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I often run into term "adjoin" when trying to understand some concepts. Those things are too abstract for me to understand as I'm neither expert in field nor category theory.
The simplest case I found is a Monoid Maybe a instance which often behaves not as I would sometimes expect with regard to Nothing.
From Wikipedia we can learn that by "adjoining" an element to a semigroup we can get a different Monoid instance. I don't understand the sentence but the equations given suggest it's exactly what I need (and is not default for some reason):
Any semigroup S may be turned into a monoid simply by adjoining an element e not in S and defining e • s = s = s • e for all s ∈ S.
Doe "adjoining" mean the same as "adding" at least in this case?
Are there other simple examples of this concept?
What would be simplest possible instance of something that is "left-adjoint"?
Sometimes "adjoining" means "adding something new", as in the semigroup-related sentence you quote. E.g. someone might say that using Maybe a means adding/adjoining a new element Nothing to the type a. Personally, I would only use "adding" for this, though.
This has nothing to do with adjoints in the categorical sense, which are a tricky concept.
Roughly put, assume you have a functional type of the form
F a -> b
where F is some mapping from types to types (more precisely, a functor). Sometimes, you can express an isomorphic type to the above one having the form
a -> G b
where "magically" the function F on the left side moved to the right side, changing into G.
The canonical example is currying: Let e.g.
F T = (T, Int)
G T = Int -> T
Then we have
(F a) -> b
-- definition of F
= (a, Int) -> b
-- currying
=~ a -> (Int -> b)
-- definition of G
= a -> G b
In such case, we write F -| G which is read as "F is left adjoint to G".
Every time you can "nicely move" an operation on the input type on the other side of the arrow, changing it into another operation on the output type, you have an adjoint. (Technically, "nicely" means we have a natural isomorphism)
Who first said the following?
A monad is just a monoid in the
category of endofunctors, what's the
problem?
And on a less important note, is this true and if so could you give an explanation (hopefully one that can be understood by someone who doesn't have much Haskell experience)?
That particular phrasing is by James Iry, from his highly entertaining Brief, Incomplete and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages, in which he fictionally attributes it to Philip Wadler.
The original quote is from Saunders Mac Lane in Categories for the Working Mathematician, one of the foundational texts of Category Theory. Here it is in context, which is probably the best place to learn exactly what it means.
But, I'll take a stab. The original sentence is this:
All told, a monad in X is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors of X, with product × replaced by composition of endofunctors and unit set by the identity endofunctor.
X here is a category. Endofunctors are functors from a category to itself (which is usually all Functors as far as functional programmers are concerned, since they're mostly dealing with just one category; the category of types - but I digress). But you could imagine another category which is the category of "endofunctors on X". This is a category in which the objects are endofunctors and the morphisms are natural transformations.
And of those endofunctors, some of them might be monads. Which ones are monads? Exactly the ones which are monoidal in a particular sense. Instead of spelling out the exact mapping from monads to monoids (since Mac Lane does that far better than I could hope to), I'll just put their respective definitions side by side and let you compare:
A monoid is...
A set, S
An operation, • : S × S → S
An element of S, e : 1 → S
...satisfying these laws:
(a • b) • c = a • (b • c), for all a, b and c in S
e • a = a • e = a, for all a in S
A monad is...
An endofunctor, T : X → X (in Haskell, a type constructor of kind * -> * with a Functor instance)
A natural transformation, μ : T × T → T, where × means functor composition (μ is known as join in Haskell)
A natural transformation, η : I → T, where I is the identity endofunctor on X (η is known as return in Haskell)
...satisfying these laws:
μ ∘ Tμ = μ ∘ μT
μ ∘ Tη = μ ∘ ηT = 1 (the identity natural transformation)
With a bit of squinting you might be able to see that both of these definitions are instances of the same abstract concept.
First, the extensions and libraries that we're going to use:
{-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes, TypeOperators #-}
import Control.Monad (join)
Of these, RankNTypes is the only one that's absolutely essential to the below. I once wrote an explanation of RankNTypes that some people seem to have found useful, so I'll refer to that.
Quoting Tom Crockett's excellent answer, we have:
A monad is...
An endofunctor, T : X -> X
A natural transformation, μ : T × T -> T, where × means functor composition
A natural transformation, η : I -> T, where I is the identity endofunctor on X
...satisfying these laws:
μ(μ(T × T) × T)) = μ(T × μ(T × T))
μ(η(T)) = T = μ(T(η))
How do we translate this to Haskell code? Well, let's start with the notion of a natural transformation:
-- | A natural transformations between two 'Functor' instances. Law:
--
-- > fmap f . eta g == eta g . fmap f
--
-- Neat fact: the type system actually guarantees this law.
--
newtype f :-> g =
Natural { eta :: forall x. f x -> g x }
A type of the form f :-> g is analogous to a function type, but instead of thinking of it as a function between two types (of kind *), think of it as a morphism between two functors (each of kind * -> *). Examples:
listToMaybe :: [] :-> Maybe
listToMaybe = Natural go
where go [] = Nothing
go (x:_) = Just x
maybeToList :: Maybe :-> []
maybeToList = Natural go
where go Nothing = []
go (Just x) = [x]
reverse' :: [] :-> []
reverse' = Natural reverse
Basically, in Haskell, natural transformations are functions from some type f x to another type g x such that the x type variable is "inaccessible" to the caller. So for example, sort :: Ord a => [a] -> [a] cannot be made into a natural transformation, because it's "picky" about which types we may instantiate for a. One intuitive way I often use to think of this is the following:
A functor is a way of operating on the content of something without touching the structure.
A natural transformation is a way of operating on the structure of something without touching or looking at the content.
Now, with that out of the way, let's tackle the clauses of the definition.
The first clause is "an endofunctor, T : X -> X." Well, every Functor in Haskell is an endofunctor in what people call "the Hask category," whose objects are Haskell types (of kind *) and whose morphisms are Haskell functions. This sounds like a complicated statement, but it's actually a very trivial one. All it means is that that a Functor f :: * -> * gives you the means of constructing a type f a :: * for any a :: * and a function fmap f :: f a -> f b out of any f :: a -> b, and that these obey the functor laws.
Second clause: the Identity functor in Haskell (which comes with the Platform, so you can just import it) is defined this way:
newtype Identity a = Identity { runIdentity :: a }
instance Functor Identity where
fmap f (Identity a) = Identity (f a)
So the natural transformation η : I -> T from Tom Crockett's definition can be written this way for any Monad instance t:
return' :: Monad t => Identity :-> t
return' = Natural (return . runIdentity)
Third clause: The composition of two functors in Haskell can be defined this way (which also comes with the Platform):
newtype Compose f g a = Compose { getCompose :: f (g a) }
-- | The composition of two 'Functor's is also a 'Functor'.
instance (Functor f, Functor g) => Functor (Compose f g) where
fmap f (Compose fga) = Compose (fmap (fmap f) fga)
So the natural transformation μ : T × T -> T from Tom Crockett's definition can be written like this:
join' :: Monad t => Compose t t :-> t
join' = Natural (join . getCompose)
The statement that this is a monoid in the category of endofunctors then means that Compose (partially applied to just its first two parameters) is associative, and that Identity is its identity element. I.e., that the following isomorphisms hold:
Compose f (Compose g h) ~= Compose (Compose f g) h
Compose f Identity ~= f
Compose Identity g ~= g
These are very easy to prove because Compose and Identity are both defined as newtype, and the Haskell Reports define the semantics of newtype as an isomorphism between the type being defined and the type of the argument to the newtype's data constructor. So for example, let's prove Compose f Identity ~= f:
Compose f Identity a
~= f (Identity a) -- newtype Compose f g a = Compose (f (g a))
~= f a -- newtype Identity a = Identity a
Q.E.D.
