We investigate some basic descriptive set theory for countably based completely quasi-metrizable topological spaces, which we refer to as quasi-Polish spaces. These spaces naturally generalize much of the classical descriptive set theory of Polish spaces to the non-Hausdorff setting. We show that a subspace of a quasi-Polish space is quasi-Polish if and only if it is Π20 source in the Borel hierarchy. Quasi-Polish spaces can be characterized within the framework of Type-2 Theory of Effectivity as precisely the countably based spaces (...) that have an admissible representation with a Polish domain. They can also be characterized domain theoretically as precisely the spaces that are homeomorphic to the subspace of all non-compact elements of an ω-continuous domain. Every countably based locally compact sober space is quasi-Polish, hence every ω-continuous domain is quasi-Polish. A metrizable space is quasi-Polish if and only if it is Polish. We show that the Borel hierarchy on an uncountable quasi-Polish space does not collapse, and that the Hausdorff–Kuratowski theorem generalizes to all quasi-Polish spaces. (shrink)

Two sixteenth-century manuscripts, Vat. 217 and 1338, each contain, as an appendix to the works of Sextus Empiricus, a small Sophistic treatise now usually referred to as the. The two appendices were first collated, it would seem, by Conrad Trieber, who planned to publish an edition of the treatise. He died, however, before the project was completed, and his notes passed into the possession of Wilamowitz, who allowed H. Mutschmann to consult them for purposes of writing his own article on (...) Sextus. (shrink)

Two sixteenth-century manuscripts, Vat. 217 and 1338, each contain, as an appendix to the works of Sextus Empiricus, a small Sophistic treatise now usually referred to as the . The two appendices were first collated, it would seem, by Conrad Trieber, who planned to publish an edition of the treatise. He died, however, before the project was completed, and his notes passed into the possession of Wilamowitz, who allowed H. Mutschmann to consult them for purposes of writing his own article (...) on Sextus. (shrink)

This paper explores Matthew Lipman's notion of the philosophical text as model. I argue that Lipman's account of the philosophical text is one that brings together the expository and narrative textual forms in a distinctive way--not one in which the tension between the expository and the narrative is overcome once and for all, but in such a way that the expository and the narrative are brought into relationship within the very form of narrative itself. Drawing upon Michel Foucault's reading (...) of Descartes "Meditations," I argue that Lipman's philosophical novels serve both a demonstrative and ascetic function, allowing us to situate Lipman's novels in the history of philosophical discourse, as well as point to the task of creating philosophical texts, and curriculum, in the future. (shrink)

An Example of Emancipation through Art: Brecht’s Galileo The challenge which Brecht set himself was to make theatre a means of emancipation, by placing it in the service of the revolution. His work dealing with the exemplary figure of Galileo, which mobilised his energies between 1938 and his death in 1959, testifies to the succession of problems he came up against in his attempt to carry out this programme. For Brecht, the attempt to arrive at a scenic (...) presentation of the complex relations between science and its social environment implied the endeavour to engage the audience in the formulation of a problem for which the theatrical performance eschewed the option of any ready-made solution. To do so could only be way of the representation of a model which was both attractive and repulsive, and by highlighting what was a fluctuating complex of contradictions. For Brecht, the status of art is thus to constitute an open-ended inquiry rather than the presentation, for propaganda purposes, of a set of cut-and dried ideas. (shrink)

Bioethics has made remarkable progress as a scholarly and applied field. A mere fledgling in the 1960s, it is now firmly established in hospitals, medical schools, and government agencies and boasts a number of professional associations and a handsome collection of journals.

