For several decades, the international community has criticized Turkey for failing to uphold the human rights and freedoms of its citizens and for not realizing the principles of non-discrimination and equality within its borders. As Turkey’s European Union candidacy proceeds, religious groups such as the Alevis claim to face discrimination and violations of their human rights and freedoms by the Turkish state. The Justice and Development Party debated the Alevis’ problems and structured the Alevi Initiative, which conducted relevant workshops and (...) discussions. Alevi arguments regarding their places of worship and the state’s religious education policy were identified as their main challenges. Alevis argued that the state’s policies on religious education and places of worship discriminated against them and violated their human rights. Through several human rights law cases before domestic and international tribunals, Alevis requested fulfillment, protection, and assurance of their human rights and freedoms. Several court decisions agreed that Alevis’ human rights and freedoms were being violated. However, the challenges and demands of Alevis still persist, as they contend that they have not succeeded in gaining the human rights and freedoms as required in contemporary Turkey under the JDP government. (shrink)

The article seeks a rapprochement between pragmatic and semantic theories of language by returning to a breaking point in the history of philosophy, the middle of the twentieth century, when these theoretical models began to evolve into distinct schools of thought. Philosophical accounts of this period explore various and intertwined dependencies between semantics and context; however, they only implicitly examine the potential of sounds and bodily gestures in bringing descriptive clarity to the modes and limits of such dependencies. The article (...) first investigates the way W. V. Quine conceptualized linguistic reference by combining behavioral models of language acquisition with more systematic explorations of syntax. It then turns to P. F. Strawson’s revisionary accounts of Kantian philosophy which reassess the silent strains of empiricism in Kant’s framework in order to identify possible grounds of reconciliation between pragmatic and semantic theories of language. Sound and gesture, two aspects that supplement language and give it an embodied feeling, are suggested as possible devices for formalizing intersections between context and semantic-oriented approaches. Poems by Wallace Stevens are used to think about the endurance of reference and how this endurance can find more compelling demonstration through an investigation of language as an embodied phenomenon. (shrink)

The rise of digital platforms is growingly acknowledged as a pivotal characteristic of contemporary capitalism. A subset of the literature on digital platforms scrutinized the political economy of platform companies, their data-driven business models along with the economic, social, and political consequences of platformization. Yet, this strand has been overwhelmingly interested in Big Tech companies in the United States and China. In this article, I aim to expand the geographical span of this emerging literature by scrutinizing platformization dynamics in Turkey, (...) a middle-income country that has not been systematically examined so far along these lines. To this end, I present an assessment on the overall platform landscape in Turkey by focusing on three highlight digital platforms (Trendyol, Hepsiburada, and Getir). My analysis on the trajectory of these three platforms indicates the following. First, these platforms have exhibited meteoric growth rates and have risen among the most valuable companies in Turkey in a tremendously short period of time. Second, their aggressive growth strategies based on data extraction and network externalities have led to a strong monopolization drive. Third, they have rapidly expanded into adjacent business areas, transforming themselves into infrastructural components of the domestic economy, with profound impacts on production, trade, and labor relations. Fourth, they remain dependent on the infrastructure laid by Big Techs. These findings suggest that platformization is rapidly transforming economic landscapes other than the United States and China as well, yet in an uneven and dependent form, underlining the need to broaden the geographical focus of the concerned literature. (shrink)

Extreme learning machine is a recent scheme for single hidden layer feed forward networks. It has attracted much interest in the machine intelligence and pattern recognition fields with numerous real-world applications. The ELM structure has several advantages, such as its adaptability to various problems with a rapid learning rate and low computational cost. However, it has shortcomings in the following aspects. First, it suffers from the irrelevant variables in the input data set. Second, choosing the optimal number of neurons in (...) the hidden layer is not well defined. In case the hidden nodes are greater than the training data, the ELM may encounter the singularity problem, and its solution may become unstable. To overcome these limitations, several methods have been proposed within the regularization framework. In this article, we considered a greedy method for sparse approximation of the output weight vector of the ELM network. More specifically, the orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm is embedded to the ELM. This new technique is named OMP-ELM. OMP-ELM has several advantages over regularized ELM methods, such as lower complexity and immunity to the singularity problem. Experimental works on nine commonly used regression problems indicate that the investigated OMP-ELM method confirms these advantages. Moreover, OMP-ELM is compared with the ELM method, the regularized ELM scheme, and artificial neural networks. (shrink)

