After discussing the limitations inherent to all set-theoretic reflection principles akin to those studied by A. Lévy et. al. in the 1960s, we introduce new principles of reflection based on the general notion of Structural Reflection and argue that they are in strong agreement with the conception of reflection implicit in Cantor’s original idea of the unknowability of the Absolute, which was subsequently developed in the works of Ackermann, Lévy, Gödel, Reinhardt, and others. We then present a comprehensive survey of results showing that different forms of the new principle of Structural Reflection are equivalent to well-known large cardinal axioms covering all regions of the large-cardinal hierarchy, thereby justifying the naturalness of the latter.

The dissertation under comment is a contribution to the area of Set Theory concerned with the interactions between the method of Forcing and the so-called Large Cardinal axioms.

The dissertation is divided into two thematic blocks. In Block I we analyze the large-cardinal hierarchy between the first supercompact cardinal and Vopěnka’s Principle (Part I). In turn, Block II is devoted to the investigation of some problems arising from Singular Cardinal Combinatorics (Part II and Part III).

We commence Part I by investigating the Identity Crisis phenomenon in the region comprised between the first supercompact cardinal and Vopěnka’s Principle. As a result, we generalize Magidor’s classical theorems [2] to this higher region of the large-cardinal hierarchy. Also, our analysis allows to settle all the questions that were left open in [1]. Finally, we conclude Part I by presenting a general theory of preservation of $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals under class forcing iterations. From this analysis we derive several applications. For instance, our arguments are used to show that an extendible cardinal is consistent with “ $(\lambda ^{+\omega })^{\mathrm {HOD}}<\lambda ^+$ , for every regular cardinal $\lambda $ .” In particular, if Woodin’s HOD Conjecture holds, and therefore it is provable in ZFC + “There exists an extendible cardinal” that above the first extendible cardinal every singular cardinal $\lambda $ is singular in HOD and $(\lambda ^+)^{\textrm {{HOD}}}=\lambda ^+$ , there may still be no agreement at all between V and HOD about successors of regular cardinals.

In Part II and Part III we analyse the relationship between the Singular Cardinal Hypothesis (SCH) with other relevant combinatorial principles at the level of successors of singular cardinals. Two of these are the Tree Property and the Reflection of Stationary sets, which are central in Infinite Combinatorics.

Specifically, Part II is devoted to prove the consistency of the Tree Property at both $\kappa ^+$ and $\kappa ^{++}$ , whenever $\kappa $ is a strong limit singular cardinal witnessing an arbitrary failure of the SCH. This generalizes the main result of [3] in two senses: it allows arbitrary cofinalities for $\kappa $ and arbitrary failures for the SCH.

In the last part of the dissertation (Part III) we introduce the notion of $\Sigma $ -Prikry forcing. This new concept allows an abstract and uniform approach to the theory of Prikry-type forcings and encompasses several classical examples of Prikry-type forcing notions, such as the classical Prikry forcing, the Gitik-Sharon poset, or the Extender Based Prikry forcing, among many others.

Our motivation in this part of the dissertation is to prove an iteration theorem at the level of the successor of a singular cardinal. Specifically, we aim for a theorem asserting that every $\kappa ^{++}$ -length iteration with support of size $\leq \kappa $ has the $\kappa ^{++}$ -cc, provided the iterates belong to a relevant class of $\kappa ^{++}$ -cc forcings. While there are a myriad of works on this vein for regular cardinals, this contrasts with the dearth of investigations in the parallel context of singular cardinals. Our main contribution is the proof that such a result is available whenever the class of forcings under consideration is the family of $\Sigma $ -Prikry forcings. Finally, and as an application, we prove that it is consistent—modulo large cardinals—the existence of a strong limit cardinal $\kappa $ with countable cofinality such that $\mathrm {SCH}_\kappa $ fails and every finite family of stationary subsets of $\kappa ^+$ reflects simultaneously.

We describe techniques for constructing models of size continuum in ω steps by simultaneously building a perfect set of enmeshed countable Henkin sets. Such models have perfect, asymptotically similar subsets. We survey applications involving Borel models, atomic models, two-cardinal transfers and models respecting various closure relations.

