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Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen
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Lattice of subcategories: subobject classifier in Cat

Two short questions:

  • Is there any work classifying the lattice of subcategories of an arbitrary (sufficiently small) category $\mathcal{C}$, similar to the way that the set of subsets of set $\mathcal{S}$ is isomorphic to the functions $\mathcal{S}\to\mathbf{2}$, where $\mathbf{2}$ is a two point set?

  • Is there standard notation denoting the lattice of subcategories of some category?

The definitions found in nLab are phrased in terms of functors going into $\mathcal{C}$, but the definition for sets talks about functions out of the set $\mathcal{S}$. Why are things done differently? That is, rather than characterising subcategories in terms of functors into $\mathcal{C}$, why not characterise them in terms of functors out of $\mathcal{C}$? Something like:

The lattice of subcategories of $\mathcal{C}$ is isomorphic to the functor category $\mathcal{SO}^\mathcal{C}$, for some "subobject classifier" $\mathcal{SO}$.

supercooldave
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