ABSTRACT In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman develops a critique of social science to argue that current technocratic practices are prone to predictive failures and unintended consequences. However, he does not provide evidence that the cause he singles out—“ideational heterogeneity”—is in fact a non-negligible source of technocratic limitations, more than or alongside better-known problems such as missing data, measurement issues, interpretive difficulties, and researcher bias. Even if we grant ideational heterogeneity, Friedman’s preferred institutional solution of exitocracy does not necessarily follow. (...) His critical epistemology would also be compatible with radical forms of collective action. (shrink)

In this article I review two contrasting approaches to Muslim women’s rights: those that want Muslims to secularize the Qur’an as the precondition for getting rights and those that emphasize the importance of a liberatory Qur’anic hermeneutics to Muslim women’s struggles for rights and equality. As examples of the former, I take the works of Nasr Abu Zayd and Raja Rhouni and, of the latter, my own. In addition to joining the debates on Muslim women’s rights, this exercise is meant (...) to illustrate that secular attempts to undermine Islam also undermine the prospects for rights and democracy in Muslim societies. In fact, I see the secular project in Muslim societies as a form of self-harm. Lastly, I revisit Antonio Gramsci’s critique of democracy as a way to query the title of the İstanbul Seminars, ‘The Promises of Democracy’. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the metalinguistic solution to the problem of mathematical omniscience for the possible-worlds account of propositions by combining it with a computational model of knowledge and belief. The metalinguistic solution states that the objects of belief and ignorance in mathematics are relations between mathematical sentences and what they express. The most pressing problem for the metalinguistic strategy is that it still ascribes too much mathematical knowledge under the standard possible-worlds model of knowledge and belief on which (...) these are closed under entailment. I first argue that Stalnaker's fragmentation strategy is insufficient to solve this problem. I then develop an alternative, computational strategy: I propose a model of mathematical knowledge and belief adapted from the algorithmic model of Halpern et al. which, when combined with the metalinguistic strategy, entails that mathematical knowledge and belief require computational abilities to access metalinguistic information, and thus aren't closed under entailment. As I explain, the computational model generalizes beyond mathematics to a version of the functionalist theory of knowledge and belief that motivates the possible-worlds account in the first place. I conclude that the metalinguistic and computational strategies yield an attractive functionalist, possible-worlds account of mathematical content, knowledge, and inquiry. (shrink)

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, (...) resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power. -/- Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Basak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue from a metasemantic principle to the existence of analytic sentences. According to the metasemantic principle, an external feature is relevant to determining which concept one expresses with an expression only if one is disposed to treat this feature as relevant. This entails that if one isn’t disposed to treat external features as relevant to determining which concept one expresses, and one still expresses a given concept, then something other than external features must determine that one (...) does. I argue that, in such cases, what determines that one expresses the concept also puts one in a position to know that certain sentences are true—these sentences are thus analytic relative to this determination basis. Finally, I argue that there are such cases: some sentences are analytic relative to what determines that we express certain key concepts, and these sentences include ones that have always been thought to be the best candidates for being analytic, namely, stipulative truths, and first principles of mathematics. (shrink)

The use of ensemble learning, deep learning, and effective document representation methods is currently some of the most common trends to improve the overall accuracy of a text classification/categorization system. Ensemble learning is an approach to raise the overall accuracy of a classification system by utilizing multiple classifiers. Deep learning-based methods provide better results in many applications when compared with the other conventional machine learning algorithms. Word embeddings enable representation of words learned from a corpus as vectors that provide a (...) mapping of words with similar meaning to have similar representation. In this study, we use different document representations with the benefit of word embeddings and an ensemble of base classifiers for text classification. The ensemble of base classifiers includes traditional machine learning algorithms such as naïve Bayes, support vector machine, and random forest and a deep learning-based conventional network classifier. We analysed the classification accuracy of different document representations by employing an ensemble of classifiers on eight different datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that the usage of heterogeneous ensembles together with deep learning methods and word embeddings enhances the classification performance of texts. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce and defend a notion of analyticity for formal languages. I first uncover a crucial flaw in Timothy Williamson’s famous argument template against analyticity, when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages. Williamson’s argument targets the popular idea that a necessary condition for analyticity is that whoever understands an analytic sentence assents to it. Williamson argues that for any given candidate analytic sentence, there can be people who understand that sentence and yet who fail (...) to assent to it. I argue that, on the most natural understanding of the notion of assent when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages, Williamson’s argument fails. Formal analyticity is the notion of analyticity that is based on this natural understanding of assent. I go on to develop the notion of formal analyticity and defend the claim that there are formally analytic sentences and rules of inference. I conclude by showing the potential payoffs of recognizing formal analyticity. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the term ‘immanence’ in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and show how it relates to her historical account of sexual oppression. I argue that Beauvoir's use of Hegel's master−slave dialectic and of Claude Lévi-Strauss's reflection on the prohibition of incest lead her to claim that in all societies “woman” is constructed as “absolutely other.” I show that there is an ambiguous logic of abjection at work in Beauvoir's account that explains why men are (...) the only examples of transcendence in history, whereas women lack it. Finally, I discuss the way in which the relation between immanence and abjection helps to explain the intellectual relation between Georges Bataille and Beauvoir. (shrink)

