Unrestricted quantification and Tarskian truth

It is well-known—a feature and not a bug—that Tarski’s definition of truth needs to be given in a metalanguage rather than the object language. Here I want to note a feature of this that I haven’t seen before.

Let’s start by considering how Tarski’s definition of truth would work for set theory.

We can define satisfaction as a relation between finite gappy sequences of objects (i.e., sets) and formulas where the variables are x₁, .... We do this by induction on formulas.

How does this work? Following the usual way to formally create an inductive definition, we will do something like this:

1. A satisfaction-like relation is a relation between finite sequences of sets and formulas such that:

   1. the relation gets right the base cases, namely, a sequence s satisfies x_n ∈ x_m if and only if the nth entry of s is a member of the mth entry of s, and satisfies x_n = x_m if and only if the nth entry of s is identical to the mth entry

   2. the relation gets right the inductive cases (e.g., s satisfies ∃x_nϕ if and only if for every sequence s′ that includes an nth place and agrees with s on all the places other than the nth place we have s′ satisfying ϕ, etc.)

2. A sequence s satisfies a formula ϕ provided that every satisfaction-like relation holds between s and ϕ.

The problem is that in (2) we quantify over satisfaction-like relations. A satisfaction-like relation is not a set in ZF, since any satisfaction-like relation includes ((a),ϕ₌) for every set a, where (a) is the sequence whose only entry is a at the first location and ϕ₌ is x₁ = x₁. Thus, a satisfaction-like relation needs to be a proper class, and we are quantifying over these, which suggests ontological commitment to these proper classes. But ZF set theory does not have proper classes. It only has virtual classes, where we identify a class with the formula defining it. And if we do that, then (2) comes down to:

3. A sequence s satisfies ϕ if for every satisfaction-like formula F the sentence F(s,ϕ) is true.

And that presupposes the concept of truth. (Besides which, I don’t know if we can define a satisfaction-like formula.) So that’s a non-starter. We need genuine and not merely virtual classes to give a Tarski-style definition of truth for set theory. In other words, it looks like the meta-language in which we give the Tarski-style definition of truth for set theory not only needs a vocabulary that goes beyond the object-language’s vocabulary, but it needs a domain of quantification that goes beyond the object-language’s domain.

Now, suppose that we try to give such a Tarskian definition of truth for a language with unrestricted quantification, namely quantification over literally everything. This is very problematic. For now the satisfaction-like relation includes the pair ((a),ϕ₌) for literally every object a. This relation, then, can neither be a set, nor a class, nor a proper superclass, nor a supersuperclass, etc.

I wonder if there is a way of getting around this difficulty by having some kind of a primitive “inductive definition” operator instead of quantifying over satisfaction-like relations.

Another option would be to be a realist about sets but a non-realist about classes, and have some non-realist story about quantification over classes.

I bet people have written on this stuff, as it’s a well-explored area. Anybody here know?

Proper classes as merely possible sets

This probably won’t work out, but I’ve been thinking about the Cantor and Russell Paradoxes and proper classes and had this curious idea: Maybe proper classes are non-existent possible sets. Thus, there is actually no collection of all the sets in our world, but there is another possible world which contains a set S whose members are all the sets of our world. When we talk about proper classes, then, we are talking about merely possible sets.

Here is the story about the Russell Paradox. There can be a set R whose members are all the actual world’s non-self-membered sets. (In fact, since by the Axiom of Foundation, none of the actual world’s sets are self-membered, R is a set whose members are all the actual world’s sets.) But R is not itself one of the actual world’s sets, but a set in another possible world.

The story about Cantor’s Paradox that this yields is that there can be a cardinality greater than all the cardinalities in our world, but there actually isn’t. And in world w₂ where such a cardinality exists, it isn’t the largest cardinality, because its powerset is even larger. But there is a third world which has a cardinality larger than any in w₂.

It’s part of the story that there cannot be any collections with non-existent elements. Thus, one cannot form paradoxical cross-world collections, like the collection of all possible sets. The only collections there are on this story are sets. But we can talk of collections that would exist counterfactually.

The challenge to working out the details of this view is to explain why it is that some sets actually exist and others are merely possible. One thought is something like this: The sets that actually exist at w are those that form a minimal model of set theory that contains all the sets that can be specified using the concrete resources in the world. E.g., if the world contains an infinite sequence of coin tosses, it contains the set of the natural numbers corresponding to tosses with heads.

How many universes in a multiverse?

Suppose that all universes, or all universes which are "good enough", exist. For any object x, let U_x be a universe which contains exactly one conscious non-divine being, where this being is an angel who spends most of his time thinking virtuously and pleasurable precisely about x. This kind of world is surely "good enough". Thus, it seems there are at least as many universes in the multiverse as there are sets, since for any set S there is a universe U_S. That's not a problem yet—after all, maybe the collection of universes is a proper class. But now for any proper class K, we can imagine the universe U_K. Now the number of universes is really creeping up on us—it seems that we have at least one universe per set or proper class. Maybe we can introduce some higher order way of counting, beyond sets and proper classes. Sure. But the same problem will occur again.