English

On Guaspari's problem about partially conservative sentences

Logic 2022-03-15 v4

Abstract

We investigate sentences which are simultaneously partially conservative over several theories. First, we generalize Bennet's results on this topic to the case of more than two theories. In particular, for any finite family {Ti}ik\{T_i\}_{i \leq k} of consistent r.e. extensions of Peano Arithmetic, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a Πn\Pi_n sentence which is unprovable in TiT_i and Σn\Sigma_n-conservative over TiT_i for all iki \leq k. Secondly, we prove that for any finite family of such theories, there exists a Σn\Sigma_n sentence which is simultaneously unprovable and Πn\Pi_n-conservative over each of these theories. This constitutes a positive solution to a particular case of Guaspari's problem. Finally, we demonstrate several non-implications among related properties of families of theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.02761,
  title  = {On Guaspari's problem about partially conservative sentences},
  author = {Taishi Kurahashi and Yuya Okawa and V. Yu. Shavrukov and Albert Visser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.02761},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

27 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:07:29.097Z