The prevailing paradigm in Internet privacy literature, treating privacy within a context merely of rights and violations, is inadequate for studying the Internet as a social realm. Following Goffman on self-presentation and Altman's theorizing of privacy as an optimization between competing pressures for disclosure and withdrawal, the author investigates the mechanisms used by a sample (n = 704) of college students, the vast majority users of Facebook and Myspace, to negotiate boundaries between public and private. Findings show little to no (...) relationship between online privacy concerns and information disclosure on online social network sites. Students manage unwanted audience concerns by adjusting profile visibility and using nicknames but not by restricting the information within the profile. Mechanisms analogous to boundary regulation in physical space, such as walls, locks, and doors, are favored; little adaptation is made to the Internet's key features of persistence, searchability, and cross-indexability. The author also finds significant racial and gender differences. (shrink)

Sosyal, siyasî, iktisadî, psikolojik, kültürel boyutları dönemlere ve coğ-rafyalara göre çeşitlilik arz etse de savaş mefhumu insanlık tarihi kadar eski-dir. Savaşın, dünya hayatının durum ve problemlerinden kaynaklanan yönlerinin yanı sıra dinî sâiklerinin bulunması, onun tarihe mal olmuş sürekliliğinde oldukça etkilidir. Eski Ahit ve Kur’an dâhil kutsal metinlerin söz konusu sâikler arasında yer alması, pek çok farklı okumaya tâbî tutulabilecek bu metinlerin savaşa dair anlatımlar bağlamında değerlendirilmesini mümkün ve hatta gerekli kılmaktadır. Bu makalede Kur’an ve Eski Ahit’in tarih boyu insan hayatını (...) doğrudan etkilediği olgulardan biri olarak savaşla ilgili anlatımları bir araya getirilmiş, bunlar çeşitli yönlerden mukayese edilerek aralarındaki benzerlik ve farklılıklar belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu mukayeseden ulaşılan sonuçlardan hareketle, her iki metnin kendi muhataplarının zihninde oluşturduğu savaş algısına dair ipuçları elde etmek hedeflenmiştir. Savaşa dair anlatımlar incelenirken Kur’an’ın Arapça metni, Eski Ahit’in ise ulaşabildiğimiz en eski İngilizce metni ve Türkçe tercümesi esas alınmıştır. (shrink)

Etienne Balibar se réfère à l’idée arendtienne de la citoyenneté pour montrer que la démocratie se construit nécessairement au travers d’une aporie. D’une part, la démocratie évoque l’idéal isonomique de l’égalité pour fonder la communauté ; d’autre part, elle inscrit la différence dans l’éventualité d’une contestation permanente des principes unificateurs. Ce que je propose, c’est de contribuer à développer le dialogue entre E. Balibar et Hannah Arendt en m’interrogeant sur la possibilité d’aller au-delà de l’horizon de la violence. Le concept (...) d’agon qu’Arendt utilise pour qualifier le vivre ensemble isonomique n’est pas la concurrence entre artisans, ni le conflit entre ennemis, mais renvoie plutôt à l’institution d’un monde commun grâce aux différences. L’agir agonistique comprend le risque de se distinguer, d’être en désaccord, de se différer, non seulement par rapport aux autres mais aussi par rapport a soi-même. Il faudrait alors définir la violence comme une force qui agit sur l’agon, c’est-à-dire, sur la capacité de « devenir-autre ». C’est justement ceci qu’aussi bien la loi que la notion moderne de droits oblitère. (shrink)

