Introduction SAMSON ABRAMSKY (samson@comlab.ox.ac.uk) Oxford University Computing Laboratory 1. Introduction Game Semantics has emerged as a powerful paradigm for giving semantics to a variety of programming languages and logical systems. It has been used to construct the first syntax-independent fully abstract models for a spectrum of programming languages ranging from purely functional languages to languages with non-functional features such as control operators and locally-scoped references [4, 21, 5, 19, 2, 22, 17, 11]. A substantial survey of the state of the art of Game Semantics circa 1997 was given in a previous Marktoberdorf volume [6]. Our aim in this tutorial presentation is to give a first indication of how Game Semantics can be developed in a new, algorithmic direction, with a view to applications in computer-assisted verification and program analysis. Some promising steps have already been taken in this

Stephen A. Cook and Bruce M. Kapron Department of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 1 Introduction Functionals are functions which take natural numbers and other functionals as arguments and return natural numbers as values. The class of "feasible" functionals of finite type was introduced in [6] via the typed lambda calculus, and used to interpret certain formal systems of arithmetic: systems capturing the notion of "feasibly constructive proof" (we equate feasibility with polynomial time computability) . Here we name the functionals of [6] the basic feasible functionals and justify the designation by presenting results which include two programming style characterizations of the class. We also give examples of both feasible and infeasible functionals, and argue that the notion plays a natural role in complexity theory. Type 2 functionals take numbers and ordinary numerical functions as arguments. When these argument functions are 0-1 valued (i.e. sets) ...

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

We discuss the conceptual problem of identifying the natural notions of computability at higher types (over the natural numbers). We argue for an eclectic approach, in which one considers a wide range of possible approaches to defining higher type computability and then looks for regularities. As a first step in this programme, we give an extended survey of the di#erent strands of research on higher type computability to date, bringing together material from recursion theory, constructive logic and computer science. The paper thus serves as a reasonably complete overview of the literature on higher type computability. Two sequel papers will be devoted to developing a more systematic account of the material reviewed here.

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