Rewriting logic [72] is proposed as a logical framework in which other logics can be represented, and as a semantic framework for the specification of languages and systems. Using concepts from the theory of general logics [70], representations of an object logic L in a framework logic F are understood as mappings L ! F that translate one logic into the other in a conservative way. The ease with which such maps can be defined for a number of quite different logics of interest, including equational logic, Horn logic with equality, linear logic, logics with quantifiers, and any sequent calculus presentation of a logic for a very general notion of "sequent," is discussed in detail. Using the fact that rewriting logic is reflective, it is often possible to reify inside rewriting logic itself a representation map L ! RWLogic for the finitely presentable theories of L. Such a reification takes the form of a map between the abstract data types representing the finitary theories of...

After giving general metalogical axioms characterizing reflection in general logics in terms of the notion of a universal theory , this paper specifies a finitely presented universal theory for rewriting logic and gives a detailed proof of the claim made in [6] that rewriting logic is reflective. The paper also gives general axioms for the notion of a strategy language internal to a given logic. Exploiting the fact that rewriting logic is reflexive, a general method for defining internal strategy languages for it and proving their correctness is proposed and is illustrated with an example. The Maude language has been used as an experimental vehicle for the exploration of these techniques. They seem quite promising for applications such as metaprogramming and module composition, logical framework representations, development of formal programming and proving environments, supercompilation, and formal verification of strategies. 1 Introduction Reflection is a very desirable property of ...

The very success and breadth of reflective techniques underscores the need for a general theory of reflection. At present what we have is a wide-ranging variety of reflective systems, each explained in its own idiosyncratic terms. Metalogical foundations can allow us to capture the essential aspects of reflective systems in a formalismindependent way. This paper proposes metalogical axioms for reflective logics and declarative languages based on the theory of general logics [34]. In this way, several strands of work in reflection, including functional, equational, Horn logic, and rewriting logic reflective languages, as well as a variety of reflective theorem proving systems are placed within a common theoretical framework. General axioms for computational strategies, and for the internalization of those strategies in a reflective logic are also given. 1 Introduction Reflection is a fundamental idea. In logic it has been vigorously pursued by many researchers since the fundamental wor...

. After introducing the basic notions of reflective logic and internal strategies, we discuss in detail how reflection can be systematically exploited to design a strategy language internal to a reflective logic in the concrete case of rewriting logic and Maude; and we illustrate the advantages of this new approach to strategies by showing how the rules of inference for Knuth-Bendix completion can be given strategies corresponding to completion procedures in a completely modular way, not requiring any change whatsoever to the inference rules themselves. 1 Introduction This paper is part of a long-term effort to study and axiomatize reflective logics and to systematically exploit reflection to bring deduction strategies within the fold of logic. In this way, more powerful, modular, and flexible notions of deduction strategy can be defined and verified. In earlier work [7, 8] we have proposed general axiomatic notions of reflective logic and internal strategy language, and have begun to...

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this paper I briefly sketch recent work on meta-logical foundations that seems promising as a conceptual basis on which to achieve the goal of formal interoperability. Specificaly, I will briefly discuss:

We present a foundation for a computational meta-theory of languages with bindings implemented in a computer-aided formal reasoning environment. Our theory provides the ability to reason abstractly about operators, languages, open-ended languages, classes of languages, etc. The theory is based on the ideas of higher-order abstract syntax, with an appropriate induction principle parameterized over the language (i.e. a set of operators) being used. In our approach, both the bound and free variables are treated uniformly and this uniform treatment extends naturally to variable-length bindings. The implementation is reflective, namely there is a natural mapping between the meta-language of the theorem-prover and the object language of our theory. The object language substitution operation is mapped to the meta-language substitution and does not need to be defined recursively. Our approach does not require designing a custom type theory; in this paper we describe the implementation of this foundational theory within a general-purpose type theory. This work is fully implemented in the MetaPRL theorem prover, using the pre-existing NuPRL-like MartinL of-style computational type theory. Based on this implementation, we lay out an outline for a framework for programming language experimentation and exploration as well as a general reflective reasoning framework. This paper also includes a short survey of the existing approaches to syntactic reflection. 1

This paper is about mechanical checking of formal mathematics. Given some formal system, we want to construct derivations in that system, or check the correctness of putative derivations; our job is not to ascertain truth (that is the job of the designer of our formal system), but only proof. However, we are quite rigid about this: only a derivation in our given formal system will do; nothing else counts as evidence! Thus it is not a collection of judgements (provability), or a consequence relation [Avr91] (derivability) we are interested in, but the derivations themselves; the formal system used to present a logic is important. This viewpoint seems forced on us by our intention to actually do formal mathematics. There is still a question, however, revolving around whether we insist on objects that are immediately recognisable as proofs (direct proofs), or will accept some meta-notations that only compute to proofs (indirect proofs). For example, we informally refer to previously proved results, lemmas and theorems, without actually inserting the texts of their proofs in our argument. Such an argument could be made into a direct proof by replacing all references to previous results by their direct proofs, so it might be accepted as a kind of indirect proof. In fact, even for very simple formal systems, such an indirect proof may compute to a very much bigger direct proof, and if we will only accept a fully expanded direct proof (in a mechanical proof checker for example), we will not be able to do much mathematics. It is well known that this notion of referring to previous results can be internalized in a logic as a cut rule, or Modus Ponens. In a logic containing a cut rule, proofs containing cuts are considered direct proofs, and can be directly accepted by a proof ch...

This paper describes a formal constructive proof of the decidability of a sequent calculus presentation of classical propositional logic. The Nuprl theories and proofs reported on here are part of a larger program to safely incorporate formally justified decision procedures into theorem provers. The proof is implemented in the Nuprl system and the resulting proof object yields a "correct-by-construction" program for deciding propositional sequents. In the case the sequent is valid, the program reports that fact; in the case the sequent is falsifiable, the program returns a falsifying assignment. Also, the semantics of the propositional sequents is formulated here in Kleene's strong threevalued logic which both: agrees with the standard two valued semantics; and gives finer information in case the proposition is falsifiable. Contents 1 Introduction 2 1.1 Related Work : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 3 1.2 Overview of the Approach : : : : : : : : : : : :...

this paper applications of reflection in rewriting logic and Maude to the following areas: