Trees and Ehrenfeucht–Fraı̈ssé games

AbstractTrees are natural generalizations of ordinals and this is especially apparent when one tries to find an uncountable analogue of the concept of the Scott-rank of a countable structure. The purpose of this paper is to introduce new methods in the study of an ordering between trees whose analogue is the usual ordering between ordinals. For example, one of the methods is the tree-analogue of the successor operation on the ordinals

On what I do not understand (and have something to say): Part I

This is a non-standard paper, containing some problems in set theory I have in various degrees been interested in. Sometimes with a discussion on what I have to say; sometimes, of what makes them interesting to me, sometimes the problems are presented with a discussion of how I have tried to solve them, and sometimes with failed tries, anecdote and opinion. So the discussion is quite personal, in other words, egocentric and somewhat accidental. As we discuss many problems, history and side references are erratic, usually kept at a minimum (``see ... '' means: see the references there and possibly the paper itself). The base were lectures in Rutgers Fall'97 and reflect my knowledge then. The other half, concentrating on model theory, will subsequently appear

Laver and set theory

In this commemorative article, the work of Richard Laver is surveyed in its full range and extent.Accepted manuscrip

A Rigid Kurepa Tree From a Free Suslin Tree

We analyze a countable support product of a free Suslin tree which turns it into a highly rigid Kurepa tree with no Aronszajn subtree

Some interesting problems

A ≤W B. (This refers to Wadge reducible.) Answer: The first question was answered by Hjorth [83] who showed that it is independent. 1.2 A subset A ⊂ ω ω is compactly-Γ iff for every compact K ⊂ ω ω we have that A ∩ K is in Γ. Is it consistent relative to ZFC that compactly-Σ 1 1 implies Σ 1 1? (see Miller-Kunen [111], Becker [11]) 1.3 (Miller [111]) Does ∆ 1 1 = compactly- ∆ 1 1 imply Σ 1 1 = compactly-Σ 1 1? 1.4 (Prikry see [62]) Can L ∩ ω ω be a nontrivial Σ 1 1 set? Can there be a nontrivial perfect set of constructible reals? Answer: No, for first question Velickovic-Woodin [192]. question Groszek-Slaman [71]. See also Gitik [67]

The Universality Problem

The theme of this thesis is to explore the universality problem in set theory in connection to model theory, to present some methods for finding universality results, to analyse how these methods were applied, to mention some results and to emphasise some philosophical interrogations that these aspects entail. A fundamental aspect of the universality problem is to find what determines the existence of universal objects. That means that we have to take into consideration and examine the methods that we use in proving their existence or nonexistence, the role of cardinal arithmetic, combinatorics etc. The proof methods used in the mathematical part will be mostly set-theoretic, but some methods from model theory and category theory will also be present. A graph might be the simplest, but it is also one of the most useful notions in mathematics. We show that there is a faithful functor F from the category L of linear orders to the category G of graphs that preserves model theoretic-related universality results (classes of objects having universal models in exactly the same cardinals, and also having the same universality spectrum). Trees constitute combinatorial objects and have a central role in set theory. The universality of trees is connected to the universality of linear orders, but it also seems to present more challenges, which we survey and present some results. We show that there is no embedding between an ℵ2-Souslin tree and a non-special wide ℵ2 tree T with no cofinal branches. Furthermore, using the notion of ascent path, we prove that the class of non-special ℵ2-Souslin tree with an ω-ascent path a has maximal complexity number, 2ℵ2 = ℵ3. Within the general framework of the universality problem in set theory and model theory, while emphasising their approaches and their connections with regard to this topic, we examine the possibility of drawing some philosophical conclusions connected to, among others, the notions of mathematical knowledge, mathematical object and proof