The lunar month of Ramadan is an important time period for Muslims around the world. In this study, we examine whether Ramadan brings happiness to individuals. For this purpose, we conducted a survey once before Ramadan, three times during Ramadan, and once after Ramadan. Our results show that with every week in Ramadan, a small boost of happiness is reported. Yet, two weeks after Ramadan, people seem to return to their baseline level of happiness. We suggest that Ramadan is associated (...) with higher well-being due to increased socialization as non-fasting and those who fast partially also has statistically higher happiness scores than pre-Ramadan sample. Yet, those who have highest happiness scores are those who fasted fully. (shrink)

In this article, disasters as a factual reality will be discussed within the framework of Allah's justice and human responsibility on the basis of husn-qubh. In this context, the ontic structure of man and the universe, man's being in the process of being tested, the definition of good-bad/goodness-evil that enables this process, the evaluations in the literature, and the meaning of taklīf within the scope of Allah's justice (‘adl) will be discussed. The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling (...) a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and does good deeds with a universe in which evil exists. As a problem of evil, disaster is a phenomenon that must be addressed in relation to God, the universe, and human beings. While its relation with God in terms of creation appears as the legality of the universe, its relation with human beings in terms of dealing with the phenomenon and responsibility is within the scope of being subject to the offer. Therefore, a correct understanding of creation and justification of the reasonableness of the offer will answer many questions regarding disasters. The aforementioned issues and concepts in the theological literature have been discussed thoroughly (dakīk) in the schools of theology. Theologians defined God and divine action, human beings and human actions, and the universe in accordance with the paradigm of their discourse groups, and they made discussions based on the meaning they gave to these definitions and concepts. The basic determinants of the discussions are God's possession of knowledge, power, will, wisdom, and justice, and the creation of human beings in the nature of reason (‘akl). These concepts and definitions have been understood differently by the discourse groups, and the debates have moved back and forth between determination/compulsion and free will. It makes sense here that a person who experiences the phenomenon and wants to know what is happening theologically should know the Qur'anic conception of God and man. The relationship between God and man needs to be right and moral. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the topics that have been studied many times in terms of each concept together. In this respect, the article aims to seek answers to some questions about the human profile and the conception of Allah. There are three aspects to be questioned here: First, an ontological inquiry into the nature of the concepts of existence that contain moral value; second, an epistemological inquiry into whether moral value is determined by reason or revelation. In this context, the last inquiry is moral. Accordingly, what is good-bad and goodness-evil? What determines good and evil as a value? Who is the agent of the good-evil action? What is the position of the divine will if the perpetrator (fā‘ıl) is human? What is the relationship or boundary between divine will and human responsibility? What is the theological status of the perpetrator? On this basis, what is a disaster? What is the value judgment of disasters? What is the relation of disasters to God's actions? Who is the perpetrator of disasters? Are disasters a test? Are disasters a divine warning? Are disasters a divine punishment? If they are a divine punishment, what is the possibility of knowing it? These questions will be answered in the article, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. (shrink)

Will existing forms of artificial intelligence (AI) lead to genuine intelligence? How is AI changing our society and politics? This essay examines the answers to these questions in Brian Cantwell Smith's The Promise of Artificial Intelligence and Mark Coeckelbergh's The Political Philosophy of AI with a focus on their central concern with judgment—whether AI can possess judgment and how developments in AI are affecting human judgment. First, I argue that the existentialist conception of judgment that Smith defends is highly idealized. (...) While it may be an appropriate standard for intelligence, its implications for when and how AI should be deployed are not as clear as Smith suggests. Second, I point out that the concern with the displacement of judgment in favor of “reckoning” (or calculation) predates the rise of AI. The meaning and implications of this trend will become clearer if we move beyond ontology and metaphysics and into political philosophy, situating technological changes in their social context. Finally, I suggest that Coeckelbergh's distinctly political conception of judgment might offer a solution to the important boundary-drawing problem between tasks requiring judgment and those requiring reckoning, thus filling a gap in Smith's argument and clarifying its political stakes. (shrink)

