Coinductive control of inductive data types

Abstract

We combine the theory of inductive data types with the theory of universal measurings. By doing so, we find that many categories of algebras of endofunctors are actually enriched in the corresponding category of coalgebras of the same endofunctor. The enrichment captures all possible partial algebra homomorphisms, defined by measuring coalgebras. Thus this enriched category carries more information than the usual category of algebras which captures only total algebra homomorphisms. We specify new algebras besides the initial one using a generalization of the notion of initial algebra.