TITLE: Topology and axiom of choice
QUESTION [16 upvotes]: It it an easy exercise to show that if $X$ is first-countable then for every point $x$ and every subset $A$ we have $x \in \text{cl}A$ iff there exists a sequence $(x_n)_n$ that converges to $x$.
Well, this uses the axiom of choice to create the sequence (I think). What would happen if we don't have that? (I know that in topology it is much better to have AC but I want to figure out what happens).

REPLY [7 votes]: Note that depending on the way you've defined the topology and how you want to use it, you may need choice to get the countable base at each point in your space.  Thus even if you have dependent (countable) choice, there may be subtleties.
For example, suppose we work in ZF+DC+AD.  Then $\omega_1$ with the usual topology is first-countable and we can even exhibit a countable local base at each point $\aleph\in\omega_1$, namely the collection of half-open intervals
$\{(\beta,\alpha] : \beta<\alpha\}$ --- we can even order this in order-type $\omega$.  However, we cannot uniformly order all the bases in order-type $\omega$.  That is, there is no function $f:\omega_1\times\omega\to P(\omega_1)$ such that $\{f(\alpha,n) : n\in\omega\}$ is a local base at $\alpha$.  (Recall that AD implies that there is no sequence $\{C_\lambda\subseteq\lambda\}_{\lambda\in\omega_1}$ such that $C_\lambda$ is a cofinal subset of $\lambda$ with order-type $\omega$.