logic, categorical algebra, and game semantics. I show that there is at most one 2-cell between any parallel pair of 1-cells in the free cartesian closed bicategory on a set and hence---in terms of the dif…
We argue that locally Cartesian closed categories form a suitable doctrine for defining dependent type theories, including non-extensional ones. Using the theory of sketches, one may define syntactic categories for type theories in a style that resembles the use of Martin-Löf's Logical Framework, following the "judgments as types" principle. The concentration of type theories into their locally Cartesian closed categories of judgments is particularly convenient for proving syntactic metatheorems by semantic means (canonicity, normalization, etc.). Perhaps surprisingly, the notion of a context …
Cartesian reverse differential categories (CRDCs) are a recently defined structure which categorically model the reverse differentiation operations used in supervised learning. Here we define a related structure called a monoidal reverse differential category, prove important results about its relationship to CRDCs, and provide examples of both structures, including examples coming from models of quantum computation.
Cai et al. have recently proposed change structures as a semantic framework for incremental computation. We generalise change structures to arbitrary cartesian categories and propose the notion of change action model as a categorical model for (higher-order) generalised differentiation. Change action models naturally arise from many geometric and computational settings, such as (generalised) cartesian differential categories, group models of discrete calculus, and Kleene algebra of regular expressions. We show how to build canonical change action models on arbitrary cartesian categories, remin…
We show how the categorical logic of untyped, simply typed and dependently typed lambda calculus can be structured around the notion of category with family (cwf). To this end we introduce subcategories of simply typed cwfs (scwfs), where types do not depend on variables, and unityped cwfs (ucwfs), where there is only one type. We prove several equivalence and biequivalence theorems between cwf-based notions and basic notions of categorical logic, such as cartesian operads, Lawvere theories, categories with finite products and limits, cartesian closed categories, and locally cartesian closed c…
We present a variant of the calculus of deductive systems developed in (Lambek 1972, 1974), and give a generalization of the Curry-Howard-Lambek theorem giving an equivalence between the category of typed lambda-calculi and the category of cartesian closed categories and exponential-preserving morphisms that leverages the theory of generalized categories (Schoenbaum 2016). We discuss potential applications and extensions.
We show that a version of Martin-Löf type theory with an extensional identity type former I, a unit type N1 , Sigma-types, Pi-types, and a base type is a free category with families (supporting these type formers) both in a 1- and a 2-categorical sense. It follows that the underlying category of contexts is a free locally cartesian closed category in a 2-categorical sense because of a previously proved biequivalence. We show that equality in this category is undecidable by reducing it to the undecidability of convertibility in combinatory logic. Essentially the same construction also shows a s…
The reverse derivative is a fundamental operation in machine learning and automatic differentiation. This paper gives a direct axiomatization of a category with a reverse derivative operation, in a similar style to that given by Cartesian differential categories for a forward derivative. Intriguingly, a category with a reverse derivative also has a forward derivative, but the converse is not true. In fact, we show explicitly what a forward derivative is missing: a reverse derivative is equivalent to a forward derivative with a dagger structure on its subcategory of linear maps. Furthermore, we…
We introduce the concept of Frobenius theory as a generalisation of Lawvere's functorial semantics approach to categorical universal algebra. Whereas the universe for models of Lawvere theories is the category of sets and functions, or more generally cartesian categories, Frobenius theories take their models in the category of sets and relations, or more generally in cartesian bicategories.
Notions of guardedness serve to delineate the admissibility of cycles, e.g. in recursion, corecursion, iteration, or tracing. We introduce an abstract notion of guardedness structure on a symmetric monoidal category, along with a corresponding notion of guarded traces, which are defined only if the cycles they induce are guarded. We relate structural guardedness, determined by propagating guardedness along the operations of the category, to geometric guardedness phrased in terms of a diagrammatic language. In our setup, the Cartesian case (recursion) and the co-Cartesian case (iteration) becom…
We give a conceptual treatment of the notion of joints, marginals, and independence in the setting of categorical probability. This is achieved by endowing the usual probability monads (like the Giry monad) with a monoidal and an opmonoidal structure, mutually compatible (i.e. a bimonoidal structure). If the underlying monoidal category is cartesian monoidal, a bimonoidal structure is given uniquely by a commutative strength. However, if the underlying monoidal category is not cartesian monoidal, a strength is not enough to guarantee all the desired properties of joints and marginals. A bimono…
