Bu makalede 16. yüzyılın sonlarında Osmanlı hareminde güçlü bir konuma gelen Kethüdâ Canfedâ Hatun’un inşa ettirdiği mimari eserler ele alınmıştır. III. Murad döneminde (1574-1595) haremin en etkin kadın banilerinden birisi olan Canfedâ Hatun’un İstanbul ve İzmit’te cami, sıbyan mektebi, hamam, çeşme, köprü, su sarnıcı gibi farklı türden yapılar inşa ya da ihya ettirdiği görülmektedir. Canfeda Hatun’un ihya ettirdiği Mimar Ayas Camii ve inşa ettirdiği Saraçhane Sebili günümüze ulaşamamıştır. Gedikpaşa’daki çeşme ise ikinci bir bani tarafından yeniden inşa edilmiştir. Makalede Canfedâ Hatun’un (...) inşa ettirdiği eserlerin mevcut durumları, mimari ve süsleme özellikleri, zaman içerisindeki değişimleri ve geçirdikleri onarımlar fotoğraflar, çizimler ve arşiv belgeleriyle ortaya konulmaya çalışılmıştır. Yapılar benzer örneklerle karşılaştırılarak mimari ve süsleme unsurları açısından değerlendirilmiştir. Bu amaç doğrultusunda öncelikle Canfedâ Hatun’un hayatına ve Osmanlı Mimarisi’nde kadın bânilere dair bilgiler verilmiştir. (shrink)

While situation theory and situation semantics provide an appropriate framework for a realistic model-theoretic treatment of natural language, serious thinking on their 'computational' aspects has only recently started. Existing proposals mainly offer a Prolog- or Lisp-like programming environment with varying degrees of divergence from the ontology of situation theory. In this paper, we introduce a computational medium (called BABY-SIT) based on situations. The primary motivation underlying BABY-SIT is to facilitate the development and testing of programs in domains ranging from linguistics (...) to artificial intelligence in a unified framework built upon situation-theoretic constructs. (shrink)