The answers here do an excellent job in defining both monoids and monads, however, they still don't seem to answer the question:
And on a less important note, is this true and if so could you give an explanation (hopefully one that can be understood by someone who doesn't have much Haskell experience)?
The crux of the matter that is missing here, is the different notion of "monoid", the so-called categorification more precisely -- the one of monoid in a monoidal category. Sadly Mac Lane's book itself makes it very confusing:
All told, a monad in X is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors of X, with product × replaced by composition of endofunctors and unit set by the identity endofunctor.
Main confusion
Why is this confusing? Because it does not define what is "monoid in the category of endofunctors" of X. Instead, this sentence suggests taking a monoid inside the set of all endofunctors together with the functor composition as binary operation and the identity functor as a monoidal unit. Which works perfectly fine and turns into a monoid any subset of endofunctors that contains the identity functor and is closed under functor composition.
Yet this is not the correct interpretation, which the book fails to make clear at that stage. A Monad f is a fixed endofunctor, not a subset of endofunctors closed under composition. A common construction is to use f to generate a monoid by taking the set of all k-fold compositions f^k = f(f(...)) of f with itself, including k=0 that corresponds to the identity f^0 = id. And now the set S of all these powers for all k>=0 is indeed a monoid "with product × replaced by composition of endofunctors and unit set by the identity endofunctor".
And yet:
This monoid S can be defined for any functor f or even literally for any self-map of X. It is the monoid generated by f.
The monoidal structure of S given by the functor composition and the identity functor has nothing do with f being or not being a monad.
And to make things more confusing, the definition of "monoid in monoidal category" comes later in the book as you can see from the table of contents. And yet understanding this notion is absolutely critical to understanding the connection with monads.
(Strict) monoidal categories
Going to Chapter VII on Monoids (which comes later than Chapter VI on Monads), we find the definition of the so-called strict monoidal category as triple (B, *, e), where B is a category, *: B x B-> B a bifunctor (functor with respect to each component with other component fixed) and e is a unit object in B, satisfying the associativity and unit laws:
(a * b) * c = a * (b * c)
a * e = e * a = a
for any objects a,b,c of B, and the same identities for any morphisms a,b,c with e replaced by id_e, the identity morphism of e. It is now instructive to observe that in our case of interest, where B is the category of endofunctors of X with natural transformations as morphisms, * the functor composition and e the identity functor, all these laws are satisfied, as can be directly verified.
What comes after in the book is the definition of the "relaxed" monoidal category, where the laws only hold modulo some fixed natural transformations satisfying so-called coherence relations, which is however not important for our cases of the endofunctor categories.
Monoids in monoidal categories
Finally, in section 3 "Monoids" of Chapter VII, the actual definition is given:
A monoid c in a monoidal category (B, *, e) is an object of B with two arrows (morphisms)
mu: c * c -> c
nu: e -> c
making 3 diagrams commutative. Recall that in our case, these are morphisms in the category of endofunctors, which are natural transformations corresponding to precisely join and return for a monad. The connection becomes even clearer when we make the composition * more explicit, replacing c * c by c^2, where c is our monad.
Finally, notice that the 3 commutative diagrams (in the definition of a monoid in monoidal category) are written for general (non-strict) monoidal categories, while in our case all natural transformations arising as part of the monoidal category are actually identities. That will make the diagrams exactly the same as the ones in the definition of a monad, making the correspondence complete.
Conclusion
In summary, any monad is by definition an endofunctor, hence an object in the category of endofunctors, where the monadic join and return operators satisfy the definition of a monoid in that particular (strict) monoidal category. Vice versa, any monoid in the monoidal category of endofunctors is by definition a triple (c, mu, nu) consisting of an object and two arrows, e.g. natural transformations in our case, satisfying the same laws as a monad.
Finally, note the key difference between the (classical) monoids and the more general monoids in monoidal categories. The two arrows mu and nu above are not anymore a binary operation and a unit in a set. Instead, you have one fixed endofunctor c. The functor composition * and the identity functor alone do not provide the complete structure needed for the monad, despite that confusing remark in the book.
Another approach would be to compare with the standard monoid C of all self-maps of a set A, where the binary operation is the composition, that can be seen to map the standard cartesian product C x C into C. Passing to the categorified monoid, we are replacing the cartesian product x with the functor composition *, and the binary operation gets replaced with the natural transformation mu from
c * c to c, that is a collection of the join operators
join: c(c(T))->c(T)
for every object T (type in programming). And the identity elements in classical monoids, which can be identified with images of maps from a fixed one-point-set, get replaced with the collection of the return operators
return: T->c(T)
But now there are no more cartesian products, so no pairs of elements and thus no binary operations.
I came to this post by way of better understanding the inference of the infamous quote from Mac Lane's Category Theory For the Working Mathematician.
In describing what something is, it's often equally useful to describe what it's not.
The fact that Mac Lane uses the description to describe a Monad, one might imply that it describes something unique to monads. Bear with me. To develop a broader understanding of the statement, I believe it needs to be made clear that he is not describing something that is unique to monads; the statement equally describes Applicative and Arrows among others. For the same reason we can have two monoids on Int (Sum and Product), we can have several monoids on X in the category of endofunctors. But there is even more to the similarities.
Both Monad and Applicative meet the criteria:
endo => any arrow, or morphism that starts and ends in the same place
functor => any arrow, or morphism between two Categories (e.g., in day to day Tree a -> List b, but in Category Tree -> List)
monoid => single object; i.e., a single type, but in this context, only in regards to the external layer; so, we can't have Tree -> List, only List -> List.
The statement uses "Category of..." This defines the scope of the statement. As an example, the Functor Category describes the scope of f * -> g *, i.e., Any functor -> Any functor, e.g., Tree * -> List * or Tree * -> Tree *.
What a Categorical statement does not specify describes where anything and everything is permitted.
In this case, inside the functors, * -> * aka a -> b is not specified which means Anything -> Anything including Anything else. As my imagination jumps to Int -> String, it also includes Integer -> Maybe Int, or even Maybe Double -> Either String Int where a :: Maybe Double; b :: Either String Int.
So the statement comes together as follows:
functor scope :: f a -> g b (i.e., any parameterized type to any parameterized type)
endo + functor :: f a -> f b (i.e., any one parameterized type to the same parameterized type) ... said differently,
a monoid in the category of endofunctor
So, where is the power of this construct? To appreciate the full dynamics, I needed to see that the typical drawings of a monoid (single object with what looks like an identity arrow, :: single object -> single object), fails to illustrate that I'm permitted to use an arrow parameterized with any number of monoid values, from the one type object permitted in Monoid. The endo, ~ identity arrow definition of equivalence ignores the functor's type value and both the type and value of the most inner, "payload" layer. Thus, equivalence returns true in any situation where the functorial types match (e.g., Nothing -> Just * -> Nothing is equivalent to Just * -> Just * -> Just * because they are both Maybe -> Maybe -> Maybe).
