Online research in philosophy

CHAPTER 1 Combinatorial Geometries and Infinitary Logics In this chapter we introduce two of the key concepts that are used throughout the text. ...

We study the expansion of stable structures by adding predicates for arbitrary subsets. Generalizing work of Poizat-Bouscaren on the one hand and Baldwin-Benedikt-Casanovas-Ziegler on the other we provide a sufficient condition (Theorem 4.7) for such an expansion to be stable. This generalization weakens the original definitions in two ways: dealing with arbitrary subsets rather than just submodels and removing the 'small' or 'belles paires' hypothesis. We use this generalization to characterize in terms of pairs, the 'triviality' of the geometry on (...) a strongly minimal set (Theorem 2.5). Call a set A benign if any type over A in the expanded language is determined by its restriction to the base language. We characterize the notion of benign as a kind of local homogenity (Theorem 1.7). Answering a question of [8] we characterize the property that M has the finite cover property over A (Theorem 3.9). (shrink)

This paper ties together much of the model theory of the last 50 years. Shelah's attempts to generalize the Morley theorem beyond first order logic led to the notion of excellence, which is a key to the structure theory of uncountable models. The notion of Abstract Elementary Class arose naturally in attempting to prove the categoricity theorem for L ω 1 ,ω (Q). More recently, Zilber has attempted to identify canonical mathematical structures as those whose theory (in an appropriate logic) (...) is categorical in all powers. Zilber's trichotomy conjecture for first order categorical structures was refuted by Hrushovski, by the introducion of a special kind of Abstract Elementary Class. Zilber uses a powerful and essentailly infinitary variant on these techniques to investigate complex exponentiation. This not only demonstrates the relevance of Shelah's model theoretic investigations to mainstream mathematics but produces new results and conjectures in algebraic geometry. (shrink)

For $n < \omega$ , expand the structure (n, S, I, F) (with S the successor relation, I, F as the initial and final element) by forming graphs with edge probability n-α for irrational α, with $0 < \alpha < 1$ . The sentences in the expanded language, which have limit probability 1, form a complete and stable theory.

We provide a general framework for studying the expansion of strongly minimal sets by adding additional relations in the style of Hrushovski. We introduce a notion of separation of quantifiers which is a condition on the class of expansions of finitely generated models for the expanded theory to have a countable ω-saturated model. We apply these results to construct for each sufficiently fast growing finite-to-one function μ from 'primitive extensions' to the natural numbers a theory T μ of an expansion (...) of an algebraically closed field which has Morley rank 2. Finally, we show that if μ is not finite-to-one the theory may not be ω-stable. (shrink)

$\underline{\text{Saturation is} (\mu, \kappa)-\text{transferable in} T}$ if and only if there is an expansion T 1 of T with ∣ T 1 ∣ = ∣ T ∣ such that if M is a μ-saturated model of T 1 and ∣ M ∣ ≥ κ then the reduct M ∣ L(T) is κ-saturated. We characterize theories which are superstable without f.c.p., or without f.c.p. as, respectively those where saturation is (ℵ 0 , λ)- transferable or (κ (T), λ)-transferable for all λ. (...) Further if for some $\mu \geq \mid T \mid, 2^\mu > \mu^+$ , stability is equivalent to for all μ ≥ ∣ T ∣, saturation is (μ, 2 μ )- transferable. (shrink)

Let T be a complete countable first order theory and λ an uncountable cardinal. Theorem 1. If T is not superstable, T has 2 λ resplendent models of power λ. Theorem 2. If T is strictly superstable, then T has at least $\min(2^\lambda,\beth_2)$ resplendent models of power λ. Theorem 3. If T is not superstable or is small and strictly superstable, then every resplendent homogeneous model of T is saturated. Theorem 4 (with Knight). For each μ ∈ ω ∪ {ω, (...) 2 ω } there is a recursive theory in a finite language which has μ resplendent models of power κ for every infinite κ. (shrink)

Let I(μ,K) denote the number of nonisomorphic models of power μ and IE(μ,K) the number of nonmutually embeddable models. We define in this paper the notion of a diverse class and use it to prove a number of results. The major result is Theorem B: For any diverse class K and μ greater than the cardinality of the language of K, $\mathbf{IE}(\mu,K) \geq \min(2^\mu,\beth_2).$ From it we deduce both an old result of Shelah, Theorem C: If T is countable and (...) $\lambda_0 > \aleph_0$ then for every $\mu > \aleph_0,\mathbf{IE}(\mu,T) \geq \min(2^\mu,\beth_2)$ , and an extension of that result to uncountable languages, Theorem D: If $|T| |T|$ , and |D(T)| = |T| then for $\mu > |T|$ , $\mathbf{IE}(\mu,T) \geq \min(2^\mu,\beth_2).$. (shrink)