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- From: alopez-o@neumann.uwaterloo.ca (Alex Lopez-Ortiz)
- Subject: sci.math FAQ: The Continuum Hypothesis
- Summary: Part 28 of many, New version,
- Originator: alopez-o@neumann.uwaterloo.ca
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- Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 17:15:59 GMT
- Expires: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 09:55:55 GMT
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- Archive-Name: sci-math-faq/AC/ContinuumHyp
- Last-modified: December 8, 1994
- Version: 6.2
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- THE CONTINUUM HYPOTHESIS
-
-
-
-
-
- A basic reference is Godel's ``What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?",
- from 1947 with a 1963 supplement, reprinted in Benacerraf and Putnam's
- collection Philosophy of Mathematics. This outlines Godel's generally
- anti-CH views, giving some ``implausible" consequences of CH.
-
- "I believe that adding up all that has been said one has good reason
- to suspect that the role of the continuum problem in set theory will
- be to lead to the discovery of new axioms which will make it possible
- to disprove Cantor's conjecture."
-
- At one stage he believed he had a proof that C = aleph_2 from some new
- axioms, but this turned out to be fallacious. (See Ellentuck,
- ``Godel's Square Axioms for the Continuum", Mathematische Annalen
- 1975.)
-
- Maddy's ``Believing the Axioms", Journal of Symbolic Logic 1988 (in 2
- parts) is an extremely interesting paper and a lot of fun to read. A
- bonus is that it gives a non-set-theorist who knows the basics a good
- feeling for a lot of issues in contemporary set theory.
-
- Most of the first part is devoted to ``plausible arguments" for or
- against CH: how it stands relative to both other possible axioms and
- to various set-theoretic ``rules of thumb". One gets the feeling that
- the weight of the arguments is against CH, although Maddy says that
- many ``younger members" of the set-theoretic community are becoming
- more sympathetic to CH than their elders. There's far too much here
- for me to be able to go into it in much detail.
-
- Some highlights from Maddy's discussion, also incorporating a few
- things that other people sent me:
-
- 1. Cantor's reasons for believing CH aren't all that persuasive
- today.
- 2. Godel's proof of the consistency of CH shows that CH follows from
- ZFC plus the Axiom of Constructibility ( V = L , roughly that the
- set-theoretic universe = the constructible universe). However,
- most set-theorists seem to find Constructiblity implausible and
- much too restrictive. It's an example of a ``minimizing"
- principle, which tends to cut down on the number of sets admitted
- to one's universe. Apparently ``maximizing" principles meet with
- much more sympathy from set theorists. Such principles are more
- compatible with not CH than with CH.
- 3. If GCH is true, this implies that aleph_0 has certain unique
- properties: e.g. that it's that cardinal before which GCH is false
- and after which it is true. Some would like to believe that the
- set-theoretic universe is more ``uniform" (homogeneous) than that,
- without this kind of singular occurrence. Such a ``uniformity"
- principle tends to imply not GCH.
- 4. Most of those who disbelieve CH think that the continuum is likely
- to have very large cardinality, rather than aleph_2 (as Godel
- seems to have suggested). Even Cohen, a professed formalist,
- argues that the power set operation is a strong operation that
- should yield sets much larger than those reached quickly by
- stepping forward through the ordinals:
-
- "This point of view regards C as an incredibly rich set given to us
- by a bold new axiom, which can never be approached by any piecemeal
- process of construction."
- 5. There are also a few arguments in favour of CH, e.g. there's an
- argument that not CH is restrictive (in the sense of (2) above).
- Also, CH is much easier to force (Cohen's method) than not CH. And
- CH is much more likely to settle various outstanding results than
- is not CH, which tends to be neutral on these results.
- 6. Most large cardinal axioms (asserting the existence of cardinals
- with various properties of hugeness: these are usually derived
- either from considering the hugeness of aleph_0 compared to the
- finite cardinals and applying uniformity, or from considering the
- hugeness of V (the set-theoretic universe) relative to all sets
- and applying ``reflection") don't seem to settle CH one way or the
- other.
- 7. Various other axioms have some bearing. Axioms of determinacy
- restrict the class of sets of reals that might be counterexamples
- to CH. Various forcing axioms (e.g. Martin's axiom), which are
- ``maximality" principles (in the sense of (2) above), imply not
- CH. The strongest (Martin's maximum) implies that C = aleph_2 . Of
- course the ``truth" or otherwise of all these axioms is
- controversial.