Sidebar: ~ outside is conceptual, but is the left most symbol in f a. It also describes what "Haskell" reads-in first (big picture); so Type is "outside" in relation to a Type Value. The relationship between layers (a chain of references) in programming is not easy to relate in Category. The Category of Set is used to describe Types (Int, Strings, Maybe Int etc.) which includes the Category of Functor (parameterized Types). The reference chain: Functor Type, Functor values (elements of that Functor's set, e.g., Nothing, Just), and in turn, everything else each functor value points to. In Category the relationship is described differently, e.g., return :: a -> m a is considered a natural transformation from one Functor to another Functor, different from anything mentioned thus far.
Back to the main thread, all in all, for any defined tensor product and a neutral value, the statement ends up describing an amazingly powerful computational construct born from its paradoxical structure:
on the outside it appears as a single object (e.g., :: List); static
but inside, permits a lot of dynamics
any number of values of the same type (e.g., Empty | ~NonEmpty) as fodder to functions of any arity. The tensor product will reduce any number of inputs to a single value... for the external layer (~fold that says nothing about the payload)
infinite range of both the type and values for the inner most layer
In Haskell, clarifying the applicability of the statement is important. The power and versatility of this construct, has absolutely nothing to do with a monad per se. In other words, the construct does not rely on what makes a monad unique.
When trying to figure out whether to build code with a shared context to support computations that depend on each other, versus computations that can be run in parallel, this infamous statement, with as much as it describes, is not a contrast between the choice of Applicative, Arrows and Monads, but rather is a description of how much they are the same. For the decision at hand, the statement is moot.
This is often misunderstood. The statement goes on to describe join :: m (m a) -> m a as the tensor product for the monoidal endofunctor. However, it does not articulate how, in the context of this statement, (<*>) could also have also been chosen. It truly is an example of 'six in one, half a dozen in the other'. The logic for combining values are exactly alike; same input generates the same output from each (unlike the Sum and Product monoids for Int because they generate different results when combining Ints).
So, to recap: A monoid in the category of endofunctors describes:
~t :: m * -> m * -> m *
and a neutral value for m *
(<*>) and (>>=) both provide simultaneous access to the two m values in order to compute the the single return value. The logic used to compute the return value is exactly the same. If it were not for the different shapes of the functions they parameterize (f :: a -> b versus k :: a -> m b) and the position of the parameter with the same return type of the computation (i.e., a -> b -> b versus b -> a -> b for each respectively), I suspect we could have parameterized the monoidal logic, the tensor product, for reuse in both definitions. As an exercise to make the point, try and implement ~t, and you end up with (<*>) and (>>=) depending on how you decide to define it forall a b.
If my last point is at minimum conceptually true, it then explains the precise, and only computational difference between Applicative and Monad: the functions they parameterize. In other words, the difference is external to the implementation of these type classes.
In conclusion, in my own experience, Mac Lane's infamous quote provided a great "goto" meme, a guidepost for me to reference while navigating my way through Category to better understand the idioms used in Haskell. It succeeds at capturing the scope of a powerful computing capacity made wonderfully accessible in Haskell.
However, there is irony in how I first misunderstood the statement's applicability outside of the monad, and what I hope conveyed here. Everything that it describes turns out to be what is similar between Applicative and Monads (and Arrows among others). What it doesn't say is precisely the small but useful distinction between them.
Note: No, this isn't true. At some point there was a comment on this answer from Dan Piponi himself saying that the cause and effect here was exactly the opposite, that he wrote his article in response to James Iry's quip. But it seems to have been removed, perhaps by some compulsive tidier.
Below is my original answer.
It's quite possible that Iry had read From Monoids to Monads, a post in which Dan Piponi (sigfpe) derives monads from monoids in Haskell, with much discussion of category theory and explicit mention of "the category of endofunctors on Hask" . In any case, anyone who wonders what it means for a monad to be a monoid in the category of endofunctors might benefit from reading this derivation.
I've been reading about monads in category theory. One definition of monads uses a pair of adjoint functors. A monad is defined by a round-trip using those functors. Apparently adjunctions are very important in category theory, but I haven't seen any explanation of Haskell monads in terms of adjoint functors. Has anyone given it a thought?
Edit: Just for fun, I'm going to do this right. Original answer preserved below
The current adjunction code for category-extras now is in the adjunctions package: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/adjunctions
I'm just going to work through the state monad explicitly and simply. This code uses Data.Functor.Compose from the transformers package, but is otherwise self-contained.
An adjunction between f (D -> C) and g (C -> D), written f -| g, can be characterized in a number of ways. We'll use the counit/unit (epsilon/eta) description, which gives two natural transformations (morphisms between functors).
class (Functor f, Functor g) => Adjoint f g where
counit :: f (g a) -> a
unit :: a -> g (f a)
Note that the "a" in counit is really the identity functor in C, and the "a" in unit is really the identity functor in D.
We can also recover the hom-set adjunction definition from the counit/unit definition.
phiLeft :: Adjoint f g => (f a -> b) -> (a -> g b)
phiLeft f = fmap f . unit
phiRight :: Adjoint f g => (a -> g b) -> (f a -> b)
phiRight f = counit . fmap f
In any case, we can now define a Monad from our unit/counit adjunction like so:
instance Adjoint f g => Monad (Compose g f) where
return x = Compose $ unit x
x >>= f = Compose . fmap counit . getCompose $ fmap (getCompose . f) x
Now we can implement the classic adjunction between (a,) and (a ->):
instance Adjoint ((,) a) ((->) a) where
-- counit :: (a,a -> b) -> b
counit (x, f) = f x
-- unit :: b -> (a -> (a,b))
unit x = \y -> (y, x)
And now a type synonym
type State s = Compose ((->) s) ((,) s)
And if we load this up in ghci, we can confirm that State is precisely our classic state monad. Note that we can take the opposite composition and get the Costate Comonad (aka the store comonad).
There are a bunch of other adjunctions we can make into monads in this fashion (such as (Bool,) Pair), but they're sort of strange monads. Unfortunately we can't do the adjunctions that induce Reader and Writer directly in Haskell in a pleasant way. We can do Cont, but as copumpkin describes, that requires an adjunction from an opposite category, so it actually uses a different "form" of the "Adjoint" typeclass that reverses some arrows. That form is also implemented in a different module in the adjunctions package.
this material is covered in a different way by Derek Elkins' article in The Monad Reader 13 -- Calculating Monads with Category Theory: http://www.haskell.org/wikiupload/8/85/TMR-Issue13.pdf
Also, Hinze's recent Kan Extensions for Program Optimization paper walks through the construction of the list monad from the adjunction between Mon and Set: http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/ralf.hinze/Kan.pdf
Old answer:
Two references.
1) Category-extras delivers, as as always, with a representation of adjunctions and how monads arise from them. As usual, it's good to think with, but pretty light on documentation: http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/category-extras/0.53.5/doc/html/Control-Functor-Adjunction.html
2) -Cafe also delivers with a promising but brief discussion on the role of adjunction. Some of which may help in interpreting category-extras: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2007-December/036328.html
Derek Elkins was showing me recently over dinner how the Cont Monad arises from composing the (_ -> k) contravariant functor with itself, since it happens to be self-adjoint. That's how you get (a -> k) -> k out of it. Its counit, however, leads to double negation elimination, which can't be written in Haskell.
For some Agda code that illustrates and proves this, please see http://hpaste.org/68257.
This is an old thread, but I found the question interesting,
so I did some calculations myself. Hopefully Bartosz is still there
and might read this..
In fact, the Eilenberg-Moore construction does give a very clear picture in this case.
