English

The theory of hereditarily bounded sets

Logic 2022-04-21 v2 Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

We show that for any kωk\in\omega, the structure (Hk,)(H_k,\in) of sets that are hereditarily of size at most kk is decidable. We provide a transparent complete axiomatization of its theory, a quantifier elimination result, and tight bounds on its computational complexity. This stands in stark contrast to the structure Vω=kHkV_\omega=\bigcup_k H_k of hereditarily finite sets, which is well known to be bi-interpretable with the standard model of arithmetic (N,+,)(\mathbb N,+,\cdot).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2104.06932,
  title  = {The theory of hereditarily bounded sets},
  author = {Emil Jeřábek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.06932},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

20 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:10:03.903Z