People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief change has focused on a limited set of well-known, charged, contentious issues and has not accounted for deliberation over reasons and arguments in belief formation prior to experimental sessions. With a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 3,001), we attempt to overcome these existing problems, and we investigate the causes and (...) consequences of resistance to belief change for five diverse and less contentious socio-political issues. After participants chose initially to support or oppose a given socio-political position, they were provided with reasons favoring their chosen position (affirming reasons), reasons favoring the other, unchosen position (conflicting reasons), or all reasons for both positions (reasons for both sides). Our results indicate that participants are more likely to stick with their initial decisions than to change them no matter which reasons are considered, and that this resistance to belief change is likely due to a motivated, biased evaluation of the reasons to support their initial beliefs (prior-belief bias). More specifically, they rated affirming reasons more favorably than conflicting reasons—even after accounting for reported prior knowledge about the issue, the novelty of the reasons presented, and the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. In many cases, participants who did not change their positions tended to become more confident in the superiority of their positions after considering many reasons for both sides. (shrink)

People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which (...) other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time. (shrink)

The neural reuse framework developed primarily by Michael Anderson proposes that brain regions are involved in multiple and diverse cognitive tasks and that brain regions flexibly and dynamically interact in different combinations to carry out cognitive functioning. We argue that the evidence cited by Anderson and others falls short of supporting the fundamental principles of neural reuse. We map out this problem and provide solutions by drawing on recent advances in network neuroscience, and we argue that methods employed in network (...) neuroscience provide the means to fully engage in a research program operating under the principles of neural reuse. (shrink)

Counterfactual thinking involves imagining hypothetical alternatives to reality. Philosopher David Lewis argued that people estimate the subjective plausibility that a counterfactual event might have occurred by comparing an imagined possible world in which the counterfactual statement is true against the current, actual world in which the counterfactual statement is false. Accordingly, counterfactuals considered to be true in possible worlds comparatively more similar to ours are judged as more plausible than counterfactuals deemed true in possible worlds comparatively less similar. Although Lewis (...) did not originally develop his notion of comparative similarity to be investigated as a psychological construct, this study builds upon his idea to empirically investigate comparative similarity as a possible psychological strategy for evaluating the perceived plausibility of counterfactual events. More specifically, we evaluate judgments of comparative similarity between episodic memories and episodic counterfactual events as a factor influencing people's judgments of plausibility in counterfactual simulations, and we also compare it against other factors thought to influence judgments of counterfactual plausibility, such as ease of simulation and prior simulation. Our results suggest that the greater the perceived similarity between the original memory and the episodic counterfactual event, the greater the perceived plausibility that the counterfactual event might have occurred. While similarity between actual and counterfactual events, ease of imagining, and prior simulation of the counterfactual event were all significantly related to counterfactual plausibility, comparative similarity best captured the variance in ratings of counterfactual plausibility. Implications for existing theories on the determinants of counterfactual plausibility are discussed. (shrink)

The phrase ‘person‐centred care’ (PCC) reminds us that the fundamental philosophical goal of caring for people is to uphold or promote their personhood. However, such an idea has translated into promoting individualist notions of autonomy, empowerment and personal responsibility in the context of consumerism and neoliberalism, which is problematic both conceptually and practically. From a conceptual standpoint, it ignores the fact that humans are social, historical and biographical beings, and instead assumes an essentialist or idealized concept of personhood in which (...) a person is viewed as an individual static object. From a practical standpoint, the application of such a concept of personhood can lead to neglect of a person's fundamental care needs and exacerbate the problems of social inequity, in particular for older people and people with dementia. Therefore, we argue that our understanding of PCC must instead be based on a dynamic concept of personhood that integrates the relevant social, relational, temporal and biographical dimensions. We propose that the correct concept of personhood in PCC is one in which persons are understood as socially embedded, relational and temporally extended subjects rather than merely individual, autonomous, asocial and atemporal objects. We then present a reconceptualization of the fundamental philosophical goal of PCC as promoting selfhood rather than personhood. Such a reconceptualization avoids the problems that beset the concept of personhood and its application in PCC, while also providing a philosophical foundation for the growing body of empirical literature that emphasizes the psychosocial, relational, subjective and biographical dimensions of PCC. (shrink)

The present text attempts to introduce readers to the fundamental philosophical and pedagogical values promoted by Matthew Lipman, the author who laid the basis for the philosophy for children movement. It analyzes several theoretical and applied texts written by Lipman, in an attempt to explain Lipman’s goals, his views on education, and the way in which his „community of inquiry” manages to transform the classroom into a space of freedom, creativity and thinking.