(I will use CWM notation with Haskell like syntax)
Let T be the list monad < T,eta,mu > (eta = return and mu = concat)
and consider a T-algebra h:T a -> a.
(Note that T a = [a] is a free monoid <[a],[],(++)>, that is, identity [] and multiplication (++).)
By definition, h must satisfy h.T h == h.mu a and h.eta a== id.
Now, some easy diagram chasing proves that h actually induces a monoid structure on a (defined by x*y = h[x,y] ),
and that h becomes a monoid homomorphism for this structure.
Conversely, any monoid structure < a,a0,* > defined in Haskell is naturally defined as a T-algebra.
In this way (h = foldr ( * ) a0, a function that 'replaces' (:) with (*),and maps [] to a0, the identity).
So, in this case, the category of T-algebras is just the category of monoid structures definable in Haskell, HaskMon.
(Please check that the morphisms in T-algebras are actually monoid homomorphisms.)
It also characterizes lists as universal objects in HaskMon, just like free products in Grp, polynomial rings in CRng, etc.
The adjuction corresponding to the above construction is < F,G,eta,epsilon >
where
F:Hask -> HaskMon, which takes a type a to the 'free monoid generated by a',that is, [a],
G:HaskMon -> Hask, the forgetful functor (forget the multiplication),
eta:1 -> GF , the natural transformation defined by \x::a -> [x],
epsilon: FG -> 1 , the natural transformation defined by the folding function above
(the 'canonical surjection' from a free monoid to its quotient monoid)
Next, there is another 'Kleisli category' and the corresponding adjunction.
You can check that it is just the category of Haskell types with morphisms a -> T b,
where its compositions are given by the so-called 'Kleisli composition' (>=>).
A typical Haskell programmer will find this category more familiar.
Finally,as is illustrated in CWM, the category of T-algebras
(resp. Kleisli category) becomes the terminal (resp. initial) object in the category
of adjuctions that define the list monad T in a suitable sense.
I suggest to do a similar calculations for the binary tree functor T a = L a | B (T a) (T a) to check your understanding.
I've found a standard constructions of adjunct functors for any monad by Eilenberg-Moore, but I'm not sure if it adds any insight to the problem. The second category in the construction is a category of T-algebras. A T algebra adds a "product" to the initial category.
So how would it work for a list monad? The functor in the list monad consists of a type constructor, e.g., Int->[Int] and a mapping of functions (e.g., standard application of map to lists). An algebra adds a mapping from lists to elements. One example would be adding (or multiplying) all the elements of a list of integers. The functor F takes any type, e.g., Int, and maps it into the algebra defined on the lists of Int, where the product is defined by monadic join (or vice versa, join is defined as the product). The forgetful functor G takes an algebra and forgets the product. The pair F, G, of adjoint functors is then used to construct the monad in the usual way.
I must say I'm none the wiser.
If you are interested,here's some thoughts of a non-expert
on the role of monads and adjunctions in programming languages:
First of all, there exists for a given monad T a unique adjunction to the Kleisli category of T.
In Haskell,the use of monads is primarily confined to operations in this category
(which is essentially a category of free algebras,no quotients).
In fact, all one can do with a Haskell Monad is to compose some Kleisli morphisms of
type a->T b through the use of do expressions, (>>=), etc., to create a new
morphism. In this context, the role of monads is restricted to just the economy
of notation.One exploits associativity of morphisms to be able to write (say) [0,1,2]
instead of (Cons 0 (Cons 1 (Cons 2 Nil))), that is, you can write sequence as sequence,
not as a tree.
Even the use of IO monads is non essential, for the current Haskell type system is powerful
enough to realize data encapsulation (existential types).
This is my answer to your original question,
but I'm curious what Haskell experts have to say about this.
On the other hand, as we have noted, there's also a 1-1 correspondence between monads and
adjunctions to (T-)algebras. Adjoints, in MacLane's terms, are 'a way
to express equivalences of categories.'
In a typical setting of adjunctions <F,G>:X->A where F is some sort
of 'free algebra generator' and G a 'forgetful functor',the corresponding monad
will (through the use of T-algebras) describe how (and when) the algebraic structure of A is constructed on the objects of X.
In the case of Hask and the list monad T, the structure which T introduces is that
of monoid,and this can help us to establish properties (including the correctness) of code through algebraic
methods that the theory of monoids provides. For example, the function foldr (*) e::[a]->a can
readily be seen as an associative operation as long as <a,(*),e> is a monoid,
a fact which could be exploited by the compiler to optimize the computation (e.g. by parallelism).
Another application is to identify and classify 'recursion patterns' in functional programming using categorical
methods in the hope to (partially) dispose of 'the goto of functional programming', Y (the arbitrary recursion combinator).
Apparently, this kind of applications is one of the primary motivations of the creators of Category Theory (MacLane, Eilenberg, etc.),
namely, to establish natural equivalence of categories, and transfer a well-known method in one category
to another (e.g. homological methods to topological spaces,algebraic methods to programming, etc.).
Here, adjoints and monads are indispensable tools to exploit this connection of categories.
(Incidentally, the notion of monads (and its dual, comonads) is so general that one can even go so far as to define 'cohomologies' of
Haskell types.But I have not given a thought yet.)
As for non-determistic functions you mentioned, I have much less to say...
But note that; if an adjunction <F,G>:Hask->A for some category A defines the list monad T,
there must be a unique 'comparison functor' K:A->MonHask (the category of monoids definable in Haskell), see CWM.
This means, in effect, that your category of interest must be a category of monoids in some restricted form (e.g. it may lack some quotients but not free algebras) in order to define the list monad.
Finally,some remarks:
The binary tree functor I mentioned in my last posting easily generalizes to arbitrary data type
T a1 .. an = T1 T11 .. T1m | ....
Namely,any data type in Haskell naturally defines a monad (together with the corresponding category of algebras and the Kleisli category),
which is just the result of any data constructor in Haskell being total.
This is another reason why I consider Haskell's Monad class is not much more than a syntax sugar
(which is pretty important in practice,of course).
Most tutorials seem to give a lot of examples of monads (IO, state, list and so on) and then expect the reader to be able to abstract the overall principle and then they mention category theory. I don't tend to learn very well by trying generalise from examples and I would like to understand from a theoretical point of view why this pattern is so important.
Judging from this thread:
Can anyone explain Monads?
this is a common problem, and I've tried looking at most of the tutorials suggested (except the Brian Beck videos which won't play on my linux machine):
Does anyone know of a tutorial that starts from category theory and explains IO, state, list monads in those terms? the following is my unsuccessful attempt to do so:
As I understand it a monad consists of a triple: an endo-functor and two natural transformations.
The functor is usually shown with the type:
(a -> b) -> (m a -> m b)
I included the second bracket just to emphasise the symmetry.
But, this is an endofunctor, so shouldn't the domain and codomain be the same like this?:
(a -> b) -> (a -> b)
I think the answer is that the domain and codomain both have a type of:
(a -> b) | (m a -> m b) | (m m a -> m m b) and so on ...
But I'm not really sure if that works or fits in with the definition of the functor given?
When we move on to the natural transformation it gets even worse. If I understand correctly a natural transformation is a second order functor (with certain rules) that is a functor from one functor to another one. So since we have defined the functor above the general type of the natural transformations would be:
((a -> b) -> (m a -> m b)) -> ((a -> b) -> (m a -> m b))
But the actual natural transformations we are using have type:
a -> m a
m a -> (a ->m b) -> m b
Are these subsets of the general form above? and why are they natural transformations?
