Alphabeta Math
False statementConstruction: Literature-sourcedVerification: AI-adaptedSession-authored (Fable 5 assisted)precheck passaudited 2026-08-26 rests on unproved material (inherited)
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.

Rests on 3 statements not proved in this library, by way of the results it cites. This item cites no such statement directly; it depends on results that do. The unproved premises it inherits are Cohen's first model: an infinite Dedekind-finite set of reals, Sierpiński 1947: the generalised continuum hypothesis implies the Axiom of Choice and The continuum hypothesis and its generalisation are independent of ZFC. Each is recorded with a citation to the literature and is not established here, because the track that would prove it has not yet been developed in this library. Everything else in this proof is proved here.

FALSE: every Kan extension is pointwise

Statement refuted

That every left or right Kan extension is pointwise.

The witness below is a left Kan extension along a fully faithful functor which is not pointwise.

Facts & Assumptions

Given: The discrete category A on two objects ,r; the category D with objects ,m,r and only the two non-identity arrows m and mr; the fully faithful inclusion K:AD; the category E with objects a,b,c,d, identities, and only the two non-identity arrows ca and cb; the functor F:AE with F()=a and F(r)=b; and the extension L:DE with L()=a, L(r)=b, L(m)=c, and the two displayed arrows.

[F1]

A fully faithful functor is one that is bijective on each hom-set (Faithful, full, fully faithful, essentially surjective, and split essentially surjective functors).

[F2]

A left Kan extension is initial among pairs (M,α) with α:FMK, while pointwise left Kan extensions are computed by the comma-category formula (Left and right Kan extensions, Pointwise Kan extensions by the comma-category formula, The comma-category and representable-preservation notions of pointwise Kan extension agree).

[F3]

A pointwise left Kan extension along a fully faithful functor would restrict back by isomorphism to the original functor (A pointwise Kan extension along a fully faithful functor genuinely extends the original functor).

[F4]

An initial object must admit a morphism to every object (Initial object, terminal object, and zero object).

Refutation

technique · direct
1.1

The inclusion K is fully faithful by [F1], and the pair (L,η) with η=1a and ηr=1b is a left Kan extension of F along K: if α:FMK exists, then necessarily M()=a and M(r)=b, since a has no non-identity arrow out of it and neither does b; and because M must carry the arrows m and mr to arrows into a and b, necessarily M(m)=c, the only object of E with arrows to both. Thus M=L and α is forced to be the identity on and r, so there is exactly one natural transformation LM.

F1F2given
2.1

But (Km) is empty: there is no arrow m and no arrow rm in D. If (L,η) were pointwise, [F2] would make L(m)=c the colimit of the empty diagram, hence an initial object of E. This is impossible by [F4], since there is no morphism cd. Therefore (L,η) is a left Kan extension which is not pointwise.

F2F4step 1.1assume-hyp
3.1

So the claim that every Kan extension is pointwise is false. The pointwise hypothesis in [F3] is genuinely needed.

F3step 2.1

Depends on

Used by

Nothing in the library uses this result yet.

Dependency tree · two levels

20 results within two dependency steps of this one, each drawn at its shortest distance from it. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, so the chart reads left to right and ends at this result, which carries a heavier outline. Every node is a link to that result. Click elsewhere on the chart to enlarge it.

Sources