Abstract

We prove a folklore theorem, that two derivations in a cut-free sequent calculus for intuitionistic propositional logic (based on Kleene's G3) are inter-permutable (using a set of basic "permutation reduction rules" derived from Kleene's work in 1952) iff they determine the same natural deduction. The basic rules form a confluent and weakly normalising rewriting system. We refer to Schwichtenberg's proof elsewhere that a modification of this system is strongly normalising. Key words: intuitionistic logic, proof theory, natural deduction, sequent calculus. 1 Introduction There is a folklore theorem that two intuitionistic sequent calculus derivations are "really the same" iff they are inter-permutable, using permutations as described by Kleene in [13]. Our purpose here is to make precise and prove such a "permutability theorem". Prawitz [18] showed how intuitionistic sequent calculus derivations determine natural deductions, via a mapping ' from LJ to NJ (here we consider only ...

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