New Foundations is consistent

2.1 Conventions

  • We are working in Lean’s type theory, so cardinals and ordinals are quotients of a large type. In particular, cardinals are not just specific ordinals, and types cannot be ordinals.

  • We write \( \# \tau \) for the cardinality of a type \( \tau \).

  • If \( \tau \) is a type endowed with a well-order \( {\lt} \), we write \( \operatorname {\mathsf{ot}}(\tau ) \) for the order type of \( \tau \) with this well-ordering.

  • The initial ordinal corresponding to a cardinal \( c \) is denoted \( \operatorname {\mathsf{ord}}(c) \). The cofinality of an ordinal \( o \) is \( \operatorname {\mathsf{cof}}(o) \), and this is a cardinal.

  • The symmetric difference of two sets is denoted \( s \mathrel {\triangle }t :=(s \setminus t) \cup (t \setminus s) \). Note that \( (s \mathrel {\triangle }t) \cup (s \cap t) = s \cup t \), and the union on the left-hand side is disjoint.

  • We use \( f[s] \) for the direct image \( \{ f(x) \mid x \in s \} \). We write \( f^{-1}[s] \) for the inverse image \( \{ x \mid f(x) \in s \} \), and \( f^{-1}(x) \) for the fibre \( \{ y \mid f(y) = x \} \).

  • For any type \( \alpha \), we write \( \operatorname {\mathsf{Part}}\alpha \) for the type \( \sum _{p : \mathsf{Prop}} (p \to \alpha ) \).