How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
Formal Set-Theoretic Syntax, Structures, and Satisfaction: Examples and Counterexamples
1 · Prerequisites
2 · Summary
These examples calculate satisfaction in small structures, expose variable capture and the failure of agreement at a single assignment under substitution, and evaluate empty-class guards. The final refutation concerns the explicitly stated truth-with-parameters scheme; it does not presume a sentence-only arithmetization theorem.
3 · Logical flowchart
4 · Definitions, theorems and proofs
None yet.
5 · Examples, counterexamples and false statements
Parsing and evaluating a membership formula
Example
In the membership structure on , where and , let . Then . It is false when and true when .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Work in ZF unless the statement explicitly weakens or supplements it; fix the objects and hypotheses of the statement.
Assignments agreeing on give equal denotations when is a term and the same truth value when is a formula. Also, passage to a reduct preserves denotations and satisfaction for expressions in the smaller signature. In particular sentence truth is independent of assignment; the truth of a formula can be specified by any tuple assigning all its free variables. (Coincidence for term values and satisfaction)
Verification
The outer code is . The body has both variables free; the outer binder removes . By coincidence all other assignment values are irrelevant.
The only membership pair in is . For value at , neither candidate witness is a member of . For value , witness works. These are the two asserted truth values.
Variable capture changes satisfaction
Statement refuted
False claim: replacing free occurrences by a variable without first avoiding capture always has the intended substitution semantics. In , naively substitute for .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Work in ZF unless the statement explicitly weakens or supplements it; fix the objects and hypotheses of the statement refuted.
There is a canonical total capture-avoiding substitution on formulas, obtained by renaming obstructing binders using least unused variable indices. It replaces the original free occurrences of and satisfies Canonicity refers to the specified coding and traversal, not to literal invariance under other fresh-variable conventions. (Canonical capture-avoiding substitution)
Counterexample
In with restricted membership, take . The intended substitution truth, supplied by capture-avoiding substitution, is the truth of after setting to . It is true, with witness .
Naive replacement gives , false since neither carrier element belongs to itself. Renaming the binder to first gives , true at the displayed assignment. Thus the naive operation changes the required truth value.
Relativization to the empty class
Example
For , the relativization of is false and that of is true. The empty class is not an admitted structure.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Work in ZF unless the statement explicitly weakens or supplements it; fix the objects and hypotheses of the statement.
Fix a pure membership formula defining a class . This is eliminable notation for a predicate, not a class object. For a fixed pure membership formula , first rename its binders away from the parameter variables . Define by keeping atoms, commuting with Boolean constructors, and setting Copies of are inserted by capture-avoiding substitution and fresh internal bound variables. In the set case use the predicate , with a fresh parameter variable for . This operation is meaningful even for an empty class. It does not make the empty class an admitted structure: carriers of structures remain nonempty. For proper classes, evaluation of means a separate ambient formula for each fixed , not a uniform universe satisfaction relation. Conventions and prerequisites: prop-capture-avoiding-substitution. (Relativization to sets and definable classes)
Verification
The existential relativization is . Its matrix is false at every set, so it has no witness.
The universal relativization is . Its antecedent is always false, so it is true. These computations concern guarded formulas; the nonempty-carrier convention remains in force.
Agreement at one assignment is insufficient
Statement refuted
False claim: if two formulas agree at one assignment, they still agree there after the same free-for substitution. Use the two-element equality structure with constant , distinct variables , and .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Work in ZF unless the statement explicitly weakens or supplements it; fix the objects and hypotheses of the statement refuted.
If is free for in , then for every structure and assignment , (Free-for substitution commutes with satisfaction)
Counterexample
At , the formulas and are both true. The constant has no variables, so is free for in each formula. The free-for identity evaluates substitution by changing to .
After substitution the formulas are and . Their truth values are respectively false () and true (). The original agreement at imposes no agreement at the updated assignment, which is exactly the missing hypothesis.
V has a definable truth predicate
Statement
False statement, in the truth-with-parameters sense: there is a pure membership formula and a set such that for every pure membership formula with free variables among and every pair of sets ,
The displayed universal demand is a scheme of biconditionals for the proposed .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Work in ZF unless the statement explicitly weakens or supplements it; fix the objects and hypotheses of the statement.
Set satisfaction and relativization must be distinguished. Set satisfaction is uniform in the code of a formula and the data of a set structure. Relativization to a definable proper class supplies an ambient formula separately for each fixed input formula. Writing in this latter sense merely abbreviates . For the truth-with-parameters interface, a proposed pure membership formula and a set parameter would have to satisfy, for every pure membership formula with free variables among and all sets , the biconditional . Here is its finite set code. This is a scheme of requirements, not a single first-order assertion quantifying over ambient truths. The companion refutation tests this exact scheme by one formula built from the proposed . No sentence-only arithmetized diagonal lemma or representability theorem is asserted here. Conventions and prerequisites: thm-relativization-and-set-satisfaction. (Set truth and the Tarski interface)
There is a canonical total capture-avoiding substitution on formulas, obtained by renaming obstructing binders using least unused variable indices. It replaces the original free occurrences of and satisfies Canonicity refers to the specified coding and traversal, not to literal invariance under other fresh-variable conventions. (Canonical capture-avoiding substitution)
Refutation
Fix a proposed . Rename bound variables and use capture-avoiding simultaneous replacement of its four free slots to form the pure membership formula . This notation means slot replacement in , not an added predicate symbol. Its only possible free variables are , and its finite code is a set.
The demanded instance for this , and gives . The definition of gives . Therefore that one instance equates a proposition with its negation, which is impossible in classical logic. This refutes every proposed without a sentence-only arithmetization theorem.
Sources
- Weiss, An Introduction to Set Theory (2014) — chapter 1 pp.17–18, nonempty-set formula.
- Weiss, An Introduction to Set Theory (2014) — chapter 1 worked substitution pp.17–18.
- Weiss, An Introduction to Set Theory (2014) — chapter 1 pp.20–21.
- Moschovakis, Lecture Notes in Logic (2014) — x1.3.2 p.48, adapted from arithmetic to a finite structure.
- Schlicht, Mathematical Logic (2021) — Theorem 2.4.1 and complete proof pp.37–38.