English

Reflection in second-order set theory with abundant urelements bi-interprets a supercompact cardinal

Logic 2024-11-20 v2

Abstract

After reviewing various natural bi-interpretations in urelement set theory, including second-order set theories with urelements, we explore the strength of second-order reflection in these contexts. Ultimately, we prove, second-order reflection with the abundant atom axiom is bi-interpretable and hence also equiconsistent with the existence of a supercompact cardinal. The proof relies on a reflection characterization of supercompactness, namely, a cardinal κ\kappa is supercompact if and only if every Π11\Pi^1_1 sentence true in a structure MM (of any size) containing κ\kappa in a language of size less than κ\kappa is also true in a substructure mMm\prec M of size less than κ\kappa with mκκm\cap\kappa\in\kappa.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.09766,
  title  = {Reflection in second-order set theory with abundant urelements bi-interprets a supercompact cardinal},
  author = {Joel David Hamkins and Bokai Yao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.09766},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

36 pages, 6 figures. Commentary can be made on the first author's blog at http://jdh.hamkins.org/second-order-reflection-with-abundant-urelements. V2 contains several refinements, improvements to exposition, and additional citations

R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:53:59.419Z