In
mathematical logic
Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...
, Heyting arithmetic
is an axiomatization of arithmetic in accordance with the philosophy of
intuitionism
In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach where mathematics is considered to be purely the result of the constructive mental activity of humans rather than the discovery of fu ...
. It is named after
Arend Heyting, who first proposed it.
Axiomatization
Heyting arithmetic can be characterized just like the
first-order theory
A theory is a systematic and rational form of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the conclusions derived from such thinking. It involves contemplative and logical reasoning, often supported by processes such as observation, experimentation, ...
of
Peano arithmetic , except that it uses the
intuitionistic predicate calculus for inference. In particular, this means that the double-negation elimination principle, as well as the
principle of the excluded middle , do not hold. Note that to say
does not hold exactly means that the excluded middle statement is not automatically provable for all propositions—indeed many such statements are still provable in
and the negation of any such disjunction is inconsistent.
is strictly stronger than
in the sense that all
-
theorem
In mathematics and formal logic, a theorem is a statement (logic), statement that has been Mathematical proof, proven, or can be proven. The ''proof'' of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to esta ...
s are also
-theorems.
Heyting arithmetic comprises the axioms of Peano arithmetic and the intended model is the collection of
natural number
In mathematics, the natural numbers are the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on, possibly excluding 0. Some start counting with 0, defining the natural numbers as the non-negative integers , while others start with 1, defining them as the positive in ...
s
. The signature includes zero "
" and the successor "
", and the theories characterize addition and multiplication. This impacts the logic: With
, it is a metatheorem that
can be defined as
and so that
is
for every proposition
. The negation of
is of the form
and thus a trivial proposition.
For
terms, write
for
.
For a fixed term
, the equality
is true by reflexivity and a proposition
is equivalent to
.
It may be shown that
can then be defined as
. This formal elimination of disjunctions was not possible in the quantifier-free
primitive recursive arithmetic . The theory may be extended with function symbols for any
primitive recursive function
In computability theory, a primitive recursive function is, roughly speaking, a function that can be computed by a computer program whose loops are all "for" loops (that is, an upper bound of the number of iterations of every loop is fixed befor ...
, making
also a fragment of this theory. For a total function
, one often considers predicates of the form
.
Theorems
Double negations
With
explosion
An explosion is a rapid expansion in volume of a given amount of matter associated with an extreme outward release of energy, usually with the generation of high temperatures and release of high-pressure gases. Explosions may also be generated ...
valid in any intuitionistic theory, if
is a theorem for some
, then by definition
is provable if and only if the theory is inconsistent. Indeed, in Heyting arithmetic the double-negation explicitly expresses
. For a
predicate , a theorem of the form
expresses that it is ''inconsistent to rule out'' that
could be validated for some
. Constructively, this is weaker than the existence claim of such a
.
A big part of the metatheoretical discussion will concern classically provable existence claims.
A double-negation
entails
. So a theorem of the form
also always gives new means to conclusively reject (also positive) statements
.
Proofs of classically equivalent statements
Recall that the implication in
can classically be reversed, and with that so can the one in
. Here the distinction is between existence of numerical counter-examples versus absurd conclusions when assuming validity for all numbers. Inserting double-negations turns
-theorems into
-theorems. More exactly, for any formula provable in
, the classically equivalent
Gödel–Gentzen negative translation of that formula is already provable in
. In one formulation, the translation procedure includes a rewriting of
to
The result means that all Peano arithmetic theorems have a proof that consists of a constructive proof followed by a classical logical rewriting. Roughly, the final step amounts to applications of double-negation elimination.
In particular, with undecidable atomic propositions being absent, for any proposition
not including existential quantifications or disjunctions at all, one has
.
Valid principles and rules
Minimal logic proves double-negation elimination for negated formulas,
. More generally, Heyting arithmetic proves this classical equivalence for any
Harrop formula.
And
-results are well behaved as well:
Markov's rule at the lowest level of the
arithmetical hierarchy
In mathematical logic, the arithmetical hierarchy, arithmetic hierarchy or Kleene–Mostowski hierarchy (after mathematicians Stephen Cole Kleene and Andrzej Mostowski) classifies certain sets based on the complexity of formulas that define th ...
is an
admissible rule of inference, i.e. for
with
free,
:
Instead of speaking of quantifier-free predicates, one may equivalently formulate this for primitive recursive predicate or
Kleene's T predicate, called
, resp.
and
.
Even the related rule
is admissible, in which the tractability aspect of
is not e.g. based on a syntactic condition but where the left hand side also requires
.
