Slow Reflection

We describe a “slow” version of the hierarchy of uniform reflection principles over Peano Arithmetic (PA). These principles are unprovable in Peano Arithmetic (even when extended by usual reflection principles of lower complexity) and introduce a new provably total function. At the same time the consistency of PA plus slow reflection is provable in PA + Con ( PA ) . We deduce a conjecture of S.-D. Friedman, Rathjen and Weiermann: Transfinite iterations of slow consistency generate a hierarchy of precisely ε 0 stages between PA and PA + Con ( PA ) (where Con ( PA ) refers to the usual consistency statement).