Sizes and filtrations in accessible categories

Abstract

Accessible categories admit a purely category-theoretic replacement for cardinality: the internal size. Generalizing results and methods from arXiv:1708.06782, we examine set-theoretic problems related to internal sizes and prove several L\"owenheim-Skolem theorems for accessible categories. For example, assuming the singular cardinal hypothesis, we show that a large accessible category has an object in all internal sizes of high-enough cofinality. We also prove that accessible categories with directed colimits have filtrations: any object of sufficiently high internal size is (the retract of) a colimit of a chain of strictly smaller objects.