Ijmā is ranked as the third shariah evidence after the Qur’ān and Sunnah in the science of Uṣūl. Shafi was the first one who made Uṣūl which had been known and used by the Islamic scholars, into a written document and who ascertained that Ijmā was the third of the shariah evidences. Kalām is one of the sciences in which Ijmā evidence is used. The scholars of Kalām used this evidence as far as the science of Uṣūl made it possible. (...) They always used it without changing any basics of religious beliefs and acceptances. That the aqidah of Ahl al-Sunnah has been supported with Ijmā which is regarded as one of naqly evidences, played an important role in eliminating suspicions which were tried to be aroused in momins’ mind. In this article, the function and importance of Ijmā evidence, which is one of the primary sources of the science of Uṣūl, in the science of Kalām and Aqidah of Ahl al-Sunnah has been studied.SummaryWhat the Qur’ān demands from us is to emphasize the spirit of unity among ummah and to keep out the factors that could trigger separation and division. Indeed, Allah emphasizes in the following verses in the Qur’ān on the protection of the unitary structure of the ummah: “And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided” (Āl a-Imrān 3/103) and “And do not be like the ones who became divided and differed after the clear proofs had come to them” (Āl al-Imrān 3/105). Allah has commanded the Ulul ‘Azm Prophets to hold the religion upright and to avoid division. (al-Shūrā 42/13). The command of holding the religion upright and not to be divided in this religion means to certify what needs to be confirmed in the religion of Allah and to obey those that must be obeyed. This is also the proclamation of the principle of religion that all the prophets have consensus over.Ahl al-Sunnah understanding of Islam is identical to the understanding of the Prophet and his companions. For this reason, Ahl al-Sunna is the school that represents the main backbone of Islam. In Ahl al-Sunna, in many subjects, be it usūlî / primary or furū’ī / secondary, there has been ijmā. These ijmās are Sahaba ijmās and deductive ijmās that come from mutakallimūn (theologians) ijtihāds. Therefore, ijmā and ijtihād are closely connected to each other. Ijmā is supported by ijtihād and ijtihād is also the source of ijmā. Thus, the issue is no longer just a pure ijtihād; it turns out to be a degree that gives a solid knowledge after it has risen to some degree just after the nass/texts.Ahl al- Sunnah theologians are talking about two kinds of ijmā. The first is “ijmā taṣdīqī” (approval consensus) which is the consensus based on Sahaba İjmā. These are the ijmās that occur on the principles called ḍaruratal-diniyya (necessities of the religion), and accepted as solid proofs in religion. Issues such as the principles of faith, obligation of prayer and the fasting are the subjects that are determined by the solid/definite ijmā. Such ijmās are valid approvals on existing provisions. These ijmās based on solid nass (verses and hadiths). Such ijmās do not give any new information. The existing information is strengthened by the alliance of Muslims. In these areas, ijtihād cannot be done and Muslims do not need ijtihād on these issues. There is an consensus of Ahl al-Sunnah scholars about the unfaithfulness of the one who denies one or more of the principles which are accepted as the main obligatory principles in Islam. The other is the “deductive ijmā which the ijtihāds have roles over. This kind of ijmās, are formed as a result of mujtahids’ consensus over the same opinion on the issue of theological secondary issues. The issues related to the secondary theological issues which were open to the ijtihāds and the different results obtained on matters are not accepted as the cause of takfīr. However, depending on the subject he/she can be a sinner. Istidlālī/deductive ijmās are not considered as an independent proofs in ‘Ilm al-Kalām, rather a supportive ones and are considered as textual evidences.Since, texts that are accepted as sources give supposed information. In this regard, the Ahl al-Sunnah scholars accepted other members of the sect who have in secondary theological issues opposed the ijmā of the salaf / predecessor as Ahl al-Qibla, but named them as Ahl al-Bid’a (innovator in religion) because of their opposition to Salaf’s İjmās. Moreover, the scholars of the Ahl al-Sunnah did not see them appropriate to participate in the Ijmās, which could occur between the generations that come after Sahābas/companions.Not all disputes have been criticized in Islam. It is a blessing for the ummah to claim different opinions on the issues subject to ijtihād. Since the ummah, in this way, will bring new solutions to emerging issues and as a result, Islam will have a mechanism to produce a dynamic solution. This can only be possible through ijtihād. Dispute is to propose different views on a subject. If this view is not in the actual matters that could harm the unity of the Ummah, rather in the case of ijtihādi issues, this conflict could turn to be mercy.The reason why the methodists evaluate the ijmā within the scope of the authorized evidence is that because they think it is essential that the ijmā be based on a proof. From this point of view, the alliances that occurred in mental matters were not considered as ijmā. The theologians always tried to support their claims with nass/textual proofs. When the ijmā is realized, whether known or not, they have stated that there is certainly a religious proof behind it. Because, the provisions that were reached through ijmā, cannot be against the provisions of the Prophet.Many issues in Islamic Belief and Kalām works are supported by the mental and textual evidences as well as by deductive ijmā. However, many of the claims of Ijmās in these works reflect the inter-sect ijmās of the Ahl al-Sunnah. The sects outside the Ahl al-Sunnah were excluded. This attitude is, above all, the aim of ensuring the integrity within the sect, and trying to protect the Ahl al-Sunnah belief. Since the ijmā evidence has a function that prevents all kinds of arbitrary and divisive thoughts and turns the supposed knowledge into the qat’ī/certain one, it raises the provision to the next level just after the nass, rather than merely being a ijtihādi provision. In the case of the forerunner of the Ahl al-Sunnah, the Māturīdes and Ash‘arites have not differed in in understanding of ijmā in terms of methodology.Although they have different views on the definition and content of the ijmā, they have a common understanding of alliances of Mujtahids on the same view. The mutakallims (theologians) of Māturīdī and Ash’arī schools have used the proof of ijmā as supportive evidence in the cases related to Kalām. al-Ash’arī not only adopted the proof of ijmā but also used it in practice in. He did not make any distinction in proof of ijmā as practical, theological, methodological or sub-divisional; he used it freely in every field. Māturīdī and Ash’arī scholars decided that the ijmā could occur in religious matters and that there would be evidence when it was formed; In the case of mental issues, they have required the knowledge to be based on solid information. In the case of ijmā in purely mental issues, they have disputed over the issue. While some Ahl al-Sunnah scholars stated that since purely mental matters were certain knowledge and therefore don’t need ijmā, they also ruled that because the mujtahids could get this knowledge from religious texts, therefore ijmā could occur in mental matters as well. (shrink)