The catastrophic risks posed by new technologies such as killer robots and geoengineering have triggered calls for halting new research. Arguments for restricting research typically have a slippery‐slope structure: Researching A will lead to deployment; we have decisive moral reasons against deployment; therefore, we should not research A. However, scientific uncertainty makes it difficult to prove or disprove the conclusion of slippery‐slope arguments. This article accepts this indeterminacy and asks whether and when it would be permissible to restrict research under (...) empirical and normative uncertainty. The argument starts from the ethical framework for the regulation of scientific research with human subjects and offers modifications to adapt it to the purpose of restricting new technologies. Two main questions arise in the process: whether it is permissible to impose restrictions at the research stage to prevent harms that will arise from the use of a technology and whether it is permissible to restrict research preemptively on the grounds of public fear and anxiety, before there is sufficient evidence establishing the risk of harm. I answer both questions in the affirmative and defend this position against objections. (shrink)

Consensus around what constitutes researcher conflicts of interest (COIs) and awareness of their influence on our research are two critical steps in ensuring the integrity of our science. In this research, data were collected from individual scholars via 2 surveys 5 years apart and from journals and associations to examine the level of social consensus and moral awareness among scholars, journals, and associations regarding researcher COIs. Although we observed increases in level of social consensus and moral awareness between 2012 and (...) 2017, results still revealed limited agreement about what relationships constitute a COI and limited awareness about the presence of and the ethical issues surrounding COIs. Although all journals and associations we examined supported COI disclosure, most did not provide researchers with detailed COI-related information, guidance, or disclosure tools. Limited social consensus and moral awareness regarding COIs is problematic because it inhibits the recognition, disclosure, and management of COIs and limits ethical decision making. We need to continue and enhance discussions about COIs and aim to create consensus and awareness where we do not have it with the goal of reducing potential scientific misconduct related to COIs. (shrink)

Hartmut Rosa Eleştirel Teori’ye yeni bir soluk getiriyor. Bir yandan “hızlanma” teorisiyle Eleştirel Teori geleneğinin “yabancılaşma” kavramına çağdaş bir içerik kazandırırken, diğer yandan da bu yabancılaşmaya cevap olarak ortaya koyduğu rezonans teorisinde, toplum felsefesini ve eleştirel teoriyi dışarıdan beslemiş olsa da onunla tam olarak buluşmamış bir felsefi geleneği, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’nin düşüncesinde şekillenen fenomenolojik yaklaşımı düşüncesini dayandırdığı ana zemin olarak sunuyor. Rosa bize şeylerle, diğerleriyle ve var olan anlamlarla kurduğumuz çağrı-yanıt ilişkileri içinde dünyamızı her an yeniden oluşturduğumuzu, dönüştürdüğümüzü ve bu karşılıklılık (...) halinin korunması için açacağımız zamana ve mekâna dair imkanların, verilmiş tüm cevaplardan, elde edilmiş tüm kesinliklerden daha hayati olduğunu hatırlatıyor. Bu makale Rosa’nın düşüncesinin eleştirel teoriye getirdiği yeniliği ve bu yeniliğin kamusal alan ve yurttaşlararasılık için taşıdığı anlamı değerlendirmeyi amaçlıyor. (shrink)

According to the iterative conception of sets, standardly formalized by ZFC, there is no set of all sets. But why is there no set of all sets? A simple-minded, though unpopular, “minimal” explanation for why there is no set of all sets is that the supposition that there is contradicts some axioms of ZFC. In this paper, I first explain the core complaint against the minimal explanation, and then argue against the two main alternative answers to the guiding question. I (...) conclude the paper by outlining a close alternative to the minimal explanation, the conception-based explanation, that avoids the core complaint against the minimal explanation. (shrink)

