Easy and cheap access to the Internet and a wide array of new technologies, such as smartphones, have multiplied opportunities for online informal learning of English. Yet, despite sizeable research, few studies have examined the issue of OILE in the context of university students of different disciplines. The aim of this research study was to examine the role of online language use through smartphones among students of various disciplines and its possible effects on enhancement of their foreign language skills. The (...) study assumed both qualitative and quantitative methodology encompassing three research instruments: an online survey, the self-assessment language competence grid of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and a semi-structured interview. Data were collected with 377 students from two universities: University of Białystok, Poland and University of Osijek, Croatia. The research outcomes indicate that both Croatian and Polish students of different disciplines use their smartphones chiefly for receptive activities with infrequent use for language learning purposes and the predominant use of the mother tongue or English for the listed online activities through smartphones do not significantly affect the self-assessed level of their communicative competence in English. However, it can be stated that the choice of the preponderant language for online use through smartphones, especially for study-related issues, is conditioned by the students’ discipline of study. (shrink)

This paper investigates a connection between the semantic notion provided by the ordering * among theories in model theory and the syntactic SOPn hierarchy of Shelah. It introduces two properties which are natural extensions of this hierarchy, called SOP2 and SOP1. It is shown here that SOP3 implies SOP2 implies SOP1. In Shelah's article 229) it was shown that SOP3 implies *-maximality and we prove here that *-maximality in a model of GCH implies a property called SOP2″. It has been (...) subsequently shown by Shelah and Usvyatsov that SOP2″ and SOP2 are equivalent, so obtaining an implication between *-maximality and SOP2. It is not known if SOP2 and SOP3 are equivalent. Together with the known results about the connection between the SOPn hierarchy and the existence of universal models in the absence of GCH, the paper provides a step toward the classification of unstable theories without the strict order property. (shrink)

Revisionism in the theory of moral responsibility is the idea that some aspect of responsibility practices, attitudes, or concept is in need of revision. While the increased frequency of revisionist language in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is striking, what discussion there has been of revisionism about responsibility and free will tends to be critical. In this paper, I argue that at least one species of revisionism, moderate revisionism, is considerably more sophisticated and defensible than critics have (...) realized. I go on to argue for the advantages of moderate revisionist theories over standard compatibilist and incompatibilist theories. (shrink)

In recent years, reflection on the relationship between individual moral responsibility and determinism has undergone a remarkable renaissance. Incompatibilists, those who believe moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism, have offered powerful new arguments in support of their views. Compatibilists, those who think moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, have responded with ingenious counterexamples and alternative accounts of responsibility. Despite the admirable elevation of complexity and subtlety within both camps, the trajectory of the literature is somewhat discouraging. Every dialectical stalemate between (...) incompatibilists and compatibilists seems to be superseded by a similar though often more subtle stalemate.1 The stalemates have two sources. On the one hand, incompatibilists again and again find powerful intuitive support from our folk concept. On the other hand, compatibilists seem right to insist that even if determinism were true, this would not mitigate our need for a concept of responsibility. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the existence of a universal graph at the successor of a strong limit singular μ of cofinality ℵ0. Starting from the assumption of the existence of a supercompact cardinal, a model is built in which for some such μ there are $\mu^{++}$ graphs on μ+ that taken jointly are universal for the graphs on μ+, while $2^{\mu^+} \gg \mu^{++}$ . The paper also addresses the general problem of obtaining a framework for consistency results at the (...) successor of a singular strong limit starting from the assumption that a supercompact cardinal κ exists. The result on the existence of universal graphs is obtained as a specific application of a more general method. (shrink)

If κ is any strongly unfoldable cardinal, then this is preserved in a forcing extension in which κ fails. This result continues the progression of the corresponding results for weakly compact cardinals, due to Woodin, and for indescribable cardinals, due to Hauser.

Many prominent accounts of free will and moral responsibility make use of the idea that agents can be responsive to reasons. Call such theories Reasons accounts. In what follows, I consider the tenability of Reasons accounts in light of situationist social psychology and, to a lesser extent, the automaticity literature. In the first half of this chapter, I argue that Reasons accounts are genuinely threatened by contemporary psychology. In the second half of the paper I consider whether such threats can (...) be met, and at what cost. Ultimately, I argue that Reasons accounts can abandon some familiar assumptions, and that doing so permits us to build a more empirically plausible picture of our agency. (shrink)

