Definition of sum of ordinals

elementary-set-theoryordinals

I've defined the sum of ordinals inductively as:

\begin{align}\alpha+0&=\alpha \\
\alpha+(\beta+1)&=(\alpha+\beta)+1\\
\alpha+\lambda&=\sup\{\alpha+\beta\,|\,\beta<\lambda\}\quad \mbox{(if $\lambda$ is a limit ordinal)} \end{align}

The question is: is it equivalent to define the sum of ordinals inductively as $\alpha+\lambda=\sup\{\alpha+\beta\,|\,\beta<\lambda\}$ for evey ordinal $\alpha,\lambda$ even if $\lambda$ is not a limit ordinal? What goes wrong?

Best Answer

This goes wrong for successors (unsurprisingly). For example, suppose that $\lambda = 1$, then $$ \sup \{ \alpha + \beta : \beta < \lambda \} = \sup \{ \alpha + 0 \} = \alpha. $$ In fact, it goes wrong for every successor ordinal. Let's say $\lambda = \gamma + 1$ for some $\gamma$, then: $$ \sup \{ \alpha + \beta : \beta < \lambda \} = \sup \{ \alpha + \beta : \beta < \gamma + 1 \} = \sup \{ \alpha + \beta : \beta \leq \gamma \} = \alpha + \gamma. $$

Of course, "going wrong" here is not really a precise term. An operation $\oplus$, defined inductively by $\alpha \oplus 0 = \alpha$ and $\alpha \oplus \beta = \sup \{ \alpha \oplus \gamma : \gamma < \beta \}$ for $\beta > 0$, is a perfectly fine definition. It is just not an interesting one, because the above essentially shows that $\alpha \oplus \beta = \alpha$ for all $\alpha$ and $\beta$. So "going wrong" here would mean that this operation does not really define addition as we would expect.

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