We consider the informal concept of “computability” or “effective calculability” and two of the formalisms commonly used to define it, “(Turing) computability” and “(general) recursiveness.” We consider their origin, exact technical definition, concepts, history, general English meanings, how they became fixed in their present roles, how they were first and are now used, their impact on nonspecialists, how their use will affect the future content of the subject of computability theory, and its connection to other related areas. After a careful historical and conceptual analysis of computability and recursion we make several recommendations in section §7 about preserving the intensional differences between the concepts of “computability” and “recursion.” Specifically we recommend that: the term “recursive ” should no longer carry the additional meaning of “computable” or “decidable;” functions defined using Turing machines, register machines, or their variants should be called “computable” rather than “recursive;” we should distinguish the intensional difference between Church’s Thesis and Turing’s Thesis, and use the latter particularly in dealing with mechanistic questions; the name of the subject should be “Computability Theory” or simply Computability rather than

A set X of nonnegative integers is computably enumerable (c.e.), also called recursively enumerable (r.e.), if there is a computable method to list its elements. Let E denote the structure of the computably enumerable sets under inclusion, E = (fW e g e2! ; `). We previously exhibited a first order E-definable property Q(X) such that Q(X) guarantees that X is not Turing complete (i.e., does not code complete information about c.e. sets). Here we show first that Q(X) implies that X has a certain "slowness " property whereby the elements must enter X slowly (under a certain precise complexity measure of speed of computation) even though X may have high information content. Second we prove that every X with this slowness property is computable in some member of any nontrivial orbit, namely for any noncomputable A 2 E there exists B in the orbit of A such that X T B under relative Turing computability ( T ). We produce B using the \Delta 0 3 -automorphism method we introduced earli...

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2.1 Notation from model theory................... 4 2.2 F

We show that there is a computable Boolean algebra B and a computably enumerable ideal I of B such that the quotient algebra B/I is of Cantor-Bendixson rank 1 and is not isomorphic to any computable Boolean algebra. This extends a result of L. Feiner and is deduced from Feiner's result even though Feiner's construction yields a Boolean algebra of infinite Cantor-Bendixson rank.

The conventional wisdom presented in most computability books and historical papers is that there were several researchers in the early 1930’s working on various precise definitions and demonstrations of a function specified by a finite procedure and that they should all share approximately equal credit. This is incorrect. It was Turing alone who achieved the characterization, in the opinion of Gödel. We also explore Turing’s oracle machine and its analogous properties in analysis. Keywords: Turing a-machine, computability, Church-Turing Thesis, Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, Turing o-machine, computable approximations,

Abstract. To each computable enumerable (c.e.) set A with a particular enumeration {As}s∈ω, there is associated a settling function mA(x), where mA(x) is the last stage when a number less than or equal to x was enumerated into A. One c.e. set A is settling time dominated by another set B (B>st A) if for every computable function f, for all but finitely many x, mB(x)> f(mA(x)). This settling-time ordering, which is a natural extension to an ordering of the idea of domination, was first introduced by Nabutovsky and Weinberger in [3] and Soare [6]. They desired a sequence of sets descending in this relationship to give results in differential geometry. In this paper we examine properties of the <st ordering. We show that it is not invariant under computable isomorphism, that any countable partial ordering embeds into it, that there are maximal and minimal sets, and that two c.e. sets need not have an inf or sup in the ordering. We also examine a related ordering, the strong settling-time ordering where we require for all computable f and g, for almost all x, mB(x)> f(mA(g(x))).

We construct a Π0 1-class X that has classical packing dimension 0 and effective packing dimension 1. This implies that, unlike in the case of effective Hausdorff dimension, there is no natural correspondence principle (as defined by Lutz) for effective packing dimension. We also examine the relationship between upper box dimension and packing A major theme of computability theory is the effectivization of classical mathematics. To do this one takes an existing (i.e. classical) mathematical notion and develops a new computability-theoretic analogue of that notion. Afterwards, one tries to determine the similarities and differences between the

It is shown that, if a, b are recursively enumerable degrees such that 0 ! a ! 0 0 and a [ b = 0 0 , then there exists a recursively enumerable degree c such that c ! a and c [ b = 0 0 . 1 Introduction By analogy with the notion of major subset in the context of the lattice of r.e. sets, the r.e. degree c is called a major subdegree of the r.e. degree a if c ! a and for every r.e. degree b a [ b = 0 0 ) c [ b = 0 0 : This paper represents modest progress towards answering the question: Does every r.e. degree which is neither 0 nor 0 0 have a major subdegree? This question was first posed by the second author in 1967, although it does not seem to have appeared in print. In the 70's and 80's efforts were made to answer the question but bore little fruit. In this paper we prove: The second author was supported by NSERC (Canada) Grant A3040, and the third author by National Science Foundation Grant DMS 88-07389. The third author presented the results in this paper and tho...

A set A ` ! is computably enumerable (c.e.), also called recursively enumerable, (r.e.), or simply enumerable, if there is a computable algorithm to list its members. Let E denote the structure of the c.e. sets under inclusion. Starting with Post [1944] there has been much interest in relating the denable (especially E-denable) properties of a c.e. set A to its iinformation contentj, namely its Turing degree, deg(A), under T , the usual Turing reducibility. [Turing 1939]. Recently, Harrington and Soare answered a question arising from Post's program by constructing a nonemptly E-denable property Q(A) which guarantees that A is incomplete (A !T K). The property Q(A) is of the form (9C)[A ae m C & Q \Gamma (A; C)], where A ae m C abbreviates that iA is a major subset of Cj, and Q \Gamma (A; C) contains the main ingredient for incompleteness. A dynamic property P (A), such as prompt simplicity, is one which is dened by considering how fast elements elements enter A relat...