The theory of apartness spaces, and their relation to topological spaces (in the point–set case) and uniform spaces (in the set–set case), is sketched. New notions of local decomposability and regularity are investigated, and the latter is used to produce an example of a classically metrisable apartness on R that cannot be induced constructively by a uniform structure.

Seeing nature as ultimately separate from us rather than as apart of us is the source of a powerful environmental ethic. The work of Martin Buber, Rudolf Otto, and Peter Wessei Zapffe forms the conceptual framework for a view of nature as a Thou or a “Wholly Other,” a view which inspires awe for the nonhuman intrinsic value in nature. In contrast to the Self-realization approach of Naess and others, intrinsic value is here independent of the notion of a self. (...) This approach suggests an ethic of humility and respect for nonhuman nature-to the degree that the continued existence of humans should be considered an open question. (shrink)

In this article I elucidate a conception of small worlds, or ‘ontological’ contexts, within the curriculum that stand out and beyond the horizon of technological‐scientific reality, which might be linked with forgotten, marginal ways of being and thinking. As I attempt to demonstrate, it is possible that such ontological worlds apart from technology's ‘Enframing’ effect might inspire the type of meditative thinking in our classrooms that is consistent with Heidegger's notion of authentic worldly dwelling as it appears in the later (...) writings of the 1930s, or the ‘turn’. (shrink)

Seeing nature as ultimately separate from us rather than as apart of us is the source of a powerful environmental ethic. The work of Martin Buber, Rudolf Otto, and Peter Wessei Zapffe forms the conceptual framework for a view of nature as a Thou or a “Wholly Other,” a view which inspires awe for the nonhuman intrinsic value in nature. In contrast to the Self-realization approach of Naess and others, intrinsic value is here independent of the notion of a self. (...) This approach suggests an ethic of humility and respect for nonhuman nature-to the degree that the continued existence of humans should be considered an open question. (shrink)

An axiomatic development of the theory of apartness and nearness of a point and a set is introduced as a framework for constructive topology. Various notions of continuity of mappings between apartness spaces are compared; the constructive independence of one of the axioms from the others is demonstrated; and the product apartness structure is defined and analysed.

An axiomatic development of the theory of apartness and nearness of a point and a set is introduced as a framework for constructive topology. Various notions of continuity of mappings between apartness spaces are compared; the constructive independence of one of the axioms from the others is demonstrated; and the product apartness structure is defined and analysed.

This article argues that a person’s well-being at a time and the goodness of her life are two distinct values. It is commonly accepted as platitudinous that well-being is what makes a life good for the person who lives it. Even philosophers who distinguish between well-being at a time and the goodness of a life still typically assume that increasing a person’s well-being at some particular moment, all else equal, necessarily improves her life on the whole. I develop a precise (...) statement of this standard assumption, and then show that it is subject to counterexamples. The possibility of such counterexamples depends only on premises similar to those sometimes invoked to argue that a person’s well-being over a long period is not simply the aggregate well-being of the shorter periods that compose the long period. The refutation of the standard assumption linking well-being and life-goodness entails that these are distinct and sometimes divergent values. As an alternative to the standard assumption, it is proposed that well-being is best understood as an ingredient in a good life. (shrink)

The ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 has forced governments to impose a lockdown, and many people have suddenly found themselves having to reduce their social relations drastically. Given the exceptional nature of similar situations, only a few studies have investigated the negative psychological effects of forced social isolation and how they can be mitigated in a real context. In the present study, we investigated whether the amount of digital communication technology use for virtual meetings during the lockdown promoted the perception of (...) social support, which in itself mitigated the psychological effects of the lockdown in Italy. Data were collected in March 2020, during the lockdown imposed to reduce the COVID-19 spread. The results indicated that the amount of digital technology use reduced feelings of loneliness, anger/irritability, and boredom and increased belongingness via the perception of social support. The present study supported the positive role of digital technologies in maintaining meaningful social relationships even during an extreme situation such as a lockdown. Implications such as the need to reduce the digital divide and possible consequences of the ongoing pandemic are discussed. (shrink)

