It is time for a new paper about open questions in the currently very active area of randomness and computability. Ambos-Spies and Kučera presented such a paper in 1999 [1]. All the question in it have been solved, except for one: is KL-randomness different from Martin-Löf randomness? This question is discussed in Section 6.

Not all the questions are necessarily hard—some simply have not been tried seriously. When we think a question is a major one, and therefore likely to be hard, we indicate this by the symbol ▶, the criterion being that it is of considerable interest and has been tried by a number of researchers. Some questions are close contenders here; these are marked by ▷. With few exceptions, the questions are precise. They mostly have a yes/no answer. However, there are often more general questions of an intuitive or even philosophical nature behind. We give an outline, indicating the more general questions.

All sets will be sets of natural numbers, unless otherwise stated. These sets are identified with infinite strings over {0, 1}. Other terms used in the literature are sequence and real.

The last decade has seen an enormous development in infinite-valued systems and in particular in such systems which have become known as mathematical fuzzy logics.

The paper discusses the mathematical background for the interest in such systems of mathematical fuzzy logics, as well as the most important ones of them. It concentrates on the propositional cases, and mentions the first-order systems more superficially. The main ideas, however, become clear already in this restricted setting.

One of the most important contributions of A. Church to logic is his invention of the lambda calculus. We present the genesis of this theory and its two major areas of application: the representation of computations and the resulting functional programming languages on the one hand and the representation of reasoning and the resulting systems of computer mathematics on the other hand.

In program synthesis, we transform a specification into a system that is guaranteed to satisfy the specification. When the system is open, then at each moment it reads input signals and writes output signals, which depend on the input signals and the history of the computation so far. The specification considers all possible input sequences. Thus, if the specification is linear, it should hold in every computation generated by the interaction, and if the specification is branching, it should hold in the tree that embodies all possible input sequences.

Often, the system cannot read all the input signals generated by its environment. For example, in a distributed setting, it might be that each process can read input signals of only part of the underlying processes. Then, we should transform a specification into a system whose output depends only on the readable parts of the input signals and the history of the computation. This is called synthesis with incomplete information. In this work we solve the problem of synthesis with incomplete information in its full generality. We consider linear and branching settings with complete and incomplete information. We claim that alternation is a suitable and helpful mechanism for coping with incomplete information. Using alternating tree automata, we show that incomplete information does not make the synthesis problem more complex, in both the linear and the branching paradigm. In particular, we prove that independently of the presence of incomplete information, the synthesis problems for CTL and CTL*. are complete for EXPTIME and 2EXPTIME, respectively.

A mass problem is a set of Turing oracles. If P and Q are mass problems, we say that P is weakly reducible to Q if every member of Q Turing computes a member of P. We say that P is strongly reducible to Q if every member of Q Turing computes a member of P via a fixed Turing functional. The weak degrees and strong degrees are the equivalence classes of mass problems under weak and strong reducibility, respectively. We focus on the countable distributive lattices ω and s of weak and strong degrees of mass problems given by nonempty subsets of 2ω. Using an abstract Gödel/Rosser incompleteness property, we characterize the subsets of 2ω whose associated mass problems are of top degree in ω and s, respectively Let R be the set of Turing oracles which are random in the sense of Martin-Löf, and let r be the weak degree of R. We show that r is a natural intermediate degree within ω. Namely, we characterize r as the unique largest weak degree of a subset of 2ω of positive measure. Within ω we show that r is meet irreducible, does not join to 1, and is incomparable with all weak degrees of nonempty thin perfect subsets of 2ω. In addition, we present other natural examples of intermediate degrees in ω. We relate these examples to reverse mathematics, computational complexity, and Gentzen-style proof theory.

The Lévy-Solovay Theorem[8] limits the kind of large cardinal embeddings that can exist in a small forcing extension. Here I announce a generalization of this theorem to a broad new class of forcing notions. One consequence is that many of the forcing iterations most commonly found in the large cardinal literature create no new weakly compact cardinals, measurable cardinals, strong cardinals, Woodin cardinals, strongly compact cardinals, supercompact cardinals, almost huge cardinals, huge cardinals, and so on.

The best known and most widely discussed aspect of Kurt Gödel's philosophy of mathematics is undoubtedly his robust realism or platonism about mathematical objects and mathematical knowledge. This has scandalized many philosophers but probably has done so less in recent years than earlier. Bertrand Russell's report in his autobiography of one or more encounters with Gödel is well known:

Gödel turned out to be an unadulterated Platonist, and apparently believed that an eternal “not” was laid up in heaven, where virtuous logicians might hope to meet it hereafter.

On this Gödel commented:

Concerning my “unadulterated” Platonism, it is no more unadulterated than Russell's own in 1921 when in the Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy … he said, “Logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features.” At that time evidently Russell had met the “not” even in this world, but later on under the infuence of Wittgenstein he chose to overlook it.

One of the tasks I shall undertake here is to say something about what Gödel's platonism is and why he held it.