Both Peter Sloterdijk and Richard David Precht have characteristics of the so-called media intellectuals in their gesture and appearance and also implicitly refer to the protection of human rights. Whereby Sloterdijk seems to be focused on the rights of the individual and his individual interests, a Richard David Precht is more focused on community as well as individual interests. It will be briefly outlined how they can be viewed as representatives of two media tendencies of the media public in the (...) German public - or to establish certain contradictions. (shrink)

With his philosophy of transcendence, Karl Jaspers is considered one of the few great metaphysicians of the 20th century. This study is devoted to the roots of his transcendental thinking in the philosophy of Plotinus (c. 204–270). It demonstrates the constitutive role that reference to the philosophia perennis played for Jaspers, as well as his early and intensive engagement with the founder of Neoplatonism, who for Jaspers was ‘the metaphysician par excellence’. His connection with Plotinus opens up fascinating new perspectives (...) on Jaspers’ concept of existential self-emergence as an ascent to the One, and on his henological philosophy of reason and his speculative paradoxical thinking about God. (shrink)

One of the most influential figures in the history of Islamic thought is Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210). The identities of mushakkik, which creates problems on many subjects, especially metaphysical and theological ones, the muhaqqiq who tries to solve the problems above the sects, and the jâmî who brings many different views together in the highest concepts, have seriously affected all the thinkers after him. Therefore, in the tradition, all schools had to inherit the philosophical and scientific dynamism that he (...) created and displayed an attitude about the problems he created and the solutions he offered. The real important motive that makes Râzî so indispensable and effective is his problematic identity (mushakkik), which carries the kalām to philosophy and philosophy to kalām, and criticizes philosophy on the basis of the kalām, and the kalām on the basis of philosophy. For this reason, when we look at the works of Râzî, who has been evaluated politically and sociologically within Ash'arism throughout his life, it is clearly seen that he is a thinker who is suitable to be embraced by different schools and to be interpreted in different ways. The fact that many Ahl as-sunnah theologians emphasized the works written by Râzî with a theological-Ash'ari theme, caused his supra-sectarian identity to be overshadowed. On the other hand, it is seen that some thinkers are making an effort to know and recognize Râzî as a philosopher-theologian and muhaqqiq. This effort is clearly seen especially in scientific figures who benefited from Kamaladdin Ibn Yûnus (d. 639/1242) in some way. Afḍal al-Dīn Khūnajī (d. 646/1248), Athir al-Din al-Abharî (d. 663/1265), Najm al-Din al-Qazwinî al-Kâtibî (d. 675/1277) can be given as examples. These personalities, on the one hand, played an active role in the spread of Râzî's scientific heritage and they were effective in bringing Râzî to the fore with his supra-sectarian identity on the other. Sirāj Al-Dīn Al-Urmawî (d. 682/1283), who inherited his scientific legacy, is among the important names who established his identity as a muhaqqiq who mostly solved supra-sectarian problems. Human actions are at the forefront of the issues in which this facility has clearly emerged. Urmawî tries to revise al-Arba'în's expressions, which seem to ignore the power and influence of human beings in terms of human actions as well as criticizing Razi's arguments very seriously. In his work Lübâb, on the one hand, he summarizes al-Erba'în of Razî he seriously criticizes Razi's Ash'ari attitude towards human actions on the other. He does this largely on the axis of the arguments that Râzî himself expressed from his encyclopedic works such as al-Matâlibu'l-'âliyya mina'l-'ilmi'l-ilâhi. It is clear that this is not an ordinary situation. Because human actions are at the forefront of the issues that determine the thinkers' conception of divinity and the relationship between God and man. In this study, Râzî's attitude on this issue and Urmavi's philosophical and theological criticisms will be tried to be determined. Thus, it is clearly seen that he is trying to establish Râzî as a muhaqqiq in the axis of human actions. (shrink)

