Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
An initial segment of hyperdegrees is a set S of hyperdegrees such that whenever h ∈ S and k ≦ h then k ∈ S. The main results of this paper affirm the existence of initial segments having certain order types. In particular, if L is a finite distributive lattice then L is isomorphic to an initial segment of hyperdegrees [Theorem 1]; as a consequence the elementary theory of the ordering of hyperdegrees is recursively undecidable [Corollary 1].
This paper reports research supported in part by the National Research Council of Canada, Grant #A-4065.