Modalities in the Stone Age: A Comparison of Coalgebraic Logics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2012

Abstract

Coalgebra develops a general theory of transition systems, parametric in a functor T; the functor T specifies the possible one-step behaviours of the system. A fundamental question in this area is how to obtain, for an arbitrary functor T, a logic for T-coalgebras. We compare two existing proposals, Moss’s coalgebraic logic and the logic of all predicate liftings, by providing one-step translations between them, extending the results in Raul Andres Leal (2008) [34] by making systematic use of Stone duality. Our main contribution then is a novel coalgebraic logic, which can be seen as an equational axiomatisation of Moss’s logic. The three logics are equivalent for a natural but restricted class of functors. We give examples showing that the logics differ in general. Finally, we argue that the quest for a generic logic for T-coalgebras is still open in the general case.

Comments

This article was originally published in Theoretical Computer Science, volume 430, in 2012. DOI: 10.1016/j.tcs.2012.03.027

Copyright

Elsevier

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS