On reduction to a symmetric relation

Abstract

In a current paper, Church and Quine show how any dyadic relation of natural numbers can be defined in terms of a symmetric dyadic relation of natural numbers together with the truth functions and quantification over natural numbers. The purpose of the present note is to extend their result to the following: Where R1, R2, …, ad infinitum are any classes or relations (of any degree) of natural numbers, they can all be defined in terms of a single symmetric dyadic relation of natural numbers together with the truth functions and quantification over natural numbers.Let pi, for each i, be the tth prime > 1. Let the degree of Ri, for each i, be di. Let R be the dyadic relation which each number x bears to each number y such that either x is a factor of y or else x is 0 and y is for some such that . Since R is dyadic, we know from Church and Quine's result that R is definable in terms of a symmetric dyadic relation. Moreover, as seen in the incidental constructions in §1 of Church and Quine, ‘y = x + 1’ is expressible on the same basis.