Tarski-Grothendieck set theory starts with conventional Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and then adds “Tarski's axiom”. We will use the axioms, definitions, and notation of Mizar to describe it. Mizar's basic objects and processes are fully formal; they are described informally below. First, let us assume that:
Given any set, the singleton exists.
Given any two sets, their unordered and ordered pairs exist.
TG includes the following axioms, which are conventional because they are also part of ZFC:
Set axiom: Quantified variables range over sets alone; everything is a set.
Extensionality axiom: Two sets are identical if they have the same members.
Axiom of regularity: No set is a member of itself, and circular chains of membership are impossible.
Axiom schema of replacement: Let the domain of the function be the set. Then the range of is also a set.
It is Tarski's axiom that distinguishes TG from other axiomatic set theories. Tarski's axiom also implies the axioms of infinity, choice, and power set. It also implies the existence of inaccessible cardinals, thanks to which the ontology of TG is much richer than that of conventional set theories such as ZFC.
Tarski's axiom. For every set, there exists a set whose members include:
- itself; - every subset of every member of ; - the power set of every member of ; - every subset of of cardinality less than that of. More formally: where “” denotes the power class of x and “” denotes equinumerosity. What Tarski's axiom states for each set there is a Grothendieck universe it belongs to. That looks much like a “universal set” for – it not only has as members the powerset of, and all subsets of, it also has the powerset of that powerset and so on – its members are closed under the operations of taking powerset or taking a subset. It's like a “universal set” except that of course it is not a member of itself and is not a set of all sets. That's the guaranteed Grothendieck universe it belongs to. And then any such is itself a member of an even larger “almost universal set” and so on. It's one of the strong cardinality axioms guaranteeing vastly more sets than one normally assumes to exist.
Implementation in the Mizar system
The Mizar language, underlying the implementation of TG and providing its logical syntax, is typed and the types are assumed to be non-empty. Hence, the theory is implicitly taken to be non-empty. The existence axioms, e.g. the existence of the unordered pair, is also implemented indirectly by the definition of term constructors. The system includes equality, the membership predicate and the following standard definitions:
Singleton: A set with one member;
Unordered pair: A set with two distinct members. ;
Ordered pair: The set ;
Subset: A set all of whose members are members of another given set;
The union of a family of sets : The set of all members of any member of.
Implementation in Metamath
The Metamath system supports arbitrary higher-order logics, but it is typically used with the "set.mm" definitions of axioms. The adds Tarski's axiom, which in Metamath is defined as follows: ⊢ ∃y ∧ ∃w ∈ y ∀v) ∧ ∀z)
