Background: Midwives are required to make ethical decisions with the support of respective codes of professional ethics which provide a framework for decision making in clinical practice. While each midwife should be ethically aware and sensitive to the ever-changing issues within reproduction, few empirical studies have examined the views of student midwives in relation to reproductive ethical dilemmas. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore midwifery students’ reactions to a number of ethical dilemmas relating to women’s experiences of (...) reproductive decision making. Design: A series of focus groups were conducted with midwifery students who were asked to discuss five culturally significant scenarios including issues of knowledge acquisition regarding methods of family planning, removal or insertion of an intrauterine device, and abortion. Setting: A University in Turkey was the setting for this study. Participants: Purposeful sampling was adopted which resulted in five focus groups with a total of 57 midwifery students. Ethical considerations: The study was reviewed and granted formal ethical approval by an ethical committee at the Faculty of Health Science in Atatürk University. The head of the Faculty of Health Science approved the investigation. The participants received both oral and written information about the study and they gave their consent. Results: Five themes were identified from the analysis of the focus group data related to all five scenarios. These themes were ‘the right to information’, ‘choice and protection’, ‘parental rights and welfare of the women’, ‘make a decision’ and ‘women rights and sexual abuse’. Conclusion: This study has shown that while students respected women’s choice, they also expressed great ambivalence in some situations when personal values conflict with dominant societal beliefs and professional ethics. A focus on ethics education to include human rights is suggested as a means to enable students to explore their own social-value judgements, and as a means to limit the possible development of ethical confusion and moral distress. (shrink)

The common conception of intelligence in terms of information processing has its origin in cybernetics and information technology. Its import into cognitive science and the humanities not only generates theoretical problems, but also constitutes the basis of methods and policies that have adverse impacts on intelligent agents. In order to demonstrate why this technological conception of intelligence is not suitable for addressing the intelligence of living agents, and why natural intelligence is artificially not imitable, first, the basic notions, formalisms, and (...) assumptions of the technological context are presented. Next, the cybernetic feedback scheme is modified by dropping the technological assumptions, and a more sophisticated closed-loop scheme is developed that is better suited for representing cognitive processes in living agents. With reference to the thus developed scheme, the capacity of achieving ontological expansion, via what will be called “internal restructuring,” is proposed as the criterion for intelligence. (shrink)

Fertilization triggers cytoplasmic movements in the frog egg that lead in mysterious ways to the stabilization of β‐catenin on the dorsal side of the embryo. The novel Huluwa (Hwa) transmembrane protein, identified in China, is translated specifically in the dorsal side, acting as an egg cytoplasmic determinant essential for β‐catenin stabilization. The Wnt signaling pathway requires macropinocytosis and the sequestration inside multivesicular bodies (MVBs, the precursors of endolysosomes) of Axin1 and Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3 (GSK3) that normally destroy β‐catenin. In (...) Xenopus, the Wnt‐like activity of GSK3 inhibitors and of Hwa mRNA can be blocked by brief treatment with inhibitors of membrane trafficking or lysosomes at the 32‐cell stage. In dorsal blastomeres, lysosomal cathepsin is activated and intriguing MVBs surrounded by electron dense vesicles are formed at the 64‐cell stage. We conclude that membrane trafficking and lysosomal activity are critically important for the earliest asymmetries in vertebrate embryonic development. (shrink)

This paper explores the semantics of bare singulars in Turkish, which are unmarked for number in form, as in English, but can behave like both singular and plural terms, unlike in English. While they behave like singular terms as case-marked arguments, they are interpreted number neutrally in non-case-marked argument positions, the existential copular construction, and the predicate position. Previous accounts 20:1–15, 2010; Görgülü, in: Semantics of nouns and the specification of number in Turkish, Ph.d. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2012) propose (...) that Turkish bare singulars denote number neutral sets and that morphologically plural marked nouns denote sets of pluralities only. This approach leads to a symmetric correlation of morphological and semantic markedness. However, in this paper, I defend a strict singular view for bare singulars and show that Turkish actually patterns with English where this correlation is exhibited asymmetrically. I claim that bare singulars in Turkish denote atomic properties and that bare plurals have a number neutral semantics as standardly assumed for English. I argue that the apparent number neutrality of bare singulars in the three cases arises via singular kind reference, which I show to extend to the phenomenon called pseudo-incorporation and a construction that I call kind specification. I argue that pseudo-incorporation occurs in non-case-marked argument positions following Öztürk and the existential copular construction, whereas kind specification is realized in the predicate position. The different behaviors of bare singulars in Turkish and English stem from the fact that singular kind reference is used more extensively in Turkish than in English. Furthermore, while there are well-known asymmetries between singular and plural kind reference cross-linguistically, Turkish manifests a more restricted distribution for bare plurals than English in the positions where pseudo-incorporation and kind specification are in evidence. I explain this as a blocking effect, specific to Turkish, by singular kind terms on plural kind terms. (shrink)