A set of reals is universally Baire if all of its continuous preimages in topological spaces have the Baire property. ${\sf Sealing}$ is a type of generic absoluteness condition introduced by Woodin that asserts in strong terms that the theory of the universally Baire sets cannot be changed by set forcings. The ${\sf Largest\ Suslin\ Axiom}$ ( ${\sf LSA}$ ) is a determinacy axiom isolated by Woodin. It asserts that the largest Suslin cardinal is inaccessible for ordinal definable surjections. Let ${\sf LSA}$ - ${\sf over}$ - ${\sf uB}$ be the statement that in all (set) generic extensions there is a model of $\sf {LSA}$ whose Suslin, co-Suslin sets are the universally Baire sets. We outline the proof that over some mild large cardinal theory, $\sf {Sealing}$ is equiconsistent with $\sf {LSA}$ - $\sf {over}$ - $\sf {uB}$ . In fact, we isolate an exact theory (in the hierarchy of strategy mice) that is equiconsistent with both (see Definition 3.1). As a consequence, we obtain that $\sf {Sealing}$ is weaker than the theory “ $\sf {ZFC}$ + there is a Woodin cardinal which is a limit of Woodin cardinals.” This significantly improves upon the earlier consistency proof of $\sf {Sealing}$ by Woodin. A variation of $\sf {Sealing}$ , called $\sf {Tower \ Sealing}$ , is also shown to be equiconsistent with $\sf {Sealing}$ over the same large cardinal theory. We also outline the proof that if V has a proper class of Woodin cardinals, a strong cardinal, and a generically universally Baire iteration strategy, then $\sf {Sealing}$ holds after collapsing the successor of the least strong cardinal to be countable. This result is complementary to the aforementioned equiconsistency result, where it is shown that $\sf {Sealing}$ holds in a generic extension of a certain minimal universe. This theorem is more general in that no minimal assumption is needed. A corollary of this is that $\sf {LSA}$ - $\sf {over}$ - $\sf {uB}$ is not equivalent to $\sf {Sealing}$ .

A Martin-Löf random sequence is an infinite binary sequence with the property that every initial segment σ has prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity K(σ) at least ∣σ∣ − c, for some constant c ϵ ω. Informally, initial segments of Martin-Löf randoms are highly complex in the sense that they are not compressible by more than a constant number of bits. However, all Martin-Löf randoms necessarily have contiguous substrings of arbitrarily low complexity. If we demand that all substrings of a sequence be uniformly complex, then we arrive at the notion of shift-complex sequences. In this paper, we collect some of the existing results on these sequences and contribute two new ones. Rumyantsev showed that the measure of oracles that compute shift-complex sequences is zero. We strengthen this result by proving that the Martin-Löf random sequences that do not compute shift-complex sequences are exactly the incomplete ones, in other words, the ones that do not compute the halting problem. In order to do so, we make use of the characterization by Franklin and Ng of the class of incomplete Martin-Löf randoms via a notion of randomness called difference randomness. Turning to the power of shift-complex sequences as oracles, we show that there are shift-complex sequences that do not compute Martin-Löf random (or even Kurtz random) sequences.

Full proofs of the Gödel incompleteness theorems are highly intricate affairs. Much of the intricacy lies in the details of setting up and checking the properties of a coding system representing the syntax of an object language (typically, that of arithmetic) within that same language. These details are seldom illuminating and tend to obscure the core of the argument. For this reason a number of efforts have been made to present the essentials of the proofs of Gödel's theorems without getting mired in syntactic or computational details. One of the most important of these efforts was made by Löb [8] in connection with his analysis of sentences asserting their own provability. Löb formulated three conditions (now known as the Hilbert-Bernays-Löb derivability conditions), on the provability predicate in a formal system which are jointly sufficient to yield the Gödel's second incompleteness theorem for it. A key role in Löb's analysis is played by (a special case of) what later became known as the diagonalization or fixed point property of formal systems, a property which had already, in essence, been exploited by Gödel in his original proofs of the incompleteness theorems. The fixed point property plays a central role in Lawvere's [7] category-theoretic account of incompleteness phenomena (see also [10]).

We announce some new results regarding the classification problem for separable von Neumann algebras. Our results are obtained by applying the notion of Borel reducibility and Hjorth's theory of turbulence to the isomorphism relation for separable von Neumann algebras.

Goodstein’s principle is arguably the first purely number-theoretic statement known to be independent of Peano arithmetic. It involves sequences of natural numbers which at first appear to diverge, but eventually decrease to zero. These sequences are defined relative to a notation system based on exponentiation for the natural numbers. In this article, we provide a self-contained and modern analysis of Goodstein’s principle, obtaining some variations and improvements. We explore notions of optimality for notation systems and apply them to the classical Goodstein process and to a weaker variant based on multiplication rather than exponentiation. In particular, we introduce the notion of base-change maximality, and show how it leads to far-reaching extensions of Goodstein’s result. We moreover show that by varying the initial base of the Goodstein process, one readily obtains independence results for each of the fragments $\mathsf {I}\Sigma _n$ of Peano arithmetic.

We introduce a way of relativizing operational set theory that also takes care of application. After presenting the basic approach and proving some essential properties of this new form of relativization we turn to the notion of relativized regularity and to the system OST (LR) that extends OST by a limit axiom claiming that any set is element of a relativized regular set. Finally we show that OST (LR) is proof-theoretically equivalent to the well-known theory KPi for a recursively inaccessible universe.