A categorical manifesto

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Goguen

This paper tries to explain why and how category theory is useful in computing science, by giving guidelines for applying seven basic categorical concepts: category, functor, natural transformation, limit, adjoint, colimit and comma category. Some examples, intuition, and references are given for each concept, but completeness is not attempted. Some additional categorical concepts and some suggestions for further research are also mentioned. The paper concludes with some philosophical discussion.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miho Fuyama ◽  
Hayato Saigo ◽  
Tatsuji Takahashi

We propose the theory of indeterminate natural transformation (TINT) to investigate the dynamical creation of meaning as an association relationship between images, focusing on metaphor comprehension as an example. TINT models meaning creation as a type of stochastic process based on mathematical structure and defined by association relationships, such as morphisms in category theory, to represent the indeterminate nature of structure-structure interactions between the systems of image meanings. Such interactions are formulated in terms of the so-called coslice categories and functors as structure-preserving correspondences between them. The relationship between such functors is “indeterminate natural transformation”, the central notion in TINT, which models the creation of meanings in a precise manner. For instance, metaphor comprehension is modeled by the construction of indeterminate natural transformations from a canonically defined functor, which we call the base-of-metaphor functor.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1573
Author(s):  
Hayato Saigo ◽  
Juzo Nohmi

In the present paper, we propose a new axiomatic approach to nonstandard analysis and its application to the general theory of spatial structures in terms of category theory. Our framework is based on the idea of internal set theory, while we make use of an endofunctor U on a topos of sets S together with a natural transformation υ, instead of the terms as “standard”, “internal”, or “external”. Moreover, we propose a general notion of a space called U-space, and the category USpace whose objects are U-spaces and morphisms are functions called U-spatial morphisms. The category USpace, which is shown to be Cartesian closed, gives a unified viewpoint toward topological and coarse geometric structure. It will also be useful to further study symmetries/asymmetries of the systems with infinite degrees of freedom, such as quantum fields.


Symmetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1578
Author(s):  
Krystian Jobczyk

The natural transformation constitutes one of the most important entity of category theory and it introduces a piece of sophisticated dynamism to the categorial structures. Each natural transformation forms a unique mapping between the so-called functors, which live between categories. In the most simple contexts, natural transformations may be recognized by commutativity of diagrams, which determine them. In fact, the natural transformation does not form any single mapping, but a pair of two components, which–together with the commutativity condition itself–introduces a kind of a symmetry to the functor diagrams. Meanwhile, the general form of the natural transformation may be predicted by means the so-called Yoneda’s lemma in each scenario based on two-valued logic. Meanwhile, the situation may be radically different if we deal with multi-diagrams (instead of the single ones) and if we exchange the two-valued scenario for a multi-valued or fuzzy one. Due to this background–the paper introduces a new concept of multi-fuzzy natural transformation. Its definition exploits the notion of fuzzy natural transformation. Moreover, a multi-fuzzy Yoneda’s lemma is formulated and proved. Finally, some references of these constructions to coding theory are elucidated in last parts of the paper.


1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERNIE G. MANES

In object-oriented programming, there are many notions of ‘collection with members in X’. This paper offers an axiomatic theory of collections based on monads in the category of sets and total functions. Heuristically, the axioms defining a collection monad state that each collection has a finite set of members of X, that pure 1-element collections exist and that a collection of collections flattens to a single collection whose members are the union of the members of the constituent collections. The relationship between monads and universal algebra leads to a formal definition of collection implementation in terms of tree-processing. Ideas from elementary category theory underly the classification of collections. For example, collections can be zipped if and only if the monad's endofunctor preserves pullbacks. Or, a collection can be uniquely specified by its shape and list of data if the morphisms of the Kleisli category of the monad are all deterministic, and the converse holds for commutative monads. Again, a collection monad is ordered if the monad's functor preserves equalizers of monomorphisms (so, in particular, if collections can be zipped the monad is ordered). Every implementable monad is ordered. It is shown using the well-ordering principle that a collection monad is ordered if and only if its functor admits an appropriated list-valued natural transformation that lists the members of each collection.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shunsuke Ikeda ◽  
Miho Fuyama ◽  
Hayato Saigo ◽  
Tatsuji Takahashi

Machine learning techniques have realized some principal cognitive functionalities such as nonlinear generalization and causal model construction, as far as huge amount of data are available. A next frontier for cognitive modelling would be the ability of humans to transfer past knowledge to novel, ongoing experience, making analogies from the known to the unknown. Novel metaphor comprehension may be considered as an example of such transfer learning and analogical reasoning that can be empirically tested in a relatively straightforward way. Based on some concepts inherent in category theory, we implement a model of metaphor comprehension called the theory of indeterminate natural transformation (TINT), and test its descriptive validity of humans' metaphor comprehension. We simulate metaphor comprehension with two models: one being structure-ignoring, and the other being structure-respecting. The former is a sub-TINT model, while the latter is the minimal-TINT model. As the required input to the TINT models, we gathered the association data from human participants to construct the ``latent category'' for TINT, which is a complete weighted directed graph. To test the validity of metaphor comprehension by the TINT models, we conducted an experiment that examines how humans comprehend a metaphor. While the sub-TINT does not show any significant correlation, the minimal-TINT shows significant correlations with the human data. It suggests that we can capture metaphor comprehension processes in a quite bottom-up manner realized by TINT.


Author(s):  
Michael Ernst

In the foundations of mathematics there has been an ongoing debate about whether categorical foundations can replace set-theoretical foundations. The primary goal of this chapter is to provide a condensed summary of that debate. It addresses the two primary points of contention: technical adequacy and autonomy. Finally, it calls attention to a neglected feature of the debate, the claim that categorical foundations are more natural and readily useable, and how deeper investigation of that claim could prove fruitful for our understanding of mathematical thinking and mathematical practice.


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