Dowker [1] raised the question of the existence of filters such that for every coloring (partition) of the underlying index set I with two colors there is a relation R on I which (i) is fat (in the sense that sets of the form {y Є I∣xRy} are in the filter) and (ii) has no bichromatic symmetric pairs (i.e., distinct indices x and y such that x R y and y R x). Additionally, he required that the filter have no anti-symmetric fat relation, for such a relation would vacuously satisfy (i) and (ii). The question of the existence of Dowker filters has been studied more recently by Rudin [3], [4], who conjectures [3] that such filters do not exist.

For ZFC the problem remains open. However, Example 2 of this paper shows that one can construct a Dowker filter provided one drops the axiom of choice in favor of the Baire Property (BP) axiom which is known to be incompatible with ZFC but relatively consistent with ZF. In fact, the filter constructed is super-Dowker in the sense that (ii) can be replaced by the requirement that all components of all symmetric pairs have the same color. But, in ZFC the existence of a super-Dowker filter implies the existence of a measurable cardinal.

Let F be a filter on an index set I. A set will be called big, small, or medium depending on whether F contains that set, its compliment, or neither, respectively. We define five cardinals associated with F:

α denotes the smallest cardinal such that there is a family of α big sets whose intersection is not big.

ν denotes the smallest cardinal such that there is a family of ν big sets whose intersection is small.