Martin
A quick disclaimer: I'm a little shaky on category theory in general, while I get the impression you have at least some familiarity with it. Hopefully I won't make too much of a hash of this...
Does anyone know of a tutorial that starts from category theory and explains IO, state, list monads in those terms?
First of all, ignore IO for now, it's full of dark magic. It works as a model of imperative computations for the same reasons that State works for modelling stateful computations, but unlike the latter IO is a black box with no way to deduce the monadic structure from the outside.
The functor is usually shown with the type: (a -> b) -> (m a -> m b) I included the second bracket just to emphasise the symmetry.
But, this is an endofunctor, so shouldn't the domain and codomain be the same like this?:
I suspect you are misinterpreting how type variables in Haskell relate to the category theory concepts.
First of all, yes, that specifies an endofunctor, on the category of Haskell types. A type variable such as a is not anything in this category, however; it's a variable that is (implicitly) universally quantified over all objects in the category. Thus, the type (a -> b) -> (a -> b) describes only endofunctors that map every object to itself.
Type constructors describe an injective function on objects, where the elements of the constructor's codomain cannot be described by any means except as an application of the type constructor. Even if two type constructors produce isomorphic results, the resulting types remain distinct. Note that type constructors are not, in the general case, functors.
The type variable m in the functor signature, then, represents a one-argument type constructor. Out of context this would normally be read as universal quantification, but that's incorrect in this case since no such function can exist. Rather, the type class definition binds m and allows the definition of such functions for specific type constructors.
The resulting function, then, says that for any type constructor m which has fmap defined, for any two objects a and b and a morphism between them, we can find a morphism between the types given by applying m to a and b.
Note that while the above does, of course, define an endofunctor on Hask, it is not even remotely general enough to describe all such endofunctors.
But the actual natural transformations we are using have type:
a -> m a
m a -> (a ->m b) -> m b
Are these subsets of the general form above? and why are they natural transformations?
Well, no, they aren't. A natural transformation is roughly a function (not a functor) between functors. The two natural transformations that specify a monad M look like I -> M where I is the identity functor, and M ∘ M -> M where ∘ is functor composition. In Haskell, we have no good way of working directly with either a true identity functor or with functor composition. Instead, we discard the identity functor to get just (Functor m) => a -> m a for the first, and write out nested type constructor application as (Functor m) => m (m a) -> m a for the second.
The first of these is obviously return; the second is a function called join, which is not part of the type class. However, join can be written in terms of (>>=), and the latter is more often useful in day-to-day programming.
As far as specific monads go, if you want a more mathematical description, here's a quick sketch of an example:
For some fixed type S, consider two functors F and G where F(x) = (S, x) and G(x) = S -> x (It should hopefully be obvious that these are indeed valid functors).
These functors are also adjoints; consider natural transformations unit :: x -> G (F x) and counit :: F (G x) -> x. Expanding the definitions gives us unit :: x -> (S -> (S, x)) and counit :: (S, S -> x) -> x. The types suggest uncurried function application and tuple construction; feel free to verify that those work as expected.
An adjunction gives rise to a monad by composition of the functors, so taking G ∘ F and expanding the definition, we get G (F x) = S -> (S, x), which is the definition of the State monad. The unit for the adjunction is of course return; and you should be able to use counit to define join.
This page does exactly that. I think your main confusion is that the class doesn't really make the Type a functor, but it defines a functor from the category of Haskell types into the category of that type.
Following the notation of the link, assuming F is a Haskell Functor, it means that there is a functor from the category of Hask to the category of F.
Roughly speaking, Haskell does its category theory all in just one category, whose objects are Haskell types and whose arrows are functions between these types. It's definitely not a general-purpose language for modelling category theory.
A (mathematical) functor is an operation turning things in one category into things in another, possibly entirely different, category. An endofunctor is then a functor which happens to have the same source and target categories. In Haskell, a functor is an operation turning things in the category of Haskell types into other things also in the category of Haskell types, so it is always an endofunctor.
[If you're following the mathematical literature, technically, the operation '(a->b)->(m a -> m b)' is just the arrow part of the endofunctor m, and 'm' is the object part]
When Haskellers talk about working 'in a monad' they really mean working in the Kleisli category of the monad. The Kleisli category of a monad is a thoroughly confusing beast at first, and normally needs at least two colours of ink to give a good explanation, so take the following attempt for what it is and check out some references (unfortunately Wikipedia is useless here for all but the straight definitions).
Suppose you have a monad 'm' on the category C of Haskell types. Its Kleisli category Kl(m) has the same objects as C, namely Haskell types, but an arrow a ~(f)~> b in Kl(m) is an arrow a -(f)-> mb in C. (I've used a squiggly line in my Kleisli arrow to distinguish the two). To reiterate: the objects and arrows of the Kl(C) are also objects and arrows of C but the arrows point to different objects in Kl(C) than in C. If this doesn't strike you as odd, read it again more carefully!
Concretely, consider the Maybe monad. Its Kleisli category is just the collection of Haskell types, and its arrows a ~(f)~> b are functions a -(f)-> Maybe b. Or consider the (State s) monad whose arrows a ~(f)~> b are functions a -(f)-> (State s b) == a -(f)-> (s->(s,b)). In any case, you're always writing a squiggly arrow as a shorthand for doing something to the type of the codomain of your functions.
[Note that State is not a monad, because the kind of State is * -> * -> *, so you need to supply one of the type parameters to turn it into a mathematical monad.]
So far so good, hopefully, but suppose you want to compose arrows a ~(f)~> b and b ~(g)~> c. These are really Haskell functions a -(f)-> mb and b -(g)-> mc which you cannot compose because the types don't match. The mathematical solution is to use the 'multiplication' natural transformation u:mm->m of the monad as follows: a ~(f)~> b ~(g)~> c == a -(f)-> mb -(mg)-> mmc -(u_c)-> mc to get an arrow a->mc which is a Kleisli arrow a ~(f;g)~> c as required.
Perhaps a concrete example helps here. In the Maybe monad, you cannot compose functions f : a -> Maybe b and g : b -> Maybe c directly, but by lifting g to
Maybe_g :: Maybe b -> Maybe (Maybe c)
Maybe_g Nothing = Nothing
Maybe_g (Just a) = Just (g a)
and using the 'obvious'
u :: Maybe (Maybe c) -> Maybe c
u Nothing = Nothing
u (Just Nothing) = Nothing
u (Just (Just c)) = Just c
you can form the composition u . Maybe_g . f which is the function a -> Maybe c that you wanted.
In the (State s) monad, it's similar but messier: Given two monadic functions a ~(f)~> b and b ~(g)~> c which are really a -(f)-> (s->(s,b)) and b -(g)-> (s->(s,c)) under the hood, you compose them by lifting g into
State_s_g :: (s->(s,b)) -> (s->(s,(s->(s,c))))
State_s_g p s1 = let (s2, b) = p s1 in (s2, g b)
then you apply the 'multiplication' natural transformation u, which is
u :: (s->(s,(s->(s,c)))) -> (s->(s,c))
u p1 s1 = let (s2, p2) = p1 s1 in p2 s2
which (sort of) plugs the final state of f into the initial state of g.
In Haskell, this turns out to be a bit of an unnatural way to work so instead there's the (>>=) function which basically does the same thing as u but in a way that makes it easier to implement and use. This is important: (>>=) is not the natural transformation 'u'. You can define each in terms of the other, so they're equivalent, but they're not the same thing. The Haskell version of 'u' is written join.
