Thin Objects Are Not Transparent

In this short paper, we analyse whether assuming that mathematical objects are “thin” in Linnebo's sense simplifies the epistemology of mathematics. Towards this end, we introduce the notion of transparency and show that not all thin objects are transparent. We end by arguing that, far from being a weakness of thin objects, the lack of transparency of some thin objects is a fruitful characteristic mark of abstract mathematics

Learning algebraic structures with the help of Borel equivalence relations

We study algorithmic learning of algebraic structures. In our framework, a learner receives larger and larger pieces of an arbitrary copy of a computable structure and, at each stage, is required to output a conjecture about the isomorphism type of such a structure. The learning is successful if the conjectures eventually stabilize to a correct guess. We prove that a family of structures is learnable if and only if its learning domain is continuously reducible to the relation E0 of eventual agreement on reals. This motivates a novel research program, that is, using descriptive set theoretic tools to calibrate the (learning) complexity of nonlearnable families. Here, we focus on the learning power of well-known benchmark Borel equivalence relations (i.e., E1, E2, E3, Z0, and Eset)

Classifying word problems of finitely generated algebras via computable reducibility

We contribute to a recent research program which aims at revisiting the study of the complexity of word problems, a major area of research in combinatorial algebra, through the lens of the theory of computably enumerable equivalence relations (ceers), which has considerably grown in recent times. To pursue our analysis, we rely on the most popular way of assessing the complexity of ceers, that is via computable reducibility on equivalence relations, and its corresponding degree structure (the c-degrees). On the negative side, building on previous work of Kasymov and Khoussainov, we individuate a collection of c-degrees of ceers which cannot be realized by the word problem of any finitely generated algebra of finite type. On the positive side, we show that word problems of finitely generated semigroups realize a collection of c-degrees which embeds rich structures and is large in several reasonable ways