6
$\begingroup$

This is an attempt to locate a theorem I vaguely remember but cannot find (which arose in the context of Consistency of non-trivial elementary embedding $j : \mathit{Ord} \to \mathit{Ord}$ and motivated Can $Ord$ have nontrivial second-order elementary self-embeddings?). Specifically, I recall a theorem along the following lines (in contrast of course with the Kunen inconsistency):

Every "reasonably definable" expansion of the class-sized structure $(\mathit{Ord}; \in)$ has nontrivial elementary self-embeddings.

Here the relevant notion of "reasonably definable" was broad enough to include the usual ordinal arithmetic operations, and if I recall correctly more complicated operations like $\alpha\mapsto\omega_\alpha$. On the other hand, it was a $\mathsf{ZFC}$ theorem, so we certainly can't go all the way to second-order logic (see the MO question linked above).

Additionally, I vaguely recall that this was due to either Harvey Friedman or Mostowski and that the relevant definability notion was "least-fixed-point-flavored," but I'm much less confident about either of these memories.

$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ Per our earlier discussion, I used \mathit on your $\mathit{Ord}$s. I also inlined the titles of the questions you reference. I hope that this is all right. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 2:06
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @LSpice Fine by me! (And I totally forgot \mathit was an option ... again. :P) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 2:11

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.