A feature of Gödel's view is the manner in which he connects it with a strong conception of mathematical intuition, strong in the sense that it appears to be a basic epistemological factor in knowledge of highly abstract mathematics, in particular higher set theory. Other defenders of intuition in the foundations of mathematics, such as Brouwer and the traditional intuitionists, have a much more modest conception of what mathematical intuition will accomplish.

Two ways of describing a group are considered. 1. A group is finite-automaton presentable if its elements can be represented by strings over a finite alphabet, in such a way that the set of representing strings and the group operation can be recognized by finite automata. 2. An infinite f.g. group is quasi-finitely axiomatizable if there is a description consisting of a single first-order sentence, together with the information that the group is finitely generated. In the first part of the paper we survey examples of FA-presentable groups, but also discuss theorems restricting this class. In the second part, we give examples of quasi-finitely axiomatizable groups, consider the algebraic content of the notion, and compare it to the notion of a group which is a prime model. We also show that if a structure is bi-interpretable in parameters with the ring of integers, then it is prime and quasi-finitely axiomatizable.

It is by now well known that Gödel first advocated the philosophy of Leibniz and then, since 1959, that of Husserl. This raises three questions:

1. 1. How is this turn to Husserl to be interpreted? Is it a dismissal of the Leibnizian philosophy, or a different way to achieve similar goals?

2. 2. Why did Gödel turn specifically to the later Husserl's transcendental idealism?

3. 3. Is there any detectable influence from Husserl on Gödel's writings?

Regarding the first question, Wang [96, p.165] reports that Gödel ‘[saw] in Husserl's work a method of refining and consolidating Leibniz' monadology’. But what does this mean? In what for Gödel relevant sense is Husserl's work a refinement and consolidation of Leibniz' monadology?

The second question is particularly pressing, given that Gödel was, by his own admission, a realist in mathematics since 1925. Wouldn't the uncompromising realism of the early Husserl's Logical investigations have been a more obvious choice for a Platonist like Gödel?

The third question can only be approached when an answer to the second has been given, and we want to suggest that the answer to the first question follows from the answer to the second. We begin, therefore, with a closer look at the actual turn towards phenomenology.

Some 30 years before his serious study of Husserl began, Gödel was well aware of the existence of phenomenology. Apart from its likely appearance in the philosophy courses that Gödel took, it reached him from various directions.

§1. Introduction. Ideals and filters of subsets of natural numbers have been studied by set theorists and topologists for a long time. There is a vast literature concerning various kinds of ultrafilters (or, dually, maximal ideals). There is also a substantial interest in nicely definable (Borel, analytic) ideals—these by old results of Sierpiński are very far from being maximal— and the structure of such ideals will concern us in this announcement. In addition to being interesting in their own right, Borel and analytic ideals occur naturally in the investigations of compact subsets of the space of all Baire class 1 functions on a Polish space (Rosenthal compacta), see [12, 18]. Also, certain objects associated with such ideals are of considerable interest and were quite extensively studied by several authors. Let us list here three examples; in all three of them I stands for an analytic or Borel ideal.

1. The partial order induced by I on P(ω): X ≥I Y iff X \ Y ϵ I ([16]) and the partial order (I, ⊂)([18]).

2. Boolean algebras of the form P(ω)/I and their automorphisms ([6, 5, 19, 20]).

3. The equivalence relation associated with I: XEI Y iff X Δ ϵ I ([4, 14, 15,9]).

In Section 4, we will have an opportunity to state some consequences of our results for equivalence relations as in 3.

This paper explores the set theoretic assumptions used in the current published proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, how these assumptions figure in the methods Wiles uses, and the currently known prospects for a proof using weaker assumptions.

We survey various aspects of the problem of automatic continuity of homomorphisms between Polish groups.

We prove that in all Mitchell-Steel core models, □k holds for all k. (See Theorem 2.) From this we obtain new consistency strength lower bounds for the failure of □k if k is either singular and countably closed, weakly compact, or measurable. (Corollaries 5, 8, and 9.) Jensen introduced a large cardinal property that we call subcompactness; it lies between superstrength and supercompactness in the large cardinal hierarchy. We prove that in all Jensen core models, □k holds iff k is not subcompact. (See Theorem 15; the only if direction is essentially due to Jensen.)

In his monograph On Numbers and Games, J. H. Conway introduced a real-closed field containing the reals and the ordinals as well as a great many less familiar numbers including −ω, ω/2, 1/ω, and ω − π to name only a few. Indeed, this particular real-closed field, which Conway calls No, is so remarkably inclusive that, subject to the proviso that numbers—construed here as members of ordered fields—be individually definable in terms of sets of NBG (von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory with global choice), it may be said to contain “All Numbers Great and Small.” In this respect, No bears much the same relation to ordered fields that the system ℝ of real numbers bears to Archimedean ordered fields.

In Part I of the present paper, we suggest that whereas ℝ should merely be regarded as constituting an arithmetic continuum (modulo the Archimedean axiom), No may be regarded as a sort of absolute arithmetic continuum (modulo NBG), and in Part II we draw attention to the unifying framework No provides not only for the reals and the ordinals but also for an array of non-Archimedean ordered number systems that have arisen in connection with the theories of non-Archimedean ordered algebraic and geometric systems, the theory of the rate of growth of real functions and nonstandard analysis.

