Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, 1967. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliography.

Kant's antinomies are exercises designed to illustrate the limits of human reasoning. He skillfully juxtaposes pairs of arguments and exposes the dangerous propensity for human reasoning to stretch beyond the conditioned and into the transcendental ideas of the unconditional. Kant believes this is a natural process and affirms the limits of pure reason in so much as they should prevent us from believing that we can truly know anything about the unconditional. His first antimony addresses the possibility of a beginning in time or no beginning in time. This thesis will focus on this first antinomy and critically assesses it in set theoretic terms. It is this author's belief that the mathematical nuances of infinite sets and the understanding of mathematical objects bear relevance to the proper interpretation of this antinomy. Ultimately, this composition will illustrate that Kant's argument in the first antinomy is flawed because it fails to account for infinite bounded sets and a conceptualization of the infinite as a mathematical object of reason.

The purpose of this thesis is to present an axiomatic foundation for the development of the natural numbers from two points of view. It makes no claim at originality other than at the point of organization and presentation of previously developed works.

Let G be a Polish group. We say that G is an algebraically determined Polish group if given any Polish group L and any algebraic isomorphism from L to G, then the algebraic isomorphism is a topological isomorphism. We will prove a general theorem that gives useful sufficient conditions for a semidirect product of two Polish groups to be algebraically determined. This will smooth the way for the proofs for some special groups. For example, let H be a separable Hilbert space and let G be a subset of the unitary group U(H) acting transitively on the unit sphere. Assume that -I in G and G is a Polish topological group in some topology such that H x G to H, (x,U) to U(x) is continuous, then H x G is a Polish topological group. Hence H x G is an algebraically determined Polish group. In addition, we apply the above the above result on the unitary group U(A) of a separable irreducible C*-algebra A with identity acting transitively on the unit sphere in a separable Hilbert space H and proved that the natural semidirect product H x U(A) is an algebraically determined Polish group. A similar theorem is true for the natural semidirect product R^{n} x G(n), where G(n) = GL(n,R), or GL^{+}(n,R), or SL(n,R), or |SL(n,R)|={A in GL(n,R) : |det(A)|=1}. On the other hand, it is known that the Heisenberg group H_{3}(R) , (R, +), (R{0}, x), and GL^{+}(n,R) are not algebraically determined Polish groups.

The results from this dissertation are an exact computation of ultrapowers by measures on cardinals $\aleph\sb{n},\ n\in w$, in $L(\IR$), and a proof that ordinals in $L(\IR$) below $\delta\sbsp{5}{1}$ represented by descriptions and the identity function with respect to sequences of measures are cardinals. An introduction to the subject with the basic definitions and well known facts is presented in chapter I. In chapter II, we define a class of measures on the $\aleph\sb{n},\ n\in\omega$, in $L(\IR$) and derive a formula for an exact computation of the ultrapowers of cardinals by these measures. In chapter III, we give the definitions of descriptions and the lowering operator. Then we prove that ordinals represented by descriptions and the identity function are cardinals. This result combined with the fact that every cardinal $<\delta\sbsp{5}{1}$ in $L(\IR$) is represented by a description (J1), gives a characterization of cardinals in $L(\IR$) below $\delta\sbsp{5}{1}. Concrete examples of formal computations are shown in chapter IV.

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We consider questions involving two different variations of Schmidt's game: the rho game and the HAW (Hyperplane Absolutely Winning) game.

We give some background on the free part of the action of tuples of integers into 2. We will construct specific structures on this space, and then show that certain other structures cannot exist.