Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
When bounds on complexity of some aspect of a structure are preserved under isomorphism, we refer to them as intrinsic. Here, building on work of Soskov [34], [33], we give syntactical conditions necessary and sufficient for a relation to be intrinsically on a structure. We consider some examples of computable structures and intrinsically relations R. We also consider a general family of examples of intrinsically relations arising in computable structures of maximum Scott rank.
For three of the examples, the maximal well-ordered initial segment in a Harrison ordering, the superatomic part of a Harrison Boolean algebra, and the height-possessing part of a Harrison p-group, we show that the Turing degrees of images of the relation in computable copies of the structure are the same as the Turing degrees of paths through Kleene's . With this as motivation, we investigate the possible degrees of these paths. We show that there is a path in which ∅′ is not computable. In fact, there is one in which no noncomputable hyperarithmetical set is computable. There are paths that are Turing incomparable, or Turing incomparable over a given hyperarithmetical set. There is a pair of paths whose degrees form a minimal pair. However, there is no path of minimal degree.