[This lecture was covered by Marion Scheepers. Many thanks! The notes below also cover lecture 6.]
We want to prove the following result and a few related facts.
Theorem. (Specker). and
imply
.
It follows immediately from the theorem that implies
, since the result gives that any (infinite)
embeds into
.
Proof. The argument depends on 2 lemmas.
Lemma 1. implies that
.
Proof. a) , where the strict inequality is Specker’s lemma, shown on lecture 3, section 5. By
, we have
. (In particular,
is Dedekind-infinite.)
b) , by a). By
, we have
or
.
c) If , we can inject
into the set
of finite sequences of elements of
. For example, if
is the disjoint union of
and
, both of size
, there are bijections
and
, and we can use them to define an injection
as follows: Fix
. Define
by
, and
by
.
d) But there is no such injection, by the Halbeisen-Shelah theorem, shown on lecture 3, section 6. The theorem has the hypothesis that is Dedekind-infinite, that we showed in a).
e) So .
f) Finally, by e). By
it follows that
, or
.
g) But immediately contradicts the Halbeisen-Shelah theorem.
h) So .
Lemma 2. implies that either
is well-orderable (and equal to
), or else
does not inject into
.
Proof. Assume . Suppose
injects into
. Note that
since
does not inject into
. Thus,
since
implies
, as shown in Lemma 1. By
again,
.
By ,
so, if
has size
, then
is equipotent with
, as shown on lecture 4, section 9 (remark after the proof of the first lemma).
As shown on lecture 4, first lemma in section 9, if injects into
for some ordinal
, then
is well-orderable. It follows that in our situation
is well-orderable, so
is an ordinal. But then
is an ordinal and in fact, it equals
Since it also equals
, we are done.
Using these lemmas, we prove Specker’s result as follows:
- Assuming
but
not well-orderable, from Lemma 2 it follows that
.
- Hence, if
,
, and
is not well-orderable, then neither is
, so
and
.
- Hence, if
has size
, then
. But
and
have the same size by Lemma 1, so
.
- But this contradicts that
injects into
, as shown on lecture 3, proof of the Lemma in section 7. This completes the proof of Specker’s theorem.
Open question. (). Does
imply that
is well-orderable?
Remark. does not imply that
is well-orderable. For example, under determinacy, every set of reals has the perfect set property, so
holds. But
is not well-orderable.
Homework problem 4. Suppose that and
Then
.
Some hypothesis is necessary for the result of Homework problem 4 to hold. For example, it is consistent that there is an infinite Dedekind finite set with
also Dedekind-finite. (On the other hand,
is necessarily Dedekind-infinite.) However, if
is Dedekind-finite and
for nonzero cardinals
, then obviously
.
I am not sure who first proved the following. Maybe Kanamori-Pincus?
Theorem. Assume ,
and
Then
In particular, there is at most one initial ordinal
such that
but
is not well-orderable.
Proof. If then
since
by
.
Again by either
or
If then Homework problem 4 implies that
so
and
fails.
Hence, so
.
The `in particular’ clause follows immediately.
Corollary. for initial ordinals implies
.
Proof. As shown below, is equivalent to
being well-orderable for all ordinals
This follows immediately from
for initial ordinals, by the last theorem.
It remains to show:
Theorem. The axiom of choice is equivalent to the statement that is well-orderable for all ordinals
.
Proof. Assume in that the power set of any ordinal is well-orderable. We want to conclude that choice holds, i.e., that every set is well-orderable. A natural strategy is to proceed inductively, showing that each
is well-orderable: Clearly, if the result is true, each
would be well-orderable. But also, given any set
, it belongs to some
and, since the latter is transitive, in fact
and therefore
is well-orderable as well. The strategy is suggested by the fact that for all
,
, so a well-ordering of
gives us a well-ordering of
thanks to our initial assumption.
We argue by induction: Clearly is well-ordered by the well-ordering
. Given a well-ordering
of
, there is a unique ordinal
and a unique order isomorphism
. By assumption,
is well-orderable, and any well-ordering of it induces (via
) a well-ordering of
.
We are left with the task of showing that is well-orderable for
limit. The natural approach is to patch together the well-orderings of the previous
into a well-ordering of
. This approach meets two obstacles.
The first, and not too serious, one, is that the well-orderings of different are not necessarily compatible, so we need to be careful on how we “patch them together. ” The natural solution to this obstacle is to simply order the sets as they appear inside
. More precisely, define
for
, iff
- Either
, or else
, say, and if
is the well-ordering of
, then
.