This article summarizes the moderate revisionist position I put forth in Four Views on Free Will and responds to objections to it from Robert Kane, John Martin Fischer, Derk Pereboom, and Michael McKenna. Among the principle topics of the article are (1) motivations for revisionism, what it is, and how it is different from compatibilism and hard incompatibilism, (2) an objection to the distinctiveness of semicompatibilism against conventional forms of compatibilism, and (3) whether moderate revisionism is committed to realism about (...) moral responsibility. (shrink)

I discuss experimental work by Nichols, and Nichols and Knobe, with respect to the philosophical problems of free will and moral responsibility. I mention some methodological concerns about the work, but focus principally on the philosophical implications of the work. The experimental results seem to show that in particular, concrete cases we are more willing to attribute responsibility than in cases described abstractly or in general terms. I argue that their results suggest a deep problem for traditional accounts of compatibilism, (...) and that they may cast some light on the literature surrounding Frankfurt cases. I also suggest a way in which mature philosophical convictions about free will may reflect a contingent process of refining and defending either of two competing strands of intuitions, and suggest that this may partly explain the persistence of philosophical debates about free will. (shrink)

Suppose that λ is the successor of a singular cardinal μ whose cofinality is an uncountable cardinal κ. We give a sufficient condition that the club filter of λ concentrating on the points of cofinality κ is not λ+-saturated.1 The condition is phrased in terms of a notion that we call weak reflection. We discuss various properties of weak reflection. We introduce a weak version of the ♣-principle, which we call ♣*−, and show that if it holds on a stationary (...) subset S of λ, then no normal filter on S is λ+-saturated. Under the above assumptions, ♣*− is true for any stationary subset S of λ which does not contain points of cofinality κ. For stationary sets S which concentrate on points of cofinality κ, we show that ♣*− holds modulo an ideal obtained through the weak reflection. (shrink)

Constitutive instrumentalism is the view that responsibility practices arise from and are justified by our being prosocial creatures who need responsibility practices to secure specific kinds of social goods. In particular, responsibility practices shape agency in ways that disposes adherence to norms that enable goods of shared cooperative life. The mechanics of everyday responsibility practices operate, in part, via costly signaling about the suitability of agents for coordination and cooperation under conditions of shared cooperative life. So, there are a range (...) of identifiable conditions where the ordinary operation of responsibility practices—and thus, the usual normative force of the practices—is disrupted. Even so, these conditions are not so widespread as to favor a more thoroughgoing abandonment of responsibility practices. (shrink)

Many prominent theories of moral responsibility rely on the notion of “tracing,” the idea that responsibility for an outcome can be located in (i.e., “traced back to”) some prior moment of control, perhaps significantly antecedent to the proximate sources of a considered action. In this article, I show how there is a problem for theories that rely on tracing. The problem is connected to the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. Many prima facie good candidate cases for tracing analyses appear to (...) violate the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. So, either we need to dispense with tracing approaches or we must refine our understanding of the knowledge condition or we are responsible less frequently than we suppose. (shrink)

Neil Levy (2007) argues that empirical data shows that psychopaths lack the moral knowledge required for moral responsibility. His account is intriguing, and it offers a promising way to think about the significance of psychopaths for work on moral responsibility. In what follows we focus on three lines of concern connected to Levy's account: his interpretation of the data, the scope of exculpation, and the significance of biological explanations for anti-social behavior.

Suppose that λ=λ <λ ≥ℵ0, and we are considering a theory T. We give a criterion on T which is sufficient for the consistent existence of λ++ universal models of T of size λ+ for models of T of size ≤λ+, and is meaningful when 2λ +>λ++. In fact, we work more generally with abstract elementary classes. The criterion for the consistent existence of universals applies to various well known theories, such as triangle-free graphs and simple theories. Having in mind (...) possible applications in analysis, we further observe that for such λ, for any fixed μ>λ+ regular with μ=μλ+, it is consistent that 2λ=μ and there is no normed vector space over ℚ of size <μ which is universal for normed vector spaces over ℚ of dimension λ+ under the notion of embedding h which specifies (a,b) such that ||h(x)/||x∈(a,b) for all x. (shrink)

The question of how we actually arrive at our knowledge of others’ mental lives is lively debated, and some philosophers defend the idea that mentality is sometimes accessible to perception. In this paper, a distinction is introduced between “mind awareness” and “mental state awareness,” and it is argued that the former at least sometimes belongs to perceptual, rather than cognitive, processing.

Part I: Building blocks. 1. Folk convictions -- 2. Doubts about libertarianism -- 3. Nihilism and revisionism -- 4. Building a better theory -- Part II. A theory of moral responsibility. 5. The primacy of reasons -- 6. Justifying the practice -- 7. Responsible agency -- 8. Blame and desert -- 9. History and manipulation --10. Some conclusions.

