Say that a d.c.e. degree d is nonisolated if for any c.e. degree a

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Computability theory concerns information with a causal–typically algorithmic–structure. As such, it provides a schematic analysis of many naturally occurring situations. Emil Post was the first to focus on the close relationship between information, coded as real numbers, and its algorithmic infrastructure. Having characterised the close connection between the quantifier type of a real and the Turing jump operation, he looked for more subtle ways in which information entails a particular causal context. Specifically, he wanted to find simple relations on reals (...) which produced richness of local computability-theoretic structure. To this extent, he was not just interested in causal structure as an abstraction, but in the way in which this structure emerges in natural contexts. Post’s programme was the genesis of a more far reaching research project. In this article we will firstly review the history of Post’s programme, and look at two interesting developments of Post’s approach. The first of these developments concerns the extension of the core programme, initially restricted to the Turing structure of the computably enumerable sets of natural numbers, to the Ershov hierarchy of sets. The second looks at how new types of information coming from the recent growth of research into randomness, and the revealing of unexpected new computability-theoretic infrastructure. We will conclude by viewing Post’s programme from a more general perspective. We will look at how algorithmic structure does not just emerge mathematically from information, but how that emergent structure can model the emergence of very basic aspects of the real world. (shrink)

Examining various kinds of isolation phenomena in the Turing degrees, I show that there are, for every n>0, (n+1)-c.e. sets isolated in the n-CEA degrees by n-c.e. sets below them. For n≥1 such phenomena arise below any computably enumerable degree, and conjecture that this result holds densely in the c.e. degrees as well. Surprisingly, such isolation pairs also exist where the top set has high degree and the isolating set is low, although the complete situation for jump classes remains unknown.

In this paper, we study the bi-isolation phenomena in the d.c.e. degrees and prove that there are c.e. degrees c1 < c2 and a d.c.e. degree d∈ such that and contain no c.e. degrees. Thus, the c.e. degrees between c1 and c2 are all incomparable with d. We also show that there are d.c.e. degrees d1 < d2 such that contains a unique c.e. degree.

We study the jump hierarchy of d.c.e. Turing degrees and show that there exists a high d.c.e. degree d which does not bound any minimal pair of d.c.e. degrees.

Computability theory concerns information with a causal–typically algorithmic–structure. As such, it provides a schematic analysis of many naturally occurring situations. Emil Post was the first to focus on the close relationship between information, coded as real numbers, and its algorithmic infrastructure. Having characterised the close connection between the quantifier type of a real and the Turing jump operation, he looked for more subtle ways in which information entails a particular causal context. Specifically, he wanted to find simple relations on reals (...) which produced richness of local computability-theoretic structure. To this extent, he was not just interested in causal structure as an abstraction, but in the way in which this structure emerges in natural contexts. Post’s programme was the genesis of a more far reaching research project. In this article we will firstly review the history of Post’s programme, and look at two interesting developments of Post’s approach. The first of these developments concerns the extension of the core programme, initially restricted to the Turing structure of the computably enumerable sets of natural numbers, to the Ershov hierarchy of sets. The second looks at how new types of information coming from the recent growth of research into randomness, and the revealing of unexpected new computability-theoretic infrastructure. We will conclude by viewing Post’s programme from a more general perspective. We will look at how algorithmic structure does not just emerge mathematically from information, but how that emergent structure can model the emergence of very basic aspects of the real world. (shrink)

We prove that for any computably enumerable degree c, if it is cappable in the computably enumerable degrees, then there is a d.c.e. degree d such that c d = 0′ and c ∩ d = 0. Consequently, a computably enumerable degree is cappable if and only if it can be complemented by a nonzero d.c.e. degree. This gives a new characterization of the cappable degrees.

Lachlan observed that any nonzero d.c.e. degree bounds a nonzero c.e. degree. In this paper, we study the c.e. predecessors of d.c.e. degrees, and prove that given a nonzero d.c.e. degree , there is a c.e. degree below and a high d.c.e. degree such that bounds all the c.e. degrees below . This result gives a unified approach to some seemingly unrelated results. In particular, it has the following two known theorems as corollaries: there is a low c.e. degree isolating (...) a high d.c.e. degree [S. Ishmukhametov, G. Wu, Isolation and the high/low hierarchy, Arch. Math. Logic 41 259–266]; there is a high d.c.e. degree bounding no minimal pairs [C.T. Chong, A. Li, Y. Yang, The existence of high nonbounding degrees in the difference hierarchy, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 138 31–51]. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the bi-isolation phenomena in the d.c.e. degrees and prove that there are c.e. degrees c₁ < c₂ and a d.c.e. degree d ∈ (c₁, c₂) such that (c₁, d) and (d, c₂) contain no c.e. degrees. Thus, the c.e. degrees between c₁ and c₂ are all incomparable with d. We also show that there are d.c.e. degrees d₁ < d₂ such that (d₁, d₂) contains a unique c.e. degree.