Related papers: Sets and Their Sizes
We review and compare five ways of assigning totally ordered sizes to subsets of the natural numbers: cardinality, infinite lottery logic with mirror cardinalities, natural density, generalised density, and $\alpha$-numerosity. Generalised…
Classification theory of elementary classes deals with first order (elementary) classes of structures (i.e. fixing a set T of first order sentences, we investigate the class of models of T with the elementary submodel notion). It tries to…
We study a model of machine teaching where the teacher mapping is constructed from a size function on both concepts and examples. The main question in machine teaching is the minimum number of examples needed for any concept, the so-called…
The compactness phenomenon is one of the featured aspects of structuralism in mathematics. In simple and broad words, a compactness property holds in a structure if a related property is satisfied by sufficiently many substructures of that…
While many inner model theoretic combinatorial principles are incompatible with large cardinal axioms, on some rare occasions, large cardinals actually imply that the structure of the universe of sets is analogous to the canonical inner…
Category theory provides a powerful tool to organize mathematics. A sample of this descriptive power is given by the categorical analysis of the practice of "classes as shorthands" in ZF set theory. In this case category theory provides a…
We show, assuming PD, that every complete finitely axiomatized second order theory with a countable model is categorical, but that there is, assuming again PD, a complete recursively axiomatized second order theory with a countable model…
Cantor's ordinal numbers, a powerful extension of the natural numbers, are a cornerstone of set theory. They can be used to reason about the termination of processes, prove the consistency of logical systems, and justify some of the core…
The compactness theorem for a logic states, roughly, that the satisfiability of a set of well-formed formulas can be determined from the satisfiability of its finite subsets, and vice versa. Usually, proofs of this theorem depend on the…
We present a coherent collection of finite mathematical theorems some of which can only be proved by going well beyond the usual axioms for mathematics. The proofs of these theorems illustrate in clear terms how one uses the well studied…
This the first of a series of articles dealing with abstract classification theory. The apparatus to assign systems of cardinal invariants to models of a first order theory (or determine its impossibility) is developed in [Sh:a]. It is…
The category of models of any theory $T$ in any first-order language $L$ has the surprising property that any small category that is elementarily equivalent with it, already embeds in it. The proof uses an abstract argument via ultrapowers,…
We give an example of a countable theory T such that for every cardinal lambda >= aleph_2 there is a fully indiscernible set A of power lambda such that the principal types are dense over A, yet there is no atomic model of T over A. In…
This article critically reappraises arguments in support of Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers. The following results are reported: i) Cantor's proofs of nondenumerability are refuted by analyzing the logical inconsistencies in…
We generalize the measurement using an expanded concept of cover, in order to provide a new approach to size of set other than cardinality. The generalized measurement has application backgrounds such as a generalized problem in dimension…
Large cardinals arising from the existence of arbitrarily long end elementary extension chains over models of set theory are studied here. In particular, we show that the large cardinals obtained that way (`Unfoldable cardinals') behave as…
We consider the problem of deciding the satisfiability of quantifier-free formulas in the theory of finite sets with cardinality constraints. Sets are a common high-level data structure used in programming; thus, such a theory is useful for…
The embracing of actual infinity in mathematics leads naturally to the question of comparing the sizes of infinite collections. The basic dilemma is that the Cantor Principle (CP), according to which two sets have the same size if there is…
We try to understand complete types over a somewhat saturated model of a complete first order theory which is dependent (previously called NIP), by "decomposition theorems for such types". Our thesis is that the picture of dependent theory…
This paper examines the possibilities of extending Cantor's two arguments on the uncountable nature of the set of real numbers to one of its proper denumerable subsets: the set of rational numbers. The paper proves that, unless certain…