Notions of Computation as Monoids

Abstract

There are different notions of computation, the most popular being monads, applicative functors, and arrows. In this article we show that these three notions can be seen as monoids in a monoidal category. We demonstrate that at this level of abstraction one can obtain useful results which can be instantiated to the different notions of computation. In particular, we show how free constructions and Cayley representations for monoids translate into useful constructions for monads, applicative functors, and arrows. Moreover, the uniform presentation of all three notions helps in the analysis of the relation between them.