In this article I propose a resolution to the history issue for responsible agency, given a moderate revisionist approach to responsibility. Roughly, moderate revisionism is the view that a plausible and normatively adequate theory of responsibility will require principled departures from commonsense thinking. The history issue is whether morally responsible agency – that is, whether an agent is an apt target of our responsibility-characteristic practices and attitudes – is an essentially historical notion. Some have maintained that responsible agents must have (...) particular sorts of histories, others have argued that no such history is required. Resolution of this contentious issue is connected to a wide range of concerns, including the significance and culpability of different forms of manipulation, the plausibility of important incompatibilist criticisms of compatibilism, and of course, a satisfactory account of moral responsibility. As it turns out, history matters sometimes, but less frequently than we might think. (shrink)

This book, published in 2019 as an open-access edition of the Fordham University Press, attracts by its title. Imagination, as we mathematicians know only too w.

A large part of the contemporary literature on dehumanization is committed to three ideas: (a) dehumanization involves some degree of denial of humanness, (b) such denial is to be comprehended in mental terms, and (c) whatever exact mechanisms underlie the denial of humanness, they belong in the realm of post-perceptual processing. This chapter examines (c) and argues that the awareness of minds might belong to perceptual processing. This paves the way for the possibility that dehumanization might, at least in part, (...) be a perceptual phenomenon, such that dehumanizers visually perceive the dehumanized as exhibiting lesser-than-human minds. It is perhaps unsurprising that the first systematic investigations of dehumanization approached the phenomenon as linked to contexts of war, genocide, extreme hatred, and violence. One guiding hypothesis was that dehumanizers exclude the dehumanized from a moral community of human beings, implicitly conceptualized as displaying distinct individualities and being embedded in caring interpersonal relations. By comprehending the dehumanized as deindividuated entities to which moral norms and considerations of fairness do not apply (Opotow 1990), dehumanizers are able to disengage from moral restrictions and self-sanctions (Bandura 1999). (shrink)

We survey the use of club guessing and other PCF constructs in the context of showing that a given partially ordered class of objects does not have a largest, or a universal, element.

Dentre todas as possibilidades de ação feminista, há a militância em espaço público e a prática em apoio às mulheres, bem como a levada de consciência sobre pautas feministas para as mulheres, tanto no âmbito privado como no público. Esta era a abordagem de Andrea Dworkin, que proferia discursos em marchas e levava suas próprias experiências para o âmbito da escrita, sua prática profissional. A mesma abordagem era utilizada por Suzanne Lacy, artista contemporânea que, através de instalações urbanas, realizava suas (...) ações de militância combinada à arte. Este trabalho visa traçar parâmetros comuns entre estas duas mulheres, focando em suas pautas e na reverberação de seus trabalhos um em relação ao outro, bem como na sociedade.Palavras-chave: Público. Arte Contemporânea. Feminismo. AbstractAmongst all possibilities of feminist action there’s the militant strategy: to take the word of action into the public space, to act in women’s aid, to talk to your target audience and bring your discourse to the people. That was Andrea Dworkin’s strategy, who would bring her speeches into women’s marches and take her experience into her writing, which was her profession. The same strategy was taken by Suzanne Lacy, contemporary artist who focuses on urban installations to mix political and artistic action. This paper correlates these two authors, focusing on their preferred subjects and how their works reverberated together and in society.Keywords: Public. Contemporary Art. Feminism. (shrink)

The paper engages Christopher Boorse’s Bio-Statistical Theory (BST). In its current form, BST runs into a significant challenge. For BST to account for its central tenet—that lower-level part-dysfunction is sufficient for higher-level pathology—it must provide criteria for how to decide which lower-level parts are the ones to be analyzed for health or pathology. As BST is a naturalistic theory, such choices must be based solely on naturalistic considerations. An argument is provided to show that, if BST is to be preserved, (...) such parthood choices are based on non-naturalistic considerations. We demonstrate that even when parthood choices are based on the best way to preserve BST, there are counterintuitive results which bring the central tenet of BST into question. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Mexico informed consent is a legal requirement that ensures that patients who are invited to participate in clinical trials are provided with all the information needed to decide whether to participate, or not, in a research protocol. To improve our understanding of the problems physicians in developing countries encounter, when obtaining informed consent (IC), we examined their opinion on the importance of IC in clinical research, the quantity and quality of the information provided to the participant, and the (...) conditions in which the IC is obtained. Investigators considered that IC was useful to the patients, providing information that helped the patient to make a decision about his/her participation. Nevertheless, they felt that for some aspects of the research, like drug development in general, the use of placebos, and the randomization process, many of the patients were not capable of fully understanding the information provided, referring to the complexity of the information and illiteracy as the main reasons. Many investigators were not acquainted with some of the guidelines established in the Mexican General Law of Health,1 36% of them admitting to not having completed their IC letters. Most investigators gave only minutes to the patient to make a decision and 20% of ICs were obtained while the patient was hospitalized. Except for one investigator, all of them considered that specific training in medical ethics would be useful for the daily clinical work. (shrink)

