Paper detail

Stack semantics and the comparison of material and structural set theories

We extend the usual internal logic of a (pre)topos to a more general interpretation, called the stack semantics, which allows for "unbounded" quantifiers ranging over the class of objects of the topos. Using well-founded relations inside the stack semantics, we can then recover a membership-based (or "material") set theory from an arbitrary topos, including even set-theoretic axiom schemas such as collection and separation which involve unbounded quantifiers. This construction reproduces the models of Fourman-Hayashi and of algebraic set theory, when the latter apply. It turns out that the axioms of collection and replacement are always valid in the stack semantics of any topos, while the axiom of separation expressed in the stack semantics gives a new topos-theoretic axiom schema with the full strength of ZF. We call a topos satisfying this schema "autological."