Semantic Suppositions in Frege’s Definition of Natural Number

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-136
Author(s):  
Constantin Stoenescu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
1937 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 164-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Turing

In the theory of conversion it is important to have a formally defined function which assigns to any positive integer n the least integer not less than n which has a given property. The definition of such a formula is somewhat involved: I propose to give the corresponding formula in λ-K-conversion, which will (naturally) be much simpler. I shall in fact find a formula þ such that if T be a formula for which T(n) is convertible to a formula representing a natural number, whenever n represents a natural number, then þ(T, r) is convertible to the formula q representing the least natural number q, not less than r, for which T(q) conv 0.2 The method depends on finding a formula Θ with the property that Θ conv λu·u(Θ(u)), and consequently if M→Θ(V) then M conv V(M). A formula with this property is,The formula þ will have the required property if þ(T, r) conv r when T(r) conv 0, and þ(T, r) conv þ(T, S(r)) otherwise. These conditions will be satisfied if þ(T, r) conv T(r, λx·þ(T, S(r)), r), i.e. if þ conv {λptr·t(r, λx·p(t, S(r)), r)}(þ). We therefore put,This enables us to define also a formula,such that (T, n) is convertible to the formula representing the nth positive integer q for which T(q) conv 0.


1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD S. BIRD ◽  
ROSS PATERSON

“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmesde Bruijn notation is a coding of lambda terms in which each occurrence of a bound variable x is replaced by a natural number, indicating the ‘distance’ from the occurrence to the abstraction that introduced x. One might suppose that in any datatype for representing de Bruijn terms, the distance restriction on numbers would have to be maintained as an explicit datatype invariant. However, by using a nested (or non-regular) datatype, we can define a representation in which all terms are well-formed, so that the invariant is enforced automatically by the type system. Programming with nested types is only a little more difficult than programming with regular types, provided we stick to well-established structuring techniques. These involve expressing inductively defined functions in terms of an appropriate fold function for the type, and using fusion laws to establish their properties. In particular, the definition of lambda abstraction and beta reduction is particularly simple, and the proof of their associated properties is entirely mechanical.


1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Palle Yourgrau

Frege's definition of the natural number n in terms of the set of n-membered sets has been treated rudely by history. It has suffered not one but two crippling blows. The discovery of Russell's Paradox revealed a fatal flaw in the ‘naive’ conception of set. In spite of its intuitive appeal, Frege's Basic Law V (in the context of the rest of his theory) turned out to be impermissible, leaving us only with the etiolated concept of set that survives in the axiomatic treatments initiated by Zermelo. The independence results, however, of Godel and Cohen, concerning Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis, have left us adrift in choosing between Cantorian and non-Cantorian set theories, which has induced in some logicians a skepticism in regard to the very idea of set-theoretic platonism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Paula Quinon

AbstractThe core of the problem discussed in this paper is the following: the Church-Turing Thesis states that Turing Machines formally explicate the intuitive concept of computability. The description of Turing Machines requires description of the notation used for the input and for the output. Providing a general definition of notations acceptable in the process of computations causes problems. This is because a notation, or an encoding suitable for a computation, has to be computable. Yet, using the concept of computation, in a definition of a notation, which will be further used in a definition of the concept of computation yields an obvious vicious circle. The circularity of this definition causes trouble in distinguishing on the theoretical level, what is an acceptable notation from what is not an acceptable notation, or as it is usually referred to in the literature, “deviant encodings”.Deviant encodings appear explicitly in discussions about what is an adequate or correct conceptual analysis of the concept of computation. In this paper, I focus on philosophical examples where the phenomenon appears implicitly, in a “disguised” version. In particular, I present its use in the analysis of the concept of natural number. I also point at additional phenomena related to deviant encodings: conceptual fixed points and apparent “computability” of uncomputable functions. In parallel, I develop the idea that Carnapian explications provide a much more adequate framework for understanding the concept of computation, than the classical philosophical analysis.


