Beppo Levi's analysis of the paradoxes

DOI10.1007/S11787-012-0072-7MaRDI QIDQ2392013zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 6 August 2013

Published in Logica Universalis (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/s11787-012-0072-7

axiom of reducibility Cantor's paradox elementation procedures logical paradoxes Peano

History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) History of mathematical logic and foundations (03-03) Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations (03A05)

Review text

Beppo Levi published a note on the semantic paradoxes in 1908. His approach was not taken up at the time, and Levi himself did not return to the topic. He preserved an unrestricted comprehension principle, but did not allow sets to be elements; an `elementation' function generates individuals (potential elements) from sets, not unlike the axiom of reducibility. The idea is also reminiscent of two-sorted theories like second-order arithmetic, Z2. Russell's paradox requires one to assume that Russell's set \(R\) is elementable, and the contradiction becomes a reductio argument that this assumption is false. For Cantor's paradox, Levi's method shows that there is a set \(S\) (normally the set \(V\) of all sets) such that \(\overline{\overline{S}} \nless {\overline{\overline{\mathcal {P} (S)}}}\), in other words, that Cantor's theorem (that the cardinal number of a set is strictly less than the cardinal number of its power set) fails. Since Levi was at the University of Turin during Peano's professorship there, though working under Corrado Segre, this paper should also interest those studying Peano's influences.

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