Wednesday, 16 August 2006

set theory - Does Cantor-Bernstein hold for classes?

This is an interesting question. I think there are some issues which the others did not mention yet. But I'm not an expert at all, I might be wrong. Please leave me a comment!



In the following, I work in ZF. Thus, a class is just a formula. There are some constructions and relations of sets which directly carry over to classes. For example A=B means that the formulas of A,B are equivalent.



Let's sketch the proof for classes. Let A,B classes, f:AtoB, g:BtoA injective maps. Define the classes AnsubseteqA,BnsubseteqB recursively by A0=A,B0=B,An+1=g[Bn],Bn+1=f[An]. Then h:AtoB, defined by f on capnAncup(cupnA2nsetminusA2n+1) and by g1 in the rest, is well-defined and a bijection.



Unions, cuts, images of functions etc. are not the problem. But what about the recursion? What we really need here is a recursion scheme for classes. Actually there is a theorem which might be called the transfinite recursion scheme for classes:




Let R be a well-founded and set-like relation of the class A and F:AtimesVtoV a function. Then there is a function G:AtoV, such that for all xinA



G(x)=F(x,G|yinA:yRx).




However, note that the images of G are sets, not proper classes. We can't use that theorem here.



I think we need a meta-theorem stating that the above also holds when V is replaced by the set of formulas and R=mathbbN. Also, the meta-world should be able to talk about functions. But this is not plausible at all, since the resulting formula won't have to be finite, right?



For example, try to define a formula G(n) recursively by G(0)=phi0 (doesn't matter what phin is) and G(n)=G(n1)wedgephin. Why should there be a formula psi(n,x) such that psi(n,x)Leftrightarrowwedgei=0nphii? I think we need a rather mighty logical calculus for that.



Also note that Francois' great answer here (proving Schröder-Bernstein without the existence of the set omega) also causes problems when you want to write down the formula for the part "...existss:0,...,ntoA ...". Perhaps there is really no bijection between the two classes mentioned above (class of all singletons, and class of all 2-element sets)?

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