“1950’li yıllarda dönemin büyük felsefecileri arasında dinsel inancı savunan bir kişi bile yoktu. 1990’lı yıllarda Yale’den UCLA’ya, Oxford’dan Heidelberg’e kadar birçok yerde insanın manevi yanını savunan ve geliştiren yüzlerce kitap yazılacak, sel olup akacaktı. Aradaki 40 yıllık süre zarfındaysa sadece ve sadece Alvin Plantinga vardı.” Kelly James Clark Tanrı’nın veya tanrıların varlığı sorusu felsefenin ezeli sorularından biri olagelmişse de Nietzsche’nin Tanrı’nın ölümünü ilan ettiği günden bu yana onu doğrularcasına yaşanan acılar, savaşlar, kötülükler bu konudaki tartışmaların sesini uzun süre bastırdı. Ama (...) özellikle yüzyılın ikinci yarısından sonra palazlanan analitik felsefede meydana gelen “metafiziğe dönüş”, dine yakınlık duyan, en azından dinle ilgilenen filozofların tekrar Yahudi-Hıristiyan ve İslam geleneklerinde anlaşıldığı şekliyle Tanrı’nın varlığına duyulan inancın gerekçelerini yeniden değerlendirmelerine, konuya yeni bir bakış ve araçlarla bakmalarına vesile oldu. Alvin Plantinga’nın bu kitabı, yayımlandığı tarihten itibaren “analitik din felsefesi” alanının da en önemli ve sarsıcı eserlerinden biri hâline geldi ve Tanrı’nın ölmediğini ilan etti. Anselmus’tan Hume’a, Kant ve pozitivistlerden John Mackie gibi modern ateologlara kadar felsefe geleneğiyle hesaplaşan Plantinga, bu abidevi çalışmasında ontolojik, kozmolojik ve teleolojik tanrı kanıtlamalarının eski ve yeni biçimlerinin çıkmazlarını, meziyetlerini ve sunduğu imkânları değerlendiriyor. Tanrı’nın varlığına duyulan inanç ile diğer insanların varlığına ve zihinlerine duyulan inanç arasındaki şaşırtıcı ve sarsıcı bağlantıyı ortaya koyuyor. (shrink)

Hz. Peygamber’in ashâbı, bir takım şahsî özellikleri açısından hadis rivayetine farklı şekillerde katkı sunmuşlardır. Bu çalışmada da Yahudilikten ihtidâ etmiş bir sahâbî olması özelliğiyle dikkatleri çeken Abdullah b. Selâm ve hadis rivayeti ele alınmıştır. Müslüman olmadan önce Medine Yahudilerinin önemli ilim adamlarından biri olan Abdullah b. Selâm, Müslümanlar arasında da ilmî açıdan önemli bir yere sahip olmuştur. Sahâbîlerin ona sorular yönelterek onun eski dinine dair ilminden istifade ettikleri görülmektedir. Hatta Hz. Peygamber dahi bazı hususlarda onun Tevrat bilgisinden yararlanmıştır. Abdullah b. (...) Selâm, hakkında birtakım ayetler nazil olan, aynı zamanda pek çok ayetin tefsirinde de kendisinden bahsedilen bir sahâbîdir Kur’an’ın Yahudi kökenli oldu-ğuna dair iddialarda adının zikredilmesi de Abdullah b. Selâm’ı önemli bir isim kılmaktadır. Hadis rivayeti açısından bakıldığında Abdullah b. Selâm’ın yetmiş beş rivayeti tespit edilmiştir. Bu yetmiş beş rivayet içerik olarak incelendiğinde ise aslında bunların toplamda elli rivayetin farklı versiyonları olduğu görülmektedir. Bu rivayetler çerçevesinde Abdullah b. Selâm’dan rivayette bulunan elli râvî tespit edilmiştir. Bunlar içerisinde sahâbî, muhadram ve tâbînden olanlar bulunmaktadır. İsrâiliyat üzerinden eleştiriye maruz kalan Abdullah b. Selâm’ın mevkuf rivayetleri içerikleri itibariyle incelendiğinde İsrâiliyat konularıyla alakalı olabilecek yirmi iki tane mevkuf rivayeti olduğu görülmüştür. Bu rivayetlerin içeriği genel itibariyle yaratılış, peygamberler tarihi, ahiret ahvâli, kıyamet alametleri, fiten ve melâhîm ile alakalıdır. Bu tür rivayetlerinin miktarı göz önünde bulundurulduğunda aslında onun İsrâiliyat konusunda çok abartılacak bir etkisinin bulunmadığını söylemek mümkündür. (shrink)

