When it comes to a question as notoriously unclear as “What is the meaning of life?” clarifying the question and its conceptual setting is a necessary step before attempting to answer the question. The analysis of the concept of “the meaning of life” is a twofold task; “the meaning” and “life” both need to be examined. In this paper, I primarily focus on “the meaning”. I argue that, although there is much disagreement and confusion in the literature about the meaning (...) of “the meaning” as it is applied to life, there is one most plausible interpretation of this notion. In the end, even though I do not answer the question of the meaning of life, I propose an account of what a correct answer to the question is supposed to look like, based on my original function analysis of “the meaning.”. (shrink)

Das Wort »Grenzüberschreitung« ist in Kunstzeitschriften und Feuilletons allgegenwärtig. Überschreitet man eine Grenze, so die scheinbar unvermeidliche Konsequenz, verlässt man das umgrenzte Territorium. Jedoch scheint dies in der Ästhetik nicht der Fall zu sein. Viele Kunstpraktiken werden als »grenzüberschreitend« bezeichnet und trotzdem weiter als dem Gebiet »Kunst« zugehörig betrachtet. Wie also lässt die Reichweite der Kunst - im Gegensatz zu Ethik oder Politik - unterschiedliche Grenzüberschreitungen zu? Tufan Acil entwickelt anhand von ästhetischen Theorien von Kant, Adorno und Derrida ein (...) Konzept der Grenze, das die konstitutive Rolle der Überschreitungen der Künste für eine Kunsttheorie plausibel zur Geltung bringt. (shrink)

Das Wort »Grenzüberschreitung« ist in Kunstzeitschriften und Feuilletons allgegenwärtig. Überschreitet man eine Grenze, so die scheinbar unvermeidliche Konsequenz, verlässt man das umgrenzte Territorium. Jedoch scheint dies in der Ästhetik nicht der Fall zu sein. Viele Kunstpraktiken werden als »grenzüberschreitend« bezeichnet und trotzdem weiter als dem Gebiet »Kunst« zugehörig betrachtet. Wie also lässt die Reichweite der Kunst - im Gegensatz zu Ethik oder Politik - unterschiedliche Grenzüberschreitungen zu? Tufan Acil entwickelt anhand von ästhetischen Theorien von Kant, Adorno und Derrida ein (...) Konzept der Grenze, das die konstitutive Rolle der Überschreitungen der Künste für eine Kunsttheorie plausibel zur Geltung bringt. (shrink)

This short paper comments on Lukáš Makky’s article What Makes Things Banal. The argument is divided into two sections. The first section reconstructs Makky’s understanding of banality, which he develops based on aesthetic theories by Wolfgang Welsch and Walter Benjamin. The second and more critical section examines the validity of the arguments Makky uses for his definition of banality. Although this commentary attaches great value to Makky’s insightful analysis of the term banality and agrees with identifying it as a historical (...) and processual concept, drawing on writings by M. Heidegger and J. Derrida it eventually proposes a different understanding of the relationship between the arts and banal things and underlines the importance of banality for the creation and perception of the arts. (shrink)

-------------------- Conceived on the basis of a survey on the « tanking » community's practices, this article is attempting to highlight a new typical activity in today's society which is quite different from instrumental and symbolic (or communication- based) activities. It is actually describing the ways in which some individuals are endeavouring to gain a victory over themselves through experiments on their own personal being. The various forms of action and the means used for that purpose are referred to under (...) the name of self-fashioning technologies. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend an antiphysicalist argument, namely, the imagination argument, which draws inspiration from Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument, or rather its misinterpretation by Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland. They interpret the knowledge argument to be about the ability to imagine a novel experience, which Jackson explicitly denies. The imagination argument is the following. Let Q be a visual phenomenal quality that is imaginable based on one’s phenomenal experience. (1) It is not possible to imagine Q solely (...) based on complete physical knowledge. (2) If it is not possible to imagine Q solely based on complete physical knowledge, then physicalism is false. (3) Therefore, physicalism is false. Even though objections have been raised to this argument in the literature, there is, as far as I know, no explicit defense of it. I argue that the imagination argument is more plausible than the knowledge argument in some respects and less plausible in others. All things considered, it is at least as interesting and serious a challenge to physicalism as the knowledge argument is. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend an antiphysicalist argument, namely, the imagination argument, which draws inspiration from Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument, or rather its misinterpretation by Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland. They interpret the knowledge argument to be about the ability to imagine a novel experience, which Jackson explicitly denies. The imagination argument is the following. Let Q be a visual phenomenal quality that is imaginable based on one’s phenomenal experience. It is not possible to imagine Q solely based (...) on complete physical knowledge. If it is not possible to imagine Q solely based on complete physical knowledge, then physicalism is false. Therefore, physicalism is false. Even though objections have been raised to this argument in the literature, there is, as far as I know, no explicit defense of it. I argue that the imagination argument is more plausible than the knowledge argument in some respects and less plausible in others. All things considered, it is at least as interesting and serious a challenge to physicalism as the knowledge argument is. (shrink)

