Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
We give two new finite combinatorial statements which are independent of Peano arithmetic, using the methods of Kirby and Paris [6] and Paris [12]. Both are in fact equivalent over Peano arithmetic (denoted by P) to its 1-consistency. The first involves trees and the second linear orderings. Both were “motivated” by anti-basis theorems of Clote (cf. [1], [2]). The one involving trees, however, is not unrelated to the Kirby-Paris characterization of strong cuts in terms of the tree property [6], but, in fact, comes directly from König's lemma, of which it is a miniaturization. (See the remark preceding Theorem 3 below.) The resulting combinatorial statement is easily seen to imply the independent statement discovered by Mills [11], but it is not clear how to show their equivalence over Peano arithmetic without going through 1-consistency. The one involving linear orderings miniaturizes the property of infinite sets X that any linear ordering of X is isomorphic to ω or ω* on some infinite subset of X. Both statements are analogous to Example 2 of [12] and involve the notion of dense [12] or relatively large [14] finite set.
We adopt the notations and definitions of [6] and [12]. We shall in particular have need of the notions of semiregular, regular and strong initial segments and of indicators.
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