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I'm not the most category-theoretic person but I have run into the following statement in my work. Suppose we have a category duality $\mathcal F:\mathcal C\to\mathcal D$. For my needs you can probably assume that $\mathcal C$ and $\mathcal D$ are as nice as you want but I think it suffices for them to be locally small well-powered and co-well-powered (so that the subobjects or quotient objects of a given object form a set, thank you, Zhen Lin). I believe that for any object $X$ in $\mathcal C$ such an $\mathcal F$ will induce a bijection between the subobjects of $X$ and the quotient objects of $\mathcal F(X)$ by simply sending the class of a monomorphism $\alpha$ to the class of the epimorphism $\mathcal F(\alpha)$. This appears semi-obvious and a detailed proof is easy to give but it is a bit longer than I'd like to put in my paper, since the subject is something else completely. So my question is: what would be a reference for a statement of this form, preferably in a textbook on category theory.

For context, I'd like to apply this when $\mathcal C$ is the category of finite posets, $\mathcal D$ is the category of finite distributive lattices and $\mathcal F$ is the functor sending a poset to the the lattice of its order ideals. Also, the dual statement is, of course, the even more intuitive claim that a category equivalence induces bijections between sets of subobjects. A reference for that would also be nice but I'm hoping for the above precise form.

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    $\begingroup$ Locally small does not imply that the (isomorphism classes) of subobjects or quotient objects of a fixed object form a small collection. That is the condition of being (co)wellpowered, which is different. $\endgroup$
    – Zhen Lin
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 1:12
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    $\begingroup$ @ZhenLin Right you are, thanks! What got me confused is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subobject#Definitions which says that "if the subobject-collection of every object is a set, the category is called well-powered or sometimes locally small". It made me assume "locally small" in the conventional sense would be enough since "morphisms forming a set" is kinda what we want. But it isn't, of course. $\endgroup$ Commented May 14, 2021 at 1:19
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    $\begingroup$ The usage of "locally small" to mean "well-powered" is pretty archaic, I think. I'm surprised it's even mentioned on Wikipedia. $\endgroup$ Commented May 14, 2021 at 2:29
  • $\begingroup$ All one can say about a question like this is that you have picked up some very confused ideas about what category theory does. Just because the axiomatisation of the subject is symmetric in the direction of the arrows does not mean that any particular category is dual in the sense you suggest or otherwise. It would be best to formulate whatever argument you have in mind in non-categorical language and then try to understand how the components of that argument are captured by categorical ideas. $\endgroup$ Commented May 14, 2021 at 8:07

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