Abstract. In the framework of ZF, i.e., Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory without the axiom of choice AC, we show that if the family of all non-empty, closed subsets of a metric space (X, d) has a choice function, then so does the family of all non-empty, open subsets of X. In addition, we establish that the converse is not provable in ZF.We also show that the statement "every subspace of the real line R with the standard topology has a choice function for its family of all closed, non-empty subsets" is equivalent to the weak choice form "every continuum sized family of non-empty subsets of reals has a choice function".
Notation and terminologyIn the following, each of the statements "Form x" has been considered in [5], where all known implications between these forms are given in Table 1; see http:// www.math.purdue.edu/˜jer /Papers/conseq.html.
Definition 1.(1) Let (X, T ) be a topological space. (1a) X is said to be a Loeb space iff the family of all non-empty, closed subsets of X has a choice function. (1b) X is said to be selective iff the family of all non-empty, open subsets of X has a choice function. (1c) X is called second countable if it has a countable base for T . (1d) X is called separable if it has a countable dense subset.