# Hyperarithemtic statements decidable by induction up to a recursive ordinal

Kleene's O is a $\Pi_1^1$ complete set that decides every hyperarithmetic statement. A Turing Machine that uses this set as an oracle to decide a hyperarithmetic question can only look at a finite segment of the oracle before making a decision. The possible questions are all of the form $n$ is or is not a notation for a recursive ordinal. Can every hyperarithmetic question be decided by a single notation for a sufficiently large recursive ordinal?

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Paul, it appears that your question is a little vague. Ali Enayat and I interpreted it in two different ways. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean. –  François G. Dorais Jul 19 '11 at 17:29
@Paul Budnik: I still don't understand exactly what you're asking, so it might be helpful to state it more formally. Possibly the following fact is helpful: if $S$ is hyperarithmetic then there is an ordinal $\alpha<\omega_1^{CK}$ such that for each $n$ there is an ordering $\prec_n$ (uniformly computable from $n$) such that $n\in S$ iff $ot(\prec_n)<\alpha$. –  Henry Towsner Jul 20 '11 at 22:05
Every $\Pi^1_1$ set is many-one reducible to Kleene's $\mathcal{O}$. In particular, the universal $\Pi^1_1$ set is many-one reducible to Kleene's $\mathcal{O}$. Therefore, every $\Pi^1_1$ sentence (and in particular hyperarithmetical sentences) can be decided by making a single query to Kleene's $\mathcal{O}$.
I thought the question is asking whether there is a recursive ordinal $\alpha$ such that every hyperarithmetical question can be answered by a Turing machine that has access to an oracle that can tell whether a given notation describes $\alpha$ or not. –  Ali Enayat Jul 19 '11 at 17:17
I forgot to add that under my interpretation the answer to the question is negative based on Kleene's theorem that describes hyperarithmetic sets as those constructed along branches of $\cal{O}$ using the jump operation. –  Ali Enayat Jul 19 '11 at 17:49