450 research outputs found
Proving unprovability
This paper addresses the question: given some theory T that we accept, is there some natural, generally applicable way of extending T to a theory S that can prove a range of things about what it itself (i.e., S) can prove, including a range of things about what it cannot prove, such as claims to the effect that it cannot prove certain particular sentences (e.g., 0 = 1), or the claim that it is consistent? Typical characterizations of Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, and its significance, would lead us to believe that the answer is ‘no’. But the present paper explores a positive answer. The general approach is to follow the lead of recent (and not so recent) approaches to truth and the Liar paradox
Separating Bounded Arithmetics by Herbrand Consistency
The problem of separating the hierarchy of bounded arithmetic has
been studied in the paper. It is shown that the notion of Herbrand Consistency,
in its full generality, cannot separate the theory from ; though it can
separate from . This extends a
result of L. A. Ko{\l}odziejczyk (2006), by showing the unprovability of the
Herbrand Consistency of in the theory .Comment: Published by Oxford University Press. arXiv admin note: text overlap
with arXiv:1005.265
Resource Bounded Unprovability of Computational Lower Bounds
This paper introduces new notions of asymptotic proofs,
PT(polynomial-time)-extensions, PTM(polynomial-time Turing
machine)-omega-consistency, etc. on formal theories of arithmetic including PA
(Peano Arithmetic). This paper shows that P not= NP (more generally, any
super-polynomial-time lower bound in PSPACE) is unprovable in a
PTM-omega-consistent theory T, where T is a consistent PT-extension of PA. This
result gives a unified view to the existing two major negative results on
proving P not= NP, Natural Proofs and relativizable proofs, through the two
manners of characterization of PTM-omega-consistency. We also show that the
PTM-omega-consistency of T cannot be proven in any PTM-omega-consistent theory
S, where S is a consistent PT-extension of T.Comment: 78 page
Consistency of circuit lower bounds with bounded theories
Proving that there are problems in that require
boolean circuits of super-linear size is a major frontier in complexity theory.
While such lower bounds are known for larger complexity classes, existing
results only show that the corresponding problems are hard on infinitely many
input lengths. For instance, proving almost-everywhere circuit lower bounds is
open even for problems in . Giving the notorious difficulty of
proving lower bounds that hold for all large input lengths, we ask the
following question: Can we show that a large set of techniques cannot prove
that is easy infinitely often? Motivated by this and related
questions about the interaction between mathematical proofs and computations,
we investigate circuit complexity from the perspective of logic.
Among other results, we prove that for any parameter it is
consistent with theory that computational class , where is one of
the pairs: and , and , and
. In other words, these theories cannot establish
infinitely often circuit upper bounds for the corresponding problems. This is
of interest because the weaker theory already formalizes
sophisticated arguments, such as a proof of the PCP Theorem. These consistency
statements are unconditional and improve on earlier theorems of [KO17] and
[BM18] on the consistency of lower bounds with
Herbrand Consistency of Some Arithmetical Theories
G\"odel's second incompleteness theorem is proved for Herbrand consistency of
some arithmetical theories with bounded induction, by using a technique of
logarithmic shrinking the witnesses of bounded formulas, due to Z. Adamowicz
[Herbrand consistency and bounded arithmetic, \textit{Fundamenta Mathematicae}
171 (2002) 279--292]. In that paper, it was shown that one cannot always shrink
the witness of a bounded formula logarithmically, but in the presence of
Herbrand consistency, for theories with , any witness for any bounded formula can be shortened logarithmically. This
immediately implies the unprovability of Herbrand consistency of a theory
in itself.
In this paper, the above results are generalized for . Also after tailoring the definition of Herbrand
consistency for we prove the corresponding theorems for . Thus the Herbrand version of G\"odel's second incompleteness
theorem follows for the theories and
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