We consider various versions of the ♣ principle. This principle is a known consequence of $\lozenge$ . It is well known that $\lozenge$ is not sensitive to minor changes in its definition, e.g., changing the guessing requirement form "guessing exactly" to "guessing modulo a finite set". We show however, that this is not true for ♣. We consider some other variants of ♣ as well.

Este artículo explora algunas de las relaciones entre dialéctica y filosofía dentro del programa de una dialéctica modificada de Theodor W. Adorno ¿Cómo pensar la tensión entre las categorías dialécticas y la filosofía desde el prisma de una dialéctica negativa? ¿Qué significa desde el pensamiento de Adorno a liberar a la filosofía y a la dialéctica de su carácter afirmativo? Elaborar estas preguntas es el objetivo de este trabajo.

After some preliminary distinctions, this paper will discuss the merits of higher-order representational theory and same-order theory. A distinction will be introduced between a intrinsic conception of consciousness and a representational variant . It will be argued that the SOIT account of 'non-reflective self-awareness' can be applied to understanding aspects of psychopathology. However, a closer look at specific aspects of schizophrenic experience reveals that we might need to widen the scope of and 'situate' the SOIT of non-reflective selfawareness.

In this paper I criticize libertarianism and skepticism about free will. The criticism of libertarianism takes some steps towards filling in an argument that is often mentioned but seldom developed in any detail, the argument that libertarianism is a scientifically implausible view. I say "take some steps" because I think the considerations I muster (at most) favor a less ambitious relative of that argument. The less ambitious claim I hope to motivate is that there is little reason to believe that (...) extant libertarian accounts satisfy a standard of naturalistic plausibility, even if they do satisfy a standard of naturalistic compatibility. The argument against skepticism about free will tries to show (1) perhaps the most prominent form of skeptical argument against the existence of free will does not work, and (2) there is a good general argument against skepticism about free will. (shrink)

Este artículo, después de situar etimológica e históricamente los conceptos de utopía y distopía, realiza un breve vistazo a la doctrina pesimista de Schopenhauer, para luego mostrar cómo Émile Zola la articula y la despliega en una distopía, en ciertos pasajes de La alegría de vivir. Se concluye, a través de varias preguntas, cómo Zola ficciona, en la figura de su personaje Pauline, una pequeña isla de felicidad dentro de un enorme océano pesimista, inquietante y malévolo: la utopía y la (...) distopía surgen entrelazadas en una ficción que, historiando y politizando la cuestión, muestra cómo lo filosófico aparece en la ficción novelesca cuando ha sido colocado allí a propósito. (shrink)

Between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, the quotidian dimension took political centrality in Japan thanks to the leading role of the New Left movement and its ideology. This went hand in hand with an appreciation of the philosophical approaches of Marxist intellectuals such as Jun Tosaka and Gorō Hani, who saw the quotidian as a fundamental space for historical transformation. We know how Tosaka and Hani developed an everyday-centred philosophy of history through their writings, but we know little about (...) how formats other than the written word – such as cinema – contributed to thinking historical reality from the same ideological approach. To address this gap in our understanding, this article analyses the intersection of two highly representative films with Tosaka and Hani’s historical thought: Secrets Within Walls ( Kabe no naka no himegoto, Kōji Wakamatsu, 1965) and Ceremonies ( Gishiki, Nagisa Ōshima, 1971). These films’ cinematic allegorisation of post-war Japan’s everyday relationships was a way to reflect on the political character of that period. (shrink)

Standard models of practical rationality face a puzzle that has gone unnoticed: given a modest assumption about the nature of deliberation, we are apparently frequently briefly irrational. In what follows, I explain the problem, consider what is wrong with several possible solutions, and propose an account that does not generate the objectionable result.