The other thing missing from this definition of Kleisli categories is the identity on each object: a ~(1_a)~> a which is really a -(n_a)-> ma where n is the 'unit' natural transformation. This is written return in Haskell, and doesn't seem to cause as much confusion.
I learned category theory before I came to Haskell, and I too have had difficulty with the mismatch between what mathematicians call a monad and what they look like in Haskell. It's no easier from the other direction!
Not sure I understand what was the question but yes, you are right, monad in Haskell is defined as a triple:
m :: * -> * -- this is endofunctor from haskell types to haskell types!
return :: a -> m a
(>>=) :: m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b
but common definition from category theory is another triple:
m :: * -> *
return :: a -> m a
join :: m (m a) -> m a
It is slightly confusing but it's not so hard to show that these two definitions are equal.
To do that we need to define join in terms of (>>=) (and vice versa).
First step:
join :: m (m a) -> m a
join x = ?
This gives us x :: m (m a).
All we can do with something that have type m _ is to aply (>>=) to it:
(x >>=) :: (m a -> m b) -> m b
Now we need something as a second argument for (>>=), and also,
from the type of join we have constraint (x >>= y) :: ma.
So y here will have type y :: ma -> ma and id :: a -> a fits it very well:
join x = x >>= id
The other way
(>>=) :: ma -> (a -> mb) -> m b
(>>=) x y = ?
Where x :: m a and y :: a -> m b.
To get m b from x and y we need something of type a.
Unfortunately, we can't extract a from m a. But we can substitute it for something else (remember, monad is a functor also):
fmap :: (a -> b) -> m a -> m b
fmap y x :: m (m b)
And it's perfectly fits as argument for join: (>>=) x y = join (fmap y x).
The best way to look at monads and computational effects is to start with where Haskell got the notion of monads for computational effects from, and then look at Haskell after you understand that. See this paper in particular: Notions of Computation and Monads, by E. Moggi.
See also Moggi's earlier paper which shows how monads work for the lambda calculus alone: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.26.2787
The fact that monads capture substitution, among other things (http://blog.sigfpe.com/2009/12/where-do-monads-come-from.html), and substitution is key to the lambda calculus, should give a good clue as to why they have so much expressive power.
While monads originally came from category theory, this doesn't mean that category theory is the only abstract context in which you can view them. A different viewpoint is given by operational semantics. For an introduction, have a look at my Operational Monad Tutorial.
One way to look at IO is to consider it as a strange kind of state monad. Remember that the state monad looks like:
data State s a = State (s -> (s, a))
where the "s" argument is the data type you want to thread through the computation. Also, this version of "State" doesn't have "get" and "put" actions and we don't export the constructor.
Now imagine a type
data RealWorld = RealWorld ......
This has no real definition, but notionally a value of type RealWorld holds the state of the entire universe outside the computer. Of course we can never have a value of type RealWorld, but you can imagine something like:
getChar :: RealWorld -> (RealWorld, Char)
In other words the "getChar" function takes a state of the universe before the keyboard button has been pressed, and returns the key pressed plus the state of the universe after the key has been pressed. Of course the problem is that the previous state of the world is still available to be referenced, which can't happen in reality.
But now we write this:
type IO = State RealWorld
getChar :: IO Char
Notionally, all we have done is wrap the previous version of "getChar" as a state action. But by doing this we can no longer access the "RealWorld" values because they are wrapped up inside the State monad.
So when a Haskell program wants to change a lightbulb it takes hold of the bulb and applies a "rotate" function to the RealWorld value inside IO.
For me, so far, the explanation that comes closest to tie together monads in category theory and monads in Haskell is that monads are a monid whose objects have the type a->m b. I can see that these objects are very close to an endofunctor and so the composition of such functions are related to an imperative sequence of program statements. Also functions which return IO functions are valid in pure functional code until the inner function is called from outside.
This id element is 'a -> m a' which fits in very well but the multiplication element is function composition which should be:
(>=>) :: Monad m => (a -> m b) -> (b -> m c) -> (a -> m c)
This is not quite function composition, but close enough (I think to get true function composition we need a complementary function which turns m b back into a, then we get function composition if we apply these in pairs?), I'm not quite sure how to get from that to this:
(>>=) :: Monad m => m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b
I've got a feeling I may have seen an explanation of this in all the stuff that I read, without understanding its significance the first time through, so I will do some re-reading to try to (re)find an explanation of this.
The other thing I would like to do is link together all the different category theory explanations: endofunctor+2 natural transformations, Kleisli category, a monoid whose objects are monoids and so on. For me the thing that seems to link all these explanations is that they are two level. That is, normally we treat category objects as black-boxes where we imply their properties from their outside interactions, but here there seems to be a need to go one level inside the objects to see what’s going on? We can explain monads without this but only if we accept apparently arbitrary constructions.
Martin
See this question: is chaining operations the only thing that the monad class solves?
In it, I explain my vision that we must differentiate between the Monad class and individual types that solve individual problems. The Monad class, by itself, only solve the important problem of "chaining operations with choice" and mades this solution available to types being instance of it (by means of "inheritance").
On the other hand, if a given type that solves a given problem faces the problem of "chaining operations with choice" then, it should be made an instance (inherit) of the Monad class.
The fact is that problems not get solved merely by being a Monad. It would be like saying that "wheels" solve many problems, but actually "wheels" only solve a problem, and things with wheels solve many different problems.
Who first said the following?
A monad is just a monoid in the
category of endofunctors, what's the
problem?
And on a less important note, is this true and if so could you give an explanation (hopefully one that can be understood by someone who doesn't have much Haskell experience)?
That particular phrasing is by James Iry, from his highly entertaining Brief, Incomplete and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages, in which he fictionally attributes it to Philip Wadler.
The original quote is from Saunders Mac Lane in Categories for the Working Mathematician, one of the foundational texts of Category Theory. Here it is in context, which is probably the best place to learn exactly what it means.
But, I'll take a stab. The original sentence is this:
All told, a monad in X is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors of X, with product × replaced by composition of endofunctors and unit set by the identity endofunctor.
X here is a category. Endofunctors are functors from a category to itself (which is usually all Functors as far as functional programmers are concerned, since they're mostly dealing with just one category; the category of types - but I digress). But you could imagine another category which is the category of "endofunctors on X". This is a category in which the objects are endofunctors and the morphisms are natural transformations.
And of those endofunctors, some of them might be monads. Which ones are monads? Exactly the ones which are monoidal in a particular sense. Instead of spelling out the exact mapping from monads to monoids (since Mac Lane does that far better than I could hope to), I'll just put their respective definitions side by side and let you compare:
A monoid is...
A set, S
An operation, • : S × S → S
An element of S, e : 1 → S
...satisfying these laws:
(a • b) • c = a • (b • c), for all a, b and c in S
e • a = a • e = a, for all a in S
A monad is...
An endofunctor, T : X → X (in Haskell, a type constructor of kind * -> * with a Functor instance)
A natural transformation, μ : T × T → T, where × means functor composition (μ is known as join in Haskell)
A natural transformation, η : I → T, where I is the identity endofunctor on X (η is known as return in Haskell)
...satisfying these laws:
μ ∘ Tμ = μ ∘ μT
μ ∘ Tη = μ ∘ ηT = 1 (the identity natural transformation)
With a bit of squinting you might be able to see that both of these definitions are instances of the same abstract concept.