La présente étude propose une relecture de trois théoriciens dont les investigations continuent à servir de pierre angulaire à la théâtrologie : celles d'Aristote dont La Poétique, outre le fait qu'elle consacre le théâtre occidental, sert de fondement à l'esthétique dramatique et celles, plus récentes, d'Antonin Artaud et de Bertolt Brecht qui, bien qu'ils aient réfuté radicalement les théories aristoté- liciennes, ne se sont pas moins distingués l'un de l'autre pour donner les deux grandes voies que l'on sait à (...) la réflexion dramaturgique contemporaine. Ces spéculations seront envisagées sous l'éclairage décisif de la mimèsis et de la catharsis qui ne se posent pas chez eux comme des notions distinctes, mais comme l'avers et l'envers d'un même travail sur un réel à chaque fois redéfini, qu'il s'agisse de l'obéissance aristotélicienne à une stricte logique narrative, de l'utopique déculturation artaudienne ou de l'engagement brechtien.The author proposes a review of three major theoreticians whose works are considered to be the corner-stones of theatrical studies : Aristotle, whose Poetics, the first reflexion on Occidental theatre, also serve as the foundation of the aesthetics of drama, and, closer to us, Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht who, although unanimous in rejecting the Aristotelian theory, have quite different views on contemporary theatre. Their definitions are analyzed in the light of mimesis and catharsis, which are not taken here as separate notions, but rather as a mean of grasping the fluctuant outlines of the concept of "reality", be it Aristotle's obedience to a strict narrative structure, Artaud's denial of culture or Brecht's political commitment. (shrink)

Having positive moral traits is central to one’s sense of self, and people generally are motivated to maintain a positive view of the self in the present. But it remains unclear how people foster a positive, morally good view of the self in the present. We suggest that recollecting and reflecting on moral and immoral actions from the personal past jointly help to construct a morally good view of the current self in complementary ways. More specifically, across four studies we (...) investigated the extent to which people believe they have changed over time after recollecting their own moral or immoral behaviors from the personal past. Our results indicate that recollecting past immoral actions is associated with stronger impressions of dissimilarity and change in the sense of self over time than recollecting past moral actions. These effects held for diverse domains of morality (i.e., honesty/dishonesty, helping/harming, fairness/unfairness, and loyalty/disloyalty), and they remained even after accounting for objective, calendar time. Further supporting a motivational explanation, these effects held when people recollected their own past actions but not when they recollected the actions of other people. (shrink)

Throughout the English-speaking world, and in the many other countries where analytic philosophy is studied, Hillel Steiner is esteemed as one of the foremost contemporary political philosophers. This volume is designed as a festschrift for Steiner and as an important collection of philosophical essays in its own right. The editors have assembled a roster of highly distinguished international contributors, all of whom are eager to pay tribute to Steiner by focusing on topics on which he himself has concentrated. Some of (...) the contributors engage directly with Steiner's work, whereas others focus not directly on his writings but instead grapple with issues that have figured prominently therein. Each essay seeks to advance the debates in which Steiner himself has so notably participated. The study concludes with a response by Steiner himself. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an introduction to the special issue on the Philosophical Novel for Children by pointing to a lacuna in the theoretical field of philosophy for/with children, suggesting that the field is in need of more research on the philosophical novel given its status as the curricular centerpiece of Matthew Lipman’s vision of P4/WC. I describe the genesis of the idea for this special issue, emerging as it did first from a series of questions and experiences (...) which I encountered while working with Lipman’s philosophical novels as a P4/WC practitioner, then through a scholarly exploration of Lipman’s model theory of the philosophical novel for children, and culminating in the presentation of several of the papers published here at a special symposium on the philosophical novel for children at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association. I conclude with a preview of the papers in this special issue, highlighting several shared themes and concerns. (shrink)

