Constructing Higher Inductive Types as Groupoid Quotients
In this paper, we show that all finitary 1-truncated higher inductive types (HITs) can be constructed from the groupoid quotient. We start by defining internally a notion of signatures for HITs, and for each signature, we construct a bicategory of algebras in 1-types and in groupoids. We continue by proving initial algebra semantics for our signatures. After that, we show that the groupoid quotient induces a biadjunction between the bicategories of algebras in 1-types and in groupoids. We finish by constructing a biinitial object in the bicategory of algebras in groupoids. From all this, we conclude that all finitary 1-truncated HITs can be constructed from the groupoid quotient. All the results are formalized over the UniMath library of univalent mathematics in Coq.
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