There have been many suggestions for what should be a computable real number or function. Some of them exhibited pathological properties. At present, research concentrates either on an application of Weihrauch's Type Two Theory of Effectivity or on domain-theoretic approaches, in which case the partial objects appearing during computations are made explicit. A further, more analysis-oriented line of research is based on Grzegorczyk's work. All these approaches are claimed to be equivalent, but not in all cases proofs have been given. In this paper it is shown that a real number as well as a real-valued function are computable in Weihrauch's sense if and only if they are definable in Escardo's functional language Real PCF, an extension of the language PCF by a new ground type for (total and partial) real numbers. This is exactly the case if the number is a computable element in the continuous domain of all compact real intervals and/or the function has a computable extension to this doma...

on topological spaces via domain representations

We discuss several ways of making precise the informal concept of physical determinism, drawing on ideas from mathematical logic and computability theory. We outline a programme of investigating these notions of determinism in detail for specific, precisely articulated physical theories. We make a start on our programme by proposing a general logical framework for describing physical theories, and analysing several possible formulations of a simple Newtonian theory from the point of view of determinism. Our emphasis throughout is on clarifying the precise physical and metaphysical assumptions that typically underlie a claim that some physical theory is ‘deterministic’. A sequel paper is planned, in which we shall apply similar methods to the analysis of other physical theories. Along the way, we discuss some possible repercussions of this kind of investigation for both physics and logic. 1

Abstract. We discuss some of the choices that arise when one tries to make the idea of physical determinism more precise. Broadly speaking, ‘ontological ’ notions of determinism are parameterized by one’s choice of mathematical ideology, whilst ‘epistemological ’ notions of determinism are parameterized by the choice of an appropriate notion of computability. We present some simple examples to show that these choices can indeed make a difference to whether a given physical theory is ‘deterministic’ or not. Keywords: Laplace’s demon, physical determinism, philosophy of mathematics, notions of computability. 1