Abstract

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia, Woodin’s Ω-Logic. 1 To say that the universe of all sets is an unfinished totality does not mean objective undeterminateness, but merely a subjective inability to finish it. Gödel, in Wang, [17] 1 Reflection Principles in Set Theory Historically reflection principles are associated with attempts to say that no one notion, idea, or statement can capture our whole view of the universe of sets V = ⋃ α∈On Vα where On is the class of all ordinals. That no one idea can pin down the universe of all sets has firm historical roots (see the quotation from Cantor later or the following): The Universe of sets cannot be uniquely characterized (i.e. distinguished from all its initial segments) by any internal structural property of the membership relation in it, which is expressible in any logic of finite or transfinite type, including infinitary logics of any cardinal number. Gödel: Wang- ibid. Indeed once set theory was formalized by the (first order version of) the axioms and schemata of Zermelo with the additions of Skolem and Fraenkel, it was seen that reflection of first order formulae ϕ(v0, , vn) in the language of set theory L∈ ˙ could actually be proven:

Citations