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[Coq-Club] Unusual drinker-like paradox


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  • From: Jonathan <jonikelee AT gmail.com>
  • To: Coq Club <coq-club AT inria.fr>
  • Subject: [Coq-Club] Unusual drinker-like paradox
  • Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 16:47:53 -0400

Consider the goal: forall (A:Type), inhabited (inhabited A -> A).

It seems to be a bit like the Drinker's Paradox, but not quite. However, I can't seem to prove it from the Drinker's Paradox, or vice versa. It is provable from excluded middle. I think it's also weaker than excluded middle.

If added to a constructive logic, it would suggest that the resulting logic isn't really constructive ("For any type, there exists a way to get an instance non-constructively."). But, if it is weaker than excluded middle, then paradoxically the logic still is constructive.

Anyone seen it before?

It's the most trivial general example I could come up with that can't be proved in Coq because Coq doesn't allow "informative" Prop case analysis in a non-Prop goal even if that goal is a subgoal of a parent (or ancestral) Prop goal - and thus isn't really informative to the overall proof, and would be erased during extraction.

-- Jonathan



  • [Coq-Club] Unusual drinker-like paradox, Jonathan, 09/30/2014

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