Worlds Apart is concerned with one of the new futures of anthropology, namely the advances in technologies which r eate an imagination of new global and local forms. It also analyses studies of the consumption of these forms and attempts to go beyond the assumptions that consumption either localises or fails to effect global forms and images. Several of the chapters are written by anthropologists who have specialised in material culture studies and who examine the new forms, especially television and (...) mass commodities, as well as some new uses of older forms, such as the body. The book also considers the ways in which people are increasingly not the primary creators of these images but have become secondary consumers. (shrink)

We extend the concept of apartness spaces to the concept of quasi-apartness spaces. We show that there is an adjunction between the category of quasi-apartness spaces and the category of neighbourhood spaces, which indicates that quasi-apartness is a more natural concept than apartness. We also show that there is an adjoint equivalence between the category of apartness spaces and the category of Grayson’s separated spaces.

Two classes of account have been proposed to explain the memory processes subserving the processing of reflexive-antecedent dependencies. Structure-based accounts assume that the retrieval of the antecedent is guided by syntactic tree-configurational information without considering other kinds of information such as gender marking in the case of English reflexives. By contrast, unconstrained cue-based retrieval assumes that all available information is used for retrieving the antecedent. Similarity-based interference effects from structurally illicit distractors which match a non-structural retrieval cue have been interpreted (...) as evidence favoring the unconstrained cue-based retrieval account since cue-based retrieval interference from structurally illicit distractors is incompatible with the structure-based account. However, it has been argued that the observed effects do not necessarily reflect interference occurring at the moment of retrieval but might equally well be accounted for by interference occurring already at the stage of encoding or maintaining the antecedent in memory, in which case they cannot be taken as evidence against the structure-based account. We present three experiments (self-paced reading and eye-tracking) on German reflexives and Swedish reflexive and pronominal possessives in which we pit the predictions of encoding interference and cue-based retrieval interference against each other. We could not find any indication that encoding interference affects the processing ease of the reflexive-antecedent dependency formation. Thus, there is no evidence that encoding interference might be the explanation for the interference effects observed in previous work. We therefore conclude that invoking encoding interference may not be a plausible way to reconcile interference effects with a structure-based account of reflexive processing. (shrink)

Jakob von Uexküll’s (1864-1944) account of Umwelt has been proposed as a mediating concept to bridge the gap between ecological psychology’s realism about environmental information and enactivism’s emphasis on the organism’s active role in constructing the meaningful world it inhabits. If successful, this move would constitute a significant step towards establishing a single ecological-enactive framework for cognitive science. However, Uexküll’s thought itself contains different perspectives that are in tension with each other, and the concept of Umwelt is developed in representationalist (...) terms that conflict with the commitments of both enactivism and ecological psychology. One central issue shared by all these approaches is the problem of how a living being experiences its environment. In this paper, we will look at Uexküll’s reception in French philosophy and highlight the different ways in which the concept of Umwelt functions in the work of Georges Canguilhem, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze. This analysis helps clarify different aspects of Uexküll’s thought and the deeper philosophical implications of importing his concepts into embodied cognitive science. This paper is part of a recent trend in which enactivism engages with continental philosophy in a way that both deepens and transcends the traditional links to phenomenology, including most recently the thought of Georg W. F. Hegel and Gilbert Simondon. However, no more than a brief outline and introduction to the potentials and challenges of this complex conceptual intersection can be given here. Our hope is that it serves to make more explicit the philosophical issues that are at stake for cognitive science in the question of experienced environments, while charting a useful course for future research. (shrink)

Significant inequalities in health between and within countries have been measured over the past decades. Although these inequalities, as well as attempts to improve sub-standard health, raise profound issues of social justice and the right to health, those working in the field of bioethics have historically tended to devote greater attention to ethical issues raised by new, cutting-edge biotechnologies such as life-support cessation, genomics, stem cell research or face transplantation. This suggests that bioethics research and scholarship may revolve around issues (...) that, while fascinating and important, currently affect only a small minority of the world's population. In this article, we examine the accusation that bioethics is largely dominated by Anglophone and industrialized world interests, and explore what kinds of positive contributions a 'bioethics from below' (as Paul Farmer calls it) can make to the field of bioethics in general. As our guide in this exploration, we make use of some experiences and lessons learned in our collaborative bioethics project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Building Bioethics Capacity and Justice in Health. We conclude that while there is some evidence of increased attention to bioethical challenges in developing countries, this development should be further cultivated, because it could help expand the horizons of the field and enhance its social relevance wherever it is practiced. (shrink)

