English

On interpretations of bounded arithmetic and bounded set theory

Logic 2008-08-18 v3

Abstract

In a recent paper, Kaye and Wong proved the following result, which they considered to belong to the folklore of mathematical logic. THEOREM: The first-order theories of Peano arithmetic and ZF with the axiom of infinity negated are bi-interpretable: that is, they are mutually interpretable with interpretations that are inverse to each other. In this note, I describe a theory of sets that stands in the same relation to the bounded arithmetic IDelta0 + exp. Because of the weakness of this theory of sets, I cannot straightforwardly adapt Kaye and Wong's interpretation of arithmetic in set theory. Instead, I am forced to produce a different interpretation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0807.4850,
  title  = {On interpretations of bounded arithmetic and bounded set theory},
  author = {Richard Pettigrew},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.4850},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

12 pages; section on omega-models removed due to error; references added and typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:05:55.182Z