The Continuum Hypothesis is an Open Problem

I adhere to Bourbakis set theory and terminology (see [1]).

I think that, for any relation R, there is no Bourbakis assemblage corre-

sponding to the statement R is undecidable. Thus, there can be no proof of this
statement.

More generally there is, in texts of people like Godel and Cohen, something I
find puzzling.

Recall Hilberts quotation: it must be possible to replace in all geometric

statements the words point, line, plane by table, chair, mug; take your favorite
text of Godel or Cohen (like [2] or [3]); and replace the words integer and set
(when these words are employed in their mathematical sense) by, say, word1
and word2.

Many words have at the same time a usual meaning and a mathematical one
and its vital to distinguish these two meanings. In most of the cases this dis-
tinction is easy to make: for example for words like group, ring, field, . . .
For words like integer and set, the distinction is not as easy to make, but not
less important. (Some people would say that, in mathematics, the word set is
a primitive one and has no definition. Indeed its not so easy to find a mathe-
matical definition of the word set. The only one I know is that of Bourbaki [1],
p. II.1.) Strictly speaking, we have no more reasons to expect mathematical inte-
gers and mathematical sets to behave like real world integers and real world
sets, than we have to expect mathematical rings to behave like real world rings.
(Lets not be afraid of Virginia Woolf!) Of course this also applies to many
other words (or strings of words) like equal, proof, there exists, for all,
and, or, not, . . . (This is crucial for instance to understand why different
sets can be equal although intuitively two sets are equal only if they are the
same set.)

People like Godel and Cohen believe that some statements about integers and
sets are true in an absolute sense, independently of any axiom. (Such would be
the case, I presume, of a statement like 0=0.) This conviction of reasoning in the
absolute is clearly stated by Cohen in [2]:

It should be emphasized that these functions are real mathematical objects and
not objects of any formal system . . . (P. 26-27.)

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The theorems of the previous section are not results about what can be proved in
particular axiom systems; they are absolute statements about functions. (P. 39.)

It seems fair to paraphrase Cohen as follows:

I prove some things about functions, but I need no assumption whatsoever to

prove these things; in fact I dont even need to say what a function is.

It seems to me that such a claim of doing mathematics without definitions or

hypothesis would not be accepted in other fields of mathematics. If I proved the
Riemann Hypothesis without ever using the definition of a complex number, who
would take me seriously?

Its worth giving another quote from [2]. Cohen introduces a formal sys-
tem Z1 supposed to formalize the nonnegative integers, and considers (in Z1 )
a certain statement denoted A. He writes on p. 41:

We have now arrived at a rather peculiar situation. On the one hand A is

not provable in Z1 and yet we have just given an informal proof that A is true.
(There is no contradiction here since we have merely shown that the proofs in Z1
do not exhaust the set of all acceptable arguments.)

What does true mean? What is an informal proof? What is an acceptable

argument?

In my humble opinion, mathematical logicians should state (and prove) pre-

cise mathematical results (using standard axioms and definitions), and indicate the
metamathematical interpretations that these results can be given. An example of
this is the Appendix on pages I.42 to I.46 of Bourbaki [1]. Mathematical logicians
may very well have convincing arguments for the undecidability of the Continuum
Hypothesis but these should be presented for what they are: convincing argu-
ments, not proofs . . .

I think that understanding the status of the various statements (in particular
distinguishing mathematical and metamathematical statements) is the key point.
It seems wise to use the words theorem, proof and true only in their math-
ematical sense (in particular true should be just a synonym of provable, as in
[1]). In [1], even if the distinction mathematics/metamathematics is clearly made,
it is still somewhat subtile. For instance, theorems are not given mathematical
proofs. Instead were presented with metamathematical arguments showing the
existence of such proofs. In principle the patient enough reader can, thanks to

