KIT Course: Constructive Logic (SS'23)

This course provides a thorough introduction to modern constructive logic, its roots in philosophy, its numerous applications in computer science, and its mathematical properties. The core topics of this course are intuitionistic logic, natural deduction, Curry-Howard isomorphism, propositions as types, proofs as programs, formulas as programs, functional programming, logic programming, Heyting arithmetic and primitive recursion, cut elimination, connections between classical and constructive logic, inductive definitions, sequent calculus, and decidable classes. Advanced topics may include type theory, proof search, linear logic, temporal logic, modal logic.

Students who successfully complete this course will:

• Understand the working principles of logic
• Understand how the meaning of a proposition comes from its verifications
• Distinguish propositions from judgments
• Use proof rules to conduct formal proofs
• Formalize informal problems into precise logical language
• Justify how proof rules fit to one another in sound and complete ways
• Assess the validity of a formal proof
• Understand propositions as types, proofs as programs, formulas as programs
• Relate constructive logic to computation and constructive proofs to functional programs
• Relate deductive proof search to computation in logic programming
• Relate induction to recursion and use induction to prove properties in and about logical systems
• Understand the principles and applications of logic programming

The instructor greatly appreciates the help by other members of the Alexander von Humboldt Professor group for Logic of Autonomous Dynamical Systems at KIT.