Lambek's categorical proof theory and Läuchli's abstract realizability

In this paper we give an introduction to categorical proof theory, and reinterpret, with improvements, Lauchli's work on abstract realizability restricted to propositional logic (but see [M1] for predicate logic). Partly to make some points of a foundational nature, we have included a substantial amount of background material. As a result, the paper is (we hope) readable with a knowledge of just the rudiments of category theory, the notions of category, functor, natural transformation, and the like. We start with an extended introduction giving the background, and stating what we do with a minimum of technicalities. In three publications [L1, 2, 3] published in the years 1968, 1969 and 1972, J. Lambek gave a categorical formulation of the notion of formal proof in deductive systems in certain propositional calculi. The theory is also described in the recent book [LS]. See also [Sz]. The basic motivation behind Lambek's theory was to place proof theory in the framework of modern abstract mathematics. The spirit of the latter, at least for the purposes of the present discussion, is to organize mathematical objects into mathematical structures . The specific kind of structure we will be concerned with is category . In Lambek's theory, one starts with an arbitrary theory in any one of several propositional calculi. One has the (formal) proofs (deductions) in the given theory of entailments A ⇒ B , with A and B arbitrary formulas. One introduces an equivalence relation on proofs under which, in particular, equivalent proofs are proofs of the same entailment; equivalence of proofs is intended to capture the idea of the proofs being only inessentially different. One forms a category whose objects are the formulas of the underlying language of the theory, and whose arrows from A to B , with the latter arbitrary formulas, are the equivalence classes of formal proofs of A ⇒ B .