Minimal predicates P satisfying a given first-order description φ(P) occur widely in mathematical logic and computer science. We give an explicit first-order syntax for special first-order ‘PIA conditions’ φ(P) which guarantees unique existence of such minimal predicates. Our main technical result is a preservation theorem showing PIA-conditions to be expressively complete for all those first-order formulas that are preserved under a natural model-theoretic operation of ‘predicate intersection’. Next, we show how iterated predicate minimization on PIA-conditions yields a language MIN(FO) equal in expressive power to LFP(FO), first-order logic closed under smallest fixed-points for monotone operations. As a concrete illustration of these notions, we show how our sort of predicate minimization extends the usual frame correspondence theory of modal logic, leading to a proper hierarchy of modal axioms: first-order-definable, first-order fixed-point definable, and beyond.

In this paper we introduce canonical extensions of partially ordered sets and monotone maps and a corresponding discrete duality. We then use these to give a uniform treatment of completeness of relational semantics for various substructural logics with implication as the residual(s) of fusion.

We show that every nonzero Δ⁰₂ e-degree bounds a minimal pair. On the other hand, there exist Σ⁰₂ e-degrees which bound no minimal pair.

We construct a model in which there is a strongly compact cardinal κ such that the set S(κ,κ⁺) = { a∈ P_κ κ⁺: o.t.(a) = (a∩κ)⁺ } is non-stationary.

In this paper we devise some technical tools for dealing with problems connected with the philosophical view usually called mathematical instrumentalism. These tools are interesting in their own right, independently of their philosophical consequences. For example, we show that even though the fragment of Peano's Arithmetic known as IΣ₁ is a conservative extension of the equational theory of Primitive Recursive Arithmetic (PRA), IΣ₁ has a super-exponential speed-up over PRA. On the other hand, theories studied in the Program of Reverse Mathematics that formalize powerful mathematical principles have only polynomial speed-up over IΣ₁.

In this paper we devise some technical tools for dealing with problems connected with the philosophical view usually called mathematical instrumentalism. These tools are interesting in their own right, independently of their philosophical consequences. For example, we show that even though the fragment of Peano's Arithmetic known as IΣ₁ is a conservative extension of the equational theory of Primitive Recursive Arithmetic (PRA), IΣ₁ has a super-exponential speed-up over PRA. On the other hand, theories studied in the Program of Reverse Mathematics that formalize powerful mathematical principles have only polynomial speed-up over IΣ₁.

We propose a logic for reasoning about metric spaces with the induced topologies. It combines the ‘qualitative’ interior and closure operators with ‘quantitative’ operators ‘somewhere in the sphere of radius r,’ including or excluding the boundary. We supply the logic with both the intended metric space semantics and a natural relational semantics, and show that the latter (i) provides finite partial representations of (in general) infinite metric models and (ii) reduces the standard ‘ε-definitions’ of closure and interior to simple constraints on relations. These features of the relational semantics suggest a finite axiomatisation of the logic and provide means to prove its EXPTIME-completeness (even if the rational numerical parameters are coded in binary). An extension with metric variables satisfying linear rational (in)equalities is proved to be decidable as well. Our logic can be regarded as a ‘well-behaved’ common denominator of logical systems constructed in temporal, spatial, and similarity-based quantitative and qualitative representation and reasoning. Interpreted on the real line (with its Euclidean metric), it is a natural fragment of decidable temporal logics for specification and verification of real-time systems. On the real plane, it is closely related to quantitative and qualitative formalisms for spatial representation and reasoning, but this time the logic becomes undecidable.

We prove that under reasonable assumptions, every cat (compact abstract theory) is metric, and develop some of the theory of metric cats. We generalise Morley's theorem: if a countable Hausdorff cat T has a unique complete model of density character λ ≥ ω₁, then it has a unique complete model of density character λ for every λ ≥ ω₁.