Geleneksel bir bakış açısıyla İsrailoğullarının Tevrat’taki ilk kadın peygamberi olan Miryam, Harun ve Musa’nın kız kardeşi olup Mısır’dan çıkışın önemli figürlerinden biridir. Ancak eleştirel ve farklı bakış açısından Miryam ile ilgili kutsal kitap ve midraşlardaki anlatılara bakıldığında onun üç farklı portreye sahip olduğu görülmektedir. İlk portre, sepet içinde suya bırakılan Musa’yı uzaktan seyreden ve ismi belirtilmeyen abladır. İkinci tasvirde o, Mısır’dan çıkış esnasında Harun’un kız kardeşi peygamber Miryam olarak betimlenmektedir. Bu tasvir daha yakından incelendiğinde Mısır’dan çıkışta dilinde ezgisi, elinde tefi (...) ile dans ederek İsrailoğullarına liderlik eden Miryam’ın, peygamber olmaktan ziyade Mısır’dan izler taşıyan rahibe olmaya daha yakın durduğu görülmektedir. Nitekim Miryam’ı bir rahibe olarak görmek Cüzzamlı Miryam kıssasını daha anlaşılır kıldığı gibi onun fiziki kusurla cezalandırılması Mısır’daki bir rahibenin görevden uzaklaştırılmasıyla uyumluluk arz etmektedir. Rabbani literatür başta olmak üzere Yahudi geleneğinin Miryam algısı ise ona üçüncü bir portre kazandırmaktadır. Midraş literatürün Miryam portresi, ölümünden hemen önce Tevrat’ın ondan aldığı saygınlığı iade çerçevesinde olup, onu diğer önemli anneler arasında görmek üzerine kuruludur. (shrink)

This paper is a qualitative empirical study of the perceptions of web editors and moderators about reader comments. Drawing from the insights provided by nineteen in-depth interviews with newsroom staff, we contend that reader comments have so far made little impact on the practices of traditional journalism in Turkey and that their promise to foster more constructive online public deliberation is largely unfulfilled. Reader comments continue to be an underestimated and neglected feature of online news. Online journalists’ perceptions of reader (...) comments are not based on any solid information of their readers but on their own personal observation and experiences. Moreover, freedom of expression in reader comments in mainstream newspapers is very limited due to legal and political pressures and prevalent self-censorship. Online journalists define politics and sports as the main categories that receive the highest number of comments most of the time. They also observe in reader comments the manifestation of a current political polarization in Turkey and point out the existence of majority pressure and a spiral of silence in relation to the Kurdish issue. (shrink)

Advance directives are not a part of the healthcare service in Turkey. This may be related with the fact that paternalism is common among the healthcare professionals in the country, and patients are not yet integrated in the decision‐making process adequately.However, starting from the enactment of the Regulation of Patient Rights in 1998, this situation started to change. While the paternalist tradition still appears to be strong in Turkey, the Ministry of Health has been taking concrete measures in the recent (...) years to ensure that patient rights are implemented in healthcare practice. Therefore, Turkey now seems to be in a transitional period where a move towards a more patient‐autonomy centred approach is being supported by the regulatory authorities, as well as the academic circles and the public at large. In the light of this background, this paper aims to examine the potential benefits of advance directives, particularly with regard to their possible effect in the clinical decision‐making process of Turkey's context. It will be argued that advance directives, if correctly understood and implemented in the right settings, may be beneficial, particularly for improving communication between patients and healthcare professionals and for implementing of the right to refuse treatment. (shrink)

This paper explores expatriates’ ethical evaluations of and responses to guanxi in China through the lens of integrative social contracts theory. We conducted in-depth interviews with 14 expatriate managers who had spent, on average, 6.5 years working and living in China. Based on the content analysis of these interviews, we identified two different uses of guanxi: defensive and competitive. In general, the respondents found defensive guanxi moral in the Chinese context, while they considered competitive guanxi immoral. Based on our findings, (...) we identified fair competition as the substantive hypernorm that governed most respondents’ ethical evaluations of guanxi. The study has implications for all scholars who seek to utilize integrative social contracts theory to study the relationship between informal networks and corruption in developing countries. (shrink)

