Abstract

. This paper studies the problem of coherence in category theory from a type-theoretic viewpoint. We first show how a Curry-Howard interpretation of a formal proof of normalization for monoids almost directly yields a coherence proof for monoidal categories. Then we formalize this coherence proof in intensional intuitionistic type theory and show how it relies on explicit reasoning about proof objects for intensional equality. This formalization has been checked in the proof assistant ALF. 1 Introduction Mac Lane [18, pp.161--165] proved a coherence theorem for monoidal categories. A basic ingredient in his proof is the normalization of object expressions. But it is only one ingredient and several others are needed too. Here we show that almost a whole proof of this coherence theorem is hidden in a Curry-Howard interpretation of a proof of normalization for monoids. The second point of the paper is to contribute to the development of constructive category theory in the sense of Huet a...

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