Related
Context
I started teaching myself lambda calculus last night and I am trying to determine if what I understand so far is correct.
Understanding
SKK is equivalent to the Identity combinator, I.
Where L stands for lambda:
S = LxLyLz((xz)(yz))
K = LxLy(x)
K essentially takes the next 2 (lambda) terms and gives back the first of those. S seems a little more complicated in the untyped lambda calculus.
My Interpretation
SK(any-lambda-term) is also equivalent to I.
I.e. the application of the application of S to K to Any-lambda-term is equivalent to the Identity combinator:
((S K)(Any)) = I = S K K = ((S K)(K))
I am using the convention of “left-association” in my above notation, if that helps (And I tried to make that clear in the 4th term above with parentheses. Everything I have read so far seems to use this convention).
Reasoning
S K = LyLz((K z)(y z))
The next lambda term will be substituted for y, let the term be Y.
S K Y = Lz((K z)(Y z))
(Y z) is the application of Y to z, also a lambda term.
(K z)returns the constant function that returns z, given another term input: (Y z).
Is my interpretation true? If not, can you provide an explanation? I would greatly appreciate it. Particularly if a sort of order of operations can be explained—I regularly find myself confused when considering when to evaluate. Perhaps that will be refined with practice.
Your intuition is correct, but an intuition proves nothing (alas...)
So, how can we prove your statement? Simply by showing that SKK and SKS have the same behaviour. "Behaviour" is an informal notion, which is formally capture by "semantics": if SKK and SKS are equals, then they should always reduce to the same term, according to the SKI-calculus semantics.
Now, there is a deep question, which is: what are the SKI-calculus? Actually, there is not a single way to answer that. What you implicitly do in your question is that you express SKI in terms of λ terms and you rely on the semantics of the λ calculus. This is absolutly correct. An other way to do it could have been to define directly SKI semantics. For instance, if you look at the wikipedia page, you can see that the semantics are not defined with lambda terms (and the fact that it correspond to lambda term is a (nice and expected) side effect). In the rest of this answer, I'll take the same approach as you do, and convert SKI terms in λ terms. A good exercise for you is to redo the proof, using the proper SKI semantics.
So, let formalize your question: your question is whether, for any SKI term t, SKKt = SKSt? Well... Let's see.
SKKt is encoded as (λx.λy.λz.(xz)(yz))(λx.λy.x)(λx.λy.x)t in the λ-calculus. We now just have to reduce it to a normal form (I detail every step, each time I reduce the leftmost λ, even tho it is not the fastest strategy):
(λx.λy.λz.(xz)(yz))(λx.λy.x)(λx.λy.x)t
= (λy.λz.((λx.λy.x)z)(yz))(λx.λy.x)t
= (λz.((λx.λy.x)z)((λx.λy.x)z))t
= ((λx.λy.x)t)((λx.λy.x)t)
= (λy.t)((λx.λy.x)t)
= t
So, the encoding of SKKt in the λ calculus reduces to t (as a sidenote, we just proved that SKK is equivalent to I here). To conclude our proof, we have to reduce SKSt and see whether it also reduces to t.
SKSt is encoded as (λx.λy.λz.(xz)(yz))(λx.λy.x)(λx.λy.λz.(xz)(yz))t. Let reduce it. (I don't detail as much this time)
(λx.λy.λz.(xz)(yz))(λx.λy.x)(λx.λy.λz.(xz)(yz))t
= ((λx.λy.x) t)((λx.λy.λz.(xz)(yz)) t))
= (λy.t)((λx.λy.λz.(xz)(yz)) t))
= t
Hurrah! It also reduce to t, so indeed, SKS and SKK are equivalent. It seems that the third combinator is not important: that as soon as you have SK?, it is equivalent to I. As an exercise, you can easily prove it (same strategy, if it is the case, then for any terms t and s, SKts = s). As mentionned above, an other good exercise is to redo the proof without using the λ semantics, but the proper SKI semantics.
Finally, my answer should raise a new question to you: we have two semantics, one that encodes SKI terms into λ terms, and one that does not. The question you may have is: are the two semantics equivalent? What does it mean for two semantics to be equivalent? If you are only starting to teach yourself λ calculus, it may be a bit early to try to answer those questions right now, but you can keep it in a corner of your head for when you'll get more familiar with formal languages.
I'm stuck with a big proof in my homework. I have to use natural deduction to prove something, and I think if I can prove this somehow then I can finish the full proof. Can anyone help?
P v Q, ¬P : Q
I have to do it from first principles though, I can't use DM's laws.
I can use the following rules:
implication intro, implication elim, conjunction intro, conjunction elim, disjunction intro, disjunction elim, (double) negation elimination, negation introduction (using Reductio Ad Absurdum)
Yeah, the question might be off-topic, but find the solution here (the used rules are in the right column of the derivation). It's part of this tutorial on natural deduction. You can check for the notation and abbreviations of the rule names there, it uses Fitch style derivations rather than e.g. tree notation, but should be easy to read nonetheless.
What approach can i take to solve these question:
Prove or disprove the following statements. The universe of discourse is N = {1,2,3,4,...}.
(a) ∀x∃y,y = x·x
(b) ∀y∃x,y = x·x
(c) ∃y∀x,y = x·x.
The best way to solve such problems is first to think about them until you're confident that they can be either proven or disproven.
If they can be disproven, then all you have to do to disprove the statement is provide a counterexample. For instance, for b, I can think of the counterexample y=2. There is no number x in N for which n*n = 2. Thus, there is a counterexample, and the statement is false.
If the statement appears to be true, it may be necessary to use some axioms or tautologies to prove the statment. For instance, it is known that two integers that are multiplied together will always produce another integer.
Hopefully this is enough of an approach to get you going.
To prove something exists, find one example for which it is true.
To prove ∀x F(x), take an arbitrary constant a and prove F(a) is true.
Counterexamples can be used to disprove ∀ statements, but not ∃ statements. To disprove ∃x F(x), prove that ∀x !F(x). So, take an arbitrary constant a and show that F(a) is false.
I read the question asked in Herbrand universe, Herbrand Base and Herbrand Model of binary tree (prolog) and the answers given, but I have a slightly different question more like a confirmation and hopefully my confusion will be clarified.
Let P be a program such that we have the following facts and rule:
q(a, g(b)).
q(b, g(b)).
q(X, g(X)) :- q(X, g(g(g(X)))).
From the above program, the Herbrand Universe
Up = {a, b, g(a), g(b), q(a, g(a)), q(a, g(b)), q(b, g(a)), q(b, g(b)), g(g(a)), g(g(b))...e.t.c}
Herbrand base:
Bp = {q(s, t) | s, t E Up}
Now come to my question(forgive me for my ignorance), i included q(a, g(a)) as an element in my Herbrand Universe but from the fact, it states q(a, g(b)). Does that mean that q(a, g(a)) does not suppose to be there?
Also since the Herbrand models are subset of the Herbrand base, how do i determine the least Herbrand model by induction?
Note: I have done a lot of research on this, and some parts are well clear to me but still i have this doubt in me thats why i want to seek the communities opinion. Thank you.
From having the fact q(a,g(b)) you cannot conclude whether or not q(a,g(a)) is in the model. You will have to generate the model first.
For determining the model, start with the facts {q(a,g(b)), q(b,g(b))} and now try to apply your rules to extend it. In your case, however, there is no way to match the right-hand side of the rule q(X,g(X)) :- q(X,g(g(g(X)))). to above facts. Therefore, you are done.
Now imagine the rule
q(a,g(Y)) :- q(b,Y).
This rule could be used to extend our set. In fact, the instance
q(a,g(g(b))) :- q(b,g(b)).
is used: If q(b,g(b)) is present, conclude q(a,g(g(b))). Note that we are using here the rule right-to-left. So we obtain
{q(a,g(b)), q(b,g(b)), q(a,g(g(b)))}
thereby reaching a fixpoint.
Now take as another example you suggested the rule
q(X, g(g(g(X)))) :- q(X, g(X)).
Which permits (I will no longer show the instantiated rule) to generate in one step:
{q(a,g(b)), q(b,g(b)), q(a,g(g(g(b)))), q(b, g(g(g(b))))}
But this is not the end, since, again, the rule can be applied to produce even more! In fact, you have now an infinite model!
{g(a,gn+1(b)), g(b, gn+1(b))}
This right-to-left reading is often very helpful when you are trying to understand recursive rules in Prolog. The top-down reading (left-to-right) is often quite difficult, in particular, since you have to take into account backtracking and general unification.
Concerning your question:
"Also since the Herbrand models are subset of the Herbrand base, how do i determine the least Herbrand model by induction?"
