Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/iii/paper-121/1/iv/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 121 1 iv Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
First prove set-theoretic absoluteness for syntactically bounded formulas in set theory by induction on their construction. Atomic equality and membership use the actual equality and membership relations in both transitive classes. Boolean operations preserve agreement.
For the bounded existential step, take and suppose . Its witness is an actual member of . Since is a transitive class, ; the induction hypothesis then gives . The converse uses the same witness in . The bounded universal step follows similarly because both structures quantify over exactly the actual members of , or follows by negation from the existential step. HenceNo ZF axioms are needed for this syntactic statement beyond the ambient meaning of a transitive class. For a ZF-equivalent bounded formula , choose a bounded equivalent . The assumption that both structures model ZF gives and . Combining these with the displayed equivalence proves the asserted set-theoretic absoluteness of .
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