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these arguments, write down the mathematical proofs. If one doesnt pay enough
attention to this point, one can get the feeling that Bourbaki uses induction before
having formally defined the natural numbers. (Take for example CF7 p. I.20: both
the statement and its proof are metamathematical; the reader can ignore them al-
together.) This is very well explained in the Introduction of [1]. On the whole,
Bourbakis reader is supposed to do quite a lot of thinking. To take another ex-
ample, on p. I.45, in the Appendix mentioned above, Bourbaki writes Suppose
that the set S is the set of the signs of a mathematical theory T . Of course,
strictly speaking, this doesnt make any sense (because there is no assemblage
corresponding to such a set); but, again, the reader bothered by this can rewrite
the appendix in a more cautious way, . . . or just skip it. Here is another slight
incoherence in Bourbakis terminology. One reads on page II.1 that the words set
and term of set theory are strictly synonymous. But one considers on page II.4
the set whose sole elements are x and y. Of course no such set can exist if one
sticks to the given definition.

The distinction between mathematics and metamathematics is also very clear

in Kleene [4]. But, whereas Bourbaki uses metamathematics only to make the
text more readable, Kleene (like Godel and Cohen) regards metamathematical
reasonings as being true in an absolute sense. (Im taking this opportunity to
point out a surprising confusion between axioms and axiom schemata on pages
206 and 207 of [4]. This confusion is easy to fix, but it occurs in the book which,
of all books, was perhaps the least likely to contain it.)

To digress a bit, people define, say, an endofunctor of the category of sets as

being given (among other things) by a endomap of the class of all sets into itself.
They know that there is no set of all sets, but they seem to believe that it suffices
to use another word to make the notion exist. However, again, there is no as-
semblage corresponding to the class of all sets. In contrast, they dont consider
classes equipped with group structures, but insist (rightly) that the elements of
a group form a set. For categories, the most natural approach is probably to adopt
Grothendiecks Universes Axiom. Sometime people abstain from introducing this
Axiom, saying things are already complicated and abstract enough without it.
But, far from being a luxury, this Axiom is a logical necessity. (Of course there
might be other ways to overcome the difficulty, but pulling a new word out of
ones hat isnt one of them.)

In conclusion Ill repeat my surprise at the following fact. It seems unan-

imously accepted that mathematical logicians take openly the right to prove
statements about things like integers and sets without saying what they mean by
proof, by integer, by set, and without using any axiom whereas such

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practices are prohibited in the other fields of mathematics. The most common
form of this practice is the distinction between provable and true statements,
especially for statements about integers never giving any definition of this no-
tion of truth. If mathematical logicians confined themselves to secondary issues,
like the Regularity Axiom, or even the Incompleteness Theorem, this wouldnt be
so serious. But were dealing with the Continuum Hypothesis! Isnt it surprising
that the undecidability of the Continuum Hypothesis the number one Hilberts
problem! was so easily taken for granted by the mathematical community? If
a majority of mathematicians accepted this undecidability, this would have been a
surprise. If a vast majority accepted it, this would have been an enormous surprise.
But the unanimity existing on this issue seems almost unbelievable!

The underlying question is of course: what is mathematics? or more

precisely: where can one find a serious presentation of mathematics? The only
such presentation I know is Bourbakis [1]. And Ive never seen any text showing
(or even claiming) that the Continuum Hypothesis is undecidable in Bourbakis
theory. A lot of people refer to the so-called Zermelo-Fraenkel theory but
Ive never seen any presentation of this theory whose thoroughness compares with
that of [1].

References
[1] Bourbaki, N. Theorie des ensembles. Hermann, Paris 1970.
[2] Cohen, Paul J. Set theory and the Continuum Hypothesis. W. A. Benjamin,
Inc., New York-Amsterdam 1966.
[3] Godel, Kurt. Uber formal unentscheidbare Satze der Principia Mathematica
und verwandter Systeme, I. (On formally undecidable propositions of Prin-
cipia Mathematica and related systems I.) Monatshefte fur Mathematik und
Physik 38: 173-98 (1931).
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/h/hirzel/papers/canon00-goedel.pdf
https://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-hirzel/canon00-goedel-
errata.txt
[4] Kleene, S. C. Mathematical Logic. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York-
London-Sydney 1967.

continuum-hypothesis.100616 Pierre-Yves Gaillard