This is a dialogue between an opponent of the phenomenal concept strategy and Mary from Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument. In this dialogue, Mary, who has complete physical knowledge about what it is like to see red, but has never seen red, is a physicalist and she defends the phenomenal concept strategy against her interlocutor’s objections. In the end, none of them is able to convince the other, but their conversation, through considerations of different versions of the knowledge argument and different (...) applications of the phenomenal concept strategy, reveals the most basic disagreement, or clash of intuitions, they have. The implied conclusion of the dialogue is that the disagreement on the success of phenomenal concept strategy as a physicalist response to the knowledge argument cannot be resolved unless this particular clash of intuitions is resolved. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the problem raised by the non-Euclidean geometries for the Kantian claim that the axioms of Euclidean geometry are synthetic a priori, and hence necessarily true. Although the Kantian view of geometry faces a serious challenge from non-Euclidean geometries, there are some aspects of Kant’s view about geometry that can still be plausible. I argue that Euclidean geometry, as a science, cannot be synthetic a priori, but the empirical world can still be necessarily Euclidean.

In this paper, I critically evaluate Lynne Rudder Baker’s nonmereological theory of material constitution in light of the “thinking into existence” objection from Theodore Sider and Dean W. Zimmerman. Baker does respond; however, she focuses only on the specific versions of the objection that has been posed by Sider and Zimmerman, and she does not address the underlying problem. Baker maintains that beliefs, social practices, and conventions can make something constitute a new object, namely, an intention-dependent object; however, as I (...) argue, the thinking into existence objection shows that constituted objects, if there are any, are ontologically independent of beliefs, social practices, and conventions. In fact, Baker’s theory doesn’t give us any reason to believe that the intention-dependent objects are more real than fictional objects. (shrink)

In this work, I explore and critically evaluate Aristotle’s views on the naturalness of dying from old age. His views are not straightforward, because Aristotle regards old age as a kind of decay and he talks about decay sometimes as natural and sometimes as unnatural. Nature, according to Aristotle, has two aspects, matter and form. I argue that, in Aristotle’s system, decay is always materially natural but formally unnatural. Likewise, natural death is death caused by old age and although getting (...) old is never formally natural, it is, in a particular sense, materially natural. In Aristotle’s view, getting old does not have the same mechanism as inorganic decay such as wine’s turning into vinegar, but it is a result of the materially natural decay of lungs, which leads to the exhaustion of the vital heat in the heart. (shrink)

What “physical” means is sometimes clarified by appealing to paradigmatically physical objects, properties, or phenomena. This move is not entirely unmotivated. The most basic intuition behind physicalism can be identified as that we, as conscious beings, are not ontologically special: we are, ultimately, like all these inanimate and unconscious things; we do not exemplify any mysterious properties that are categorically over and above all the properties that are exemplified by ordinary things like chairs or rocks or their constituents. And, according (...) to the dualists, we are, in terms of substance or property, metaphysically different from chairs, rocks, and the like. The kind of conception of the physical that refers to paradigm cases of the physical is in line with this disagreement in intuition between the physicalist and the dualist. Trying to conceptualize the physical based on some paradigmatically physical objects or phenomena, I argue, however, is a dead-end. (shrink)

Bu çalışmamızda Kur’an’da ifadesini bulan tufan, çekirge, haşere, kurbağa ve kan ayetleri ile onların karşılığı olarak Tevrat’ta aktarılan kan, kurbağa, sivrisinek/bit, sinek/böcek, veba/sığır hastalığı, çıban, dolu, çekirge, karanlık ve ilk doğanların ölümü belaları ; rivâyetler, Tevrat verileri ve bilimselci yaklaşım ekseninde ele alınmıştır. Çalışmamızda, Kur’an’da firavun ve âline karşı Hz. Musa’ya dokuz ayet verildiğinden bahsedilmesine binaen bu mucizelerin neler olduğunun ortaya konulması ve ilgili ayet, rivayetler ve Tevrat’taki verilerin tekâbüliyet, nedensellik, tutarlılık, kozmik-büyüsel algı ve bilimsel veriler ekseninde değerlendirilmesi amaçlanmıştır. (...) Bu doğrultuda ilk olarak tefsir kaynaklarımızda dokuz ayetin neler olabileceğine dair ortaya konulan görüşler hakkında bilgi verilmiş ve tarafımızca da değerlendirmede bulunulmuştur. Ayrıca rivâyetler ile Tevrat’taki verilerin tekābüliyeti hususunda gerek ayetteki ilgili lafızların anlamsal çerçevesi gerekse bilimsel veriler üzerinden tarafımızca fikir yürütülmüş, söz konusu veriler; nedensellik ve tutarlılık gibi farklı açılardan değerlendirilmiştir. Konuyla ilgili olarak Doğu’da bilimselci yaklaşımların yok denecek kadar az olmasına bağlı olarak Batılı araştırmacıların Tevrat’taki veriler üzerinden geliştirdikleri bilimselci yorumlar üzerinde durulmuştur. Bu çerçevede dış faktör olarak Ege Denizi’ndeki Thera yanardağının patlaması üzerinde, iç faktör olarak da Mısır’da muhtemelen gerçekleşmiş olan tabii olaylar üzerinde durulmuştur. (shrink)