1989 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 921-927 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Marker

Recall that a theory is said to be almost strongly minimal if in every model every element is in the algebraic closure of a strongly minimal set. In 1970 Hodges and Macintyre conjectured that there is a natural number n such that every ℵ0-categorical almost strongly minimal theory is Σn axiomatizable. Recently Ahlbrandt and Baldwin [A-B] proved that if T is ℵ0-categorical and almost strongly minimal, then T is Σn axiomatizable for some n. This result also follows from Ahlbrandt and Ziegler's results on quasifinite axiomatizability [A-Z]. In this paper we will refute Hodges and Macintyre's conjecture by showing that for each n there is an ℵ0-categorical almost strongly minimal theory which is not Σn axiomatizable.Before we begin we should note that in all these examples the complexity of the theory arises from the complexity of the definition of the strongly minimal set. It is still open whether the conjecture is true if we allow a predicate symbol for the strongly minimal set.We will prove the following result.Theorem. For every n there is an almost strongly minimal ℵ0-categorical theory T with models M and N such that N is Σn elementary but not Σn + 1 elementary.To show that these theories yield counterexamples to the conjecture we apply the following result of Chang [C].Theorem. If T is a Σn axiomatizable theory categorical in some infinite power, M and N are models of T and N is a Σn elementary extension of M, then N is an elementary extension of M.


1980 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Manevitz ◽  
Jonathan Stavi

Determining the truth value of self-referential sentences is an interesting and often tricky problem. The Gödel sentence, asserting its own unprovability in P (Peano arithmetic), is clearly true in N(the standard model of P), and Löb showed that a sentence asserting its own provability in P is also true in N (see Smorynski [Sm, 4.1.1]). The problem is more difficult, and still unsolved, for sentences of the kind constructed by Kreisel [K1], which assert their own falsity in some model N* of P whose complete diagram is arithmetically defined. Such a sentence χ has the property that N ⊨ iff N* ⊭ χ (note that ¬χ has the same property).We show in §1 that the truth value in N of such a sentence χ, after a certain normalization that breaks the symmetry between it and its negation, is determined by the parity of a natural number, called the rank of N, for the particular construction of N* used. The rank is the number of times the construction can be iterated starting from N and is finite for all the usual constructions. We also show that modifications of, e.g., Henkin's construction (in his completeness proof of predicate calculus) allow arbitrary finite values for the rank of N. Thus, on the one hand the truth value of χ in N, for a given “nice” construction of N*, is independent of the particular (normalized) choice of χ, and we shall see that χ is unique up to (provable) equivalence in P. On the other hand, the truth value in question is sensitive to minor changes in the definition of N* and its determination seems to be largely a combinatorial problem.


1966 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 3-5
Author(s):  
W. W. Morgan

1. The definition of “normal” stars in spectral classification changes with time; at the time of the publication of theYerkes Spectral Atlasthe term “normal” was applied to stars whose spectra could be fitted smoothly into a two-dimensional array. Thus, at that time, weak-lined spectra (RR Lyrae and HD 140283) would have been considered peculiar. At the present time we would tend to classify such spectra as “normal”—in a more complicated classification scheme which would have a parameter varying with metallic-line intensity within a specific spectral subdivision.


1975 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 21-26

An ideal definition of a reference coordinate system should meet the following general requirements:1. It should be as conceptually simple as possible, so its philosophy is well understood by the users.2. It should imply as few physical assumptions as possible. Wherever they are necessary, such assumptions should be of a very general character and, in particular, they should not be dependent upon astronomical and geophysical detailed theories.3. It should suggest a materialization that is dynamically stable and is accessible to observations with the required accuracy.


1979 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 125-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Allen

No paper of this nature should begin without a definition of symbiotic stars. It was Paul Merrill who, borrowing on his botanical background, coined the termsymbioticto describe apparently single stellar systems which combine the TiO absorption of M giants (temperature regime ≲ 3500 K) with He II emission (temperature regime ≳ 100,000 K). He and Milton Humason had in 1932 first drawn attention to three such stars: AX Per, CI Cyg and RW Hya. At the conclusion of the Mount Wilson Ha emission survey nearly a dozen had been identified, and Z And had become their type star. The numbers slowly grew, as much because the definition widened to include lower-excitation specimens as because new examples of the original type were found. In 1970 Wackerling listed 30; this was the last compendium of symbiotic stars published.


Author(s):  
K. T. Tokuyasu

During the past investigations of immunoferritin localization of intracellular antigens in ultrathin frozen sections, we found that the degree of negative staining required to delineate u1trastructural details was often too dense for the recognition of ferritin particles. The quality of positive staining of ultrathin frozen sections, on the other hand, has generally been far inferior to that attainable in conventional plastic embedded sections, particularly in the definition of membranes. As we discussed before, a main cause of this difficulty seemed to be the vulnerability of frozen sections to the damaging effects of air-water surface tension at the time of drying of the sections.Indeed, we found that the quality of positive staining is greatly improved when positively stained frozen sections are protected against the effects of surface tension by embedding them in thin layers of mechanically stable materials at the time of drying (unpublished).


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