Trait emotional intelligence concerns our perceptions of our emotional abilities, that is, how good we believe we are in terms of understanding, regulating, and expressing emotions in order to adapt to our environment and maintain well-being. In this article, we present succinct summaries of selected findings from research on the location of trait EI in personality factor space, the biological underpinnings of the construct, indicative applications in the areas of clinical, health, social, educational, organizational, and developmental psychology, and trait EI (...) training. Findings to date suggest that individual differences in trait EI are a consistent predictor of human behavior across the life span. (shrink)

My aim is to evaluate a new realist strategy for addressing the pessimistic induction, Ludwig Fahrbach’s (Synthese 180:139–155, 2011) appeal to the exponential growth of science. Fahrbach aims to show that, given the exponential growth of science, the history of science supports realism. I argue that Fahrbach is mistaken. I aim to show that earlier generations of scientists could construct a similar argument, but one that aims to show that the theories that they accepted are likely true. The problem with (...) this is that from our perspective on the history of science we know their argument is flawed. Consequently, we should not be impressed or persuaded by Fahrbach’s argument. Fahrbach has failed to identify a difference that matters between today’s theories and past theories. But realists need to find such a difference if they are to undermine the pessimistic induction. (shrink)

Devitt has developed an interesting defense of realism against the threats posed by the Pessimistic Induction and the Argument from Unconceived Alternatives. Devitt argues that the best explanation for the success of our current theories, and the fact that they are superior to the theories they replaced, is that they were developed and tested with the aid of better methods than the methods used to develop and test the many theories that were discarded earlier in the history of science. It (...) is no surprise that theories developed earlier in the history of science needed to be replaced. But our current theories are different, having been developed and tested with the aid of these more recently developed superior methods. I critically analyze Devitt’s defense of realism. I argue that recent developments in methodology cannot support the claims Devitt makes. I present an argument I call the “Argument from Unconceived Methods.” Given the history of science, it seems likely that scientists will continue to develop new methods in the future. And some of these methods will enable scientists to generate data that cannot be reconciled with the currently accepted theories. Consequently, it seems that our current best theories are not immune from being replaced in the future by radically different theories. (shrink)

I evaluate the extent to which we could learn something about how we should be conducting collaborative research in science from the research on groupthink. I argue that Solomon has set us in the wrong direction, failing to recognize that the consensus in scientific specialties is not the result of deliberation. But the attention to the structure of problem-solving that has emerged in the groupthink research conducted by psychologists can help us see when deliberation could lead to problems for a (...) research team. I argue that whenever we need to generate alternative solutions or proposals, groupthink is a genuine threat, and research teams would be wise to allow individuals opportunities to work alone. But the benefits of team work emerge when scientists seek to evaluate the various proposals generated, and determine a course of action. Then the group is less prone is groupthink, and the interaction of group members can be an epistemic asset. (shrink)

Machiavellianism has tremendous influence on modern business communities, especially in the U.S.A. and European countries. Businessmen today, it is said, prefer to follow the directions of pragmatism and expediency rather than the dictates of individual conscience.In principles and practices, Indian management by and large follows the Western line. Therefore, the question arises whether Machiavellian influences are perceptibly high on Indian managers. This question is more relevant in the light of a few surveys conducted on the ethical attitudes of Indian managers. (...) These identified a clear contrast between their expressed behaviour and wanted attitudes. The present study on the attitudes of managers from the major cities of India concludes that Niccolo Machiavelli inspires and influences Indian managers, but has not become the final determinant in their decision-making. (shrink)

Neoplatonic allegorical interpretation expounds how literary texts present philosophical ideas in an enigmatic and coded form, offering an alternative path to the divine truths. The Neoplatonist Porphyry’s _On the Cave of the Nymphs_ is one of the most significant allegorical interpretation handed down to us from Antiquity. This monograph, exclusively dedicated to the analysis of _On the Cave of Nymphs_, demonstrates that Porphyry interprets Homer’s verse from Odyssey 13.102-112 to convey his philosophical thoughts, particularly on the material world, relationship between (...) soul and body and the salvation of the soul through the doctrines of Plato and Plotinus. The Homeric cave of the nymphs with two gates is a station where the souls descend into genesis and ascend to the intelligible realm. Porphyry associates Odysseus’ long wanderings with the journey of the soul and its salvation from the irrational to rational through escape from all toils of the material world. (shrink)

PART The Early Wittgenstein Half of what I say is meaningless. I say it so that the other half may reach you. Kahlil Gibran My work consists of two parts ...

