Regular and relational categories: Revisiting 'Cartesian bicategories I'

MaRDI QIDQ6324465zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Brendan Fong, David I. Spivak

Publication date 30 August 2019

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to category theory (18-01) Categories of spans/cospans, relations, or partial maps (18B10)

Abstract: Regular logic is the fragment of first order logic generated by $=$, $op$, $wedge$, and $exists$. A key feature of this logic is that it is the minimal fragment required to express composition of binary relations; another is that it is the internal logic of regular categories. The link between these two facts is that in any regular category, one may construct a notion of binary relation using jointly-monic spans; this results in what is known as the bicategory of relations of the regular category. In this paper we provide a direct axiomatization of bicategories of relations, which we term relational po-categories, reinterpreting the earlier work of Carboni and Walters along these lines. Our main contribution is an explicit proof that the 2-category of regular categories is equivalent to that of relational po-categories. Throughout, we emphasize the graphical nature of relational po-categories.

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