Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
We see far away, Newton said, if we stand on giants' shoulders. We take him seriously here and moreover (as appropriate to recursion-theorists) we will jump from one giant to another, since this paper is mostly an exegesis of two fundamental works: Feferman's Some applications of the notions of forcing and generic sets [4] and Sacks' Forcing with perfect closed sets [19]. We hope the reader is not afraid of heights: our exercises are risky ones, since the two giants are in turn on the shoulders of others! Feferman [4] rests on the basic works of Cohen [2], who introduced forcing with finite conditions in the context of set theory; Sacks [19] relies on Spector [24], who realized—in recursion theory—the necessity of more powerful approximations than the finite ones.
To minimize the risk we will try to keep technicalities to a minimum, choosing to give priority to the methodology of forcing. We do not suppose any previous knowledge of forcing in the reader, but we do require some acquaintance with recursion theory. After all, our interest lies in the applications of the forcing method to the study of various recursion-theoretic notions of degrees. The farther we go, the deeper we plunge into recursion theory.
In Part I only very basic notions and results are used, like the definitions of the arithmetical hierarchy and of the jump operator and their relationships.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.