- 8. Freiling's principle about ``throwing darts at the real line" is a
- seemingly very plausible principle, not involving large cardinals
- at all, from which not CH immediately follows. Freiling's paper
- (JSL 1986) is a good read. More on this at the end of this
- message.
-
-
-
- Of course we have conspicuously avoided saying anything about whether
- it's even reasonable to suppose that CH has a determinate truth-value.
- Formalists will argue that we may choose to make it come out whichever
- way we want, depending on the system we work in. On the other hand,
- the mere fact of its independence from ZFC shouldn't immediately lead
- us to this conclusion - this would be assigning ZFC a privileged
- status which it hasn't necessarily earned. Indeed, Maddy points out
- that various axioms within ZFC (notably the Axiom of Choice, and also
- Replacement) were adopted for extrinsic reasons (e.g. ``usefulness")
- as well as for ``intrinsic" reasons (e.g. ``intuitiveness"). Further
- axioms, from which CH might be settled, might well be adopted for such
- reasons.
-
- One set-theorist correspondent said that set-theorists themselves are
- very loathe to talk about ``truth" or ``falsity" of such claims.
- (They're prepared to concede that 2 + 2 = 4 is true, but as soon as
- you move beyond the integers trouble starts. e.g. most were wary even
- of suggesting that the Riemann Hypothesis necessarily has a
- determinate truth-value.) On the other hand, Maddy's contemporaries
- discussed in her paper seemed quite happy to speculate about the
- ``truth" or ``falsity" of CH.
-
- The integers are not only a bedrock, but also any finite number of
- power sets seem to be quite natural Intuitively are also natural which
- would point towards the fact that CH may be determinate one way or the
- other. As one correspondent suggested, the question of the
- determinateness of CH is perhaps the single best way to separate the
- Platonists from the formalists.
-
- And is it true or false? Well, CH is somewhat intuitively plausible.
- But after reading all this, it does seem that the weight of evidence
- tend to point the other way.
-
- The following is from Bill Allen on Freiling's Axiom of Symmetry. This
- is a good one to run your intuitions by.
-
- Let A be the set of functions mapping Real Numbers into countable
- sets of Real Numbers. Given a function f in A , and some arbitrary
- real numbers x and y , we see that x is in f(y) with probability 0,
- i.e. x is not in f(y) with probability 1. Similarly, y is not in
- f(x) with probability 1. Let AX be the axiom which states
-
- ``for every f in A , there exist x and y such that x is not in f(y)
- and y is not in f(x) "
-
- The intuitive justification for AX is that we can find the x and y
- by choosing them at random.
-
- In ZFC, AX = not CH. proof: If CH holds, then well-order R as r_0,
- r_1, .... , r_x, ... with x < aleph_1 . Define f(r_x) as { r_y : y
- >= x } . Then f is a function which witnesses the falsity of AX.
-
- If CH fails, then let f be some member of A . Let Y be a subset of R
- of cardinality aleph_1 . Then Y is a proper subset. Let X be the
- union of all the sets f(y) with y in Y , together with Y . Then, as
- X is an aleph_1 union of countable sets, together with a single
- aleph_1 size set Y , the cardinality of X is also aleph_1 , so X is
- not all of R . Let a be in R X , so that a is not in f(y) for any y
- in Y . Since f(a) is countable, there has to be some b in Y such
- that b is not in f(a) . Thus we have shown that there must exist a
- and b such that a is not in f(b) and b is not in f(a) . So AX holds.
-
- Freiling's proof, does not invoke large cardinals or intense
- infinitary combinatorics to make the point that CH implies
- counter-intuitive propositions. Freiling has also pointed out that the
- natural extension of AX is AXL (notation mine), where AXL is AX with
- the notion of countable replaced by Lebesgue Measure zero. Freiling
- has established some interesting Fubini-type theorems using AXL.
-
- See ``Axioms of Symmetry: Throwing Darts at the Real Line", by
- Freiling, Journal of Symbolic Logic, 51, pages 190-200. An extension
- of this work appears in "Some properties of large filters", by
- Freiling and Payne, in the JSL, LIII, pages 1027-1035.
-
-
-
-
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-
-
- alopez-o@barrow.uwaterloo.ca
- Tue Apr 04 17:26:57 EDT 1995
-
-