This paper asserts that the dominant mental models of a social system are shaped by the conditions at the time when the society first gains its identity and unity,and that the basic traits of these models are maintained to a great extent throughout that society’s subsequent social evolution. Based on this assumption, some basic traits of the mental models’ characteristics of today’s civilisations are expected to have their origins in the mental models of early human agricultural societies and city-states. Since (...) Mesopotamian myths constitute some of the earliest available records originating from that ancient period, several of these myths are analysed here to examine the roots of some fundamental epistemological assumptions of our contemporary society. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine the opinions and expectations of patients and nurses about privacy during a hospital admission for surgery. The study explored what enables and maintains privacy from the perspective of Turkish surgical patients and nurses. The study included 102 adult patients having surgery and 47 nurses caring for them. Data were collected via semistructured questionnaire by face-to-face interviews. The results showed that patients were mostly satisfied by the respect shown to their privacy by the (...) nurses but were less confident of the confidentiality of their personal data. It was found that patients have expectations regarding nursing approaches and attitudes about acknowledging and respecting patient autonomy and confidentiality. It is remarkable that while nurses focused on the physical dimension of privacy, patients focused on informational and psychosocial dimensions of privacy, as well as its physical dimension. (shrink)

The capacity of visual working memory (VWM) refers to the amount of visual information that can be maintained in mind at once, readily accessible for ongoing tasks. In healthy young adults, the capacity limit of VWM corresponds to about three simple objects. While some researchers argued that VWM capacity becomes adult-like in early years of life, others claimed that the capacity of VWM continues to develop beyond middle childhood. Here we assessed whether VWM capacity reaches adult levels in adolescence. Using (...) an adaptation of the visual change detection task, we measured visual working memory capacity estimates in 13 year-olds, 16-year-olds, and young adults. We tested whether the capacity estimates observed in early or later years of adolescence were comparable to the estimates obtained from adults. Our results demonstrated that the capacity of VWM continues to develop throughout adolescence, not reaching adult levels even in 16 year-olds. These findings suggest that VWM capacity displays a prolonged development, similar to the protracted trajectories observed in various other aspects of cognition. (shrink)

Premarital sexual relations are unacceptable for women within Turkish society's understanding and perception of honour. If there is any suspicion about virginity, young girls are forced to undergo hymen examination against their will, which frequently results in attemped suicide. The most frequent cause of suicide in young Turkish girls is hymen examination. Nurses and midwives are always involve in this procedure. The purpose of this study was to determine the views of and approaches to hymen examination by nurses and midwives. (...) Of those who participated in this study, 80.2% had been present during a hymen examination, 40.4% indicated that virginity had a special significance in the society owing to social pressures, and 37.5% indicated that they agreed with the view that the idea of virginity puts restraints on a woman's sexual life, whereas sexual activity is a physiological need. They also indicated their opposition to hymen examination imposed without the individual's consent. They agreed that stopping this practice depended more on the social structural changes required than on legal measures. (shrink)

This paper proposes Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenetic theory of individuation as an overarching framework for multilevel semiosis. What renders this theory suitable for this role is the fact that it shares a significant part of its heritage with biosemiotics, which provides compatibility between them. Unlike many philosophers who have worked on individuation, Simondon envisages a general process of individuation that starts with a metastable preindividual. This process ultimately constitutes an axiomatisation of ontogenesis and manifests itself in three basic modes: physical, vital (...) and psycho-collective. In any of these modes a transductive operation is at work resolving the disparities of the preindividual whereby new structures emerge. Depending on the mode of individuation, the emerging structures can create new disparities that ask for further individuation. Simondon refers to such conversion of structure to operation and vice versa as allagmatics. He also extends his theory to scientific methodology establishing a healthy balance between reductionism and holism. His theory can be used to amend Peircean metaphysics to improve its compatibility with contemporary scientific discourse. (shrink)

