Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2020
Here, we present a category ${\mathbf {pEff}}$ which can be considered a predicative variant of Hyland's Effective Topos
${{\mathbf {Eff} }}$ for the following reasons. First, its construction is carried in Feferman’s predicative theory of non-iterative fixpoints
${{\widehat {ID_1}}}$. Second,
${\mathbf {pEff}}$ is a list-arithmetic locally cartesian closed pretopos with a full subcategory
${{\mathbf {pEff}_{set}}}$ of small objects having the same categorical structure which is preserved by the embedding in
${\mathbf {pEff}}$; furthermore subobjects in
${{\mathbf {pEff}_{set}}}$ are classified by a non-small object in
${\mathbf {pEff}}$. Third
${\mathbf {pEff}}$ happens to coincide with the exact completion of the lex category defined as a predicative rendering in
${{\widehat {ID_1}}}$ of the subcategory of
${{\mathbf {Eff} }}$ of recursive functions and it validates the Formal Church’s thesis. Hence pEff turns out to be itself a predicative rendering of a full subcategory of
${{\mathbf {Eff} }}$.