Indescribable cardinals and elementary embeddings

1991 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Hauser

Indescribability is closely related to the reflection principles of Zermelo-Fränkel set theory. In this axiomatic setting the universe of all sets stratifies into a natural cumulative hierarchy (Vα: α ϵ On) such that any formula of the language for set theory that holds in the universe already holds in the restricted universe of all sets obtained by some stage.The axioms of ZF prove the existence of many ordinals α such that this reflection scheme holds in the world Vα. Hanf and Scott noticed that one arrives at a large cardinal notion if the reflecting formulas are allowed to contain second order free variables to which one assigns subsets of Vα. For a given collection Ω of formulas in the ϵ language of set theory with higher type variables and a unary predicate symbol they define an ordinal α to be Ω indescribable if for all sentences Φ in Ω and A ⊆ VαSince a sufficient coding apparatus is available, this definition is (for the classes of formulas that we are going to consider) equivalent to the one that one obtains by allowing finite sequences of relations over Vα, some of which are possibly k-ary. We will be interested mainly in certain standardized classes of formulas: Let (, respectively) denote the class of all formulas in the language introduced above whose prenex normal form has n alternating blocks of quantifiers of type m (i.e. (m + 1)th order) starting with ∃ (∀, respectively) and no quantifiers of type greater than m. In Hanf and Scott [1961] it is shown that in ZFC, indescribability is equivalent to inaccessibility and indescribability coincides with weak compactness.

2001 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 1058-1072
Author(s):  
Greg Hjorth

The purpose of this paper is to present a kind of boundedness lemma for direct limits of coarse structural mice, and to indicate some applications to descriptive set theory. For instance, this allows us to show that under large cardinal or determinacy assumptions there is no prewellorder ≤ of length such that for some formula ψ and parameter zif and only ifIt is a peculiar experience to write up a result in this area. Following the work of Martin, Steel, Woodin, and other inner model theory experts, there is an enormous overhang of theorems and ideas, and it only takes one wandering pebble to restart the avalanche. For this reason I have chosen to center the exposition around the one pebble at 1.7 which I believe to be new. The applications discussed in section 2 involve routine modifications of known methods.A detailed introduction to many of the techniques related to using the Martin-Steel inner model theory and Woodin's free extender algebra is given in the course of [1]. Certainly a familiarity with the Martin-Steel papers, [5] and [6], is a prerequisite, as is some knowledge of the free extender algebra. Probably anyone interested in this paper will already know the necessary descriptive set theory, most of which can be found in [4]. Discussion of earlier results in this direction can be found in [3] or [2].


1981 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Mitchell Spector

The consistency of the Axiom of Determinateness (AD) poses a somewhat problematic question for set theorists. On the one hand, many mathematicians have studied AD, and none has yet derived a contradiction. Moreover, the consequences of AD which have been proven form an extensive and beautiful theory. (See [5] and [6], for example.) On the other hand, many extremely weird propositions follow from AD; these results indicate that AD is not an axiom which we can justify as intuitively true, a priori or by reason of its consequences, and we thus cannot add it to our set theory (as an accepted axiom, evidently true in the cumulative hierarchy of sets). Moreover, these results place doubt on the very consistency of AD. The failure of set theorists to show AD inconsistent over as short a time period as fifteen years can only be regarded as inconclusive, although encouraging, evidence.On the contrary, there is a great deal of rather convincing evidence that the existence of various large cardinals is not only consistent but actually true in the universe of all sets. Thus it becomes of interest to see which consequences of AD can be proven consistent relative to the consistency of ZFC + the existence of some large cardinal. Earlier theorems with this motivation are those of Bull and Kleinberg [2] and Spector ([14]; see also [12], [13]).


1971 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Kunen

One of the standard ways of postulating large cardinal axioms is to consider elementary embeddings,j, from the universe,V, into some transitive submodel,M. See Reinhardt–Solovay [7] for more details. Ifjis not the identity, andκis the first ordinal moved byj, thenκis a measurable cardinal. Conversely, Scott [8] showed that wheneverκis measurable, there is suchjandM. If we had assumed, in addition, that, thenκwould be theκth measurable cardinal; in general, the wider we assumeMto be, the largerκmust be.


