Favonia, Dan Licata, and I spent a bit of time trying to answer (1)
but didn't get anywhere. I haven't thought much about (2), but I
think we were unable to think of any nontrivial types for which we
could construct a computing K inside MLTT.
On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 3:04 PM, Martin Escardo <
m.es...@cs.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
> Interesting. So, then, here are some questions:
>
> (1) Suppose, for given type A, a hypothetical
>
> K: (x : A) (p : x == x) -> p == refl
>
> is given, internally in a univalent type theory.
>
> Is it possible to cook-up a K' of the same type, internally in univalent
> type theory, with the definitional behaviour you require?
>
> We are looking for an endofunction of the type ((x : A) (p : x == x) -> p ==
> refl) that performs some sort of definitional improvement.
>
> We know of an instance of such a phenomenon: if a factor f':||X||->A of some
> f:X->A through |-|:X->||X|| is given, then we can find another
> *definitional* factor f':||X||->A.
>
> This is here in agda
>
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mhe/truncation-and-extensionality/hsetfunext.html#15508
> and also in a paper by Nicolai, Thorsten, Thierry and myself.
>
> (2) Failing that, can we, given the same hypothetical K, cook-up a type A'
> equivalent to A (maybe A'= Sigma(x:A) (x=x)) with K' as above?
>
> (That is, maybe A itself won't provably have (1), but still will have an
> equivalent manifestation which does.)
>
> Or is this wishful thinking?
>
> Martin
> --
> Martin Escardo
>
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mhe