IV.22.
Set Theory
guess that every game is determined, but actually it is
quite easy, using AC, to prove the existence of a game
that is not determined.
It turns out that the determinacy of the games asso-
ciated with certain classes of sets of reals implies that
all sets in the class have properties similar to those of
the Borel sets. For example, the axiom of determinacy
(AD), which asserts that all sets of reals are determined,
implies that every set of reals is Lebesgue measurable,
has the property of Baire (i.e., differs from an open set
by a set of first category), and has the perfect set prop-
erty (i.e., contains a perfect set if it is uncountable). To
give the flavor of a typical argument, let us indicate why
every set A of reals is Lebesgue measurable.
First, one observes that it is enough to show that if
all measurable subsets of A are null, then A itself must
be null. And for this one plays, for every ε > 0, the
covering game for A and ε. In this game, player I plays
so that the sequence a = n0 , n2 , n4 , . . .  represents
an element of A, and player II plays (binary encodings
of) finite unions of rational intervals, with measures
adding up to at most ε, while attempting to cover a.
It can be shown that if every measurable subset of A is
null, then player I cannot have a winning strategy. So by
AD there must be a winning strategy for II. Using this
strategy one can show that the outer measure of A is
at most ε. And since this works for all ε > 0, A must
be null.
While AD rules out the existence of badly behaved
sets of reals, it implies the negation of AC, so AD is
inconsistent with ZFC. However, weaker versions of AD
are compatible with, and even follow from, ZFC. Indeed,
Donald Martin proved in 1975 that ZFC implies that
every Borel set is determined. Moreover, if there exists a
measurable cardinal, then every analytic set, and there-
fore also every coanalytic set, is determined. A natural
question, therefore, is whether the existence of larger
cardinals implies the determinacy of more complex
sets such as the Σ21 sets.
The intimate connection between large cardinals and
the determinacy of simple sets of reals was first made
explicit by Leo Harrington, who showed that the deter-
minacy of all analytic sets is in fact equivalent to a
large-cardinal principle slightly weaker than the exis-
tence of a measurable cardinal. As we shall shortly see,
large cardinals imply the determinacy of certain sim-
ply definable sets of reals, the so-called projective sets,
while the determinacy of those sets implies in turn the
existence of the same kind of large cardinals in some
inner models.
631
9 Projective Sets and
Descriptive Set Theory
As we have seen, very basic questions about sets of
real numbers can be extremely hard to answer. How-
ever, it often turns out to be possible to answer them
for sets that occur “in nature,” or that can be explicitly
described. This raises the hope that one might be able
to prove facts about definable sets of reals that cannot
be proved for arbitrary sets.
The study of the structure of definable sets of reals is
the subject of descriptive set theory. Examples of such
sets are the Borel sets, and also the projective sets,
which are sets that can be obtained from Borel sets by
taking continuous images and complements. An equiv-
alent definition of the projective sets is that they are
subsets of R that can be obtained from closed subsets
of Rn by a mixture of projecting to a lower dimension
and taking complements. To see how this relates to
definability, consider projecting a subset A ⊂ R2 down
to the x-axis. The result will be the set of all x such
that there exists y with (x, y) ∈ A. Thus, projection
corresponds to existential quantification. Taking com-
plements corresponds to negation, so one can combine
the two and obtain universal quantification as well. One
can therefore think of a projective set as a set that is
definable from a closed set.
Since analytic sets are continuous images of Borel
sets, they are projective. And so are the complements
of the analytic sets, the coanalytic sets, and the con-
tinuous images of coanalytic sets, the Σ21 sets. More
complex projective sets are obtained by taking com-
plements of Σ21 sets, the so-called Π21 sets, their contin-
uous images, called Σ31 , etc. The projective sets form a
hierarchy of increasing complexity, in accordance with
the number of steps (always finite) that are necessary
to obtain them from the Borel sets. Many sets of reals
that appear naturally in usual mathematical practice
are projective. Moreover, the results and techniques of
descriptive set theory, although originally developed
for the study of sets of reals, also apply to definable
sets in any Polish space (a separable and complete-
metrizable space). These include basic examples such
as Rn , C, separable banach spaces [III.62], etc., where
projective sets arise in a very natural way. For example,
in the space C[0, 1] of continuous real-valued functions
on [0, 1] with the sup norm, the set of everywhere dif-
ferentiable functions is coanalytic, and the set of func-
tions that satisfy the mean value theorem is Π21 . Thus,
since descriptive set theory deals with rather natural