First, the extensions and libraries that we're going to use:
{-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes, TypeOperators #-}
import Control.Monad (join)
Of these, RankNTypes is the only one that's absolutely essential to the below. I once wrote an explanation of RankNTypes that some people seem to have found useful, so I'll refer to that.
Quoting Tom Crockett's excellent answer, we have:
A monad is...
An endofunctor, T : X -> X
A natural transformation, μ : T × T -> T, where × means functor composition
A natural transformation, η : I -> T, where I is the identity endofunctor on X
...satisfying these laws:
μ(μ(T × T) × T)) = μ(T × μ(T × T))
μ(η(T)) = T = μ(T(η))
How do we translate this to Haskell code? Well, let's start with the notion of a natural transformation:
-- | A natural transformations between two 'Functor' instances. Law:
--
-- > fmap f . eta g == eta g . fmap f
--
-- Neat fact: the type system actually guarantees this law.
--
newtype f :-> g =
Natural { eta :: forall x. f x -> g x }
A type of the form f :-> g is analogous to a function type, but instead of thinking of it as a function between two types (of kind *), think of it as a morphism between two functors (each of kind * -> *). Examples:
listToMaybe :: [] :-> Maybe
listToMaybe = Natural go
where go [] = Nothing
go (x:_) = Just x
maybeToList :: Maybe :-> []
maybeToList = Natural go
where go Nothing = []
go (Just x) = [x]
reverse' :: [] :-> []
reverse' = Natural reverse
Basically, in Haskell, natural transformations are functions from some type f x to another type g x such that the x type variable is "inaccessible" to the caller. So for example, sort :: Ord a => [a] -> [a] cannot be made into a natural transformation, because it's "picky" about which types we may instantiate for a. One intuitive way I often use to think of this is the following:
A functor is a way of operating on the content of something without touching the structure.
A natural transformation is a way of operating on the structure of something without touching or looking at the content.
Now, with that out of the way, let's tackle the clauses of the definition.
The first clause is "an endofunctor, T : X -> X." Well, every Functor in Haskell is an endofunctor in what people call "the Hask category," whose objects are Haskell types (of kind *) and whose morphisms are Haskell functions. This sounds like a complicated statement, but it's actually a very trivial one. All it means is that that a Functor f :: * -> * gives you the means of constructing a type f a :: * for any a :: * and a function fmap f :: f a -> f b out of any f :: a -> b, and that these obey the functor laws.
Second clause: the Identity functor in Haskell (which comes with the Platform, so you can just import it) is defined this way:
newtype Identity a = Identity { runIdentity :: a }
instance Functor Identity where
fmap f (Identity a) = Identity (f a)
So the natural transformation η : I -> T from Tom Crockett's definition can be written this way for any Monad instance t:
return' :: Monad t => Identity :-> t
return' = Natural (return . runIdentity)
Third clause: The composition of two functors in Haskell can be defined this way (which also comes with the Platform):
newtype Compose f g a = Compose { getCompose :: f (g a) }
-- | The composition of two 'Functor's is also a 'Functor'.
instance (Functor f, Functor g) => Functor (Compose f g) where
fmap f (Compose fga) = Compose (fmap (fmap f) fga)
So the natural transformation μ : T × T -> T from Tom Crockett's definition can be written like this:
join' :: Monad t => Compose t t :-> t
join' = Natural (join . getCompose)
The statement that this is a monoid in the category of endofunctors then means that Compose (partially applied to just its first two parameters) is associative, and that Identity is its identity element. I.e., that the following isomorphisms hold:
Compose f (Compose g h) ~= Compose (Compose f g) h
Compose f Identity ~= f
Compose Identity g ~= g
These are very easy to prove because Compose and Identity are both defined as newtype, and the Haskell Reports define the semantics of newtype as an isomorphism between the type being defined and the type of the argument to the newtype's data constructor. So for example, let's prove Compose f Identity ~= f:
Compose f Identity a
~= f (Identity a) -- newtype Compose f g a = Compose (f (g a))
~= f a -- newtype Identity a = Identity a
Q.E.D.
The answers here do an excellent job in defining both monoids and monads, however, they still don't seem to answer the question:
And on a less important note, is this true and if so could you give an explanation (hopefully one that can be understood by someone who doesn't have much Haskell experience)?
The crux of the matter that is missing here, is the different notion of "monoid", the so-called categorification more precisely -- the one of monoid in a monoidal category. Sadly Mac Lane's book itself makes it very confusing:
All told, a monad in X is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors of X, with product × replaced by composition of endofunctors and unit set by the identity endofunctor.
Main confusion
Why is this confusing? Because it does not define what is "monoid in the category of endofunctors" of X. Instead, this sentence suggests taking a monoid inside the set of all endofunctors together with the functor composition as binary operation and the identity functor as a monoidal unit. Which works perfectly fine and turns into a monoid any subset of endofunctors that contains the identity functor and is closed under functor composition.
Yet this is not the correct interpretation, which the book fails to make clear at that stage. A Monad f is a fixed endofunctor, not a subset of endofunctors closed under composition. A common construction is to use f to generate a monoid by taking the set of all k-fold compositions f^k = f(f(...)) of f with itself, including k=0 that corresponds to the identity f^0 = id. And now the set S of all these powers for all k>=0 is indeed a monoid "with product × replaced by composition of endofunctors and unit set by the identity endofunctor".
And yet:
This monoid S can be defined for any functor f or even literally for any self-map of X. It is the monoid generated by f.
The monoidal structure of S given by the functor composition and the identity functor has nothing do with f being or not being a monad.
And to make things more confusing, the definition of "monoid in monoidal category" comes later in the book as you can see from the table of contents. And yet understanding this notion is absolutely critical to understanding the connection with monads.
(Strict) monoidal categories
Going to Chapter VII on Monoids (which comes later than Chapter VI on Monads), we find the definition of the so-called strict monoidal category as triple (B, *, e), where B is a category, *: B x B-> B a bifunctor (functor with respect to each component with other component fixed) and e is a unit object in B, satisfying the associativity and unit laws:
(a * b) * c = a * (b * c)
a * e = e * a = a
for any objects a,b,c of B, and the same identities for any morphisms a,b,c with e replaced by id_e, the identity morphism of e. It is now instructive to observe that in our case of interest, where B is the category of endofunctors of X with natural transformations as morphisms, * the functor composition and e the identity functor, all these laws are satisfied, as can be directly verified.
What comes after in the book is the definition of the "relaxed" monoidal category, where the laws only hold modulo some fixed natural transformations satisfying so-called coherence relations, which is however not important for our cases of the endofunctor categories.
Monoids in monoidal categories
Finally, in section 3 "Monoids" of Chapter VII, the actual definition is given:
A monoid c in a monoidal category (B, *, e) is an object of B with two arrows (morphisms)
mu: c * c -> c
nu: e -> c
making 3 diagrams commutative. Recall that in our case, these are morphisms in the category of endofunctors, which are natural transformations corresponding to precisely join and return for a monad. The connection becomes even clearer when we make the composition * more explicit, replacing c * c by c^2, where c is our monad.
Finally, notice that the 3 commutative diagrams (in the definition of a monoid in monoidal category) are written for general (non-strict) monoidal categories, while in our case all natural transformations arising as part of the monoidal category are actually identities. That will make the diagrams exactly the same as the ones in the definition of a monad, making the correspondence complete.