1954 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 180-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. V. Quine

Consider any interpreted theory Θ, formulated in the notation of quantification theory (or lower predicate calculus) with interpreted predicate letters. It will be proved that Θ is translatable into a theory, likewise formulated in the notation of quantification theory, in which there is only one predicate letter, and it a dyadic one.Let us assume a fragment of set theory, adequate to assure the existence, for all x and y without regard to logical type, of the set {x, y) whose members are x and y, and to assure the distinctness of x from {x, y} and {{x}}. ({x} is explained as {x, x}.) Let us construe the ordered pair x; y in Kuratowski's fashion, viz. as {{x}, {x, y}}, and then construe x;y;z as x;(y;z), and x;y;z;w as x;(y;z;w), and so on. Let us refer to w, w;w, w;w;w, etc. as 1w, 2w, 3w, etc.Suppose the predicates of Θ are ‘F1’, ‘F2’, …, finite or infinite in number, and respectively d1-adic, d2-adic, …. Now let Θ′ be a theory whose notation consists of that of quantification theory with just the single dyadic predicate ‘F’, interpreted thus:The universe of Θ′ is to comprise all objects of the universe of Θ and, in addition, {x, y) for every x and y in the universe of Θ′. (Of course the universe of Θ may happen already to comprise all this.)Now I shall show how the familiar notations ‘x = y’, ‘x = {y, z}’, etc., and ultimately the desired ‘’, ‘’, etc. themselves can all be defined within Θ′.


1953 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Shepherdson

In this third and last paper on inner models we consider some of the inherent limitations of the method of using inner models of the type defined in 1.2 for the proof of consistency results for the particular system of set theory under consideration. Roughly speaking this limitation may be described by saying that practically no further consistency results can be obtained by the construction of models satisfying the conditions of theorem 1.5, i.e., conditions 1.31, 1.32, 1.33, 1.51, viz.:This applies in particular to the ‘complete models’ defined in 1.4. Before going on to a precise statement of these limitations we shall consider now the theorem on which they depend. This is concerned with a particular type of complete model examples of which we call “proper complete models”; they are those complete models which are essentially interior to the universe, those whose classes are sets of the universe constituting a class thereof, i.e., those for which the following proposition is true:The main theorem of this paper is that the statement that there are no models of this kind can be expressed formally in the same way as the axioms A, B, C and furthermore it can be proved that if the axiom system A, B, C is consistent then so is the system consisting of axioms A, B, C, plus this new hypothesis that there exist no proper complete models. When combined with the axiom ‘V = L’ introduced by Gödel in (1) this new hypothesis yields a system in which any normal complete model which exists has for its universal class V, the universal class of the original system.


2001 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 1321-1341 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. V. Andreev ◽  
E. I. Gordon

AbstractWe present an axiomatic framework for nonstandard analysis—the Nonstandard Class Theory (NCT) which extends von Neumann–Gödel–Bernays Set Theory (NBG) by adding a unary predicate symbol St to the language of NBG (St(X) means that the class X is standard) and axioms—related to it—analogs of Nelson's idealization, standardization and transfer principles. Those principles are formulated as axioms, rather than axiom schemes, so that NCT is finitely axiomatizable. NCT can be considered as a theory of definable classes of Bounded Set Theory by V. Kanovei and M. Reeken. In many aspects NCT resembles the Alternative Set Theory by P. Vopenka. For example there exist semisets (proper subclasses of sets) in NCT and it can be proved that a set has a standard finite cardinality iff it does not contain any proper subsemiset. Semisets can be considered as external classes in NCT. Thus the saturation principle can be formalized in NCT.


