Definition 1. For a set S and a cardinal κ,In particular, 2ω denotes the power set of the natural numbers and not the cardinal 2ℵ0. We regard 2ω as a topological space with the usual product topology.Definition 2. A set S ⊆ 2ω is Ramsey if there is an M ∈ [ω]ω such that either [M]ω ⊆ S or else [M]ω ⊆ 2ω − S.Erdös and Rado [3, Example 1, p. 434] showed that not every S ⊆ 2ω is Ramsey. In view of the nonconstructive character of the counterexample, one might expect (as Dana Scott has suggested) that all sufficiently definable sets are Ramsey. In fact, our main result (Theorem 2) is that all Borei sets are Ramsey. Soare [10] has applied this result to some problems in recursion theory.The first positive result on Scott's problem was Ramsey's theorem [8, Theorem A]. The next advance was Nash-Williams' generalization of Ramsey's theorem (Corollary 2), which can be interpreted as saying: If S1 and S2 are disjoint open subsets of 2ω, there is an M ∈ [ω]ω such that either [M]ω ⋂ S1 = ∅ or [M]ω ∩ S2 = ⊆. (This is halfway between “clopen sets are Ramsey” and “open sets are Ramsey.”) Then Galvin [4] stated a generalization of Nash-Williams' theorem (Corollary 1) which says, in effect, that open sets are Ramsey; this was discovered independently by Andrzej Ehrenfeucht, Paul Cohen, and probably many others, but no proof has been published.
The properties of small cardinals such as ℵ1 tend to be much more complex than those of large cardinals, so that properties of ℵ1 may often be better understood by viewing them as large cardinal properties. In this paper we show that the existence of a precipitous ideal on ℵ1 is essentially the same as measurability.If I is an ideal on P(κ) then R(I) is the notion of forcing whose conditions are sets x ∈ P(κ)/I, with x ≤ x′ if x ⊆ x′. Thus a set D R(I)-generic over the ground model V is an ultrafilter on P(κ) ⋂ V extending the filter dual to I. The ideal I is said to be precipitous if κ ⊨R(I)(Vκ/D is wellfounded).One example of a precipitous ideal is the ideal dual to a κ-complete ultrafilter U on κ. This example is trivial since the generic ultrafilter D is equal to U and is already in the ground model. A generic set may be viewed as one that can be worked with in the ground model even though it is not actually in the ground model, so we might expect that cardinals such as ℵ1 that cannot be measurable still might have precipitous ideals, and such ideals might correspond closely to measures.
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