This paper evaluates a recent method proposed by Jeremy Gwiazda for calculating the value of gambles that fail to have expected values in the standard sense. I show that Gwiazda’s method fails to give answers for many gambles that do have standardly defined expected values. However, a slight modification of his method (based on the mathematical notion of the ‘Cauchy principal value’ of an integral), is in fact a proper extension of both his method and the method of ‘weak expectations’. (...) I show that this method gives an appropriate value when the ‘tails’ of the gambles that are eliminated in the truncation are ‘stable’, but that the value is not appropriate when the tails are not stable. I do not attempt to give an argument for the use of this method, but just note that it is more general than Gwiazda’s method, and is mathematically quite natural. (shrink)

Taking the critique of writing in the Phaedrus as a starting point, where Socrates argues that a book cannot choose its reader nor can it defend itself against misinterpretation, Reading Plato offers solutions to the problems of interpreting the Platonic dialogues. Thomas A. Slez'ak pursuasively argues that the dialogues are designed to stimulate philosophical inquiry and to elevate philosophy to the realm of oral dialectic.

In the present study, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated a group of participants on a grammaticality classification task after they had been exposed to well-formed consonant strings generated from an artificial regular grammar. We used an implicit acquisition paradigm in which the participants were exposed to positive examples. The objective of this studywas to investigate whether brain regions related to language processing overlap with the brain regions activated by the grammaticality classification task used in the present study. (...) Recent meta-analyses of functional neuroimaging studies indicate that syntactic processing is related to the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's areas 44 and 45) or Broca's region. In the present study, we observed that artificial grammaticality violations activated Broca's region in all participants. This observation lends some support to the suggestions that artificial grammar learning represents a model for investigating aspects of language learning in infants [TICS 4 (2000) 178] and adults [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of United States of America 99 (2002) 529]. (shrink)

We examine the sub-field of philosophy of science using a new method developed in information science, Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS). RPYS allows us to identify peak years in citations in a field, which promises to help scholars identify the key contributions to a field, and revolutionary discoveries in a field. We discovered that philosophy of science, a sub-field in the humanities, differs significantly from other fields examined with this method. Books play a more important role in philosophy of science (...) than in the sciences. Further, Einstein’s famous 1905 papers created a citation peak in the philosophy of science literature. But rather than being a contribution to the philosophy of science, their importance lies in the fact that they are revolutionary contributions to physics with important implications for philosophy of science. (shrink)

Researchers have postulated that deficits in cognitive control are associated with, and thus may underlie, the perseverative thinking that characterises generalised anxiety disorder. We examined associations between cognitive control and levels of spontaneous state rumination following a stressor in a sample of healthy control participants and participants with GAD. We assessed cognitive control by measuring working memory capacity, defined as the ability to maintain task-relevant information by ignoring task-irrelevant information. To this end, we used an affective version of the reading (...) span task with valenced distractors. Lower WMC in the presence of negative distractors was associated with greater state rumination in the GAD group, but not in the CTL group. These findings suggest that difficulty maintaining task-relevant information due to interference from negative distractors contributes to perseverative thinking in GAD. (shrink)

Epistemolojik olarak bilgiye başvuran ve bilme faaliyetinde bulunan insanın, Kur’an’da önemli bir yeri vardır. Buradaki bilme faaliyetini, salt teolojik bir buyruk olarak, yani Allah’ı bilmek olarak değil, doğru bilgi ile yanlış bilgi arasında hem teorik hem de ahlaki bir farklılık olarak anlamak ve Kur’an'da insana epistemik özellikler atfedildiğini ve böylece insanın epistemik başarılarından dolayı övüldüğünü söyleyebilmek mümkündür. Bu açıdan bakıldığında herhangi bir önermeye yönelik olarak rasyonel bir tutum benimseyen, yani bilen özne ile bu faaliyette isteyerek ve istemeyerek giren kişinin durumu (...) arasında bir fark olduğu açıktır. Doğrusu bu farkın epistemik önceliği kadar, ahlaki önceliği de dikkate değerdir. Nitekim buradaki ahlaki üstünlük, doğru bilgiyi hedefleme ve ona ulaşma noktasında ortaya çıkan erdemdir. Doğru bilgiye ulaşmanın entelektüel bir erdem olduğu düşünüldüğünde, Kur’an’ın Erdem epistemolojisi üzerinden değerlendirilmesi bu noktada önemlidir. Doğrusu erdemli bir bilişsel faaliyet, Kur'an’da açık bir şekilde ana fikir olarak ortaya konulur ve buna göre cehaletten kaçınmak ve doğru bilgiye ulaşmak için erdemli bir çaba göstermek önem taşır. Kur’an’daki ifadeleri bilgeliğe ulaşmak olarak anlayacak olursak, asıl hedef; bilgi ve anlayışımızın, entelektüel ve ahlaki vicdanımızı veya takvamızı güçlendirmesi için kullanılabileceği söylenilebilir ve bu inanç, erdem epistemolojisine dayalı bir yaklaşım içerisinde şekillendirilebilir. (shrink)

In the target article, Kirby (2014) explores conditions under which gestational surrogacy in developing countries (in this case India) may (or may not) be considered as exploitative. The author pro...

