The Ladd-Franklin “antilogism” provides a very convenient procedure for testing syllogistic arguments, especially when they are expressed algebraically. It is well known, however, that the antilogism test indicates the invalidity of certain moods which the traditional logic regards as valid. These are the moods in which a particular conclusion is inferred from two universal premises. It is the aim of this paper to show that the antilogism can be generalized in such a way as to cover these moods, and also to be applicable to certain forms of “immediate inference” and “sorites,” as these designations have been traditionally employed.

We shall find that when generalized in this fashion there are two principal kinds of antilogisms: (1) those which include an inequation of the form ab≠0, and (2) those which include an inequation of the form a≠0.

Definition. An antilogism is a group of propositions so constructed that the contradictory of any one of them is implied by the logical product of the others.

We begin with some notes concerning the genesis of this paper. A preliminary version of it was written by the third author, who was moved by the desire to correct a mistake in Poizat [1987, p. 97], and to refresh some other minor results of the same book, concerning equations which are satisfied generically in a stable group. The book in question will be considered here as our basic reference on stable groups, and these other results will be discussed elsewhere.

This preliminary version contained §§1, 2 and 3 of the present paper, restricted to the context of groups of finite Morley rank. It was observed that a counterexample of finite rank to the above theorem would be an extreme refutation of a conjecture by Zil'ber and Cherlin (cyrillic alphabet order), that may be not so solid as was believed some time ago, which states that a simple group of finite rank should be an algebraic group. Additional motivation for the problem was seen in Reineke's theorem (Reineke [1975]), stating that a connected group of rank one is abelian—the cornerstone for the study of superstable groups—whose proof rests on the fact that a group with two conjugacy classes either has only two elements, or has infinite chains of centralizers (a property that violates stability).

We show that for every enumeration degree a < 0′e there exists an e-degree c such that a ≤ c < 0′e, and all degrees b, with c ≤ b < 0′e, are properly Σ20.

Although Church and Turing presented their path-breaking undecidability results immediately after their explication of effective decidability in 1936, it has been generally felt that these results do not have any direct bearing on ordinary mathematics but only contribute to logic, metamathematics and the theory of computability. Therefore it was such a celebrated achievement when Yuri Matiyasevich in 1970 demonstrated that the problem of the solvability of Diophantine equations is undecidable. His work was building essentially on the earlier work by Julia Robinson, Martin Davis and Hilary Putnam (1961), who had showed that the problem of solvability of exponential Diophantine equations is undecidable. One should note, however, that although it was only Matiyasevich's result which finally solved Hilbert's tenth problem, already the earlier result had provided a perfectly natural problem of ordinary number theory which is undecidable.

Nevertheless, both the set of Diophantine equations with solutions and the set of exponential Diophantine equations with solutions are still semi-decidable, that is, recursively enumerable (i.e., Σ10); if an equation in fact has a solution, this can be eventually verified. More generally, they are — as are their complements, the sets of equations with no solutions, which are Π10, — also Trial and Error decidable (Putnam [1965]), or decidable in the limit (Shoenfield [1959]), for every Δ20 set is (and conversely). This last-mentioned natural “liberalized” notion of decidability has begun more recently to play an essential role e.g., in so-called Formal Learning Theory (see e.g., Osherson, Stob, and Weinstein [1986], Kelly [1996]).

We introduce a notion of syntactical truth predicate (s.t.p.) for the second order arithmetic PA2. An s.t.p. is a set T of closed formulas such that:

(i) T(t = u) if and only if the closed first order terms t and u are convertible, i.e., have the same value in the standard interpretation

(ii) T(A → B) if and only if (T(A) ⇒ T(B))

(iii) T(∀xA) if and only if (T(A[x ← t]) for any closed first order term t)

(iv) T(∀X A) if and only if (T(A[X ← ∆]) for any closed set definition ∆ = {x ∣ D(x)}).

S.t.p.'s can be seen as a counterpart to Tarski's notion of (model-theoretical) validity and have main model properties. In particular, their existence is equivalent to the existence of an ω-model of PA2, this fact being provable in PA2 with arithmetical comprehension only.

This paper consists of two parts. In §1 we mention the first strongly compact cardinal. Magidor proved in [6] that it can be the first measurable and it can be also the first supercompact. In [2], Apter proved that Con(ZFC + there is a supercompact limit of supercompact cardinals) implies Con(ZFC + the first strongly compact cardinal κ is ϕ(κ)-supercompact + no α < κ is ϕ(α)-supercompact) for a formula ϕ which satisfies certain conditions.

We shall get almost the same conclusion as Apter's theorem assuming only one supercompact cardinal. Our notion of forcing is the same as in [2] and a trick makes it possible.

In §2 we study a kind of fine ultrafilter on Pκλ investigated by Menas in [7], where κ is a measurable limit of strongly compact cardinals. He showed that such an ultrafilter is not normal in some case (Theorems 2.21 and 2.22 in [7]). We shall show that it is not normal in any case (even if κ is supercompact). We also prove that it is weakly normal in some case.

We work in ZFC and much of our notation is standard. But we mention the following: the letters α,β,γ… denote ordinals, whereas κ,λ,μ,… are reserved for cardinals. R(α) is the collection of sets rank <α. φM denotes the realization of a formula φ to a class M. Except when it is necessary, we drop “M”. For example, M ⊩ “κ is φ(κ)-supercompact” means “κ is φM(κ)-supercompact in M”. If x is a set, |x| is its cardinality, Px is its power set, and . If also x ⊆ OR, denotes its order type in the natural ordering. The identity function with the domain appropriate to the context is denoted by id. For the notation concerning ultrapowers and elementary embeddings, see [11]. When we talk about forcing, “⊩” will mean “weakly forces” and “p < q” means “p is stronger than q”.

A classical theorem in computability is that every promptly simple set can be cupped in the Turing degrees to some complete set by a low c.e. set. A related question due to A. Nies is whether every promptly simple set can be cupped by a superlow c.e. set, i.e. one whose Turing jump is truth-table reducible to the halting problem ∅′. A negative answer to this question is provided by giving an explicit construction of a promptly simple set that is not superlow cuppable. This problem relates to effective randomness and various lowness notions.

We give upper and lower bounds for the consistency strength of the failure of a combinatorial principle introduced by Jensen. Square on singular cardinals.