This article aims to examine critically the ‘cultural incompatibility’ argument, which asserts that disclosure of cancer-related information to patients is incompatible with Turkey’s cultural context. For this purpose, a brief overview of the approach to truth-telling in Turkey will first be provided, followed by the claims of two different Turkish authors on the issue and a critical analysis of their approach. It will be contended that this argument has actually been formulated with paternalistic concerns and it may be playing an (...) important role in shaping the approach of Turkish health care professionals to the issue. The article will then examine, in the light of study findings and case reports from Turkey, the concept of patient autonomy as it applies to truth-telling issues. It will be concluded that truth-telling can be compatible with Turkey’s cultural context, provided that health care professionals place more emphasis on good communication with their patients. (shrink)

Serious thinking about the computational aspects of situation theory is just starting. There have been some recent proposals in this direction (viz. PROSIT and ASTL), with varying degrees of divergence from the ontology of the theory. We believe that a programming environment incorporating bona fide situation-theoretic constructs is needed and describe our very recent BABY-SIT implementation. A detailed critical account of PROSIT and ASTL is also offered in order to compare our system with these pioneering and influential frameworks.

Advance directives are not a part of the healthcare service in Turkey. This may be related with the fact that paternalism is common among the healthcare professionals in the country, and patients are not yet integrated in the decision-making process adequately. However, starting from the enactment of the Regulation of Patient Rights in 1998, this situation started to change. While the paternalist tradition still appears to be strong in Turkey, the Ministry of Health has been taking concrete measures in the (...) recent years to ensure that patient rights are implemented in healthcare practice. Therefore, Turkey now seems to be in a transitional period where a move towards a more patient-autonomy centred approach is being supported by the regulatory authorities, as well as the academic circles and the public at large. In the light of this background, this paper aims to examine the potential benefits of advance directives, particularly with regard to their possible effect in the clinical decision-making process of Turkey's context. It will be argued that advance directives, if correctly understood and implemented in the right settings, may be beneficial, particularly for improving communication between patients and healthcare professionals and for implementing of the right to refuse treatment. (shrink)

While situation theory and situation semantics provide an appropriate framework for a realistic model-theoretic treatment of natural language, serious thinking on their 'computational' aspects has just started. Existing proposals mainly offer a Prolog- or Lisp-like programming environment with varying degrees of divergence from the ontology of situation theory. In this paper, we introduce a computational medium (called BABY-SIT) based on situations. The primary motivation underlying BABY-SIT is to facilitate the development and testing of programs in domains ranging from linguistics to (...) artificial intelligence in a unified framework built upon situation-theoretic constructs. (shrink)

In recent decades there has been growing concern about the combined undesired consequences of rapid economic growth, based on the free market movement, and developments in science and technology. This concern has placed the sustainable development concept on the world's agenda. The notion of sustainability, which originally referred mostly to the environmental consequences of human activities, along with their economic and social aspects, has been discussed not only at the national and the global levels but also in relation to particular (...) sectors of the economy. One such sector is agriculture, which to be sustainable must be ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible. Unless current trade and agricultural policies are geared to creating such a structure, sustainability will be no more than a myth in the industrialized and globalized world, while considerable numbers of people will be left struggling with hunger and poverty. Ethical, fair trade and ecologic agricultural practices, such as organic farming, have been suggested as alternatives to existing practices. However, with their current and potential size, these alternatives cannot compete with existing production and trade systems. But these alternatives nevertheless highlight the main problems of current day free trade and industrialized agriculture structures and their related solutions.This paper reviews the concepts of sustainable development and sustainable agriculture: it raises the question whether the world-wide free market economy is really free, and it considers the undesired consequences of this economy by focusing on the relationship between sustainable agriculture and agriculture-related trade policies. (shrink)

We describe a novel approach to the analysis of pronominal anaphora in Turkish. A computational medium which is based on situation theory is used as our implementation tool. The task of resolving pronominal anaphora is demonstrated in this environment which employs situation-theoretic constructs for processing.

