A Von Neumann ordinal is finite exactly when and every member of are either zero or successor ordinals. Every finite ordinal has that property. Conversely, an infinite ordinal is either , which is a nonzero limit, or is greater than and contains that nonzero limit ordinal. The test can be expressed by a bounded first-order formula: ordinality uses transitivity and membership comparability, and a nonempty ordinal is a successor exactly when it has a greatest member. This defines the class of natural numbers without quantifying over arbitrary infinite inductive sets.
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