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David E Speyer
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Let $F=G$ be the functor with $F(X)$ equal to set of the subsets of $X$, and, for $f: X \to Y$ and $S \subseteq X$, we put $F(f)(S) = f(S)$.

Let $k$ be a positive integer. We define a natural transformation $\phi_k : F \to G$ as follows: $$\phi_k(S) = \begin{cases} S & |S| \geq k \\ \emptyset & |S| < k \end{cases}.$$

Clearly, all the $\phi_k$ are distinct natural transformations.


When studying functors $F$ from the category of finite sets or related categories, one usually wants to impose some sort of finite generation condition, saying roughly that there is some integer $N$ such that any subfunctor of $F$ which agrees with $F$ on sets of size $\leq N$ is the same as $F$. One does this precisely to avoid this sort of trickery with the functor $X \mapsto 2^X$. For example, Eric Ramos, Graham White and I classify functors from FI to FinSet with a finite generation hypothesis and my student John Wiltshire-Gordon classified functors from FinSet to $\mathbb{Q}$-Vect under a similar hypothesis. These are the two papers I know which come closest to studying functors from FinSet to FinSet.

David E Speyer
  • 156.3k
  • 14
  • 422
  • 763