Synthetic Tait Computability the Hard Way

Abstract

We walk through a few proofs of canonicity and normalization, each one with more aspects dissected and re-expressed in category theory, so that readers can compare the difference across proofs. During this process we isolate the different ideas that make up the proofs. Finally we arrive at synthetic Tait computability as proposed by J. Sterling. We also give a synthetic proof for parametricity of system F.