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. Appare
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.