Almost every state has its own legal system and there is a legal system in accordance with the social norms of the state. However, although states have autonomy with their own legal systems, the legal system of each state unites under larger legal systems. From this point of view, three major legal systems can be accepted; Anglo-Saxon Legal System (English Legal System, Common Law), Continental European Legal System (Legal system of European states based on Roman law), Social Legal System on (...) which Russian Federation is based. Apart from these systems, there is also an Islamic legal system with its unique structure. The reason why the Islamic legal system is unique is that it is based on both religious and rational sources. In general, the case-based method is used in the Anglo-Saxon Legal System, and the rule-based method is used in the Continental European Legal System. Which one of these two method used by Islamic law which takes its source from Qur’an and hadith well? Or is it use both methods? Our aim in this study, in addition to analysing the operation of these two methods in Islamic law from a logical point of view, is to analyse the integration of the rule-based method into the case-based method and the case-based method with the rule-based method. With this research it is to provide a logical proposal to extend the intended use of analogy in Islamic law. As a matter of fact, we think that different branches of science should come together in order to produce new suggestions in this field. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to determine what kind of religious coping activities the refugee students forced to emigrate to Turkey due to the devastating reasons such as war and violation of rights apply in order to overcome their traumatic lives and the relationship between the use of these religious coping activities and their adaptation to the culture they live in. The fact that religion has important functions in dealing with all difficulties, especially forced migration, makes it a matter (...) of interest about what kind of religious coping process refugees have experienced for making their lives bearable. Therefore, this research is based on the assumption that the refugees mostly struggle with difficulties by using positive religious coping methods and try to achieve cultural adaptation through this struggle. The sample was selected from the refugee students from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan continuing their education in different departments of Karabük University and in different high schools of Karabük National Education Directorate in 2017-2018 academic year. “Cultural Adaptation” and “Religious Coping Styles” scales were applied to the sample with an average age of 18. According to the research findings, cultural adaptation and positive religious coping levels of the sample group are above the average, and negative religious coping levels are below the average. There was found a positive meaningful correlation between cultural adaptation and positive religious coping of which relation was determined through some independent and demographic variables (r =.269). Therefore, it is thought that providing spiritual care for refugee students might increase the level of cultural adaptation.Summary: The aim of this study is to determine what kind of religious coping activities the refugee students forced to emigrate to Turkey due to the devastating reasons such as war and violation of rights apply in order to overcome their traumatic lives and the relationship between the use of these religious coping activities and their adaptation to the culture they live in. The fact that religion has important functions in dealing with all difficulties, especially forced migration, makes it a matter of interest about what kind of religious coping process refugees have experienced for making their lives bearable. Therefore, this research is based on the assumption that the refugees mostly struggle with difficulties by using positive religious coping methods and try to achieve cultural adaptation through this struggle. The study that was conducted according to correlational survey model, used the questionnaire technique by implementing the “Cultural Adaptation” and “Religious Coping Styles” scales together with a personal information form. The sample of the study was chosen by random sampling, and consisted of 112 volunteer refugee students from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, studying at different departments of Karabük University and different public high schools in Karabük. While analyzing the data, firstly, averages were calculated by obtaining total scores of the scales. In order to reveal whether students’ cultural adaptation levels differ by various variables or not, t-test (Independent Samples t-test), one-way analysis of variance (Oneway ANOVA) and Scheffe Test were applied. While analyzing relations related to religious coping, non-parametric ‘Man Whitney U’ and ‘Kruskall Wallis H’ tests were applied in accordance with the result of the normality test. In the study in which correlation test was applied to determine the relationship between cultural adaptation and religious coping, the lowest p-value was predicated as.05 to determine the level of statistical significance. According to the findings, sample group’s levels of cultural adaptation (=3,27) and positive religious coping (=3,42) were above the average, and the level of negative religious coping (=1,77) was below the average. Cultural adaptation levels of the sample group has shown significant statistical differences in terms of the nationality variable. Accordingly, Syrian students had higher cultural adaptation scores (=3,48) than Iraqi (=3,19) and Afghani students (=3,06), and the difference among them was statistically meaningful (p<.01). There wasn’t detected any significant relationship between ‘negative religious coping’ levels of the sample and demographic and other independent variables; however, there were seen statistically significant differences just in terms of nationality, gender and age range among other demographic variables. Accordingly, female students scored higher (= 64,46) in positive coping than male students (= 47,32). The difference between them is statistically meaningful (p<.01). Students at the ages of 21-24 scored higher in positive religious coping (= 70,54) and the difference between them and the students at the ages of 14-16 (= 47,47) reached meaningful level, next to this Syrian students had higher levels of positive religious coping (= 62,91) and this reached a meaningful difference (p<.01) when compared with the averages of Afghani students (= 42,63). Moreover, there was a positive significant relationship between cultural adaptation and positive religious coping (r=.269, n=112, p=.004).Forced migration caused by wars is a traumatic experience including material and moral loss. The greatest contribution of spirituality in this kind of negative experiences causing severe stress is through positive religious coping. Hence, religious and spiritual beliefs not only enable cognitive satisfaction by offering the most satisfying answers to traumatic victims’ search for meaning, yet also help them to accept the situation. This is caused due to a sense of devotion, and contribute to both their struggle with the trauma and their post-traumatic development. According to the research findings, there is a significant relationship between students’ cultural adaptation and ‘positive religious coping’ tendency. Therefore, providing these students with spiritual care and counseling might contribute to their integration process. Moreover, it has been seen that it is important to conduct value-centered projects and activities which would prevent both refugee students and locals to marginalize each other, and would improve the culture of living-together. It is also important to provide governmental and non-governmental support for these projects and activities. On the other hand, launching free language courses to resolve communication problems, which are obstacles for integration, and establishing socio-cultural networks in and around the campus for constituting more compatible relationships among the students would improve the students’ integration capability. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media, which describe the evolution of artifacts in terms of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal are extended to create Laws of Media Environments and Laws of Media Users. It is shown that the environment or ground in which the figures of the artifacts in the LOM operate and the users of those artifacts undergo, respectively, a similar evolution of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal paralleling McLuhan’s original LOM.

