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Answer by Elliot Glazer for Ideal-like filter on a ring not generated by ring ideals

This does not hold for all commutative rings, but it does hold for Noetherian rings and for valuation rings (assuming the convention that filters don't contain $\emptyset,$ or else $\mathcal{P}(R)$ is a trivial counterexample for any ring).

Suppose $R$ is a commutative ring, $F$ is an ideal-like filter on $R,$ and $U_0 \in F$ is such that there is no ideal $I \in F \cap \mathcal{P}(U_0).$ Recursively choose $U_n \in F$ such that $U_{n+1}+U_{n+1} \subset U_n$ and $U_{n+1}=U_{n+1}R.$ Since no $U_n$ is empty or an ideal, we immediately have $U_{n+1} \subsetneq U_n.$

For $n \ge 1,$ we recursively choose $u_n \in U_n$ for $n \ge 1$ as follows: first, let $u_1$ be any element of $U_1 \setminus U_2.$ Suppose $u_1, \ldots, u_n$ have been chosen. An inductive argument shows that $I_n:=\langle u_1, \ldots, u_n \rangle \subset U_0,$ so $I_n \not \in F.$ Let $u_{n+1}$ be any element of $U_{n+1} \setminus I_n.$ Then $\{I_n\}$ is a strictly increasing sequence of ideals, so $R$ is non-Noetherian. Furthermore, $\langle u_1 \rangle$ and $\langle u_2 \rangle$ are incomparable, so $R$ is not a valuation ring.

Now we'll construct a commutative ring $R$ with an ideal-like filter $F$ not generated by ring ideals. Let $R = C^{\infty}(S^1)$ be the ring of smooth real-valued functions on the circle. Every maximal ideal in $R$ is of the form $\mathfrak{m}_x=\{f \in R: f(x)=0\}$ for some $x \in S^1$ (see https://math.stackexchange.com/a/183213/210610). Let$A_n=\{f \in R: \lambda(f^{-1}(0))> 1- \frac{1}{n}\},$ and let $F$ be the filter on $R$ generated by the $A_n$'s, i.e.$$F=\bigcup_{n=1}^{\infty} \{X \subset R: A_n \subset X\}.$$

It's clear that every $X \in F$ is infinite (in fact, $|X|=|\mathbb{R}|$) and that for every finite $S \subset R \setminus \{0\},$$R \setminus S \in F.$ We will show that there is no proper ideal in $F.$ Suppose $I \in F$ is a proper ideal on $R.$ There is $x$ such that $I \subset \mathfrak{m}_x \in F.$ But for every $n,$ there is a bump function in $A_n \setminus \mathfrak{m}_x,$ contradiction. Thus, $U=R \setminus \{1\} \in F$ does not contain any ideal in $F.$

Finally, we verify that $F$ is ideal-like. Fix $U \in F.$ Let $n$ be such that $A_n \subset U.$ Then $V=A_{2n}$ satisfies $V=VR$ and$V+V \subset A_n \subset U.$


Original answer:

This does not hold for all commutative rings, but if $R$ is a Dedekind domain, and we include the filter convention that $\emptyset \not \in F,$ then an ideal-like filter $F$ is generated by ring ideals.

Suppose $F$ is a counterexample. Let $U \in F$ be such that there is no ideal $I \in F \cap \mathcal{P}(U).$ Let $V, W \in F$ be such that $V+V+V \subset U$ and $WR \subset V.$ We may assume $W=WR.$ Since $W$ is nonempty and not an ideal, we can fix a nonzero non-unit $w \in W,$ and prime ideals $P_i$ such that $\langle w \rangle = \prod_{i=1}^n P_i.$

Let $A \subset \{1,\ldots, n\}$ be maximal such that $\prod_{i \in A} P_i \in F.$ Let $X \in F$ be such that $X=XR$ and $\sum_{i=1}^n X \subset W.$ For $j \in A,$ set $x_j=0,$ and otherwise let $x_j$ be an arbitrary element of $X \cap \prod_{i \in A} P_i \setminus \prod_{i \in A \cup \{j\}} P_i,$ which is nonempty since $X \cap \prod_{i \in A} P_i \in F.$ Let $x, y$ be such that $\langle x, y \rangle = \langle x_i: i \le n \rangle \subset W.$ Consider$$I:=\langle w, x, y \rangle \subset (W + W + W) \cap \prod_{i \in A} P_i \subset U \cap \prod_{i \in A} P_i.$$ Since $\prod_{i=1}^n P_i \subset I\subsetneq \prod_{i \in A} P_i \in F,$ there is $B \supsetneq A$ such that $I = \prod_{i \in B} P_i.$

Fix $j \in B \setminus A.$ Then $A \cup \{j\} \subset B$ and $x_j \in \langle x, y \rangle,$ so $x_j \in \prod_{i \in B} P_i \setminus \prod_{i \in A \cup \{j\}} P_i = \emptyset,$ contradiction.


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