Professor Ted Slaman, UCB Math Department

``Structure in Metamathematics''

January 31, 2000

We will begin with an overview of the hierarchy of definability: from elementary number theory, through second order arithmetic (analysis), and on to unrestricted set theory. We will give some interesting examples which exactly occupy distinguished positions within the hierarchy, such as arithmetically definable sets which are not recursive and analytically definable sets which are not Borel. We will end with a discussion of whether this presentation of the hierarchy of definability is inevitable, with the conclusion that it is so.