Cool Logic

Levin Hornischer and Stella Moon (ILLC)

Hamkins' proof that every function can be computable

May 26th at 17:30, in Science Park 107, F1.15

Recently Joel D. Hamkins published a proof showing, intuitively speaking, that every function can be computable. That is to say, every function on the natural numbers, even those that are not computable, can be computed in some model of Peano arithmetic. (In fact, there even is an algorithm that works universally for all functions to compute them in some model). The aim of the talk is to present Hamkins' proof including all its necessary background. We end by mentioning some philosophical implications that have been drawn from this and similar results.