Cadaveric transplantation and living transplantation exist side by side. Both practices help to alleviate organ need. They provide us with two separate moral schemes. Is it rational to keep them apart? The cadaveric system is organised along strict, impartial lines, while the living system is inherently partial and local. The ethical justification for this partial scheme seems to be that it merely supplements the cadaveric scheme: partial transplants do not come at the expense of cadaveric impartiality, but in fact significantly (...) reduce the waiting time for patients on the list for a cadaveric transplant.This seemingly peaceful coexistence is challenged by new initiatives, among them living donation list exchange, and also the LifeSharers initiative, leading to practices that undermine cadaveric impartiality. Should we bemoan this fact, or should we move on towards a new balance in the relationship between cadaveric and living transplantation practices, towards a new moral weighing of impartial and partial values? I argue, against the background of a rapid growth of living donations, that we have good, ethical reasons—not only utilitarian ones—for giving the value of partiality a more prominent place in our policies. (shrink)

Though doubtless two of the leading philosophers in ethics today, Habermas and Levinas have yet to be subjected to sys tematic comparison. This essay undertakes a first step. Differences of terminology aside, Habermas and Levinas can be seen to pursue, via separate routes, a similar core idea. I term this the idea of immanent normativity. While Habermas locates an unchosen normative pull in the medium of interpersonal communication, Levinas locates an unconditional ethical command in the Other as face. Hence they (...) unite in strongly opposing social contract theory's notion of moral ity as optional and of responsibility as conditional upon self-interest. Key Words: contractualism • Habermas • Levinas • vulnerability. (shrink)

"In the great English tradition of the lay specialist, Barfield, a lawyer, modernizes the Platonic dialogue format to focus on the philosophic problems of reality and ways of knowing.. This is the solvent mind at its best-distinguished exchanges giving provocative, open-ended results at every point. Highly recommended. of permanent value." -Choice: Books for College Libraries Owen Barfield, who died in 1997 shortly after entering his hundredth year, was one of the seminal minds of the twentieth century, of whom C. S. (...) Lewis wrote "he towers above us all." His books have won respect from many writers other than Lewis, among them T. S. Eliot, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Saul Bellows, and John Lukacs. He was born in North London in 1898 and received his B.A. with first-class honors from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1921. He also earned B.C.L., M.A., and B.Litt. degrees from Oxford and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He served as a solicitor for twenty-eight years until his retirement from legal practice in 1959. Barfield was a visiting professor at Brandeis and Drew Universities, Hamilton College, the University of Missouri at Columbia, UCLA, SUNY-Stony Brook, and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His books include seven others published by The Barfield Press: Romanticism Comes of Age, Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s, Unancestral Voice, Speaker's Meaning, What Coleridge Thought, The Rediscovery of Meaning, and History, Guilt and Habit. (shrink)

Cadaveric transplantation and living transplantation exist side by side. Both practices help to alleviate organ need. They provide us with two separate moral schemes. Is it rational to keep them apart? The cadaveric system is organised along strict, impartial lines, while the living system is inherently partial and local. The ethical justification for this partial scheme seems to be that it merely supplements the cadaveric scheme: partial transplants do not come at the expense of cadaveric impartiality, but in fact significantly (...) reduce the waiting time for patients on the list for a cadaveric transplant.This seemingly peaceful coexistence is challenged by new initiatives, among them living donation list exchange, and also the LifeSharers initiative, leading to practices that undermine cadaveric impartiality. Should we bemoan this fact, or should we move on towards a new balance in the relationship between cadaveric and living transplantation practices, towards a new moral weighing of impartial and partial values? I argue, against the background of a rapid growth of living donations, that we have good, ethical reasons—not only utilitarian ones—for giving the value of partiality a more prominent place in our policies. (shrink)