This article approaches commercial divination as a lens to examine the gendered contents and discontents of labor and intimacy in the neoliberal era. While coffee divinations have long been a feminized medium of socializing and caring in Turkey, they were recently transformed into a commodified service that recruits women, youth, and LGBTQ individuals as workers and consumers. In dialogue with scholarship on emotional and affective labors, I conceptualize divination as “feeling labor” that produces an affective intersubjective space for the incitement, (...) experience, and articulation of emotions. The feeling labors of divination create commodified intimacies through which women, youth, and LGBTQ individuals explore their feelings. However, these intimacies are produced at the expense of devalued labors of those who are feminized along the heteropatriarchal hierarchies of gender, age, and sexual orientation. Attending to the gendered production and consumption of feeling labors and the intimacies they create are central to understanding the relationships between gender and labor in postindustrial capitalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an algorithmic impossible-worlds model of belief and knowledge that provides a middle ground between models that entail that everyone is logically omniscient and those that are compatible with even the most egregious kinds of logical incompetence. In outline, the model entails that an agent believes (knows) φ just in case she can easily (and correctly) compute that φ is true and thus has the capacity to make her actions depend on whether φ. The model thereby (...) captures the standard view that belief and knowledge ground are constitutively connected to dispositions to act. As I explain, the model improves upon standard algorithmic models developed by Parikh, Halpern, Moses, Vardi, and Duc, among other ways, by integrating them into an impossible-worlds framework. The model also avoids some important disadvantages of recent candidate middle-ground models based on dynamic epistemic logic or step logic, and it can subsume their most important advantages. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale for measuring prospective science teachers’ awareness of waste recycling. The study was conducted with the participation of 382 prospective teachers attending a university located in northern Turkey. The five-point Likert type scale that was developed contained 82 items relating to prospective science teachers’ awareness of waste recycling. The factor analysis conducted showed that five items had factor loadings below 0.30, and five were cross loading items. Factor analysis was repeated after (...) removing these items. A further 24 items were removed from the list at the end of the factor analysis, and the remaining 48 items were grouped under ten dimensions. The reliability coefficient for the factors extracted varied between 0.717 and 0.805, and the internal reliability coefficient for the whole scale was 0.905. (shrink)

In this article I review two contrasting approaches to Muslim women’s rights: those that want Muslims to secularize the Qur’an as the precondition for getting rights and those that emphasize the importance of a liberatory Qur’anic hermeneutics to Muslim women’s struggles for rights and equality. As examples of the former, I take the works of Nasr Abu Zayd and Raja Rhouni and, of the latter, my own. In addition to joining the debates on Muslim women’s rights, this exercise is meant (...) to illustrate that secular attempts to undermine Islam also undermine the prospects for rights and democracy in Muslim societies. In fact, I see the secular project in Muslim societies as a form of self-harm. Lastly, I revisit Antonio Gramsci’s critique of democracy as a way to query the title of the İstanbul Seminars, ‘The Promises of Democracy’. (shrink)

Introduces the reader to the positions Derrida took in various areas of philosophy, as well as clarifying how derrideans interpret them in the present.

