Abstract. Sacks [Sa1966a] asks if the metarecursivley enumerable degrees are elementarily equivalent to the r.e. degrees. In unpublished work, Slaman and Shore proved that they are not. This paper provides a simpler proof of that result and characterizes the degree of the theory as O (ω) or, equivalently, that of the truth set of L ω CK

Abstract. The three quantifier theory of (R, ≤T), the recursively enumerable degrees under Turing reducibility, was proven undecidable by Lempp, Nies and Slaman (1998). The two quantifier theory includes the lattice embedding problem and its decidability is a long-standing open question. A negative solution to this problem seems out of reach of the standard methods of interpretation of theories because the language is relational. We prove the undecidability of a fragment of the theory of R that lies between the two and three quantifier theories with ≤T but includes function symbols. Theorem. The two quantifier theory of (R, ≤, ∨, ∧), the r.e. degrees with Turing reducibility, supremum and infimum (taken to be any total function extending the infimum relation on R) is undecidable. The same result holds for various lattices of ideals of R which are natural extensions of R preserving join and infimum when it exits. 1.