Publication details

Saarland University Computer Science

On Synthetic Undecidability in Coq, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem

Yannick Forster, Dominik Kirst, Gert Smolka

8th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs, CPP 2019, Cascais, Portugal, January 14-15, 2019, ACM, January 2019

We formalise the computational undecidability of validity, satisfiability, and provability of first-order formulas following a synthetic approach based on the computation native to Coq's constructive type theory. Concretely, we consider Tarski and Kripke semantics as well as classical and intuitionistic natural deduction systems and provide compact many-one reductions from the Post correspondence problem (PCP). Moreover, developing a basic framework for synthetic computability theory in Coq, we formalise standard results concerning decidability, enumerability, and reducibility without reference to a concrete model of computation. For instance, we prove the equivalence of Post's theorem with Markov's principle and provide a convenient technique for establishing the enumerability of inductive predicates such as the considered proof systems and PCP.

Link to Coq formalisation

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