On the set-generic multiverse

Sy David Friedman, Sakaé Fuchino, Hiroshi Sakai

Published 2016-07-06Version 1

The forcing method is a powerful tool to prove the consistency of set-theoretic assertions relative to the consistency of the axioms of set theory. Laver's theorem and Bukovsk\'y's theorem assert that set-generic extensions of a given ground model constitute a quite reasonable and sufficiently general class of standard models of set-theory. In sections 2 and 3 of this note, we give a proof of Bukovsk\'y's theorem in a modern setting (for another proof of this theorem see Bukovsk\'y [4]). In section 4 we check that the multiverse of set-generic extensions can be treated as a collection of countable transitive models in a conservative extension of ZFC. The last section then deals with the problem of the existence of infinitely-many independent buttons, which arose in the modal-theoretic approach to the set-generic multiverse by J.Hamkins and B.Loewe [12].