Definition 4.11.1. Suppose that X, Y are objects of a category \mathcal{C} and that a, b : X \to Y are morphisms. We say a morphism c : Y \to Z is a coequalizer for the pair (a, b) if c \circ a = c \circ b and if (Z, c) satisfies the following universal property: For every morphism t : Y \to W in \mathcal{C} such that t \circ a = t \circ b there exists a unique morphism s : Z \to W such that t = s \circ c.
4.11 Coequalizers
As in the case of the pushouts above, coequalizers when they exist are unique up to unique isomorphism, and this follows from the uniqueness of equalizers upon considering the opposite category. There is a straightforward generalization of this definition to the case where we have more than 2 morphisms.
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