English

Exploring the abyss in Kleene's computability theory

Logic 2024-01-17 v2 Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

Kleene's computability theory based on the S1-S9 computation schemes constitutes a model for computing with objects of any finite type and extends Turing's 'machine model' which formalises computing with real numbers. A fundamental distinction in Kleene's framework is between normal and non-normal functionals where the former compute the associated Kleene quantifier n\exists^n and the latter do not. Historically, the focus was on normal functionals, but recently new non-normal functionals have been studied based on well-known theorems, the weakest among which seems to be the uncountability of the reals. These new non-normal functionals are fundamentally different from historical examples like Tait's fan functional: the latter is computable from 2\exists^2, while the former are computable in 3\exists^3 but not in weaker oracles. Of course, there is a great divide or abyss separating 2\exists^2 and 3\exists^3 and we identify slight variations of our new non-normal functionals that are again computable in 2\exists^2, i.e. fall on different sides of this abyss. Our examples are based on mainstream mathematical notions, like quasi-continuity, Baire classes, bounded variation, and semi-continuity from real analysis.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.07438,
  title  = {Exploring the abyss in Kleene's computability theory},
  author = {Sam Sanders},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.07438},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

22 pages; to appear in 'Computability'; this paper is a significant extension ('journal version') of my CiE2023 proceedings paper arXiv:2302.07066

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:55:34.677Z