4

The motivation for this question begins with an answer elsewhere which references Dolph Ulrich's list of single-axiom bases and unresolved candidate single-axiom bases for implicational intuitionistic logic. My interest is more the combinator side of the Curry-Howard isomorphism, so I began translating the axioms given into lambda terms.

All of the axioms that are known to work can be translated trivially. For example, HI-8 is $(p \to q) \to (((r \to (s \to p)) \to (q \to t)) \to (p \to t))$ and corresponds (after currying) to type $$(p \to q) \to ((r \to s \to p) \to q \to t) \to p \to t$$ which obviously translates into $$\lambda xyz.y(\lambda uv.z)(xz)$$

However, many of the candidates cannot be translated trivially. For example, candidate 11 curries to $((p \to q) \to r) \to ((p \to r) \to r \to s) \to q \to s$, and a lambda term with that type would have to be of the form $\lambda xyz.yEF$ where $E:p \to r$ and $F:r$. Taken separately this is easy: $F$ must be $x(\lambda u.z)$, and $E$ must be $\lambda v.F$. But the most general type of $\lambda xyz.y(\lambda v.x(\lambda u.z))(x(\lambda u.z))$ is $$((p \to q) \to r) \to ((s \to r) \to r \to t) \to q \to t$$

(which happens to be candidate 4).

My intuition is that this should rule out candidate 11, but it seems far more likely that my intuition is failing than that Ulrich and John Halleck (who has obviously given some thought to how to rule out the candidates, since he's knocked down four of them) have overlooked something so simple.

Where does my intuition fall down? Is it just undecidability which says that it's more complicated than that to show that no term has the right type? Is this a reasonable and known heuristic argument for the failure of candidate 4 (and the others for which similar arguments can be made) which no-one has managed to make rigorous?

Peter Taylor
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  • This may be more relevant to the linked question, but don't your primitive combinators only have to be complete for typeable lambda expressions? For example, if your primitive can't express $\lambda x.xx$ that should be fine? – DanielV Nov 17 '17 at 01:26
  • @DanielV, that's an interesting question in its own right. The SK basis can express $\lambda x.xx$ as $SII$, which would have type $(q\to r)\to r$ under the unification $q ,\dot{=},q\to r$ if that were finite. I would rather expect any basis which is complete for SK in the typed lambda calculus to also be complete for it in the untyped lambda calculus, since otherwise people would have switched to such a "safe" basis. – Peter Taylor Nov 17 '17 at 07:08
  • Yeah anything than spans general lambda calculus (such as S/K) will also span typed lambda calculus, I'm just saying that it isn't trivial to say that something strictly less than the span of S/K expressions is necessarily axiomatically incomplete. Don't know whether that is true or not. – DanielV Nov 17 '17 at 07:12
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    Having thought about it a tiny bit more: if we take S and K as the axioms of HI then they are provable in HI. Therefore if we take a different basis, S and K must be theorems. On the lambda calculus side, that means that if we can't express S and K then the basis is not complete (and if we can, we can express SII). – Peter Taylor Nov 17 '17 at 07:22
  • Good point. I agree. – DanielV Nov 17 '17 at 07:25
  • Peter Taylor; Your last comment above is correct. The generalization is that all axioms in all axiomatic bases must be theorems, so if there is ANY axiom in ANY axiomatic basis that a candidate can not prove, the candidate is not a single axiom.

    My proofs (that are mentioned in passing in your question) take a candidate, and find one of the other bases that it can't possibly generate (by a syntactic argument based on condensed detachment).

    Send me a message on FaceBook, and I can go into full detail. It is too long to fit in a comment here.

    – JohnHalleck Mar 11 '19 at 00:22
  • OK, I'll send a letter. – JohnHalleck Mar 11 '19 at 23:41

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