On 02/05/13 03:46, Toby Bartels wrote:
Jean B?nabou wrote in small part:
The one [notion of equivalence of categories] which might serve here is f full and faithful and essentially surjective. But unless we have AC it is not symmetric, even for A and B small.
Then the obvious thing to try is to symmetrise it: An equivalence between A and B is a span A<- X -> B of fully faithful and essentially surjective functors.
--Toby
Equivalence of categories in practice is highly non symmetric. Usually one direction is defined and canonical, and the other is choice dependent and as such they are many of them. A definition of equivalence should reflect this fact, thus, it is not "a pair of functors such etc etc", but, either "A FUNCTOR full and faithful and essentially surjective", or "A FUNCTOR such that there exist a quasi inverse" if you do not want to use choice. e.d. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]