changeset 47:be4efaee371f

Constructivity
author Adam Chlipala Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:31:35 -0400 29058fd5448b b262252669ce src/Predicates.v 1 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) [+]
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--- a/src/Predicates.v	Sat Sep 27 15:13:01 2008 -0400
+++ b/src/Predicates.v	Sat Sep 27 15:31:35 2008 -0400
@@ -276,5 +276,14 @@
End Propositional.

+(** * What Does It Mean to Be Constructive? *)

+(** One potential point of confusion in the presentation so far is the distinction between [bool] and [Prop].  [bool] is a datatype whose two values are [true] and [false], while [Prop] is a more primitive type that includes among its members [True] and [False].  Why not collapse these two concepts into one, and why must there be more than two states of mathematical truth?

+The answer comes from the fact that Coq implements %\textit{%#<i>#constructive#</i>#%}% or %\textit{%#<i>#intuitionistic#</i>#%}% logic, in contrast to the %\textit{%#<i>#classical#</i>#%}% logic that you may be more familiar with.  In constructive logic, classical tautologies like [~ ~P -> P] and [P \/ ~P] do not always hold.  In general, we can only prove these tautologies when [P] is %\textit{%#<i>#decidable#</i>#%}%, in the sense of computability theory.  The Curry-Howard encoding that Coq uses for [or] allows us to extract either a proof of [P] or a proof of [~P] from any proof of [P \/ ~P].  Since our proofs are just functional programs which we can run, this would give us a decision procedure for the halting problem, where the instantiations of [P] would be formulas like "this particular Turing machine halts."
+
+Hence the distinction between [bool] and [Prop].  Programs of type [bool] are computational by construction; we can always run them to determine their results.  Many [Prop]s are undecidable, and so we can write more expressive formulas with [Prop]s than with [bool]s, but the inevitable consequence is that we cannot simply "run a [Prop] to determine its truth."
+
+Constructive logic lets us define all of the logical connectives in an aesthetically-appealing way, with orthogonal inductive definitions.  That is, each connective is defined independently using a simple, shared mechanism.  Constructivity also enables a trick called %\textit{%#<i>#program extraction#</i>#%}%, where we write programs by phrasing them as theorems to be proved.  Since our proofs are just functional programs, we can extract executable programs from our final proofs, which we could not do as naturally with classical proofs.
+
+We will see more about Coq's program extraction facility in a later chapter.  However, I think it is worth interjecting another warning at this point, following up on the prior warning about taking the Curry-Howard correspondence too literally.  It is possible to write programs by theorem-proving methods in Coq, but hardly anyone does it.  It is almost always most useful to maintain the distinction between programs and proofs.  If you write a program by proving a theorem, you are likely to run into algorithmic inefficiencies that you introduced in your proof to make it easier to prove.  It is a shame to have to worry about such situations while proving tricky theorems, and it is a happy state of affairs that you almost certainly will not need to, with the ideal of extracting programs from proofs being confined mostly to theoretical studies. *)