We survey the theory of Mučnik (weak) and Medvedev (strong) degrees of subsets of ωω with particular attention to the degrees of subsets of ω2. Sections 1–6 present the major definitions and results in a uniform notation. Sections 7–16 present proofs, some more complete than others, of the major results of the subject together with much of the required background material.

Gentzen's systems of natural deduction and sequent calculus were byproducts in his program of proving the consistency of arithmetic and analysis. It is suggested that the central component in his results on logical calculi was the use of a tree form for derivations. It allows the composition of derivations and the permutation of the order of application of rules, with a full control over the structure of derivations as a result. Recently found documents shed new light on the discovery of these calculi. In particular, Gentzen set up five different forms of natural calculi and gave a detailed proof of normalization for intuitionistic natural deduction. An early handwritten manuscript of his thesis shows that a direct translation from natural deduction to the axiomatic logic of Hilbert and Ackermann was, in addition to the influence of Paul Hertz, the second component in the discovery of sequent calculus. A system intermediate between the sequent calculus LI and axiomatic logic, denoted LIG in unpublished sources, is implicit in Gentzen's published thesis of 1934–35. The calculus has half rules, half “groundsequents,” and does not allow full cut elimination. Nevertheless, a translation from LI to LIG in the published thesis gives a subformula property for a complete class of derivations in LIG. After the thesis, Gentzen continued to work on variants of sequent calculi for ten more years, in the hope to find a consistency proof for arithmetic within an intuitionistic calculus.

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.

This talk surveys a range of positions on the fundamental metaphysical and epistemological questions about elementary logic, for example, as a starting point: what is the subject matter of logic—what makes its truths true? how do we come to know the truths of logic? A taxonomy is approached by beginning from well-known schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics—Logicism, Intuitionism, Formalism, Realism—and sketching roughly corresponding views in the philosophy of logic. Kant, Mill, Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Ayer, Quine, and Putnam are among the philosophers considered along the way.

In 1952, Heinrich Scholz published a question in The Journal of Symbolic Logic asking for a characterization of spectra, i.e., sets of natural numbers that are the cardinalities of finite models of first order sentences. Günter Asser in turn asked whether the complement of a spectrum is always a spectrum. These innocent questions turned out to be seminal for the development of finite model theory and descriptive complexity. In this paper we survey developments over the last 50-odd years pertaining to the spectrum problem. Our presentation follows conceptual developments rather than the chronological order. Originally a number theoretic problem, it has been approached by means of recursion theory, resource bounded complexity theory, classification by complexity of the defining sentences, and finally by means of structural graph theory. Although Scholz' question was answered in various ways, Asser's question remains open.

This article serves to present a large mathematical perspective and historical basis for the Axiom of Replacement as well as to affirm its importance as a central axiom of modern set theory.

The paper [Tarski: Les fondements de la géométrie des corps, Annales de la Société Polonaise de Mathématiques, pp. 29–34, 1929] is in many ways remarkable. We address three historico-philosophical issues that force themselves upon the reader. First we argue that in this paper Tarski did not live up to his own methodological ideals, but displayed instead a much more pragmatic approach. Second we show that Leśniewski's philosophy and systems do not play the significant role that one may be tempted to assign to them at first glance. Especially the role of background logic must be at least partially allocated to Russell's systems of Principia mathematica. This analysis leads us, third, to a threefold distinction of the technical ways in which the domain of discourse comes to be embodied in a theory. Having all of this in place, we discuss why we have to reject the argument in [Gruszczyński and Pietruszczak: Full development ofTarski's Geometry of Solids, The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, vol. 4 (2008), no. 4, pp. 481–540] according to which Tarski has made a certain mistake.

Model theorists have been studying analytic functions since the late 1970s. Highlights include the seminal work of Denef and van den Dries on the theory of the p-adics with restricted analytic functions, Wilkie's proof of o-minimality of the theory of the reals with the exponential function, and the formulation of Zilber's conjecture for the complex exponential. My goal in this talk is to survey these main developments and to reflect on today's open problems, in particular for theories of valued fields.

In his 1967 paper Vaught used an ingenious argument to show that every recursively enumerable first order theory that directly interprets the weak system VS of set theory is axiomatizable by a scheme. In this paper we establish a strengthening of Vaught's theorem by weakening the hypothesis of direct interpretability of VS to direct interpretability of the finitely axiomatized fragment VS2 of VS. This improvement significantly increases the scope of the original result, since VS is essentially undecidable, but VS2 has decidable extensions. We also explore the ramifications of our work on finite axiomatizability of schemes in the presence of suitable comprehension principles.

We sketch the ideas behind the use of chromatic numbers in establishing descriptive set-theoretic dichotomy theorems.

Vopěnka proved long ago that every set of ordinals is set-generic over HOD, Gödel's inner model of hereditarily ordinal-definable sets. Here we show that the entire universe V is class-generic over (HOD,S), and indeed over the even smaller inner model =(L[S],S), where S is the Stability predicate. We refer to the inner model as the Stable Core of V. The predicate S has a simple definition which is more absolute than any definition of HOD; in particular, it is possible to add reals which are not set-generic but preserve the Stable Core (this is not possible for HOD by Vopěnka's theorem).

We try to answer the question which is the “right” foundation of mathematics, second order logic or set theory. Since the former is usually thought of as a formal language and the latter as a first order theory, we have to rephrase the question. We formulate what we call the second order view and a competing set theory view, and then discuss the merits of both views. On the surface these two views seem to be in manifest conflict with each other. However, our conclusion is that it is very difficult to see any real difference between the two. We analyze a phenomenonwe call internal categoricity which extends the familiar categoricity results of second order logic to Henkin models and show that set theory enjoys the same kind of internal categoricity. Thus the existence of non-standard models, which is usually taken as a property of first order set theory, and categoricity, which is usually taken as a property of second order axiomatizations, can coherently coexist when put into their proper context. We also take a fresh look at complete second order axiomatizations and give a hierarchy result for second order characterizable structures. Finally we consider the problem of existence in mathematics from both points of view and find that second order logic depends on what we call large domain assumptions, which come quite close to the meaning of the axioms of set theory.