Using Yoneda's lemma to "guess" the definition of exponential object in $SET$

79 Views Asked by At

Like what the title said, I want to use Yoneda's lemma to "guess" the definition of exponential object in $SET$. So basically I want to say that given any two sets $A, B$ in $SET$, the exponential object "$A^B$" exists in the category of sets. So let's pretend for a moment, that a person has no notions of set theory, how would one give an good guess on how we should define "$A^B$". I have seen similar things being done using Yoneda's lemma on the category of presheafs, but I want to take a step back even further, just to see how to use Yoneda's lemma in this manner.

Cheers

1

There are 1 best solutions below

2
On BEST ANSWER

This depends on how you define the exponential object at all. Without any knowledge of set theory, how do you motivate the isomorphism $\mathcal{C}(A, B^C) \simeq \mathcal{C}(A \times C, B)$?

If you accept that, though, it becomes fairly clear. $A^B \simeq \mathcal{Set}(1, A^B) \simeq \mathcal{Set}(1 \times B, A) \simeq \mathcal{Set}(B, A)$. So $A^B$ is the set of functions from $B$ to $A$ (if it exists at all: you'll still need to check that $\mathcal{Set}(A, B^C) \simeq \mathcal{Set}(A \times C, B)$ in general).