In addition to its inclusive structure as an ordered field, the system No of surreal numbers has a rich algebraico-tree-theoretic structure—a simplicity hierarchical structure—that emerges from the recursive clauses in terms of which it is defined. In the development of No outlined in the present paper, in which the surreals emerge vis-à-vis a generalization of the von Neumann ordinal construction, the simplicity hierarchical features of No are brought to the fore and play central roles in the aforementioned unification of systems of numbers great and small and in some of the more revealing characterizations of No as an absolute continuum.

§1. Introduction. This paper deals with aspects of my doctoral dissertation which contributed to the early development of model theory. What was of use to later workers was less the results of my thesis, than the method by which I proved the completeness of first-order logic—a result established by Kurt Gödel in his doctoral thesis 18 years before.

The ideas that fed my discovery of this proof were mostly those I found in the teachings and writings of Alonzo Church. This may seem curious, as his work in logic, and his teaching, gave great emphasis to the constructive character of mathematical logic, while the model theory to which I contributed is filled with theorems about very large classes of mathematical structures, whose proofs often by-pass constructive methods.

Another curious thing about my discovery of a new proof of Gödel's completeness theorem, is that it arrived in the midst of my efforts to prove an entirely different result. Such “accidental” discoveries arise in many parts of scientific work. Perhaps there are regularities in the conditions under which such “accidents” occur which would interest some historians, so I shall try to describe in some detail the accident which befell me.

A mathematical discovery is an idea, or a complex of ideas, which have been found and set forth under certain circumstances. The process of discovery consists in selecting certain input ideas and somehow combining and transforming them to produce the new output ideas. The process that produces a particular discovery may thus be represented by a diagram such as one sees in many parts of science; a “black box” with lines coming in from the left to represent the input ideas, and lines going out to the right representing the output. To describe that discovery one must explain what occurs inside the box, i.e., how the outputs were obtained from the inputs.

In 1960, E. P. Wigner, a joint winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics, published a paper titled On the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences [61]. This paper can be construed as an examination and affirmation of Galileo's tenet that “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics”. To this effect, Wigner presented a large number of examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of mathematics in accurately describing physical phenomena. Wigner viewed these examples as illustrations of what he called the empirical law of epistemology, which asserts that the mathematical formulation of the laws of nature is both appropriate and accurate, and that mathematics is actually the correct language for formulating the laws of nature. At the same time, Wigner pointed out that the reasons for the success of mathematics in the natural sciences are not completely understood; in fact, he went as far as asserting that “… the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”

We give a fairly complete account which first shows that the solution to the inner model problem for one supercompact cardinal will yield an ultimate version of L and then shows that the various current approaches to inner model theory must be fundamentally altered to provide that solution.

We introduce a new framework for classifying logics on finite structures and studying their expressive power. This framework is based on the concept of almost everywhere equivalence of logics, that is to say, two logics having the same expressive power on a class of asymptotic measure 1. More precisely, if L, L′ are two logics and μ is an asymptotic measure on finite structures, then L ≡a.e.L′ (μ) means that there is a class C of finite structures with μ(C) = 1 and such that L and L′ define the same queries on C. We carry out a systematic investigation of ≡a.e. with respect to the uniform measure and analyze the ≡a.e.-equivalence classes of several logics that have been studied extensively in finite model theory. Moreover, we explore connections with descriptive complexity theory and examine the status of certain classical results of model theory in the context of this new framework.

In this paper, we give a step by step introduction to the theory of well quasi-ordered transition systems. The framework combines two concepts, namely (i) transition systems which are monotonic wrt. a well-quasi ordering; and (ii) a scheme for symbolic backward reachability analysis. We describe several models with infinite-state spaces, which can be analyzed within the framework, e.g., Petri nets, lossy channel systems, timed automata, timed Petri nets, and multiset rewriting systems. We will also present better quasi-ordered transition systems which allow the design of efficient symbolic representations of infinite sets of states.

Alonzo Church's mathematical work on computability and undecidability is well-known indeed, and we seem to have an excellent understanding of the context in which it arose. The approach Church took to the underlying conceptual issues, by contrast, is less well understood. Why, for example, was “Church's Thesis” put forward publicly only in April 1935, when it had been formulated already in February/March 1934? Why did Church choose to formulate it then in terms of Gödel's general recursiveness, not his own λ-definability as he had done in 1934? A number of letters were exchanged between Church and Paul Bernays during the period from December 1934 to August 1937; they throw light on critical developments in Princeton during that period and reveal novel aspects of Church's distinctive contribution to the analysis of the informal notion of effective calculability. In particular, they allow me to give informed, though still tentative answers to the questions I raised; the character of my answers is reflected by an alternative title for this paper, Why Church needed Gödel's recursiveness for his Thesis. In Section 5, I contrast Church's analysis with that of Alan Turing and explore, in the very last section, an analogy with Dedekind's investigation of continuity.