arXiv subjects

John T. Baldwin

Publications and source records attributed to John T. Baldwin.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv1993

Forcing isomorphism

A forcing extension may create new isomorphisms between two models of a first order theory. Certain model theoretic constraints on the theory and other constraints on the forcing can prevent this pathology. A countable first order theory is classifiable if it is superstable and does not have either the dimensional order property or the omitting types order property. Shelah [Sh:c] showed that if a theory T is classifiable then each model of cardinality lambda is described by a sentence of L_{infty, lambda}. In fact this sentence can be chosen in the L^*_{lambda}. (L^*_{lambda} is the result of enriching the language L_{infty, beth^+} by adding for each mu < lambda a quantifier saying the dimension of a dependence structure is greater than mu .) The truth of such sentences will be preserved by any forcing that does not collapse cardinals <= lambda and that adds no new countable subsets of lambda. Hence, if two models of a classifiable theory of power lambda are non-isomorphic, they are non-isomorphic after a lambda-complete forcing. Here we show that the hypothesis of the forcing adding no new countable subsets of lambda cannot be eliminated. In particular, we show that non-isomorphism of models of a classifiable theory need not be preserved by ccc forcings.

math.LO↗

arXiv1991

The primal framework. II. Smoothness

This is the second in a series of articles developing abstract classification theory for classes that have a notion of prime models over independent pairs and over chains. It deals with the problem of smoothness and establishing the existence and uniqueness of a `monster model'. We work here with a predicate for a canonically prime model.

math.LO↗

arXiv1990

The primal framework. I

This the first of a series of articles dealing with abstract classification theory. The apparatus to assign systems of cardinal invariants to models of a first order theory (or determine its impossibility) is developed in [Sh:a]. It is natural to try to extend this theory to classes of models which are described in other ways. Work on the classification theory for nonelementary classes [Sh:88] and for universal classes [Sh:300] led to the conclusion that an axiomatic approach provided the best setting for developing a theory of wider application. In the first chapter we describe the axioms on which the remainder of the article depends and give some examples and context to justify this level of generality. The study of universal classes takes as a primitive the notion of closing a subset under functions to obtain a model. We replace that concept by the notion of a prime model. We begin the detailed discussion of this idea in Chapter II. One of the important contributions of classification theory is the recognition that large models can often be analyzed by means of a family of small models indexed by a tree of height at most omega. More precisely, the analyzed model is prime over such a tree. Chapter III provides sufficient conditions for prime models over such trees to exist.

math.LO↗