Beware that in classifying a proposition based on its syntactic form, one ought not mistakenly assign a lower complexity based on some only classical valid equivalence.
Excluded middle
As with other theories over intuitionistic logic, various instances of
can be proven in this constructive arithmetic. By
disjunction introduction, whenever either the proposition
or
is proven, then
is proven as well. So for example, equipped with
and
from the axioms, one may validate the premise for
induction of excluded middle for the predicate
. One then says equality to zero is decidable. Indeed,
proves equality "
" decidable for all numbers, i.e.
. Stronger yet, as equality is the only predicate symbol in Heyting arithmetic, it then follows that, for any
quantifier-free formula
, where
are the
free variables
In mathematics, and in other disciplines involving formal languages, including mathematical logic and computer science, a variable may be said to be either free or bound. Some older books use the terms real variable and apparent variable for f ...
, the theory is closed under the rule
:
Any theory over minimal logic proves
for all propositions. So if the theory is consistent, it never proves the negation of an excluded middle statement.
Practically speaking, in rather conservative constructive frameworks such as
, when it is understood what type of statements are algorithmically decidable, then an unprovability result of an excluded middle disjunction expresses the algorithmic undecidability of
.
Conservativity
For simple statements, the theory does not just validate such classically valid binary dichotomies
. The
Friedman translation can be used to establish that
's
-theorems are all proven by
: For any
and quantifier-free
,
:
This result may of course also be expressed with explicit universal closures
. Roughly, simple statements about
computable relations provable classically are already provable constructively. Although in
halting problem
In computability theory (computer science), computability theory, the halting problem is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running, or continue to run for ...
s, not just quantifier-free propositions but also
-propositions play an important role, and as will be argued these can be even classically independent. Similarly, already unique existence
in an infinite domain, i.e.
, is formally not particularly simple.
So
is
-conservative over
. For contrast, while the classical theory of
Robinson arithmetic proves all
-
-theorems, some simple
-
-theorems are independent of it. Induction also plays a crucial role in
Friedman's result: For example, the more workable theory obtained by strengthening
with axioms about ordering, and optionally decidable equality, does prove more
-statements than its intuitionistic counterpart.
The discussion here is by no means exhaustive. There are various results for when a classical theorem is already entailed by the constructive theory. Also note that it can be relevant what logic was used to obtain metalogical results. For example, many results on
realizability were indeed obtained in a constructive metalogic. But when no specific context is given, stated results need to be assumed to be classical.
Unprovable statements
Independence results concern propositions such that neither they, nor their negations can be proven in a theory. If the classical theory is consistent (i.e. does not prove
) and the constructive counterpart does not prove one of its classical theorems
, then that
is independent of the latter. Given some independent propositions, it is easy to define more from them, especially in a constructive framework.
Heyting arithmetic has the
disjunction property : For all propositions
and
,
:
Indeed, this and its numerical generalization are also exhibited by constructive
second-order arithmetic
In mathematical logic, second-order arithmetic is a collection of axiomatic systems that formalize the natural numbers and their subsets. It is an alternative to axiomatic set theory as a foundation of mathematics, foundation for much, but not all, ...
and common
set theories such as
and
. It is a common desideratum for the informal notion of a constructive theory.
Now in a theory with
, if a proposition
is
independent, then the classically trivial
is another independent proposition, and vice versa. A schema is not valid if there is at least one instance that cannot be proven, which is how
comes to fail. One may break
by adopting an excluded middle statement axiomatically without validating either of the disjuncts, as is the case in
.
More can be said: If
is even classically independent, then also the negation
is independent—this holds whether or not
is equivalent to
. Then, constructively, the weak excluded middle
does not hold, i.e. the principle that
would hold for all propositions is not valid. If such
is
, unprovability of the disjunction manifests the breakdown of
-
, or what amounts to an
instance of for a primitive recursive function.
Classically independent propositions
Knowledge of
Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that are concerned with the limits of in formal axiomatic theories. These results, published by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the phi ...
aids in understanding the type of statements that are
-provable but not
-provable.
The resolution of
Hilbert's tenth problem provided some concrete polynomials
and corresponding
polynomial equations, such that the claim that the latter have a solution is
algorithmically undecidable. The proposition can be expressed as
:
Certain such zero value existence claims have a more particular interpretation: Theories such as
or
prove that these propositions are equivalent to the arithmetized claim of the theories own inconsistency. Thus, such propositions can even be written down for strong classical set theories.
