Forcing in recursion theory is a modification of Paul Cohen's original set-theoretic technique of forcing to deal with the effective concerns in recursion theory. Conceptually the two techniques are quite similar: in both one attempts to buildgeneric objects by meeting dense sets. Both techniques are described as a relation between 'conditions' and sentences. However, where set-theoretic forcing is usually interested in creating objects that meet every dense set of conditions in the ground model, recursion-theoretic forcing only aims to meet dense sets that are arithmetically or hyperarithmetically definable. Therefore, some of the more difficult machinery used in set-theoretic forcing can be eliminated or substantially simplified when defining forcing in recursion theory. But while the machinery may be somewhat different, recursion-theoretic and set-theoretic forcing are properly regarded as an application of the same technique to different classes of formulas.
Terminology
In this article we use the following terminology. ;real: an element of. In other words, a function that maps each integer to either 0 or 1. ;string: an element of. In other words, a finite approximation to a real. ;notion of forcing: A notion of forcing is a set and a partial order on, with a greatest element. ;condition: An element in a notion of forcing. We say a condition is stronger than a condition just when. ;compatible conditions: Given conditions say that and are compatible if there is a condition with and. means and are incompatible. ;Filter : A subset of a notion of forcing is a filter if, and. In other words, a filter is a compatible set of conditions closed under weakening of conditions. ;Ultrafilter: A maximal filter, i.e., is an ultrafilter if is a filter and there is no filter properly containing. ;Cohen forcing: The notion of forcing where conditions are elements of and ) Note that for Cohen forcing is the reverse of the containment relation. This leads to an unfortunate notational confusion where some recursion theorists reverse the direction of the forcing partial order.
Generic objects
The intuition behind forcing is that our conditions are finite approximations to some object we wish to build and that is stronger than when agrees with everything says about the object we are building and adds some information of its own. For instance in Cohen forcing the conditions can be viewed as finite approximations to a real and if then tells us the value of the real at more places. In a moment we will define a relation that holds between conditions and sentences, but first we need to explain the language that is a sentence for. However, forcing is a technique, not a definition, and the language for will depend on the application one has in mind and the choice of. The idea is that our language should express facts about the object we wish to build with our forcing construction.
