Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
By Frege's Theorem is meant the result, implicit in Frege's Grundlagen, that, for any set E, if there exists a map υ from the power set of E to E satisfying the condition
then E has a subset which is the domain of a model of Peano's axioms for the natural numbers. (This result is proved explicitly, using classical reasoning, in Section 3 of [1].) My purpose in this note is to strengthen this result in two directions: first, the premise will be weakened so as to require only that the map υ be defined on the family of (Kuratowski) finite subsets of the set E, and secondly, the argument will be constructive, i.e., will involve no use of the law of excluded middle. To be precise, we will prove, in constructive (or intuitionistic) set theory, the following
Theorem. Let υ be a map with domain a family of subsets of a set E to E satisfying the following conditions:
(i) ø ϵdom(υ)
(ii)∀U ϵdom(υ)∀x ϵ E − UU ∪ x ϵdom(υ)
(iii)∀UV ϵdom(5) υ(U) = υ(V) ⇔ U ≈ V.
Then we can define a subset N of E which is the domain of a model of Peano's axioms.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.