A realizability interpretation for intersection and union types

Abstract

Proof-functional logical connectives allow reasoning about the structure of logical proofs, in this way giving to the latter the status of first-class objects. This is in contrast to classical truth-functional connectives where the meaning of a compound formula is dependent only on the truth value of its subformulas. In this paper we present a typed lambda calculus, enriched with strong products, strong sums, and a related proof-functional logic. This calculus, directly derived from a typed calculus previously defined by two of the current authors, has been proved isomorphic to the well-known Barbanera-Dezani-Ciancaglini-de’Liguoro type assignment system. We present a logic L∩∪ featuring two proof-functional connectives, namely strong conjunction and strong disjunction. We prove the typed calculus to be isomorphic to the logic L∩∪ and we give a realizability semantics using Mints’ realizers [Min89] and a completeness theorem. A prototype implementation is also described.