Lax Modal Lambda Calculi

Intuitionistic modal logics (IMLs) extend intuitionistic propositional logic with modalities such as the box and diamond connectives. Advances in the study of IMLs have inspired several applications in programming languages via the development of corresponding type theories with modalities. Until recently, IMLs with diamonds have been misunderstood as somewhat peculiar and unstable, causing the development of type theories with diamonds to lag behind type theories with boxes. In this article, we develop a family of typed-lambda calculi corresponding to sublogics of a peculiar IML with diamonds known as Lax logic. These calculi provide a modal logical foundation for various strong functors in typed-functional programming. We present possible-world and categorical semantics for these calculi and constructively prove normalization, equational completeness and proof-theoretic inadmissibility results. Our main results have been formalized using the proof assistant Agda.

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Publication Details

Journal
DROPS (Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics)
Published
2025-12-11
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4230/lipics.csl.2026.46
Primary Topic
Logic, programming, and type systems
Type
article
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article

Lax Modal Lambda Calculi

Nachiappan Valliappan
DROPS (Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics)
Logic, programming, and type systems
article

Lax Modal Lambda Calculi

Nachiappan Valliappan
article en

Abstract

Intuitionistic modal logics (IMLs) extend intuitionistic propositional logic with modalities such as the box and diamond connectives. Advances in the study of IMLs have inspired several applications in programming languages via the development of corresponding type theories with modalities. Until recently, IMLs with diamonds have been misunderstood as somewhat peculiar and unstable, causing the development of type theories with diamonds to lag behind type theories with boxes. In this article, we develop a family of typed-lambda calculi corresponding to sublogics of a peculiar IML with diamonds known as Lax logic. These calculi provide a modal logical foundation for various strong functors in typed-functional programming. We present possible-world and categorical semantics for these calculi and constructively prove normalization, equational completeness and proof-theoretic inadmissibility results. Our main results have been formalized using the proof assistant Agda.

DROPS (Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics)
Openalex Percentile: Top 79%
Logic, programming, and type systems
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