Natural philosophers seem to have good reasons to prefer that the kallipolis, the maximally just community of the Republic, is never realized. If such a community is realized, philosophers are under the obligation of a just demand that they govern. However, a life that contains governance as a significant part is not the happiest life a philosopher can live. The happiest life for a philosopher is one consisting entirely or largely in philosophical contemplation. I confront this puzzle by arguing that (...) natural philosophers gain benefits in the kallipolis that are not available to them in other communities, primarily opportunities for correction and punishment. While other communities may offer philosophers more opportunities for philosophical contemplation, these communities do not provide a reliable mechanism for counteracting potentially dangerous moral blindness. In contrast to other communities, the kallipolis institutionalizes and reliably replicates the structures necessary for counteracting moral blindness. (shrink)

Two new notions of compactness, each classically equivalent to the standard classical one of sequential compactness, for apartness spaces are examined within Bishop-style constructive mathematics.

This dissertation interprets Leibniz’ notion of perception through abilities, agency, and action. In chapter 1, I characterize the differences between kinds of Leibnizian perception by considering their relationship to different abilities. I focus on lower cognition, where Leibniz distinguishes bare perception from sensation by their degrees of distinctness and memory. I read this relationship, between kinds of perception and qualities of perception, through actions. I begin with complete lacks of distinctness and memory and how they relate to stupors as an (...) inability to act. I then turn to a range of incrementally more advanced cases of perceptions and actions to highlight the role of distinctness and memory in each. The cases reveal how differences in kinds of action depend on differences in kinds of perception in Leibniz’ system. My approach breaks with traditional readings that invoke consciousness to account for the differences, and it builds in some ways on readings that lead with representation. I also comment on the prospects of such an abilities based approach for 21st century theories of perception. In chapter 2, I articulate the point of view or perspectival nature of Leibnizian perception through expression and agency. I establish some conditions that Leibniz sets on perspectival expression for individual perceivers, and on the particular way that perceptions belong to their perceivers in Leibniz’ system. I argue that spatial, geometrical notions of perspective, though useful, ultimately give way to a deeper, agential notion of perspective for Leibniz. I make a case for including an agential side of POV in perception, beyond the phenomenal flow of perception. I then articulate how agency is unique and fundamental to Leibniz’ notion of perspective or point of view, both in internal action and in the activity and passivity of external action. In chapter 3, I ask about the limits of perceivers in Leibniz’ system—where they arise and where they don’t. I set the question adjacent to Leibniz' celebrated mill argument. I consider readings of the argument that invoke action, and build on them to include questions about how action relates to interaction in different kinds of perceivers. One question concerns the lack of perception in primary matter, and another concerns the lack of perception in an aggregate of secondary matter. After milling through some considerations, I settle on a notion of organic unity, underpinned by a notion of action, that can draw lines between Leibnizian perceivers and non-perceivers. (shrink)

What makes us human is our special motivation to share with others how we feel, what we believe, and what we want to happen in the future. We want to share with others what is real about the world. Shared reality is crucial to what we believe--sharing is believing. It is central to our sense of self, what we strive for and how we strive. It is basic to how we get along with others. It brings us together in fellowship (...) and companionship, but it also tears us apart by creating in-group "bubbles" that conflict with one another. Our shared realities are the best of us, and the worst of us. (shrink)

Identical twins have attracted special attention for the study of behavior genetics. Some of the assumptions and results of these studies are reviewed with special attention given to the natural experiment of identical twins adopted by different families. However, the correlation for any behavior between the adopted twins of a monozygotic pair is affected by their common prenatal environment as well as by the pervasive similarity of the two adoptive environments. The genetic contribution to complex social phenomena, but also to (...) physical characteristics such as height, is usually overestimated. Both for adopted and unadopted twins differential effects of cultural, family, and prenatal environments, and the correlated experiences of twins and their physical appearance affect their development. Taxonomies and samples of environments need to be examined in order to be able to estimate the genetic contributions to behavioral traits. (shrink)