Normative ethical theories and religious traditions offer general moral principles for people to follow. These moral principles are typically meant to be fixed and rigid, offering reliable guides for moral judgment and decision-making. In two preregistered studies, we found consistent evidence that agreement with general moral principles shifted depending upon events recently accessed in memory. After recalling their own personal violations of moral principles, participants agreed less strongly with those very principles—relative to participants who recalled events in which other people (...) violated the principles. This shift in agreement was explained, in part, by people’s willingness to excuse their own moral transgressions, but not the transgressions of others. These results have important implications for understanding the roles memory and personal identity in moral judgment. People’s commitment to moral principles may be maintained when they recall others’ past violations, but their commitment may wane when they recall their own violations. (shrink)

People frequently entertain counterfactual thoughts, or mental simulations about alternative ways the world could have been. But the perceived plausibility of those counterfactual thoughts varies widely. The current article interfaces research in the philosophy and semantics of counterfactual statements with the psychology of mental simulations, and it explores the role of perceived similarity in judgments of counterfactual plausibility. We report results from seven studies (N = 6405) jointly supporting three interconnected claims. First, the perceived plausibility of a counterfactual event is (...) predicted by the perceived similarity between the possible world in which the imagined situation is thought to occur and the actual world. Second, when people attend to differences between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as less similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as less plausible. Lastly, when people attend to what is identical between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as more similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as more plausible. We discuss these results in light of philosophical, semantic, and psychological theories of counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

El presente trabajo investiga las tesis sobre el poder civil de Alonso de la Veracruz que buscan incorporar en la comunidad política española a los habitantes autóctonos del Nuevo Mundo, tesis que suelen relacionarse con F. de Vitoria y el tomismo español, y que últimamente son consideradas parte del republicanismo novohispano elaborado desde la periferia americana. Se busca demostrar que su propósito era aplicar una teoría de derechos naturales, sin que ello implique participación política de los indios americanos. Se analiza (...) la postura del fraile frente a la diversidad cultural y la guerra contra los indios. The paper explores Alonso de la Veracruz's theses on civil power, which sought to integrate the native inhabitants of the New World into the Spanish political community. These theses, which have usually been associated with F. de Vitoria and Spanish Thomism, have recently come to be considered part of a Novohispanic republicanism developed in the American periphery. The article seeks to show that the purpose of such theses was to apply a theory of natural rights that did not entail the political participation of the indigenous population, as well as to analyze Veracruz's position regarding cultural diversity and the war against the indigenous peoples. (shrink)

Technical results about the time dependence of eigenvectors of reduced density operators are considered, and the relevance of these results is discussed for modal interpretations of quantum mechanics which take the corresponding eigenprojections to represent definite properties. Continuous eigenvectors can be found if degeneracies are avoided. We show that, in finite dimensions, the space of degenerate operators has co-dimension 3 in the space of all reduced operators, suggesting that continuous eigenvectors almost surely exist. In any dimension, even when degeneracies are (...) hit, we find conditions under which a theorem due to Rellich can provide continuous eigenvectors. We use this result to formulate an extended version of the modal interpretation. We also discuss eigenvector instability which we argue poses a serious problem for the modal interpretation, even in our extended version. Many examples are given to illustrate the mathematics. (shrink)

Kant famously characterizes our human understanding as a “spontaneous” faculty, but what can this mean? I criticize some recent interpretations of Kant’s claim and suggest that we can only understand what Kant means by “the spontaneity of understanding” if we recognize certain basic differences between how Kant conceived of cognition and how philosophers commonly think of it today. I go on to argue that Kant’s conception of cognition represents an appealing alternative to the unsatisfying options that contemporary ways of thinking (...) seem to force on us. (shrink)

A number of influential biologists are currently pursuing efforts to restore previously extinct species. But for decades, philosophers of biology have regarded “de-extinction” as conceptually incoherent. Once a species is gone, it is gone forever. We argue that a range of metaphysical, biological, and ethical grounds for opposing de-extinction are at best inconclusive and that a pragmatic stance that allows for its possibility is more appealing.