ENGLISH

Degrees of Unsolvability: Structure and Theory

By R. L. Epstein

Book information

Publisher
Springer
Year
1979
ISBN
3540097104, 9783540097105
LCC
QA3 .L28 no. 759,QA9.63 .L28 no. 759
Language
english
Format
DJVU
Filesize
1 MB (1408623 bytes)
Series
Lecture Notes in Mathematics
Edition
1979
Pages
261\261
Topic
Mathematics Logic
Library
mexmat
Time added
2009-07-20 03:45:11

Description

This book presents the theory of degrees of unsolvability in textbook form. It is accessible to any student with a slight background in logic and recursive functiontheory. Degrees are defined and their basic properties established, accompanied bya number of exercises.The structure of the degrees is studied and a new proof is given that everycountable distributive lattice is isomorphic to an initial segMent of degrees. Therelationship between these initial segments and the jump operator is studied. Thesignificance of this work for the first-order theory of degrees is analyzed: it isshown that degree theory is equivalent to second-order arithmetic. Sufficient con-ditions are established for the degrees above a given degree to be not isomorphic toand have different first-order theory than the degrees, with or without jump.The degrees below the halting problem are introduced and surveyed. Priorityarguments are presented. The theory of these degrees is shown to be undecidable.The history of the subject is traced in the notes and annotated bibliography.

Similar books