This is an essay on philosophical methodology, the disciplinary prejudices of the Anglophone philosophical world, and how these things interact with some aspects of the content and form of Latin American philosophy to preclude the latter's integration with mainstream Anglophone philosophical work. Among the topics discussed of interest to analytic philosophers: metaphilosophy, the status hierarchy of philosophical subfields, experimental philosophy, and patterns of openness and exclusion in philosophy. Among the topics of interest to philosophers interested in Latin American philosophy and (...) comparative philosophy: the nature of disputes about the existence of Latin American philosophy, the significance of this genre of writing, how contributions to it can proceed, and why metaphilosophical concerns in Latin America are problematic for the prospects for integration with the Anglophone philosophical world. (shrink)

This article suggests that an account of pretence based on the idea of shared intentionality can be of help in understanding autism. In autism, there seems to be a strong link between being able to engage in pretend play, understanding the minds of others and having adequate access to own mental states. Since one of the first behavioral manifestations of autism is the lack of pretend play, it therefore seems natural to investigate pretence in order to identify the nature of (...) the central impairment in question. In mainstream theories, this has been identified as an impaired ‘theory of mind module’ or ‘mentalizing’ capacities. This paper points to some difficulties encountered by such accounts and – by drawing on research by Tomasello and Rakoczy – seeks to develop an alternative account of pretence and social cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on developmental findings to provide a nuanced understanding of background emotions, particularly those in depression. We demonstrate how they reflect our basic proximity (feeling of interpersonal connectedness) to others and defend both a phenomenological and a functional claim. First, we substantiate a conjecture by Fonagy & Target (International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88(4):917–937, 2007) that an important phenomenological aspect of depression is the experiential recreation of the infantile loss of proximity to significant others. Second, we argue (...) that proximity has a particular cognitive function that allows individuals to morph into a cohesive dyadic system able to carry out distributed emotion regulation. We show that elevated levels of psychological suffering connected to depressive background emotions may be explained not only in terms of a psychological loss, but also as the felt inability to enter into dyadic regulatory relations with others—an experiential constraint that decreases the individual’s ability to adapt to demanding situations. (shrink)

Los mecanismos de participación ciudadana se refieren a los espacios de diálogo legalmente constituidos para deliberar o negociar con las instituciones públicas. Aquí se ofrecen los resultados parciales de una investigación más amplia de esos mecanismos frente al gobierno de México entre 2019 y 2022. Se señalan los mecanismos que prevalecen en México, con sus características principales.

The importance of socio-economic impacts from the introduction and use of genetically modified crops is reflected in increasing efforts to include them in regulatory frameworks. Aiming to identify and understand the present knowledge on SEI of GM crops, we here report the findings from an extensive study of the published international scientific peer-reviewed literature. After applying specified selection criteria, a total of 410 articles are analysed. The main findings include: limited empirical research on SEI of GM crops in the scientific (...) literature; the main focus of the majority of the published research is on a restricted set of monetary economic parameters; proportionally, there are very few empirical studies on social and non-monetary economic aspects; most of the research reports only short-term findings; the variable local contexts and conditions are generally ignored in research methodology and analysis; conventional agriculture is the commonly used comparator, with minimal consideration of other substantially different agricultural systems; and there is the overall tendency to frame the research upon not validated theoretical assumptions, and to over-extrapolate small-scale and short-term specific results to generalized conclusions. These findings point to a lack of empirical and comprehensive research on SEI of GM crops for possible use in decision-making. Broader questions and improved methodologies, assisted by more rigorous peer-review, will be required to overcome current research shortcomings. (shrink)

Nuestra época, y seguramente la de las generaciones venideras, desarrolla su vida dentro de los lineamientos trazados por la Carta Política, esto resulta un axioma. Pero no siempre fue así, mucho camino se ha tenido que labrar para llegar a consolidar la realidad que atravesamos. Nuestra actual concepción de la Constitución es producto de muchos años de práctica socio – política y de actividad teórica, y este ensayo pretende, de una manera genérica, por supuesto, mostrar cómo se ha formado este (...) concepto de Constitución en la cultura jurídica moderna, siendo consecuentes con los elementos teóricos del Estado Social de Derecho. (shrink)

A wide Aronszajn tree is a tree of size and height $\omega _{1}$ with no uncountable branches. We prove that under $MA$ there is no wide Aronszajn tree which is universal under weak embeddings. This solves an open question of Mekler and Väänänen from 1994. We also prove that under $MA$, every wide Aronszajn tree weakly embeds in an Aronszajn tree, which combined with a result of Todorčević from 2007, gives that under $MA$ every wide Aronszajn tree embeds into a (...) Lipschitz tree or a coherent tree. We also prove that under $MA$ there is no wide Aronszajn tree which weakly embeds all Aronszajn trees, improving the result in the first paragraph as well as a result of Todorčević from 2007 who proved that under $MA$ there are no universal Aronszajn trees. (shrink)