We study computably enumerable equivalence relations (ceers), under the reducibility $R \le S$ if there exists a computable function f such that $x\,R\,y$ if and only if $f\left( x \right)\,\,S\,f\left( y \right)$ , for every $x,y$ . We show that the degrees of ceers under the equivalence relation generated by $\le$ form a bounded poset that is neither a lower semilattice, nor an upper semilattice, and its first-order theory is undecidable. We then study the universal ceers. We show that 1) the uniformly effectively inseparable ceers are universal, but there are effectively inseparable ceers that are not universal; 2) a ceer R is universal if and only if $R\prime \le R$ , where $R\prime$ denotes the halting jump operator introduced by Gao and Gerdes (answering an open question of Gao and Gerdes); and 3) both the index set of the universal ceers and the index set of the uniformly effectively inseparable ceers are ${\rm{\Sigma }}_3^0$ -complete (the former answering an open question of Gao and Gerdes).

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Given two (positive) equivalence relations ~1, ~2 on the set ω of natural numbers, we say that ~1 is m-reducible to ~2 if there exists a total recursive function h such that for every x, y ∈ ω, we have x ~1y iff hx ~2hy. We prove that the equivalence relation induced in ω by a positive precomplete numeration is complete with respect to this reducibility (and, moreover, a “uniformity property” holds). This result allows us to state a classification theorem for positive equivalence relations (Theorem 2). We show that there exist nonisomorphic positive equivalence relations which are complete with respect to the above reducibility; in particular, we discuss the provable equivalence of a strong enough theory: this relation is complete with respect to reducibility but it does not correspond to a precomplete numeration.From this fact we deduce that an equivalence relation on ω can be strongly represented by a formula (see Definition 8) iff it is positive. At last, we interpret the situation from a topological point of view. Among other things, we generalize a result of Visser by showing that the topological space corresponding to a partition in e.i. sets is irreducible and we prove that the set of equivalence classes of true sentences is dense in the Lindenbaum algebra of the theory.

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When dealing with axiomatic theories from a recursion-theoretic point of view, the notion of r.e. preordering naturally arises. We agree that an r.e. preorder is a pair = 〈P, ≤P〉 such that P is an r.e. subset of the set of natural numbers (denoted by ω), ≤P is a preordering on P and the set {〈;x, y〉: x ≤Py} is r.e.. Indeed, if is an axiomatic theory, the provable implication of yields a preordering on the class of (Gödel numbers of) formulas of .Of course, if ≤P is a preordering on P, then it yields an equivalence relation ~P on P, by simply letting x ~Py iff x ≤Py and y ≤Px. Hence, in the case of P = ω, any preordering yields an equivalence relation on ω and consequently a numeration in the sense of [4]. It is also clear that any equivalence relation on ω (hence any numeration) can be regarded as a preordering on ω. In view of this connection, we sometimes apply to the theory of preorders some of the concepts from the theory of numerations (see also Eršov [6]).Our main concern will be in applications of these concepts to logic, in particular as regards sufficiently strong axiomatic theories (essentially the ones in which recursive functions are representable). From this point of view it seems to be of some interest to study some remarkable prelattices and Boolean prealgebras which arise from such theories. It turns out that these structures enjoy some rather surprising lattice-theoretic and universal recursion-theoretic properties.After making our main definitions in §1, we examine universal recursion-theoretic properties of some r.e. prelattices in §2.