Date: February 21, 2014

Venue: Sendai Logic School, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Speaker: Stephen G. Simpson

Title: Reverse mathematics and Hilbert's program
       (a 1-hour tutorial for graduate students)
   
Abstract:

  I will make some remarks concerning reverse mathematics and its
  application to Hilbert's foundational program of finitistic
  reductionism.  My thesis is that, in order for a piece of
  mathematics to be finitistically reducible, its proof-theoretic
  strength must be no greater than that of PRA (= Primitive Recursive
  Arithmetic).  Reverse Mathematics has been very useful for
  determining which theorems are reducible to PRA in this sense.  I
  will mention some old and new theorems of this kind.