Cosmological arguments attempt to prove the existence of God by appeal to the necessity of a first cause. Schematically, a cosmological argument will thus appear as: (1) All contingent beings have a cause of existence. (2) There can be no infinite causal chains. (3) Therefore, there must be some non-contingent First Cause. Cosmological arguments come in two species, depending on their justification of the second premiss. Non-temporal cosmological arguments, such as those of Aristotle and Aquinas, view causation as requiring explanatory (...) or conceptual priority, and thus insist that there can be no infinite regresses in such priority. Temporal cosmological arguments, also called kalam cosmological arguments due to their historical roots in Islamic kalam philosophers such as Abu Yusuf Ya'qub b. Ishaq al-Kindi and Abu Ali al-Hussain ibn Sina, view causation as requiring temporal priority, and thus insist that there can be no infinite temporal regresses.1 The kalam cosmological argument thus requires some supporting argument showing the incoherence of an infinite temporal regress of causally related events. William Lane Craig, in "The Finitude of the Past and the Existence of God"2, attempts to provide such an argument: (4) An actual infinite cannot exist. (5) An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite. (6) Therefore an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist. (9) I will not be concerned here with the general status of cosmological arguments, kalam or otherwise, or with contesting Craig's assumption that an infinite past would (unlike an infinite future) constitute a problematic actual infinity. I am rather concerned with Craig's general working principle, embodied in (4) above, that actual infinities are impossible. Craig, of course, is not alone in denying the possibility of the actually infinite. Resistance to such infinities is at least as old as Aristotle (Physics 3.5.204b1 – 206a8), and, as Craig rightly points out, persists through much of modern (i.e., post-scholastic, pre-twentieth-century) philosophy.. (shrink)

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is widely considered to be a bodily disorder accompanied by unrealistic perceptions about one’s own body. Some researchers thus have wondered whether deficits in interoception, a conscious or non-conscious sense of one’s own body, could be a primary cause of AN. In this paper, we make the case that rather than interoception being a primary cause, deficits in interoception may occur as by-products of emotions that arise upstream in the pathogenesis of AN and interact with feelings of (...) a loss of self-control. We consider interoception, emotion, and self-control as a dynamical triad involved in the explanation of AN, with emotions as the central aspect of their interactions. We begin with a critical analysis of recent empirical literature on AN and differentiate three types of interoceptive processes. We then consider the role of self-control in AN. We go on to evaluate recent empirical and philosophical work on the role of emotions in AN and assess their importance in both interoception and self-control dynamics. We develop a testable integrative model that we believe best captures how self-control, emotional and interoceptive processes causally interact in the pathogenesis of AN. In this model, AN behaviors are not caused by interoceptive abnormalities, but rather interact with changes in emotional regulation and feelings of loss of self-control, subsequently leading to interoceptive deficits downstream. To capture a later stage in the pathogenesis of AN, we show how AN behaviors are maintained as a result of feedback among components in the model. We briefly explain future plans to further complement the model using a semi-structured interview to probe patient perspectives in AN. To develop a more valid understanding of AN, this model will have to be integrated into pluralistic approaches that include patient perspectives. (shrink)

Taking the formal analogies between black holes and classical thermodynamics seriously seems to first require that classical thermodynamics applies in relativistic regimes. Yet, by scrutinizing how classical temperature is extended into special relativity, I argue that the concept falls apart. I examine four consilient procedures for establishing the classical temperature: the Carnot process, the thermometer, kinetic theory, and black-body radiation. I argue that their relativistic counterparts demonstrate no such consilience in defining the relativistic temperature. As such, classical temperature doesn’t appear (...) to survive a relativistic extension. I suggest two interpretations for this situation: eliminativism akin to simultaneity, or pluralism akin to rotation. (shrink)

This paper contributes to debates on the benefits of single-sex and co-educational school environments by considering both single-sex versus co-educational schools and single-sex versus co-educational classes in co-educational schools. Two research studies provide the empirical basis for this discussion. One study was a 10-year-long investigation of two Australian secondary schools which had been single-sex schools and became co-educational secondary schools over a two-year period. The second study involved a two-year investigation in an English co-educational secondary school where single-sex mathematics classes (...) were introduced for one cohort of pupils for five school terms, after which mixed-sex classes were reintroduced. Evidence relating to academic self-concept, pupil, parent and staff perceptions and academic achievement are discussed. Overall, the evidence suggests that co-educational environments create possible social/interaction disadvantages for girls, but that academic self-concept is not adversely affected by transferring from single-sex environments into mixed-sex ones. (shrink)

