Skip to main content
Search type Search syntax
Tags [tag]
Exact "words here"
Author user:1234
user:me (yours)
Score score:3 (3+)
score:0 (none)
Answers answers:3 (3+)
answers:0 (none)
isaccepted:yes
hasaccepted:no
inquestion:1234
Views views:250
Code code:"if (foo != bar)"
Sections title:apples
body:"apples oranges"
URL url:"*.example.com"
Saves in:saves
Status closed:yes
duplicate:no
migrated:no
wiki:no
Types is:question
is:answer
Exclude -[tag]
-apples
For more details on advanced search visit our help page
Results tagged with
Search options not deleted user 1587

first-order and higher-order logic, model theory, set theory, proof theory, computability theory, formal languages, definability, interplay of syntax and semantics, constructive logic, intuitionism, philosophical logic, modal logic, completeness, Gödel incompleteness, decidability, undecidability, theories of truth, truth revision, consistency.

1 vote
Accepted

Is there a language in $RE \setminus R$ which is not $RE$-complete?

Examples of such languages are not easy to describe, and I think no "naturally-occurring" example is known. However, Muchnik and Friedberg found examples in 1957, and Friedberg's example is here.
John Stillwell's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
4k views

Question arising from Voevodsky's talk on inconsistency

This question arises from the talk by Voevodsky mentioned in this recent MO question. On one of his slides, Voevodsky says that a general formula even with one free variable describes a subset of …
John Stillwell's user avatar
34 votes

Does anyone know a polynomial whose lack of roots can't be proved?

Something close to what you want is in the paper "Universal Diophantine Equation" by James P. Jones in the Journal of Symbolic Logic 47 (1982), pp. 549--571. Jones produces an explicit list of 37 eq …
John Stillwell's user avatar
27 votes
2 answers
2k views

Are any natural examples of Gödel speed-up known?

In 1936 Gödel announced a theorem to the effect that proofs of certain theorems $T_1,T_2,\ldots$ become dramatically shorter when one passes from a formal system, such as Peano arithmetic PA, to a str …
John Stillwell's user avatar
16 votes
3 answers
2k views

Natural examples of Reverse Mathematics outside classical analysis?

Harvey Friedman at the 1974 ICM motivated Reverse Mathematics by the following statement: When the theorem is proved from the right axioms, the axioms can be proved from the theorem. Reverse Mathema …
John Stillwell's user avatar
10 votes

What is the high-concept explanation on why real numbers are useful in number theory?

A possible candidate for a "minimal" result about integers that is a "projection" of a result about reals: the group structure of the solutions of the Pell equation $x^2-dy^2=1$ for $d$ a nonsquare po …
6 votes

Proofs of Gödel's theorem

Possibly the least "self-referential" argument for Gödel's incompleteness theorem is the one due to Gentzen. His ordinal analysis of proofs in PA shows that any ordering that PA can prove to be a well …
John Stillwell's user avatar
38 votes

What was Gödel's real achievement?

I posted this earlier on the "narrowly-missed discoveries" thread, but I think the two paragraphs below address your three questions. For the most recent scholarly account of Post's work, see the arti …
John Stillwell's user avatar
15 votes

Why can't proofs have infinitely many steps?

Andreas Blass has nicely explained why it is not helpful to use infinitary logic in an attempt to prove the axiom of choice. It may be worth adding that the seemingly similar idea, of considering co …
John Stillwell's user avatar
11 votes

Non-computable but easily described arithmetical functions

There are some easily-described noncomputable functions, if you are willing to accept functions that take finite objects other than numbers as inputs. The "objects" I'm referring to represent instance …
John Stillwell's user avatar
19 votes

Why worry about the axiom of choice?

It is a mistake to think that the axiom of choice has no relevance to, say, undergraduate mathematics. The axiom of choice makes undergraduate analysis easier by enabling one to say that $f(x)$ is con …
98 votes

Nontrivial theorems with trivial proofs

A nontrivial geometric theorem of the type you are looking for may be the Desargues theorem: If two triangles are in perspective then the intersections of their corresponding sides lie on a line. In …
20 votes

Knuth's intuition that Goldbach might be unprovable

There are also some concrete examples in graph theory, such as Kruskal's tree theorem and the Robertson-Seymour graph minor theorem. These theorems about infinite sequences of graphs were actually pro …
John Stillwell's user avatar
12 votes
Accepted

Is any interesting question about a group G decidable from a presentation of G?

It seems to me that the analogue of Rice's theorem fails for finitely presented groups $G$ because of questions like: is the abelianization of $G$ of rank 3? The rank of the abelianization of any fini …
John Stillwell's user avatar
7 votes

Abstract thought vs calculation

An example of a slightly different kind -- not eliminating all calculation, but showing that "all calculations are easy" -- is Dehn's algorithm in combinatorial group theory. Dehn showed, using the co …

15 30 50 per page