English

The elementary theory of the 2-category of small categories

Category Theory 2025-03-26 v2 Logic

Abstract

We give an elementary description of 22-categories Cat(E)\mathbf{Cat}\left(\mathcal{E}\right) of internal categories, functors and natural transformations, where E\mathcal{E} is a category modelling Lawvere's elementary theory of the category of sets (ETCS). This extends Bourke's characterisation of 22-categories Cat(E)\mathbf{Cat}\left(\mathcal{E}\right) where E\mathcal{E} has pullbacks to take account for the extra properties in ETCS, and Lawvere's characterisation of the (one dimensional) category of small categories to take account of the two-dimensional structure. Important two-dimensional concepts which we introduce include 22-well-pointedness, full-subobject classifiers, and the categorified axiom of choice. Along the way, we show how generating families (resp. orthogonal factorisation systems) on E\mathcal{E} give rise to generating families (resp. orthogonal factorisation systems) on Cat(E)1\mathbf{Cat}\left(\mathcal{E}\right)_{1}, results which we believe are of independent interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2403.03647,
  title  = {The elementary theory of the 2-category of small categories},
  author = {Calum Hughes and Adrian Miranda},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.03647},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

v2. 37 pages. Updated definition of 2D natural numbers object in order to give it a genuine 2D universal property. Other minor changes following referee report including some reorganisation of material for better flow. To appear in the Theory and Applications of Categories special volume for Bill Lawvere