People often say that humans are omnivores in order to justify eating meat as normal and veganism as abnormal. The is one of the arguments that vegetarians and vegans encounter when meat-eaters try to defend the moral acceptability of body parts on their plate. When responding to this argument, the position of the vegan is similar to the atheist who time and again is confronted with the same fallacious arguments in support of the existence of god(s). Veganism and atheism are (...) both ethical default positions. Similarly, not killing other people is also a default position. (shrink)

This article attempts to sort out the misunderstandings between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy surrounding the question of the animal as they come to the fore in the conversations published in For Strasbourg. While Derrida finds the lack of animals in Nancy’s world puzzling, Nancy criticises Derrida’s blurring of the border between the human and the animal for inadvertently reinstating a scale or a difference, if not between humans and animals, at least between the living and the non-living. Though this (...) criticism appears misguided at first, I argue that Nancy’s recasting of finitude in terms of the limit as the place of exposure undoes the phenomenological, or more precisely Heideggerian, understanding of sense and world, which Derrida still attributes to Nancy. Ultimately, what we have in both thinkers is a radically different account of plurality. Whereas Derrida emphasises the abyss between singularities and places faith, engagement, and responsibility at the origin of the world, for Nancy the edges between singularities always already hold any inside in contact with an outside, any one in contact with the other. (shrink)

Peter Reed has defended the basis for an environmental ethic based upon feelings of awe for nature together with an existentialist absolute gulf between humans and nature. In so doing, he has claimed that there are serious difficulties with Ecosophy T and the terms, Self-realization and identification with nature. I distinguish between discussions of ultimate norms and the penultimate deep ecology platform. I also clarify and defend a technical use of identification and attempt to show that awe and identification may (...) be compatible concepts. (shrink)

Peter Reed has defended the basis for an environmental ethic based upon feelings of awe for nature together with an existentialist absolute gulf between humans and nature. In so doing, he has claimed that there are serious difficulties with Ecosophy T and the terms, Self-realization and identification with nature. I distinguish between discussions of ultimate norms and the penultimate deep ecology platform. I also clarify and defend a technical use of identification and attempt to show that awe and identification may (...) be compatible concepts. (shrink)

As it stands, Derrida’s protest is deficient in any sense of how the discourses of South African racism have been at once historically constituted and politically constitutive. For to begin to investigate how the representation of racial difference has functioned in South Africa’s political and economic life, it is necessary to recognize and track the shifting character of these discourses. Derrida, however, blurs historical differences by conferring on the single term apartheid a spurious autonomy and agency: “The word concentrates separation…. (...) By isolating being apart in some sort of essence or hypostasis, the word corrupts it into a quasi-ontological segregation” . Is it indeed the word, apartheid, or is it Derrida himself, operating here in “another regime of abstraction” , removing the word from its place in the discourse of South African racism, raising it to another power, and setting separation itself apart? Derrida is repelled by the word, yet seduced by its divisiveness, the division in the inner structure of the term itself which he elevates to a state of being.The essay’s opening analysis of the word apartheid is, then, symptomatic of a severance of word from history. When Derrida asks, “Hasn’t apartheid always been the archival record of the unnameable?” , the answer is a straightforward no. Despite its notoriety and currency overseas, the term apartheid has not always been the “watchword” of the Nationalist regime. . It has its own history, and that history is closely entwined with a developing ideology of race which has not only been created to deliberately rationalize and temper South Africa’s image at home and abroad, but can also be seen to be intimately allied to different stages of the country’s political and economic development. Because he views apartheid as a “unique appellation” , Derrida has little to say about the politically persuasive function that successive racist lexicons have served in South Africa. To face the challenge of investigating the strategic role of representation, one would have to part ways with him by releasing that pariah of a word, apartheid, from its quarantine from historical process, examining it instead in the context of developing discourses of racial difference. Anne McClintock is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Columbia University. She is working on a dissertation on race and gender in British imperial culture and is the author of a monograph on Simon de Beauvoir. Rob Nixon, in the same program at Columbia, is working on the topic of exile and Third World-metropolitan relations in the writing of V. S. and Shiva Naipaul. (shrink)