We make explicit certain results around the Galois correspondence in the context of definable automorphism groups, and point out the relation to some recent papers dealing with the Galois theory of algebraic differential equations when the constants are not “closed” in suitable senses. We also improve the definitions and results on generalized strongly normal extensions from [Pillay, “Differential Galois theory I”, Illinois Journal of Mathematics, 42(4), 1998], using this to give a restatement of a conjecture on almost semiabelian δ-groups from [Bertrand and Pillay, “Galois theory, functional Lindemann–Weierstrass, and Manin maps”, Pacific Journal of Mathematics, 281(1), 2016].

We present several results that rely on arguments involving the combinatorics of “bushy trees”. These include the fact that there are arbitrarily slow-growing diagonally noncomputable (DNC) functions that compute no Kurtz random real, as well as an extension of a result of Kumabe in which we establish that there are DNC functions relative to arbitrary oracles that are of minimal Turing degree. Along the way, we survey some of the existing instances of bushy tree arguments in the literature.

Completeness and other forms of Zorn’s Lemma are sometimes invoked for semantic proofs of conservation in relatively elementary mathematical contexts in which the corresponding syntactical conservation would suffice. We now show how a fairly general syntactical conservation theorem that covers plenty of the semantic approaches follows from an utmost versatile criterion for conservation given by Scott in 1974.

To this end we work with multi-conclusion entailment relations as extending single-conclusion entailment relations. In a nutshell, the additional axioms with disjunctions in positive position can be eliminated by reducing them to the corresponding disjunction elimination rules, which in turn prove admissible in all known mathematical instances. In deduction terms this means to fold up branchings of proof trees by way of properties of the relevant mathematical structures.

Applications include the syntactical counterparts of the theorems or lemmas known under the names of Artin–Schreier, Krull–Lindenbaum, and Szpilrajn. Related work has been done before on individual instances, e.g., in locale theory, dynamical algebra, formal topology and proof analysis.