If you have a set P of horn clauses, the definite program, then you can define
a program operator:
T_P(M) := { H S | S is ground substitution, (H :- B) in P and B S in M }
The least model is:
inf(P) := intersect { M | M |= P }
Please note that not all models of a definite program are fixpoints of the
program operator. For example the full herbrand model is always a model of
the program P, which shows that definite programs are always consistent, but
it is not necessarily a fixpoint.
On the other hand each fixpoint of the program operator is a model of the
definite program. Namely if you have T_P(M) = M, then one can conclude
M |= P. So that after some further mathematical reasoning(*) one finds that
the least fixpoint is also the least model:
lfp(T_P) = inf(P)
But we need some further considerations so that we can say that we can determine
the least model by a kind of computation. Namely one easily observes that the
program operator is contiguous, i.e. preserves infinite unions of chains, since
horn clauses do not have forall quantifiers in their body:
union_i T_P(M_i) = T_P(union_i M_i)
So that again after some further mathematical reasoning(*) one finds that we can
compute the least fixpoint via iteration, witch can be used for simple
induction. Every element of the least model has a simple derivation of finite
depth:
union_i T_P^i({}) = lpf(T_P)
Bye
(*)
Most likely you find further hints on the exact mathematical reasoning
needed in this book, but unfortunately I can't recall which sections
are relevant:
Foundations of Logic Programming, John Wylie Lloyd, 1984
http://www.amazon.de/Foundations-Programming-Computation-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/3642968287
I was wondering what sort of sentences can't you express in Prolog? I've been researching into logic programming in general and have learned that first-order logic is more expressive compared to definite clause logic (Horn clause) that Prolog is based on. It's a tough subject for me to get my head around.
So, for instance, can the following sentence be expressed:
For all cars, there does not exist at least 1 car without an engine
If so, are there any other sentences that CAN'T be expressed? If not, why?
You can express your sentence straightforward with Prolog using negation (\+).
E.g.:
car(bmw).
car(honda).
...
car(toyota).
engine(bmw, dohv).
engine(toyota, wenkel).
no_car_without_engine:-
\+(
car(Car),
\+(engine(Car, _))
).
Procedure no_car_without_engine/0 will succeed if every car has an engine, and fail otherwise.
The most problematic definitions in Prolog, are those which are left-recursive.
Definitions like
g(X) :- g(A), r(A,X).
are most likely to fail, due to Prolog's search algorithm, which is plain depth-first-search
and will run to infinity and beyond.
The general problem with Horn Clauses however is, that they're defined to have at most one positive element. That said, one can find a clause which is limited to those conditions,
for example:
A ∨ B
As a consequence, facts like ∀ X: cat(X) ∨ dog(X) can't be expressed directly.
There are ways to work around those and there are ways to allow such statements (see below).
Reading material:
These slides (p. 3) give an
example of which sentence you can't build using Prolog.
This work (p. 10) also explains Horn Clauses and their implications and introduces a method to allow 'invalid' Horn Clauses.
Prolog is a programming language, not a natural language interface.
The sentence you show is expressed in such a convoluted way that I had hard time attempting to understand it. Effectively, I must thanks gusbro that took the pain to express it in understandable way. But he entirely glossed over the knowledge representation problems that any programming language pose when applied to natural language, or even simply negation in first order logic. These problems are so urgent that the language selected is often perceived as 'unimportant'.
Relating to programming, Prolog lacks the ability to access in O(1) (constant time) any linear data structure (i.e. arrays). Then a QuickSort, for instance, that requires access to array elements in O(1), can't be implemented in efficient way.
But it's nevertheless a Turing complete language, for what is worth. Then there are no statements that can't be expressed in Prolog.
So you are looking for sentences that can't be expressed in clausal logic that can be expressed in first order logic.
Strictly speaking, there are many, simply because clausal logic is a restriction of FOL. So that's true by definition.
What you can do though is you can rewrite any set of FOL sentences into a logic program that is not equivalent but with good properties. So for example if you want to know if p is a consequence of your theory, you can use equivalently the transformed logic program.
A few notes on the other answers:
Negation in Prolog (\+) is negation as failure and not first order logic negation
Prolog is a programming language, as correctly pointed out, we should be talking about clausal logic instead.
Left recursion is not a problem. You can easily use a different selection rule, or some other inference mechanism.