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Hello. Is there a string diagram calculus out there to represent substitutions between contexts of dependent type theory?
Dependent type theories are often modelled by finitely complete categories, and I know @Pawel Sobocinski was working on a diagrammatic calculus for finitely complete categories, so he may have some thoughts on the topic.
@Nathanael Arkor What's a good place to learn about models of dependent types in finitely complete categories?
Robin Piedeleu said:
Nathanael Arkor What's a good place to learn about models of dependent types in finitely complete categories?
I don't know if it's the best place to learn, but the paper by Clairambault and Dybjer establishes a biequivalence between finitely complete categories and the 2-category of “democratic cwfs with extensional identity types and Σ-types” (see the paper for the precise definition and the relation to dependent type theory with extensional identity types and Σ-types). The paper also has some preliminary historical notes.
For the corresponding result for finitely complete (∞,1)-categories and intensional type theory, see Kapulkin–Szumiło.
Robin Piedeleu said:
Nathanael Arkor What's a good place to learn about models of dependent types in finitely complete categories?
I don't really have a good answer for that, unfortunately. I don't think there's one good source that contains all the relevant aspects. A starting point would be §6 of Pitts's Categorical logic. Jacobs's Categorical Logic and Type Theory is a good introduction to dependent type theory from a slightly different perspective: that of fibred categories.
I kind of like Maietti's Modular correspondence between dependent type theories and categories including pretopoi and topoi.