In The Death of Tragedy (1961) George Steiner observed that tragedy as a form of drama was “distinctive of Western tradition.” Today, critics and scholars are understandably impatient with this position. Indeed, Andrew Gerstle points to Japanese traditional theater to challenge the idea that there can only be one norm of the concept of the tragic. Yet both Steiner and Gerstle absolutize formalistically the power of tragic art to reveal an unalterable human condition, thereby disconnecting great literary achievements from the (...) perception of contemporary society. The argument of this essay is inspired by Raymond William’s notion of “modern tragedy,” which considers tragedy as a representation of our experience of the permanent contradictions in the process of modernization. From this perspective I critically examine the reception of traditional and modern Japanese literature in an attempt to establish through multicultural dialogue a truly inclusive framework for the interpretation of tragic art. (shrink)

In his long and productive life Joseph Margolis approached many subjects that had been the concern of philosophy all through history. However, when his texts are read carefully it is clear that his main interest was to understand humanity and its cultural values. In my text I will first introduce Margolis philosophy in general and the underlying premises that he defended throughout his work, moving on to specific claims and arguments. I will pursue my analysis through several of Margolis’ texts (...) concerning his main philosophical arguments, such as the definition of the human, relativity, ethics and aesthetics. Margolis was a prolific writer who developed his philosophy in consecutive phases, arriving in his later years to arguments that became more pointed as well as far reaching in scope. Margolis’ reasoning and argumentation proceeds in three steps: defining the problem at hand, understanding the reasonings applicable to his claim and to opposing views, reaching a solution suitable and appropriate according to the context. (shrink)

Background:Nurses and nursing students increasingly confront ethical problems in clinical practice. Moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, and ethical decision-making are therefore important skills throughout the nursing profession. Innovative teaching methods as part of the ethics training of nursing students help them acquire these fundamental skills.Aim:This study investigated the effects and potential benefits of using standardized patients in ethics education on nursing baccalaureate students’ moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, and ethical decision-making by comparing this method with in-class case analyses.Research design:This is a quasi-experimental (...) study.Participants and research context:The sample comprised 89 students in Hacettepe University’s Faculty of Nursing. Following lectures describing the theoretical components of ethics, students were randomly assigned to two working groups, one using standardized patients and the other using in-class case analyses. Data were collected using the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire, Rest’s Defining Issues Test, and the Nursing Dilemma Test. All data were analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 23.Ethical considerations:Ethical approval and official permission were obtained. All participating students completed informed consent forms.Findings:According to the results, the moral sensitivity of students in the standardized patient group significantly improved over time compared to those in the case analysis group, while the mean scores of students in both groups for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making were not statistically significant.Conclusion:Based on our results, we recommend the use of both standardized patients and case analysis as appropriate teaching methods in ethics education. (shrink)

Bernard E. Harcourt, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001, x + 294 pp. David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, xiii + 307 pp. Andrea McArdle and Tanya Erzen (eds.), Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City New York: New York University Press, 2001, xvi + 299 pp. Phillipe Bourgois, In (...) Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xii + 392 pp. Loïc Wacquant, Les Prisons de la Misère Paris: Raisons D'Agir Éditions, 1999, 189 pp. (shrink)

Excerpt from Die Dynamik der Geschichte nach der Geschichtsphilosophie des Positivismus Jede religionsphilosophische und ethische Untersuchung führt unter heutigen Verhältnissen auf den Begriff einer univer salen Entwicklungsgeschichte der Menschheit, der Begriff einer solchen Universalgeschichte auf den eines Maßstabes zur Be urteilung der Entwicklungshöhe und des in ihr enthaltenen Wertes, der Begriff eines solchen Maßstabes aber, der nur aus dem Wesen der Entwicklung selbfl: hergeleitet werden kann, auf den methodisch-abstrakten Begriff der Entwicklung selbst, in dem Sein und Bewegung, Notwendigkeit und Freiheit, (...) ur sächliche Reihe und Zweck, allgemeine Tendenz undindividuum eng miteinander verknüpft sind. Es ist der Begriff einer spezifisch historischen Dynamik mit ihrer beständigen Erzen gung und Verschmelzung der Gegensätze, ihrem immer flüssigen Ineinander aller Einzelheiten und ihrem untrennbaren Durcheinanderspielen von Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zu kunft. Dieser Begriff.erweist sichauch für den empirischen Historiker als einer seiner wichtigsten Zentralbegriffe, für den er freilich zunächst nur seinen "historischen Sinn und seine intuitive Begabung zur Verfügung hat. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Mont Publishing House and Valery Vino deliver the first volume of an eclectic collection in aesthetic education. Aesthetic Literacy is an experiment in philosophy of culture, and this volume features cross-genre contributions by: Theodore Gracyk (Minnesota), Babette Babich (Fordham), David Konstan (NYU), Katya Mandoki (UNAM), Arnold Berleant (Long Island), Jale Erzen (Middle East Tech), Curtis Carter (Marquette), Clive Cazeaux (Cardiff), Fabrizio Desideri (Florence), Ken-ichi Sasaki (Tokyo), and many others... -/- .