It is easy to see that this is indeed a well-ordering of : Given a non-empty
, let
be least so that
has an element of rank
. Then the
-first among these elements would be the
-least element of
.
The second obstacle is more serious. Namely, the assumption is simply that there is a well-ordering of each , not that there is any canonical way of choosing one. In order for the argument above to work, we need not just that each
for
is well-orderable, but in fact we need to have selected a sequence
of well-orderings of the
, with respect to which we proceeded to define the well-ordering
of
.
The way we began the proof suggests a solution: When we argued that it suffices to well-order each , we considered an arbitrary set
and noticed that if
, then a well-ordering of
gives us a well-ordering of
. Similarly, given
limit, if we can find
large enough so each
for
is below
, then we can use a well-ordering of
to induce the required well-ordering
.
We now proceed to implement this idea: Let . (Notice that this makes sense since, inductively, each
with
is well-orderable and therefore isomorphic to a unique cardinal.) Let
be a well-ordering of
. We use
to define a sequence
so that
well-orders
for all
. We use recursion on
to define this sequence. Again,
. At limit stages
we copy the strategy with which we tried to well-order
to define
: For
, set
iff
- Either
, or else
, say, and
.
Finally, given , we describe how to define
: Let
be the unique ordinal such that there is an order isomorphism
![]()
.
Since , then
, so
and the well-ordering
of
also well-orders
. Via
, this induces the well-ordering
of
we were looking for.
Remark. By Specker’s result, if but
is not well-orderable, then
must fail. Kanamori and Pincus proved that in this case in fact there is an increasing sequence of cardinals of length
between
and
Here is a rough idea of their argument: Recall from lecture 2 that denotes the set of well-orderings of subsets of
so
. Define
for ordinals
by iterating
transfinitely, taking unions at limit stages and setting
By induction, one shows the following three facts:
- For any set
and ordinal
,
- For any infinite
and any
,
- For any ordinals
and any set
,
Also, one easily verifies:
implies
In particular, if
then
Assume now that holds but
is not well-orderable. Write
for the cardinality of
for any set
of cardinality
Notice:
and so
Since there must be a least ordinal
such that
This
is necessarily an infinite limit ordinal. One concludes the proof by showing:
- For any
with
one has
A. Appendix.
I would like to review the results relating and
in a way that gives some additional information.
Definition. For an infinite set , set
surjective
and
.
Fact. is a set and
is an initial ordinal.
Proof. Suppose that is a surjection. Define
by
iff
. Clearly,
is an equivalence relation on
, and there is an obvious bijection
between the quotient
and
. The collection of quotients is in bijection with the collection of equivalence relations, that is clearly a set.
From the above it follows that an ordinal is the surjective image of
iff there is an equivalence relation on
whose quotient is well-orderable and has size
. This shows that
is a set and that if
is an ordinal, then it is an initial ordinal. But this follows from noticing that if
and
is surjective, then
is surjective, where
if
, and
otherwise.
Fact. .
Proof. If is injective and
, let
be the function
if
and
otherwise. Then
is surjective.
.
It is possible that . For example, this holds if
is well-orderable. It is also possible that
. For example, under determinacy
but
is much larger.
Fact. If is surjective, then
is injective.
Corollary. .
Proof. Define a map by setting
for a relation
unless
is a well-ordering of its field in order type
, in which case
. This is a surjection.
Corollary. for all ordinals
.
Proof. This is clear by induction if is finite. Otherwise,
.
Corollary. if
for some
.
Proof. Again, it suffices to consider infinite . In this case,
by Homework problem 3.
Corollary.
Proof. If then there is a surjection from
onto
. This is clear if
. Otherwise, if
is onto, consider
given by
.
Hence, there is an injection of into
. The result follows.
Corollary. if
is a successor cardinal.
Corollary. Suppose that is the
-th initial ordinal. If
, then
.
Proof. Let be a bijection between the set of initial ordinals below
and
. The map
given by
if
is well-orderable, and
otherwise, is a surjection.
Corollary. If is infinite and Dedekind-finite, then
.
Proof. is the
-th initial ordinal.
Corollary. Suppose that . Then
is not equipotent to a square and
for some (infinite) limit ordinal
.
Notice that, under choice, is always a successor cardinal; I do not know if the conclusion of the corollary is consistent.
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