Bipolar affective disorder (BPAD) can be a devastating disorder for both sufferers and their relatives. In addition to the variety of distressing and severe affective symptoms, the consequences of illness onset may be equally debilitating, particularly as the illness may commonly present in early adulthood. As such, the developmental trajectory between late adolescence and early adulthood is commonly interrupted. Relationships with family, friends and partners may deteriorate, employment or studies may be interrupted, and criminal histories may be acquired. In turn, (...) such events worsen stress, reduce self-esteem, and may make the recovery process more difficult.... (shrink)

Considerable attention has been paid in recent years to Catullus 63. A number of salient features have been discussed: the psychological study of emotions; the use of animal imagery; the theme of marriage and love. There have also been some helpful studies on smaller, though important, aspects of the poem such as its use of ring composition or Catullus′ inventive treatment of the challenging Galliambic metre. But little work has been done on the literary background of poem 63 apart from (...) the question of whether or not Catullus was following an Alexandrian model. I shall suggest that the basic narrative of the poem, and the way in which Catullus has handled it, have literary antecedents which have influenced the poet. The final product, however, still remains a very original piece of work. (shrink)

Considerable attention has been paid in recent years to Catullus 63. A number of salient features have been discussed: the psychological study of emotions; the use of animal imagery; the theme of marriage and love. There have also been some helpful studies on smaller, though important, aspects of the poem such as its use of ring composition or Catullus′ inventive treatment of the challenging Galliambic metre. But little work has been done on the literary background of poem 63 apart from (...) the question of whether or not Catullus was following an Alexandrian model. I shall suggest that the basic narrative of the poem, and the way in which Catullus has handled it, have literary antecedents which have influenced the poet. The final product, however, still remains a very original piece of work. (shrink)

Most commentators apply the phrase ‘vitans onus…iugi’ not only to the heifer but to Attis himself. When they ask what iugum Attis is avoiding, the immediate context provides no obvious answer. They are therefore compelled to interpret the iugum either in the light of a much earlier passage or in the light of a much later one. Neither procedure is satisfactory. On the other hand, at least one editor has proposed that the phrase ‘vitans onus…iugi’ does not apply to Attis (...) himself but to the heifer alone. The comparison between Attis and the heifer then lies only in their frenzied speed; the yoke-avoiding action is external to the comparison and merely heightens the picture of the charging heifer. The obvious difficulty with this view is that the concept of a yoke, and more generally of avoiding servitude, plays an important role relevant to Attis later on in the poem. From line 50 onwards Attis sees himself as an erifuga anxious to escape from slavery to Cybele. And the account of Cybele's lion, sent to round him up, twice refers to the notion of freeing from a yoke . Both these traditional approaches concentrate on the literal meaning of the phrase vitans onus…iugi: they assume that the yoke itself is important and that it either does or does not make sense when applied to Attis. But if we focus instead upon the action which the whole phrase vitans onus…iugi suggests, then the description of the heifer has an apt application to Attis within its own immediate context. (shrink)

Most commentators apply the phrase ‘vitans onus…iugi’ not only to the heifer but to Attis himself. When they ask what iugum Attis is avoiding, the immediate context provides no obvious answer. They are therefore compelled to interpret the iugum either in the light of a much earlier passage or in the light of a much later one. Neither procedure is satisfactory. On the other hand, at least one editor has proposed that the phrase ‘vitans onus…iugi’ does not apply to Attis (...) himself but to the heifer alone. The comparison between Attis and the heifer then lies only in their frenzied speed; the yoke-avoiding action is external to the comparison and merely heightens the picture of the charging heifer. The obvious difficulty with this view is that the concept of a yoke, and more generally of avoiding servitude, plays an important role relevant to Attis later on in the poem. From line 50 onwards Attis sees himself as an erifuga anxious to escape from slavery to Cybele. And the account of Cybele's lion, sent to round him up, twice refers to the notion of freeing from a yoke. Both these traditional approaches concentrate on the literal meaning of the phrase vitans onus…iugi: they assume that the yoke itself is important and that it either does or does not make sense when applied to Attis. But if we focus instead upon the action which the whole phrase vitans onus…iugi suggests, then the description of the heifer has an apt application to Attis within its own immediate context. (shrink)

This essay explores the aspects of the Aristotelian psuchē that accounts for its contemporary appeal. The poverty of the notion of the mind is discussed. The superiority of the psuchē over the mind is emphasized.