This article will ask questions that connect the conceptions of Marc Augé's 'place/non-place' and Gaston Bachelard's 'poetic space' to the avatar of real-time, perpetual, online, three-dimensional virtual builder's worlds, also known as the metaverse. Are metaverses 'places' or 'non-places'? Do we actually live in the metaverse or do we just traverse these worlds very much in the sense that Marc Augé defines them as transitional loci that are assigned only to circumscribed and specific positions? The question following from this is (...) whether there are nevertheless three-dimensionally embodied virtual spaces that go beyond being transitional 'non-places' to locations in which an imaginative relationship to architecture in the sense in which Bachelard describes them in his seminal work The Poetics of Space (1958) or that correspond to Marc Augé's definition of 'place' exist. (shrink)

Background: Informed consent involves patients being informed, in detail, of information relating to diagnosis, treatment, care and prognosis that relates to him or her. It also involves the patient explicitly demonstrating an understanding of the information and a decision to accept or decline the intervention. Nurses in particular experience problems regarding informed consent. Research question and design: This descriptive study was designed to determine nurse knowledge and practices regarding their roles and responsibilities for informed consent in Turkey. The research was (...) performed using 92 nurses who work at the surgical clinics. Data collection form was prepared by the researchers with assistance from the literature, and the data were evaluated by the SPSS 12.0 data analysis program. Ethical consideration: This study was approved by the Medicine and Health Sciences Research and Ethics Committee of the university. Written consent was received from the nurses. Findings: Among the nurses who participated in this study, 39.1% indicated that they were responsible for obtaining informed consent. It was also found that 90.2% of the nurses informed patients before providing nursing interventions and 32.6% of the nurses obtained consent from patients, and 90.0% of the nurses who indicated that they obtain patient consent only obtain verbal consent. Among all of the nurses, 21.7% agreed that informed consent needs to be obtained in order to protect the medical staff legally. Discussion: It is argued that a lack of official procedures at hospitals regarding informed consent and insufficient information being provided to healthcare providers has caused problems regarding informed consent. Conclusion: The nurses in this study lacked information regarding their role in obtaining informed consent from patients and they often performed incomplete and/or incorrect practices within the framework of their required role. It is believed that an increased level of education along with the creation of official policies and procedures would contribute towards solving these problems. (shrink)