Based on content analysis and in-depth interviews with the editors of 5Harfliler, Catlak Zemin and Recel-blog, popular pro-feminist women’s websites in Turkey, this article shows that these websites constitute important projects in feminist memory work in two ways: explicitly, by commemorating women in history, the gains of the women’s movement in Turkey, and by archiving misogynist policies and gender unequal legislation; implicitly, in the essays written by anonymous women whose personal memories of feminist activism as well as oppression and patriarchy (...) experienced in everyday life become sources for discussion of feminist identity and politics and contribute to women’s history writing from below. The websites also serve as a platform where feminist identity is negotiated and the past, present and future of feminist politics are discussed in a humorous, agonistic and affective style. The source of deliberation is often women’s everyday experiences and concerns rather than formal politics. Although keeping a distance from formal politics renders these websites open to criticisms of naiveté and apoliticism, they provide a creative platform for the constructive discussion of women’s shared everyday problems which are closely connected to a larger political context. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a survey study examining the knowledge, motivations and concerns of egg-share donors and recipients, and assesses the clinical and policy implications of these findings. The survey, combining quantitative and qualitative items, was completed by 48 donors and 38 recipients who took part in an egg-sharing scheme at the London Women's Clinic between 2007 and 2009. Although the most important motivation for all egg-sharers was to have a baby, both donors and recipients displayed multiple motivations, (...) including elements of self-interest and altruism. Many viewed egg-sharing as a reciprocal process in which two women with different needs help one another. The results are reassuring from an ethical and policy perspective: they suggest that if information about egg-sharing was more widely available (especially through general practitioners), more women may consider becoming egg-share donors, gaining swift access to their own treatment and reducing the UK's egg donor shortage. (shrink)

One of the prevalent inference methods the mutakallimūn uses is qiyās al-ghaib ‘ala al-shahid (analogy from the visible world to the invisible world). Mu‘tazila, who accepts this method as an absolute criterion in the divine attributes, rejects the possibility of difference between shahid and ghaib about the reality of attributes. By rejecting the concept of kalām nafsī adopted by Ahl al-Sunnah, they mention the divine speech in the category of actual attributes and claim that kalāmullāh (God’s speech), like human speech, (...) is an accident consisting of words and sounds. Mu‘tazila, who defines mutakallim as the agent of kalām, claims that God is also the agent of the word. In this regard, Mu‘tazila, who defends the origin of the kalāmullāh and the createdness of the Qur’ān, focuses on the explanation of the nature of the kalām at the beginning of these theological subjects. As an extension of the issue of whether the ḥikāyah and maḥkī are the same or not, which is the subject of discussion in the context of the possibility of creating something similar to the Qur’ān, Mu‘tazila, who disagree on whether kalām (word) is a kind of sound (ṣawt) or not, examine the problem of the nature of the word by expanding it to include sounds. Although they agree that sounds are accidents created by humans through tawlīd, they propound different theories about the physical formation of sound and kalām. These theories are differentiated according to discussions about the essential factors for the formation of sounds. Some scholars claim that i‘timād generates sounds, and the substrate (maḥall) is enough to form the sounds. In contrast, others claim the necessity of a specific structure (binya), movement (ḥaraka), and air added to the substrate. In this regard, this study will deal with the effect of these factors mentioned above to the formation of the sounds and the physical examples which every group mentioned to prove its opinions rightfulness. The most detailed explanations about this topic are seen in the works of Baṣrian Mu‘tazila. Therefore, this study will examine the opinions about the production of sounds, which argued around metaphysical issues in the context of the createdness of the Qur’ān and the attribute of kalām, which are submitted by Abū ‘Alī al-Jubbā'ī (d. 303/916), Abū Hāshim al-Jubbā'ī (d. 321/933), and their followers Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), Abū Rashīd al-Nīsābūrī (d. first half of the 5./11. century), and Ibn Mattawayh (d. first half of the 5./11. century), the representatives of Baṣrian Mu‘tazila, who adopt atomic universe understanding. The study aimed to form an opinion about the theologians’ way of discussing a particular physical phenomenon to constitute a basis for solving metaphysical problems. To clarify the problem, first, it will deal with the essence of sounds in the Baṣrian Mu‘tazilites tradition, and then it will tackle the discussions about the formation of the sounds. (shrink)