Coaxioms: flexible coinductive definitions by inference systems

Abstract

We introduce a generalized notion of inference system to support more flexible interpretations of recursive definitions. Besides axioms and inference rules with the usual meaning, we allow also coaxioms, which are, intuitively, axioms which can only be applied "at infinite depth" in a proof tree. Coaxioms allow us to interpret recursive definitions as fixed points which are not necessarily the least, nor the greatest one, whose existence is guaranteed by a smooth extension of classical results. This notion nicely subsumes standard inference systems and their inductive and coinductive interpretation, thus allowing formal reasoning in cases where the inductive and coinductive interpretation do not provide the intended meaning, but are rather mixed together.