A remark concerning decidability of complete theories

Abstract

A formalized theory is called complete if for each sentence expressible in this theory either the sentence itself or its negation is provable.A theory is called deciddble if there exists an effective procedure (called decision-procedure) which enables one to decide of each sentence, in a finite number of steps, whether or not it is provable in the theory.It is known that there exist complete but undecidable theories. There exist, namely, the so called essentially undecidable theories, i.e. theories which are undecidable and remain so after an arbitrary consistent extension of the set of axioms. Using the well-known method of Lindenbaum we can therefore obtain from each such theory a complete and undecidable theory.The aim of this paper is to prove a theorem which shows that complete theories satisfying certain very general conditions are always decidable. In somewhat loose formulation these conditions are: There exist four effective methods M1, M2, M3, M4, such that(a) M1 enables us to decide in each case whether or not any given formula is a sentence of the theory;(b) M2 gives an enumeration of all axioms of the theory;(c) the rules of inference can be arranged in a sequence R1, R2, … such that if p1, … pk, r are arbitrary sentences of the theory, we can decide by M3 whether or not r results from p1, … pk, by the n-th rule;(d) M4 enables us to construct effectively the negation of each effectively given sentence.In order to express these conditions more precisely we shall make use of an arithmetization of the considered theory .