This article shows how, in recent works of cultural analysis, the concept of ‘assemblage’ has been been derived from key sources of theory and put to work to provide a structure-like surrogate to express certain prominent values of a modernist sensibility in the discourse of description and analysis. Assemblage is a sort of anti-structural concept that permits the researcher to speak of emergence, heterogeneity, the decentred and the ephemeral in nonetheless ordered social life. There are other related concepts, like collage, (...) which have been used to give these values substance in research, but currently assemblage is enjoying a popularity perhaps because of the continuing fascination of the work of Deleuze and Guattari. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION[|]This paper has been planned as a critical response to Murat Civaner's article entitled 'Medical Ethics arguments should be concordant with scientific knowledge and certain values', published in the Autumn 2015 issue of Turkish Journal of Bioethics. It also aims to provide an evaluation of the way the authoritarian discourse manifests itself in ethical arguments.[¤]METHODS[|]For this purpose, the paper first presents the views of Orhan Hançerlioğlu on Karl Marx and Karl Popper and treats these views as a written example of (...) such authoritarian discourse, which is essentially a problematic attitude that results from an inability to acknowledge the value-laden aspects of a given perspective. [¤]RESULTS[|]In order to show that problems in Hançerlioğlu's approach is also present in Civaner's arguments, several examples where the author did not recognize the value-laden aspects and the subjective nature of information are provided. The paper then examines the recent claim by Celal Şengör, who asserted that force feeding of feces to individuals do not qualify as torture. Based on the presentation and the justification of this reductionist claim, it is emphasized that the relationship between information and values is much more complicated than those presented by Civaner. Civaner's claim, which asserts that the concept of conscience should have no place in medical ethics arguments, is also evaluated on this basis and the dangers of excluding the moral agent in ethical evaluation are underlined. In addition, the relationship of the paternalist tradition with the perspective which I refer to as the 'macro axis' is examined. Last but not least, the paper deals with the concept of 'ethics of ethics' by using examples from national and international ethics literature and emphasizes the reason why it is important for the ethicist to become aware of her own scheme of values. [¤]DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION[|]The paper concludes that contrary to what Civaner has asserted, it is not possible to exclude subjective aspects from ethical argumentation and that such an appraoch will inevitably have an authoritarian quality. For this reason, the need for other approaches for revealing, rather than repressing or ignoring, the subjective aspects of ethical inquiry is underlined.[¤]. (shrink)

Formalizing commonsense knowledge for reasoning about time has long been a central issue in AI. It has been recognized that the existing formalisms do not provide satisfactory solutions to some fundamental problems, viz. the frame problem. Moreover, it has turned out that the inferences drawn do not always coincide with those one had intended when one wrote the axioms. These issues call for a well-defined formalism and useful computational utilities for reasoning about time and change. Yoav Shoham of Stanford University (...) introduced in his 1986 Yale doctoral thesis an appealing temporal nonmonotonic logic and identified a class of theories, causal theories, which have computationally simple model-theoretic properties. This paper is a study towards building upon Shoham's work on causal theories. We concentrate on improving computational aspects of causal theories while preserving their model-theoretic properties. (shrink)

We extend causal theories and study actions in domains involving multiple agents. Causal theories, invented by Yoav Shoham, are based on a temporal nonmonotonic logic and have computationally tractable aspects. Since Shoham's formalism does not provide an adequate mechanism for representing simultaneous actions and specifying their consequences, we introduce the notion of counteractions while preserving the efficiency and model-theoretic properties of causal theories.

After a review of situation theory and previous attempts at 'computational' situation theory, we present a new programming environment, BABY-SIT, which is based on situation theory. We then demonstrate how problems requiring formal temporal reasoning can be solved in this framework. Specifically, the Yale Shooting Problem, which is commonly regarded as a canonical problem for nonmonotonic temporal reasoning, is implemented in BABY-SIT using Yoav Shoham's causal theories.

Situation theory has been developed over the last decade and various versions of the theory have been applied to a number of linguistic issues. However, not much work has been done in regard to its computational aspects. In this paper, we review the existing approaches towards 'computational situation theory' with considerable emphasis on our own research.

