Brouwer–Heyting–Kolmogorov interpretation

In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition ${\displaystyle P}$ to another proposition "not ${\displaystyle P}$", written ${\displaystyle \neg P}$, ${\displaystyle {\mathord {\sim }}P}$, ${\displaystyle P^{\prime }}$ or ${\displaystyle {\overline {P}}}$. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when ${\displaystyle P}$ is false, and false when ${\displaystyle P}$ is true. For example, if ${\displaystyle P}$ is "The dog runs", then "not ${\displaystyle P}$" is "The dog does not run". An operand of a negation is called a negand or negatum.

Negation is a unary logical connective. It may furthermore be applied not only to propositions, but also to notions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. In classical logic, negation is normally identified with the truth function that takes truth to falsity (and vice versa). In intuitionistic logic, according to the Brouwer–Heyting–Kolmogorov interpretation, the negation of a proposition ${\displaystyle P}$ is the proposition whose proofs are the refutations of ${\displaystyle P}$.

In programming language theory and proof theory, the Curry–Howard correspondence is the direct relationship between computer programs and mathematical proofs. It is also known as the Curry–Howard isomorphism or equivalence, or the proofs-as-programs and propositions- or formulae-as-types interpretation.

It is a generalization of a syntactic analogy between systems of formal logic and computational calculi that was first discovered by the American mathematician Haskell Curry and the logician William Alvin Howard. It is the link between logic and computation that is usually attributed to Curry and Howard, although the idea is related to the operational interpretation of intuitionistic logic given in various formulations by L. E. J. Brouwer, Arend Heyting and Andrey Kolmogorov (see Brouwer–Heyting–Kolmogorov interpretation) and Stephen Kleene (see Realizability). The relationship has been extended to include category theory as the three-way Curry–Howard–Lambek correspondence.

In mathematical logic, realizability is a collection of methods in proof theory used to study constructive proofs and extract additional information from them. Formulas from a formal theory are "realized" by objects, known as "realizers", in a way that knowledge of the realizer gives knowledge about the truth of the formula. There are many variations of realizability; exactly which class of formulas is studied and which objects are realizers differ from one variation to another.

Realizability can be seen as a formalization of the Brouwer–Heyting–Kolmogorov (BHK) interpretation of intuitionistic logic. In realizability the notion of "proof" (which is left undefined in the BHK interpretation) is replaced with a formal notion of "realizer". Most variants of realizability begin with a theorem that any statement that is provable in the formal system being studied is realizable. The realizer, however, usually gives more information about the formula than a formal proof would directly provide.