Conclusion
In summary, any monad is by definition an endofunctor, hence an object in the category of endofunctors, where the monadic join and return operators satisfy the definition of a monoid in that particular (strict) monoidal category. Vice versa, any monoid in the monoidal category of endofunctors is by definition a triple (c, mu, nu) consisting of an object and two arrows, e.g. natural transformations in our case, satisfying the same laws as a monad.
Finally, note the key difference between the (classical) monoids and the more general monoids in monoidal categories. The two arrows mu and nu above are not anymore a binary operation and a unit in a set. Instead, you have one fixed endofunctor c. The functor composition * and the identity functor alone do not provide the complete structure needed for the monad, despite that confusing remark in the book.
Another approach would be to compare with the standard monoid C of all self-maps of a set A, where the binary operation is the composition, that can be seen to map the standard cartesian product C x C into C. Passing to the categorified monoid, we are replacing the cartesian product x with the functor composition *, and the binary operation gets replaced with the natural transformation mu from
c * c to c, that is a collection of the join operators
join: c(c(T))->c(T)
for every object T (type in programming). And the identity elements in classical monoids, which can be identified with images of maps from a fixed one-point-set, get replaced with the collection of the return operators
return: T->c(T)
But now there are no more cartesian products, so no pairs of elements and thus no binary operations.
I came to this post by way of better understanding the inference of the infamous quote from Mac Lane's Category Theory For the Working Mathematician.
In describing what something is, it's often equally useful to describe what it's not.
The fact that Mac Lane uses the description to describe a Monad, one might imply that it describes something unique to monads. Bear with me. To develop a broader understanding of the statement, I believe it needs to be made clear that he is not describing something that is unique to monads; the statement equally describes Applicative and Arrows among others. For the same reason we can have two monoids on Int (Sum and Product), we can have several monoids on X in the category of endofunctors. But there is even more to the similarities.
Both Monad and Applicative meet the criteria:
endo => any arrow, or morphism that starts and ends in the same place
functor => any arrow, or morphism between two Categories (e.g., in day to day Tree a -> List b, but in Category Tree -> List)
monoid => single object; i.e., a single type, but in this context, only in regards to the external layer; so, we can't have Tree -> List, only List -> List.
The statement uses "Category of..." This defines the scope of the statement. As an example, the Functor Category describes the scope of f * -> g *, i.e., Any functor -> Any functor, e.g., Tree * -> List * or Tree * -> Tree *.
What a Categorical statement does not specify describes where anything and everything is permitted.
In this case, inside the functors, * -> * aka a -> b is not specified which means Anything -> Anything including Anything else. As my imagination jumps to Int -> String, it also includes Integer -> Maybe Int, or even Maybe Double -> Either String Int where a :: Maybe Double; b :: Either String Int.
So the statement comes together as follows:
functor scope :: f a -> g b (i.e., any parameterized type to any parameterized type)
endo + functor :: f a -> f b (i.e., any one parameterized type to the same parameterized type) ... said differently,
a monoid in the category of endofunctor
So, where is the power of this construct? To appreciate the full dynamics, I needed to see that the typical drawings of a monoid (single object with what looks like an identity arrow, :: single object -> single object), fails to illustrate that I'm permitted to use an arrow parameterized with any number of monoid values, from the one type object permitted in Monoid. The endo, ~ identity arrow definition of equivalence ignores the functor's type value and both the type and value of the most inner, "payload" layer. Thus, equivalence returns true in any situation where the functorial types match (e.g., Nothing -> Just * -> Nothing is equivalent to Just * -> Just * -> Just * because they are both Maybe -> Maybe -> Maybe).
Sidebar: ~ outside is conceptual, but is the left most symbol in f a. It also describes what "Haskell" reads-in first (big picture); so Type is "outside" in relation to a Type Value. The relationship between layers (a chain of references) in programming is not easy to relate in Category. The Category of Set is used to describe Types (Int, Strings, Maybe Int etc.) which includes the Category of Functor (parameterized Types). The reference chain: Functor Type, Functor values (elements of that Functor's set, e.g., Nothing, Just), and in turn, everything else each functor value points to. In Category the relationship is described differently, e.g., return :: a -> m a is considered a natural transformation from one Functor to another Functor, different from anything mentioned thus far.
Back to the main thread, all in all, for any defined tensor product and a neutral value, the statement ends up describing an amazingly powerful computational construct born from its paradoxical structure:
on the outside it appears as a single object (e.g., :: List); static
but inside, permits a lot of dynamics
any number of values of the same type (e.g., Empty | ~NonEmpty) as fodder to functions of any arity. The tensor product will reduce any number of inputs to a single value... for the external layer (~fold that says nothing about the payload)
infinite range of both the type and values for the inner most layer
In Haskell, clarifying the applicability of the statement is important. The power and versatility of this construct, has absolutely nothing to do with a monad per se. In other words, the construct does not rely on what makes a monad unique.
When trying to figure out whether to build code with a shared context to support computations that depend on each other, versus computations that can be run in parallel, this infamous statement, with as much as it describes, is not a contrast between the choice of Applicative, Arrows and Monads, but rather is a description of how much they are the same. For the decision at hand, the statement is moot.
This is often misunderstood. The statement goes on to describe join :: m (m a) -> m a as the tensor product for the monoidal endofunctor. However, it does not articulate how, in the context of this statement, (<*>) could also have also been chosen. It truly is an example of 'six in one, half a dozen in the other'. The logic for combining values are exactly alike; same input generates the same output from each (unlike the Sum and Product monoids for Int because they generate different results when combining Ints).
So, to recap: A monoid in the category of endofunctors describes:
~t :: m * -> m * -> m *
and a neutral value for m *
(<*>) and (>>=) both provide simultaneous access to the two m values in order to compute the the single return value. The logic used to compute the return value is exactly the same. If it were not for the different shapes of the functions they parameterize (f :: a -> b versus k :: a -> m b) and the position of the parameter with the same return type of the computation (i.e., a -> b -> b versus b -> a -> b for each respectively), I suspect we could have parameterized the monoidal logic, the tensor product, for reuse in both definitions. As an exercise to make the point, try and implement ~t, and you end up with (<*>) and (>>=) depending on how you decide to define it forall a b.
If my last point is at minimum conceptually true, it then explains the precise, and only computational difference between Applicative and Monad: the functions they parameterize. In other words, the difference is external to the implementation of these type classes.
In conclusion, in my own experience, Mac Lane's infamous quote provided a great "goto" meme, a guidepost for me to reference while navigating my way through Category to better understand the idioms used in Haskell. It succeeds at capturing the scope of a powerful computing capacity made wonderfully accessible in Haskell.
However, there is irony in how I first misunderstood the statement's applicability outside of the monad, and what I hope conveyed here. Everything that it describes turns out to be what is similar between Applicative and Monads (and Arrows among others). What it doesn't say is precisely the small but useful distinction between them.
Note: No, this isn't true. At some point there was a comment on this answer from Dan Piponi himself saying that the cause and effect here was exactly the opposite, that he wrote his article in response to James Iry's quip. But it seems to have been removed, perhaps by some compulsive tidier.
Below is my original answer.
It's quite possible that Iry had read From Monoids to Monads, a post in which Dan Piponi (sigfpe) derives monads from monoids in Haskell, with much discussion of category theory and explicit mention of "the category of endofunctors on Hask" . In any case, anyone who wonders what it means for a monad to be a monoid in the category of endofunctors might benefit from reading this derivation.