In a consistent and sound arithmetic theory, such an existence claim
is an independent
-proposition. Then
, by pushing a negation through the quantifier, is seen to be an independent
Goldbach-type- or
-proposition. To be explicit, the double-negation
(or
) is also independent. And any triple-negation is, in any case, already intuitionistically equivalent to a single negation.
PA violates DP
The following illuminates the meaning involved in such independent statements. Given an index in an enumeration of all proofs of a theory, one can inspect what proposition it is a proof of.
is adequate in that it can correctly represent this procedure: there is a primitive recursive predicate
expressing that a proof is one of the absurd proposition
. This relates to the more explicitly arithmetical predicate above, about a polynomial's return value being zero. One may metalogically reason that if
is consistent, then it indeed proves
for every individual index
.
In an effectively axiomatized theory, one may successively perform an inspection of each proof. If a theory is indeed consistent, then there does ''not exist'' a proof of an absurdity, which corresponds to the statement that the mentioned "absurdity search" will never halt. Formally in the theory, the former is expressed by the proposition
, negating the arithmetized inconsistency claim. The equivalent
-proposition
formalizes the never halting of the search by stating that all proofs are not a proof of an absurdity. And indeed, in an
omega-consistent theory that accurately represents provability, there is no proof that the absurdity search would ever conclude by halting (explicit inconsistency not derivable), nor—as shown by Gödel—can there be a proof that the absurdity search would never halt (consistency not derivable). Reformulated, there is no proof that the absurdity search never halts (consistency not derivable), nor is there a proof that the absurdity search does not never halt (consistency not rejectible).
To reiterate, neither of these two disjuncts is
-provable, while their disjunction is trivially
-provable. Indeed, if
is consistent then it violates
.
The
-proposition expressing the existence of a proof of
is a logically positive statement. Nonetheless, it is historically denoted
, while its negation is a
-proposition denoted by
. In a constructive context, this use of the negation sign may be misleading nomenclature.
Friedman established another interesting unprovable statement, namely that a consistent and adequate theory never proves its arithmetized disjunction property.
Unprovable classical principles
Already minimal logic logically proves all non-contradiction claims, and in particular
and
. Since also
, the theorem
may be read as a provable double-negated excluded middle disjunction (or existence claim). But in light of the disjunction property, the plain excluded middle
cannot be
-provable. So one of the
De Morgan's laws
In propositional calculus, propositional logic and Boolean algebra, De Morgan's laws, also known as De Morgan's theorem, are a pair of transformation rules that are both Validity (logic), valid rule of inference, rules of inference. They are nam ...
cannot intuitionistically hold in general either.
The breakdown of the principles
and
have been explained.
Now in
, the
least number principle is just one of many statements equivalent to the induction principle. The proof below shows how
implies
, and therefore why this principle also cannot be generally valid in
. However, the schema granting double-negated least number existence for every non-trivial predicate, denoted
, is generally valid. In light of Gödel's proof, the breakdown of these three principles can be understood as Heyting arithmetic being consistent with the provability reading of constructive logic.
Markov's principle for primitive recursive predicates
does already not hold as an implication schema for
, let alone the strictly stronger
. Although in the form of the corresponding rules, they are admissible, as mentioned.
Similarly, the theory does not prove the
independence of premise principle
for negated predicates, albeit it is closed under the rule for all negated propositions, i.e. one may pull out the existential quantifier in
. The same holds for the version where the existential statement is replaced by a mere disjunction.
The valid implication
can be proven to hold also in its reversed form, using the disjunctive syllogism. However, the double-negation shift
is not intuitionistically provable, i.e. the schema of commutativity of "
" with universal quantification over all numbers. This is an interesting breakdown that is explained by the consistency of
for some
, as discussed in the section on Church's thesis.
Least number principle
Making use of the order relation on the naturals, the
strong induction principle reads
:
In class notation, as familiar from set theory, an arithmetic statement
is expressed as
where
. For any given predicate of negated form, i.e.
, a logical equivalent to induction is
:
The insight is that among subclasses
, the property of (provably) having no least member is equivalent to being uninhabited, i.e. to being the empty class. Taking the contrapositive results in a theorem expressing that for any non-empty subclass, it cannot consistently be ruled out that there exists a member
such that there is no member
smaller than
:
:
In Peano arithmetic, where double-negation elimination is always valid, this proves the least number principle in its common formulation. In the classical reading, being non-empty is equivalent to (provably) being inhabited by some least member.
A binary relation "
" that validates the strong induction schema in the above form is always also irreflexive: Considering
or equivalently
:
for some fixed number
, the above simplifies to the statement that no member
of
validates