Kummer's Cardinality Theorem states that a language A must be recursive if a Turing machine can exclude for any n words w₁, …, w_n one of the n + 1 possibilities for the cardinality of {w₁,…,w_n} ∩ A. There was good reason to believe that this theorem is a peculiarity of recursion theory: neither the Cardinality Theorem nor weak forms of it hold for resource-bounded computational models like polynomial time. This belief may be flawed. In this paper it is shown that weak cardinality theorems hold for finite automata and also for other models. An explanation is proposed as to why recursion-theoretic and automata-theoretic weak cardinality theorems hold, but not corresponding ‘middle-ground theorems’: The recursion- and automata-theoretic weak cardinality theorems are instantiations of purely logical weak cardinality theorems. The logical theorems can be instantiated for logical structures characterizing recursive computations and finite automata computations. A corresponding structure characterizing polynomial time computations does not exist.

Following the book Algebraic Set Theory from André Joyal and Ieke Moerdijk [8], we give a characterization of the initial ZF-algebra, for Heyting pretoposes equipped with a class of small maps. Then, an application is considered (the effective topos) to show how to recover an already known model (McCarty [9]).

Using possibly infinite computations on universal monotone Turing machines, we prove Martin-Löf randomness in ∅' of the probability that the output be in some set 𝒪⊆2^≤ω under complexity assumptions about 𝒪.

We prove that the property “P doesn't make the old reals Lebesgue null” is preserved under countable support iterations of proper forcings, under the additional assumption that the forcings are nep (a generalization of Suslin proper) in an absolute way. We also give some results for general Suslin ccc ideals.

In 1924 Banach and Tarski demonstrated the existence of a paradoxical decomposition of the 3-ball B, i.e., a piecewise isometry from B onto two copies of B. This article answers a question of de Groot from 1958 by showing that there is a paradoxical decomposition of B in which the pieces move continuously while remaining disjoint to yield two copies of B. More generally, we show that if n ≥ 2, any two bounded sets in 𝑹ⁿ that are equidecomposable with proper isometries are continuously equidecomposable in this sense.

Being able to state the principles which lie deepest in the foundations of mathematics by sentences in three variables is crucially important for a satisfactory equational rendering of set theories along the lines proposed by Alfred Tarski and Steven Givant in their monograph of 1987.

The main achievement of this paper is the proof that the ‘kernel’ set theory whose postulates are extensionality, (E), and single-element adjunction and removal, (W) and (L), cannot be axiomatized by means of three-variable sentences. This highlights a sharp edge to be crossed in order to attain an ‘algebraization’ of Set Theory. Indeed, one easily shows that the theory which results from the said kernel by addition of the null set axiom, (N), is in its entirety expressible in three variables.

The Dedekind cuts in an ordered set form a set in the sense of constructive Zermelo—Fraenkel set theory. We deduce this statement from the principle of refinement, which we distill before from the axiom of fullness. Together with exponentiation, refinement is equivalent to fullness. None of the defining properties of an ordering is needed, and only refinement for two—element coverings is used.

In particular, the Dedekind reals form a set; whence we have also refined an earlier result by Aczel and Rathjen, who invoked the full form of fullness. To further generalise this, we look at Richman's method to complete an arbitrary metric space without sequences, which he designed to avoid countable choice. The completion of a separable metric space turns out to be a set even if the original space is a proper class; in particular, every complete separable metric space automatically is a set.

We solve a major open problem concerning algorithmic properties of products of ‘transitive’ modal logics by showing that products and commutators of such standard logics as K4, S4, S4.1, K4.3, GL, or Grz are undecidable and do not have the finite model property. More generally, we prove that no Kripke complete extension of the commutator [K4,K4] with product frames of arbitrary finite or infinite depth (with respect to both accessibility relations) can be decidable. In particular, if 𝒞₁ and 𝒞₂ are classes of transitive frames such that their depth cannot be bounded by any fixed n <ω, then the logic of the class { 𝔉₁ × 𝔉₂ | 𝔉₁ ∈ 𝒞₁, 𝔉₂∈ 𝒞₂ } is undecidable. (On the contrary, the product of, say, K4 and the logic of all transitive Kripke frames of depth ≤ n, for some fixed n <ω, is decidable.) The complexity of these undecidable logics ranges from r.e. to co-r.e. and Π₁¹-complete. As a consequence, we give the first known examples of Kripke incomplete commutators of Kripke complete logics.