A Symmetric Lambda-Calculus Corresponding to the Negation-Free Bilateral Natural Deduction Tatsuya Abe Software Technology and Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory, Chiba Institute of Technology, 2-17-1 Tsudanuma, Narashino, Chiba, 275-0016, Japan
[email protected] Daisuke Kimura Department of Information Science, Toho University, 2-2-1 Miyama, Funabashi, Chiba, 274-8510, Japan
[email protected] Abstract Filinski constructed a symmetric lambda-calculus consisting of expressions and continuations which are symmetric, and functions which have duality. In his calculus, functions can be encoded to expressions and continuations using primitive operators. That is, the duality of functions is not derived in the calculus but adopted as a principle of the calculus. In this paper, we propose a simple symmetric lambda-calculus corresponding to the negation-free natural deduction based bilateralism in proof-theoretic semantics. In our calculus, continuation types are represented as not negations of formulae but formulae with negative polarity. Function types are represented as the implication and but-not connectives in intuitionistic and paraconsistent logics, respectively. Our calculus is not only simple but also powerful as it includes a call-value calculus corresponding to the call-by-value dual calculus invented by Wadler. We show that mutual transformations between expressions and continuations are definable in our calculus to justify the duality of functions. We also show that every typable function has dual types. Thus, the duality of function is derived from bilateralism. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Theory of computation → Logic; Theory of computation → Type theory Keywords and phrases symmetric lambda-calculus, formulae-as-types, duality, bilateralism, natural deduction, proof-theoretic semantics, but-not connective, continuation, call-by-value Acknowledgements The author thanks Yosuke Fukuda, Tasuku Hiraishi, Kentaro Kikuchi, and Takeshi Tsukada for the fruitful discussions, which clarified contributions of the present paper.