Formal topology aims at developing general topology in intuitionistic and predicative mathematics. Many classical results of general topology have been already brought into the realm of constructive mathematics by using formal topology and also new light on basic topological notions was gained with this approach which allows distinction which are not expressible in classical topology. Here we give a systematic exposition of one of the main tools in formal topology: inductive generation. In fact, many formal topologies can be presented in a predicative way by an inductive generation and thus their properties can be proved inductively. We show however that some natural complete Heyting algebra cannot be inductively defined
The type theory described in this chapter has been developed by Martin-Löf with the original aim of being a clarification of constructive mathematics. Unlike most other formalizations of mathematics, type theory is not based on predicate logic. Instead, the logical constants are interpreted within type theory through the Curry-Howard correspondence between propositions and sets [Curry and Feys, 1958; Howard, 1980]: a proposition is interpreted as a set whose elements represent the proofs of the proposition. It is also possible to view a set as a problem description in a way similar to Kolmogorov’s explanation of the intuitionistic propositional calculus [Kolmogorov, 1932]. In particular, a set can be seen as a specification of a programming problem; the elements of the set are then the programs that satisfy the specification. An advantage of using type theory for program construction is that it is possible to express both specifications and programs within the same formalism. Furthermore, the proof rules can be used to derive a correct program from a specification as well as to verify that a given program has a certain property. As a programming language, type theory is similar to typed functional languages such as ML [Gordon et al., 1979; Milner et al., 1990] and Haskell [Hudak et al, 1992], but a major difference is that the evaluation of a well-typed program always terminates. The notion of constructive proof is closely related to the notion of computer program. To prove a proposition ("x Î A)($yÎB)P(x,y) constructively means to give a function f which when applied to an element a in A gives an element b in B such that P(a, b) holds. So if the proposition ("xÎ A)($yÎB)P(x,y) expresses a specification, then the function f obtained from the proof is a program satisfying the specification. A constructive proof could therefore itself be seen as a computer program and the process of computing the value of a program corresponds to the process of normalizing a proof. It is by this computational content of a constructive proof that type theory can be used as a programming language; and since the program is obtained from a proof of its specification, type theory can be used as a programming logic.
In Hilbert and Ackermann [2] there is a simple proof of the consistency of first order predicate logic by reducing it to propositional logic. Intuitively, the proof is based on interpreting predicate logic in a domain with only one element. Tarski [7] and Gentzen [1] have extended this method to simple type theory by starting with an individual domain consisting of a single element and then interpreting a higher type by the set of truth valued functions on the previous type.I will use the method of Hilbert and Ackermann on Martin-Löf's type theory without universes to show that ¬Eq(A, a, b) cannot be derived without universes for any type A and any objects a and b of type A. In particular, this proves the conjecture in Martin-Löf [5] that Peano's fourth axiom (∀x ϵ N)¬ Eq(N, 0, succ(x)) cannot be proved in type theory without universes. If by consistency we mean that there is no closed term of the empty type, then the construction will also give a consistency proof by finitary methods of Martin-Löf's type theory without universes. So, without universes, the logic obtained by interpreting propositions as types is surprisingly weak. This is in sharp contrast with type theory as a computational system, since, for instance, the proof that every object of a type can be computed to normal form cannot be formalized in first order arithmetic.
We present a formal theory of propositions and combinator terms, and in this theory we give an interpretation of Martin-Löf's type theory. The construction of the interpretation is inspired by the semantics for type theory, but it can also be viewed as a formalized realizability interpretation.
The completeness proof for first-order logic by Rasiowa and Sikorski [13] is a simplification of Henkin's proof [7] in that it avoids the addition of infinitely many new individual constants. Instead they show that each consistent set of formulae can be extended to a maximally consistent set, satisfying the following existence property: if it contains (∃x)ϕ it also contains some substitution ϕ(y/x) of a variable y for x. In Feferman's review [5] of [13], an improvement, due to Tarski, is given by which the proof gets a simple algebraic form.Sambin [16] used the same method in the setting of formal topology [15], thereby obtaining a constructive completeness proof. This proof is elementary and can be seen as a constructive and predicative version of the one in Feferman's review. It is a typical, and simple, example where the use of formal topology gives constructive sense to the existence of a generic object, satisfying some forcing conditions; in this case an ultrafilter satisfying the existence property.In order to get a formal topology on the set of first-order formulae, Sambin used the Dedekind-MacNeille completion to define a covering relation ⊲DM. This method, by which an arbitrary poset can be extended to a complete poset, was introduced by MacNeille [9] and is a generalization of the construction of real numbers from rationals by Dedekind cuts. It is also possible to define an inductive cover, ⊲I, on the set of formulae, which can also be used to give canonical models, see Coquand and Smith [3].
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