In this paper we isolate a notion that we call “formalism freeness” from Gödel's 1946 Princeton Bicentennial Lecture, which asks for a transfer of the Turing analysis of computability to the cases of definability and provability. We suggest an implementation of Gödel's idea in the case of definability, via versions of the constructible hierarchy based on fragments of second order logic. We also trace the notion of formalism freeness in the very wide context of developments in mathematical logic in the (...) 20th century. (shrink)

We study the κ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\kappa $$\end{document}-Borel-reducibility of isomorphism relations of complete first order theories in a countable language and show the consistency of the following: For all such theories T and T′\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$T^{\prime }$$\end{document}, if T is classifiable and T′\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$T^{\prime }$$\end{document} is not, then the isomorphism of models of T′\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} (...) \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$T^{\prime }$$\end{document} is strictly above the isomorphism of models of T with respect to κ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\kappa $$\end{document}-Borel-reducibility. In fact, we can also ensure that a range of equivalence relations modulo various non-stationary ideals are strictly between those isomorphism relations. The isomorphism relations are considered on models of some fixed uncountable cardinality obeying certain restrictions. (shrink)

Oikkonen, J. and J. Väänänen, Game-theoretic inductive definability, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 65 265-306. We use game-theoretic ideas to define a generalization of the notion of inductive definability. This approach allows induction along non-well-founded trees. Our definition depends on an underlying partial ordering of the objects. In this ordering every countable ascending sequence is assumed to have a unique supremum which enables us to go over limits. We establish basic properties of this induction and examine examples where it (...) emerges naturally. In the main results we prove an abstract Kleene Theorem and restricted versions of the Stage-Comparison Theorem and the Reduction Theorem. (shrink)

We discuss dividing lines (in model theory) and some test questions, mainly the universality spectrum. So there is much on conjectures, problems and old results, mainly of the author and also on some recent results.

Working with uncountable structures of fixed cardinality, we investigate the complexity of certain equivalence relations and show that if, then many of them are ‐complete, in particular the isomorphism relation of dense linear orders. Then we show that it is undecidable in whether or not the isomorphism relation of a certain well behaved theory (stable, NDOP, NOTOP) is ‐complete (it is, if, but can be forced not to be).

In this paper we prove a strong nonstructure theorem for κ(T)-saturated models of a stable theory T with dop. This paper continues the work started in [1].

We study how equivalent nonisomorphic models an unsuperstable theory can have. We measure the equivalence by Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse games. This paper continues the work started in $[HT]$.

We show in the paper that for any non-classifiable countable theory T there are non-isomorphic models and that can be forced to be isomorphic without adding subsets of small cardinality. By making suitable cardinal arithmetic assumptions we can often preserve stationary sets as well. We also study non-structure theorems relative to the Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé game.

We prove the existence of pairs of models of the same cardinality which are very equivalent according to EF games, but not isomorphic. We continue the paper [4], but we do not rely on it. (© 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim).

The results herein form part of a larger project to characterize the classification properties of the class of submodels of a homogeneous stable diagram in terms of the solvability (in the sense of [1]) of the potential isomorphism problem for this class of submodels. We restrict ourselves to locally saturated submodels of the monster model m of some power π. We assume that in Gödel's constructible universe ������, π is a regular cardinal at least the successor of the first cardinal (...) in which ������ is stable. We show that the collection of pairs of submodels in ������ as above which are potentially isomorphic with respect to certain cardinal-preserving extensions of ������ is equiconstructible with 0 # . As 0 # is highly "transcendental" over ������, this provides a very strong statement to the effect that potential isomorphism for this class of models not only fails to be set-theoretically absolute, but is of high (indeed of the highest possible) complexity. The proof uses a novel method that does away with the need for a linear order on the skeleton. (shrink)

We characterize the classifiability of a countable first-order theory T in terms of the solvability of the potential-isomorphism problem for models of T.