internal versus external

[Thomas Streicher <streicher@mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de>]

I try to untangle various threads in the recent discussion.

(1) Yes, there is a difference between replacement as a schema and
    the stronger form of replacement as formulated in Groth. universes.
    (To my embarrasment I have blurred this distinction against better
     knowledge!)

(2) One has to carefully distinguish between the following two questions
    (a) find as good as possible an axiomatization of "the" category of sets
        which was the aim of ETCS and Cole, Mitchell and Osius;
        in this situation it is natural to assume wellpointedness
    (b) to ask what are good notions of model for intuitionistic set theories
        where the assumption of wellpointedness is, of course,
        much too restrictive.

(a) and (b) are so different questions that I wouldn't go for comparing them.
Reading Mike Shulman's original mail I had the impression he was going for (b)
when asking whether certain arguments involving transfinite recursion could
be done categorically. There the answer is in general not. Alas, I can't say
anything about the most interesting question about small objects argument. But
I know the answer in case of the classical example where replacement is needed,
namely Borel determinacy. Don Martin gave a proof of Borel determinacy iterating
the powerset functor \omega_1 times and later H.Friedman showed that axiom of
replacement is indispensible for proving Borel determinacy. One also knows that
in the realizability model of IZF (Friedman, McCarty et.al) Borel determinacy
fails although it validates replacement (which is part of the axioms of IZF).

Now I am coming to the real issue which triggered me to take part in the
discussion, namely an apparent confusion between internal and external families
of objects. I thought that on pp.77-79 of my lecture notes on fibrations
(www.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~streicher/FIBR/FibLec.pdf.gz) I gave a summary
of the "current view" on these questions. But in the light of the recent
discussion I think a few more words seem to be in place.

Suppose EE is a topos. The most immediate notion of external family of objects
is a function I -> Ob(EE) where I is a set. An internal family in EE is simply
a map A -> X in EE. Obviously, these gadgets are quite different because in
general sets aren't objects of EE and objects of EE aren't sets. However,
one can turn an internal family a : A -> X into an external family of objects
in EE indexed by EE(1,X), namely by associating with  x : 1 -> X the object
x^*a, i.e. the (source of the) pullback of a along x.
Now one may ask whether this is a 1-1-correspondence for general toposes EE.
There is a simple example showing that going from internal to external one
looses information: let GG be a (finite) nontrivial group and G the
representable object of Psh(GG) then ALL morphisms to G (and there are plenty)
represent the external empty family of objects of Psh(GG). This might lead one
to think that internal families are just "intensional representations" of
external families. But this view is mistaken since there are external families
of objects of EE which don't arise by externalising internal families. This is
obvious since if EE is a small topos (say the free topos with nno) then there
are I-indexed families of EE where I exceeds the cardinality of any EE(1,X).
But there is the much more refined example of Peter Johnstone (also described
in my notes on the web) of a topos EE over Set and an NN-indexed family of
objects (A_n) in EE which doesn't arise from an internal family in EE. The topos
EE is the full subcat of actions of the group (ZZ,+) on those objects where
there is a finite bound on the size of orbits and A_n is ZZ_n acted on by ZZ
in the obvious way. The reason why this family cannot arise from an internal
family a : A -> X in EE is that there is a finite bound on the size of all
orbits in A and thus on all orbits in the A_x (x \in EE(1,X). But of course
A_n has an orbit of length n and, accordingly, there is not a finite bound
on the orbits of all the A_n.

Of course, if EE is a wellpointed topos the situation is "better". If EE has
also small sums then we clearly have a 1-1-correspondence between internal
families indexed by X and and external families indexed by EE(1,X). But this
isn'the case anymore if we drop the assumption of small sums. Let EE be the
wellpointed small topos arising from a countable model of Z (Zermelo's set
theory, i.e. ZF without replacement schema). Then for reasons of cardinality
there are EE(1,N)-indexed external families which don't arise from an internal
one.

>From some of the mails I got the impression that it is claimed that restriction
to "syntactically definable" (s.d.) families allows one to identify internal
and external. This is definitely wrong for the non-wellpointed case due to the
many different representations of the empty family. It might be the case that
any "syntactically definable" external family indexed by EE(1,X) arises from
some internal family a : A -> X though I don't see how to prove it. (Does any
of the advocates of external families have a proof for that?)

Finally, I would like to point out that there are two different meanings of
the phrase "syntactically definable" family. The one used by Colin in his
Philosophia article means "syntactically definable in the language of ETCS"
and the one used by set theorists is "definable in the language of set theory".
The latter hasn't any meaning in a model for ETCS since such a model doesn't
allow one to interpret a formula in the language of set theory. But, of course,
one can interpret set theoretic formulas in the models of bZ constructed from
a model of ETCS.

The reason why I doubt that models of ETCS and bZ are equivalent is that when
going from a model of ECTS to a model of bZ is that one has to restrict to the
well-founded part. At least that's what I recollect from MacLane and Moerdijk's
exposition in their book. But I am ready to believe that adding wellfoundedness
axioms to ETCS can remedy this situation.

Of course, I might be all wrong with what I have said above. But then I would
like to know what is the appropriate notion of "(external) family of objects"
that one should use in case of non-wellpointed toposes.

Thomas

PS For sake of completeness I can't refrain from mentioning the following
considerations I was told by Jean B'enabou some years ago. Let EE be some topos
(J.B. was of course considering more general situations). Then split fibrations
over EE correspond to categories internal to Psh(EE) = Set^{EE^op} (where Set is
chosen big enough for EE being small w.r.t. Set). Then one my consider the
presheaf  set(EE)  where  set(EE)(X)  consists of representable presheaves
over EE/X. It is natural to define an X-indexed family of objects of EE as
a morphism  y(X) -> set(EE)  but by Yoneda this is an element of set(EE)(X)
corresponding to a map to X in EE.