1973 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-412
Author(s):  
John Lake

Ackermann's set theory A* is usually formulated in the first order predicate calculus with identity, ∈ for membership and V, an individual constant, for the class of all sets. We use small Greek letters to represent formulae which do not contain V and large Greek letters to represent any formulae. The axioms of A* are the universal closures ofwhere all free variables are shown in A4 and z does not occur in the Θ of A2.A+ is a generalisation of A* which Reinhardt introduced in [3] as an attempt to provide an elaboration of Ackermann's idea of “sharply delimited” collections. The language of A+ is that of A*'s augmented by a new constant V′, and its axioms are A1–A3, A5, V ⊆ V′ and the universal closure ofwhere all free variables are shown.Using a schema of indescribability, Reinhardt states in [3] that if ZF + ‘there exists a measurable cardinal’ is consistent then so is A+, and using [4] this result can be improved to a weaker large cardinal axiom. It seemed plausible that A+ was stronger than ZF, but our main result, which is contained in Theorem 5, shows that if ZF is consistent then so is A+, giving an improvement on the above results.


2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 1081-1099 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Foreman

Many classical statements of set theory are settled by the existence of generic elementary embeddings that are analogous the elementary embeddings posited by large cardinals. [2] The embeddings analogous to measurable cardinals are determined by uniform, κ-complete precipitous ideals on cardinals κ. Stronger embeddings, analogous to those originating from supercompact or huge cardinals are encoded by normal fine ideals on sets such as [κ]<λ or [κ]λ.The embeddings generated from these ideals are limited in ways analogous to conventional large cardinals. Explicitly, if j: V → M is a generic elementary embedding with critical point κ and λ supnЄωjn(κ) and the forcing yielding j is λ-saturated then j“λ+ ∉ M. (See [2].)Ideals that yield embeddings that are analogous to strongly compact cardinals have more puzzling behavior and the analogy is not as straightforward. Some natural ideal properties of this kind have been shown to be inconsistent:Theorem 1 (Kunen). There is no ω2-saturated, countably complete uniform ideal on any cardinal in the interval [ℵω, ℵω).Generic embeddings that arise from countably complete, ω2-saturated ideals have the property that sup . So the Kunen result is striking in that it apparently allows strong ideals to exist above the conventional large cardinal limitations. The main result of this paper is that it is consistent (relative to a huge cardinal) that such ideals exist.


2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 349-371
Author(s):  
JAMES CUMMINGS ◽  
SY-DAVID FRIEDMAN ◽  
MENACHEM MAGIDOR ◽  
ASSAF RINOT ◽  
DIMA SINAPOVA

AbstractThree central combinatorial properties in set theory are the tree property, the approachability property and stationary reflection. We prove the mutual independence of these properties by showing that any of their eight Boolean combinations can be forced to hold at${\kappa ^{ + + }}$, assuming that$\kappa = {\kappa ^{ < \kappa }}$and there is a weakly compact cardinal aboveκ.If in additionκis supercompact then we can forceκto be${\aleph _\omega }$in the extension. The proofs combine the techniques of adding and then destroying a nonreflecting stationary set or a${\kappa ^{ + + }}$-Souslin tree, variants of Mitchell’s forcing to obtain the tree property, together with the Prikry-collapse poset for turning a large cardinal into${\aleph _\omega }$.


1987 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 897-907
Author(s):  
Joji Takahashi

As is well known, the following are equivalent for any uniform ultrafilter U on an uncountable cardinal:(i) U is selective;(ii) U → ;(iii) U → .In §1 of this paper, we consider this result in terms of M-ultrafilters (Definition 1.1), where M is a transitive model of ZFC (Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice). We define the partition properties and for M-ultrafilters (Definition 1.3), and characterize those M-ultrafilters that possess these properties (Theorem 1.5) so that the result mentioned at the beginning is subsumed as the special case that M is V, the universe of all sets. It turns out that the two properties have to be handled separately, and that, besides selectivity, we need to formulate additional conditions (Definition 1.4). The extra conditions become superfluous when M = V because they are then trivially satisfied. One of them is nothing new; it is none other than Kunen's iterability-of-ultrapowers condition.In §2, we obtain characterizations of the partition properties I+ → and I+ → (Definition 2.3) of uniform ideals I on an infinite cardinal κ (Theorem 2.6). This is done by applying the main results of §1 to the canonical -ultrafilter in the Boolean-valued model constructed from the completion of the quotient algebra P(κ)/I. They are related to certain known characterizations of weakly compact and of Ramsey cardinals.Our basic set theory is ZFC. In §1, it has to be supplemented by a new unary predicate symbol M and new nonlogical axioms that make M look like a transitive model of ZFC.


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