IX. yüzyılda Horasan bölgesinde ortaya çıkan Melâmiyye, XXI. yüzyıla kadar varlığını sürdürmüştür. Hamdûn el-Kassâr’ın (ö. 884) temsil ettiği Melâmetiyye-i Kassâriyye, Hacı Bayram-ı Velî’nin (ö. 1430) halifesi Ömer Dede Sikkînî’nin (ö. 1475) temsil ettiği Melâmetiyye-i Bayramîyye ve Muhammed Nûrü’l-Arabî’nin (ö. 1888) temsil ettiği Melâmetiyye-i Nûriyye olarak 3 dönemde incelenmektedir. Melâmîliğin bu devrelerine dair akademik düzeyde çalışmalar yapılmış olsa da mûsikî yönüne dair çalışmaların çok az olduğu görülmüştür. Bu çalışmanın evreni Nûriyye Melâmîleri, örneklemi ise Nûriyye Melâmîlerine dair mûsikî ile ilgili çalışmaları kapsamaktadır. (...) Çalışmada Nûriyye Melâmîlerinin edebi ve sanatsal yönü araştırılmış, literatür taraması aşamasında Melâmî tekke ve derneklerinde icra edilen ilahilere güfte olarak kaynaklık eden Melâmî Efendilerine ait divanlar incelenmiştir. Çalışmamızın amacı Melâmî divanlarında yer alan ve ilahi formunda bestelenmiş güfteleri tespit etmek ve bu ilahilerin yaygınlığını belirlemektir. Nitel araştırma yöntemi kullandığımız çalışmamızda birincil veri kaynaklarını; Melâmîler tarafından bizzat kaleme alınan divanlar ve yine Melâmî ihvanı ile yapılan görüşmeler oluşturmaktadır. İkincil veri kaynaklarımız ise Melâmîlik hakkında yazılan tasavvuf kitapları, makaleler ve Melâmî derneklerinin resmi sayfalarında yer alan mevcut bilgilerdir. Tespit edilen divanlardaki bestelenmiş ilahiler için ise Melâmî Divanları, Devlet Nota Arşivi, Cüneyd Kosal Nota Arşivi, Divan Makam ve Notam v1.0 (Aytaç ERGEN) programı üzerinden taranmış, eşleşen ilahiler çalışmamıza dâhil edilmiştir. Nûriyye Melâmîlerine ait 14 adet divan incelenmiştir. Bu divanlar Abdurrahîm Fedâî, Ali Örfî, Ömer Lütfî, İştipli Hacı Salih Rıf’at, Abdulmâlik Hilmî, Hulûsi Maksud, Hüseyin Şemsi Ergüneş, Hasan Fehmi Tezdoğan, Üsküplü İsmail Hakkı, Hafız Ahmet Fethî, Hüseyin Sabri Soyyiğit, Ahmet Soyyiğit, Yaşar İhsan Gülver ve Dâvud Yılmaz’a ait divanın arasından 8 tanesinde yer alan 97 adet ilahinin notaya alındığı tespit edilmiştir. Verilerin değerlendirilmesi aşamasında; yapılan bu bestelerin hem Melâmî tekke ve meclislerinde hem de tekke dışında icra edildiği, bu bağlamda Nûriyye Melâmîlerinin edebi ve sanatsal yönünün tekke dışında da etkin olduğu görülmüştür. Araştırmanın sonucunda Abdurrahîm Fedâî Divanında yer alan 1’i nefes, 1’i deyiş (bu nefes ve deyişler ilahi formu altında listelenmiştir), 12’i ilahi olmak üzere toplam 14, Ömer Lütfî Divanında yer alan 1, Salih Rıf’at Divanında yer alan 2, Hasan Fehmi Tezdoğan Divanında yer alan 20, Üsküplü İsmail Hakkı’ya ait olduğunu tespit ettiğimiz 1, Ahmet Fethi Divanında yer alan 26, Ahmet Soyyiğit Divanındaki 21, Dâvud Yılmaz Divanındaki 12, toplamda 97 eserin ilahi formunda farklı bestekârlar tarafından bestelendiği tespit edilmiştir. (shrink)

The problem of disagreement is one of the most important issues that have been debated in epistemology in recent years, and in particular the peer disagreement. The main question of this problem is what kind of attitude we should rationally adopt when we realize that someone who is an epistemic peer to us does not think the same. There are four main responses to this question: conciliationism, steadfastness, total evidence view, and justificationist view. In this article, first I will briefly (...) examine these four views and deal with the points where they fail to satisfy. Later, I will argue that resolution of the disagreement should be case-based. And finally, I will present the evidence-based argument in peer disagreement which is my own response to this problem and explain it with sample cases. (shrink)

Yönetim olgusu ilk çağlardan bu yana her daim önemini koruyan bir olgudur. İnsanlık tarihi kadar geçmişe sahip olan bu olgu, içerisinde birçok modeli barındırmaktadır. Günümüz de temsili demokrasilerde seçimlerde oy kullanmak birer vatandaşlık görevi olarak görülse de geçmiş dönemlerde bu durum çok farklıydı. Devletin yönetim mekanizmasında söz hakkına sahip olabilmek sıradan halkın ulaşabileceği türden bir hak değil belli başlı niteliklere sahip olan kişilere tanınan bir hak olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Zaman içerisinde temsil sistemi yaygınlık göstermeye başlayıp, demokrasi kavramının özüne inildikçe bu (...) tür ayrıcalık barındıran kısıtlamalara son verilmiştir. Bu çalışmada ele alınmak istenen konu, seçme hakkının temelini oluşturan oy kullanma hakkının bugünkü anlamını kazanmadan önce ki evrelerine değinerek genel oy hakkına giden süreci gözler önüne sermektir. (shrink)

