An ordinal analysis of a formal system precisely measures its proof-theoretic strength, which is its strength at justifying transfinite induction. In practice, it also measures the system’s ability to prove totality of complex computable functions.
Giving a concrete “ordinal notation” that describes the proof-theoretic strength of a system is sometimes seen as providing a constructive justification for the reasoning principles of the system. However, ordinal analysis is not limited to systems that are constructive in the sense of not assuming excluded middle. But in practice, classical systems with ordinal notations are interpretable constructively.
While it is classically true that any effective formal system has some limit to its proof-theoretic strength, only systems of limited strength have had their strength concretely described by a good ordinal notation. Specifically, all systems with ordinal analyses so far are significantly weaker than full second-order arithmetic. Consequently, so far, systems that have been given ordinal notations feel more like predicative systems than like familiar impredicative systems such as ZFC, higher-order arithmetic, and ETCS.
Many have argued, however, that the boundary between predicatively-justifiable and impredicative systems lies somewhere within the range of proof-theoretic ordinals already analyzed. In other words, that the stronger systems in the table below are actually slightly impredicative, even when it isn’t obvious.
The proof-theoretic ordinal of a theory is (commonly) defined as
where is the order-type of the well-order and means that (a free parameter) satisfies transfinite induction along ; this is the constructive way to say that is well-ordered. For most theories, this ordinal is equal to the -ordinal of the theory,
where is the truth-complexity of the -sentence (if is a first-order theory, we interpret as with a free set parameter ).
The proof-theoretic ordinal is always a recursive ordinal () if the theory is recursive.
Note that the proof-theoretic ordinal is a rather blunt invariant, because if is any true -sentence, then
So this tells us nothing about the provable arithmetical sentences of ! And indeed, all true arithmetical sentences have truth-complexity less than .
The solution is to refine the analysis to give a ordinal analysis of the theory, using a measure of the computational complexity of provable -sentences/provably recursive functions. However, there’s no natural hierarchy of all subrecursive functions. We can define such a computational complexity depending on a choice of starting function and a choice of ordinal notation system (indeed, the ordinal should be thought of as an ordinal notation, rather than an actual ordinal). But for all the ordinal analyses we have so far, these choices turn out not to matter, basically because any natural ordinal notation system will give the same result. A major issue is, however, that we have no definition of what a natural ordinal notation system is (but we know one when we see it!).
All of the ordinal analyses mentioned below also give a ordinal analysis, and thus control of the computational complexity of the provably recursive functions.
Most ordinal analyses proceed by embedding the theory in an infinitary proof calculus deriving judgments meaning has an infinitary derivation of height less than using only cuts of rank less than , or some refinement of such, for instance using operator controlled derivations. Then one analyzes how the height of a derivation changes during cut-elimination. For predicative theories, we’ll have
One sets up the calculus so that implies , so this yields upper bounds for the proof-theoretic ordinal.
Lower bounds are usually done by directly deriving for a sequence of primitive recursive well-orderings whose order-types approximate the proof-theoretic ordinal. We get these primitive recursive well-orderings from good ordinal notation systems, see below.
See below for explanations.
Ordinal | FOA | SOA | Other |
---|---|---|---|
Finitist systems | |||
EFA | RCA | ||
PRA,I | RCA, WKL | CPRC | |
Predicative systems | |||
PA | ACA, -CA, -AC | EM | |
ACA | |||
ID | -CR | EM+JR | |
-CA, -AC | EM+J, ML | ||
, U(PA) | ATR,-CA+BR | ML, MLU, KPi | |
Meta-predicative systems | |||
ATR | KPl+F-I | ||
ATR+(-DC) | KPi+-I | ||
ATR+(-DC) | KPi+F-I | ||
MLS | |||
Aut() | KPh | ||
KPM | |||
Inductive types | |||
ID | KP, CZF, MLV | ||
U(ID) | |||
ID | -CA,-CA | ||
W-ID | -CA | W-KPl | |
ID | -CA+BI | KPl | |
ID | -CR | ||
ID | -CA, -AC | W-KPi | |
-CA+BI, -AC+BI | KPi, T, CZF+REA | ||
MLW | |||
KPh, MLW | |||
Inductive-recursive types | |||
-CA+BI+(M) | CZFM, KPM | ||
KPM, MLM, “Agda” |
The sections of the table corresponds roughly to the kinds of reasoning captured by the systems:
Note that these are all very much weaker than full second-order arithmetic, and of course much weaker than Zermelo or Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory.
After the meta-predicative systems, all ordinals use a notation which refers to a much larger ordinal, often patterned on a large cardinal.
Rathjen (2005) analyzed systems up to -CA+BI+-CA (the last part is parameter-free -comprehension), corresponding to a stable ordinal. Arai has work on systems that are a bit stronger, up to about -DC+BI, in terms of ordinal diagrams defined in terms of iterated stability, and has more recently analyzed KP+-collection, which is beyond KP+“the stable ordinal are unbounded” in strength.
With current technology, we are very far from having ordinal analyses of stronger systems such as full second order arithmetic, ZFC set theory, or impredicative type theories such as the calculus of (inductive) constructions.
The functions are ordinal collapsing functions.
These assert some hierarchy of inductive defined sets of natural numbers.
Many of the results in the table concerning these can be summarized as
For any of these, we get the same proof-theoretic ordinal whether we use classical or intuitionistic logic. For the ID-systems, this is due to Sieg.
The unfolding systems U(PA) and U(ID) are not exactly first-order arithmetic systems, but capture what we can get by predicative reasoning based on the natural numbers or one generalized inductive definition, respectively.
A zero subscript indicates that we have the induction axiom rather than the induction scheme, except for RCA which has the -induction scheme.
A superscript zero indidcates that -induction is removed.
About the Mahlo level: this also corresponds to inductive-recursive definitions (Dybjer-Setzer).
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Last revised on May 23, 2022 at 08:33:55. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.