Recently, there have been some attempts towards developing programming languages based on situation theory. These languages employ situation-theoretic constructs with varying degrees of divergence from the ontology of the theory. In this paper, we review three of these programming languages.

This article offers a critical inquiry of contemporary neural network models as an instance of machine learning, from an interdisciplinary perspective of AI studies and performativity. It shows the limits on the architecture of these network systems due to the misemployment of ‘natural’ performance, and it offers ‘context’ as a variable from a performative approach, instead of a constant. The article begins with a brief review of machine learning-based natural language processing systems and continues with a concentration on the relevant (...) model of recurrent neural networks, which is applied in most commercial research such as Facebook AI Research. It demonstrates that the logic of performativity is not brought into account in all recurrent nets, which is an integral part of human performance and languaging, and it argues that recurrent network models, in particular, fail to grasp human performativity. This logic works similarly to the theory of performativity articulated by Jacques Derrida in his critique of John L. Austin’s concept of the performative. Applying Jacques Derrida’s work on performativity, and linguistic traces as spatially organized entities that allow for this notion of performance, the article argues that recurrent nets fall into the trap of taking ‘context’ as a constant, of treating human performance as a ‘natural’ fix to be encoded, instead of performative. Lastly, the article applies its proposal more concretely to the case of Facebook AI Research’s Alice and Bob. (shrink)

Causal knowledge unquestionably provides useful means to describe, explain and predict both natural and daily phenomena. This article addresses whether causality as such may not be ontologically primary and looks for an alternative fundamental mechanism encapsulating the information load of the causal framework. A probabilistic process view of reality asserting the struggle of natural forces is considered along with lines quoted from Nietzsche’s posthumously published notebooks and published work. Examples from scientific discoveries, in particular neurosciences, echoing his ontology are provided. (...) Furthermore, I propose a basic number game algorithm to illustrate and model the struggle of forces leading to causal inferences for an external observer. Nietzschean dynamic ontology involving the ceaseless struggle of will-to-power units accords with the emergentist approach to causation, which has been principally employed by the scientists working under the fields of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and complex dynamical systems. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethico-legal problems regarding the right to refuse treatment in Turkey's healthcare system. We discuss these problems in the light of a recent case that was directly reported to us. We first summarise the experience of a chronically dependent patient (as recounted by her daughter) and her family during their efforts to refuse treatment and receive palliative care only. This is followed by a summary of the legal framework governing the limits of the right to refuse treatment (...) in Turkey. With the help of this background information on the legal framework, we re-examine the ethico-legal aspects of the case and explain the underlying reasons for the problems the family and the patient experienced. Finally, we conclude that Turkey's legal framework relating to the right to refuse treatment needs to be clarified and amended in accordance with international conventions and fundamental human rights. (shrink)

Planlama --- bir amaca ulaşmak üzere bir aksiyonlar bütünü tasarlamak --- yapay zekadaki en temel problemlerden biridir. Bu yazıda, robotikte planlama konusuna mantıkçı (logicist) yaklaşım ele alınmaktadır. [Planning --- devising a plan of action to reach a given goal --- is a fundamental problem in AI. This paper reviews the logicist approach to planning in robotics.].

Understanding dental ethics as a field separate from its much better known counterpart, medical ethics, is a relatively new, but necessary approach in bioethics. This need is particularly felt in dental education and establishing a curriculum specifically for dental ethics is a challenging task. Although certain topics such as informed consent and patient rights can be considered to be of equal importance in both fields, a number of ethical issues in dental practice are only remotely—if at all—relevant for medical practice. (...) Therefore, any sound approach to education in dental ethics has to recognise the unique aspects of dental practice in order to meet the needs of dental students and prepare them for the ethical challenges they may face during their professional practice. With this goal in mind, this paper examines the approach of the authors to dental ethics education and proposes a system to organise the topics of biomedical ethics for dental education. While the authors' perspective is based on their experience in Turkey, the proposed system of classification is not a rigid one; it is open to interpretation in other contexts with different social, cultural and professional expectations. Therefore, the paper also aims to inspire discussion on the development of an ideal dental ethics curriculum at an international level. (shrink)