Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Wand/Set Theories: A realization of Conway's mathematicians' liberation movement, with an application to Church's set theory with a universal set.Tim Button - forthcoming - Journal of Symbolic Logic.
    Consider a variant of the usual story about the iterative conception of sets. As usual, at every stage, you find all the (bland) sets of objects which you found earlier. But you also find the result of tapping any earlier-found object with any magic wand (from a given stock of magic wands). -/- By varying the number and behaviour of the wands, we can flesh out this idea in many different ways. This paper's main Theorem is that any loosely constructive (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Level Theory, Part 3: A Boolean Algebra of Sets Arranged in Well-Ordered Levels.Tim Button - 2022 - Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 28 (1):1-26.
    On a very natural conception of sets, every set has an absolute complement. The ordinary cumulative hierarchy dismisses this idea outright. But we can rectify this, whilst retaining classical logic. Indeed, we can develop a boolean algebra of sets arranged in well-ordered levels. I show this by presenting Boolean Level Theory, which fuses ordinary Level Theory (from Part 1) with ideas due to Thomas Forster, Alonzo Church, and Urs Oswald. BLT neatly implement Conway’s games and surreal numbers; and a natural (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Level theory, part 2: Axiomatizing the bare idea of a potential hierarchy.Tim Button - 2021 - Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 27 (4):461-484.
    Potentialists think that the concept of set is importantly modal. Using tensed language as an heuristic, the following bar-bones story introduces the idea of a potential hierarchy of sets: 'Always: for any sets that existed, there is a set whose members are exactly those sets; there are no other sets.' Surprisingly, this story already guarantees well-foundedness and persistence. Moreover, if we assume that time is linear, the ensuing modal set theory is almost definitionally equivalent with non-modal set theories; specifically, with (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark