Size Matters in Univalent Foundations

We investigate predicative aspects of constructive univalent foundations. By predicative and constructive, we respectively mean that we do not assume Voevodsky's propositional resizing axioms or excluded middle. Our work complements existing work on predicative mathematics by exploring what cannot be done predicatively in univalent foundations. Our first main result is that nontrivial (directed or bounded) complete posets are necessarily large. That is, if such a nontrivial poset is small, then weak propositional resizing holds. It is possible to derive full propositional resizing if we strengthen nontriviality to positivity. The distinction between nontriviality and positivity is analogous to the distinction between nonemptiness and inhabitedness. Moreover, we prove that locally small, nontrivial (directed or bounded) complete posets necessarily lack decidable equality. We prove our results for a general class of posets, which includes directed complete posets, bounded complete posets and sup-lattices. Secondly, we show that each of Zorn's lemma, Tarski's greatest fixed point theorem and Pataraia's lemma implies propositional resizing. Hence, these principles are inherently impredicative and a predicative development of order theory must therefore do without them. Thirdly, we clarify, in our predicative setting, the relation between the traditional definition of sup-lattice that requires suprema for all subsets and our definition that asks for suprema of all small families. Finally, we investigate the inter-definability and interaction of type universes of propositional truncations and set quotients in the absence of propositional resizing axioms.