Paper: Generalized Decidability via Brouwer Trees (at LICS 2026)

Authors: Tom de Jong Nicolai Kraus Aref Mohammadzadeh Fredrik Nordvall Forsberg

Open access: https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.LICS.2026.59

Abstract

In the setting of constructive mathematics, we suggest and study a framework for decidability of properties, which allows for finer distinctions than just "decidable, semidecidable, or undecidable". We work in homotopy type theory and use Brouwer tree ordinals to specify the level of decidability of a property. In this framework, we express the property that a proposition is α-decidable, for an ordinal α, and show that it generalizes decidability and semidecidability. Further generalizing known results, we show that α-decidable propositions are closed under binary conjunction, and discuss for which α they are closed under binary disjunction. We prove that if each P(i) is semidecidable, then the countable meet ∀ i ∈ ℕ. P(i) is ω²-decidable, and similar results for countable joins and iterated quantifiers. We also discuss the relationship with countable choice. All our results are formalized in Cubical Agda.

BibTeX

  @InProceedings{JongKrausMohammadza-GeneralizedDecidabi,
    author = 	 {Tom de Jong and Nicolai Kraus and Aref Mohammadzadeh and Fredrik Nordvall Forsberg},
    title = 	 {Generalized Decidability via Brouwer Trees},
    booktitle =  {Proceedings of the Forty-First Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2026)},
    year =	 {2026},
    month =	 {July}, 
    pages =      {59:1--59:27},
    location =   {Lisbon, Portugal}, 
    publisher =	 {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik},
    doi =        {10.4230/LIPIcs.LICS.2026.59}
  }