“Diaspora uzman(lığ)ı”, sivil toplum örgütleri ve uluslararası kuruluşlar tarafından tıbbi, teknik ve yönetimsel bilimler gibi çeşitli alanlarda uzman ve bir diaspora grubuna ait kişileri tanımlamak için kullanılmaktadır. Fakat bu kavramının bir de uzmanlık alanını diaspora konusu üzerine kazanmış kişileri anlatması söz konusudur. Bu çalışmada ilk durumu anlatmak için “diaspora-içinden-uzmanlık”, ikinci durum içinse “diaspora-üzerine-uzmanlık” kullanılmıştır. Diaspora-üzerine uzmanlık; diasporaların anavatanla, misafir ülkeyle ve diğer ülkelerdeki diaspora gruplarıyla ilişkilerini kapsayan bir ağın yönetimine; bir tür dünya politikasına yönelik uzmanlık bilgisidir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, günümüzde (...) diaspora üzerine uzmanlıktan beklenen bilgi, deneyim ve yetenek birikiminin siyaset kavramını ve disiplinini nasıl dönüştürdüğünü anlamaktır. Bu doğrultuda öncelikle kavramların anlamlarına (diaspora ve uzmanlık) ve diaspora-içinden-uzmanlığa değinilmiş; sonrasında diaspora-üzerine-uzmanlığın izleri üniversitelerde kurulan program, enstitü, merkez vb. oluşumlar üzerinden akademi alanında ve “diaspora uzman(lığ)ı” başlıklı iş ilanları üzerinden piyasada/uygulamada aranmıştır. Sonuç bölümünde diaspora-üzerine-uzmanlık konusundaki gelişmelerin siyaset çalışmaları akademisyenleri ve mezunları için neleri ima ettiği tartışılmıştır. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine how and why Heidegger's early conception of freedom as the ground of the self-appropriation of Dasein had been gradually transformed after 1930. The approach of Heidegger to the issue of human freedom displays how his thinking proceeds from Kant's formulation of the problem in "The Third Antinomy" of the first Critique to Sophocles' tragedy of Antigone. I argue that the reason behind this transformation resides in the attempt of thinking the relation between freedom and natural (...) necessity over and beyond the constraints of critical philosophy. What seems pivotal in this transformation is Heidegger's growing concern with the "tragic" in which he envisages the possibility of a genuine exposure to the "truth" of the conflict between freedom and necessity and, more primordially, to the "abode" wherein the encounter between man and Being {Sein) occurs. Here, the "tragic" is pointing to the limits of representation and what is presented. In other words, it exhibits the limits of human freedom in its relation to the truth of Being. In the passion for disclosure of Being {aletheia), man is driven into the freedom of instituting its truth. In Heidegger's late thinking, human freedom is determined not any more by the obligation of choosing oneself but by the necessity of clearing the truth of Being. Human freedom is tragic in the face of this necessity that it has to answer. Therefore, man is envisaged as having no right or mastery over his freedom for there is no total clearing of its origin. Finally, I argue that it seems impossible to understand the transformation in Heidegger's concept of freedom without an appeal to his emphasis on the "tragic" as being an attempt to deepen and to transfigure the problem as treated in Kantian critical philosophy. In its tragic sense, Heidegger's concept of human freedom displays what lies beneath the Kantian antinomy: the incomprehensible origin of human freedom conceived as the event of the historical appropriation of Being {Er-eignis). (shrink)

Am 21. Februar 2021 wäre der US-amerikanische Philosoph John Bordley Rawls hundert Jahre alt geworden. Die Bedeutung seines Werkes für die politische Philosophie im Ganzen und die Theorie der liberalen, pluralistischen, sozialen und säkularen Demokratie im Besonderen lässt sich kaum überschätzen. Das gilt vor allem für das Opus Magnum Eine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit, welches 2021 ebenfalls einen runden Geburtstag feiert. Fünfzig Jahre nach ihrem Erscheinen gilt die Theorie als wichtigstes Werk des zeitgenössischen politischen Liberalismus und ihr Verfasser als Klassiker des (...) politischen Denkens, auf den zahlreiche Begriffe, Impulse und Themen der aktuellen Debatten zurückzuführen sind. Dieses zweifache Jubiläum nimmt der vorliegende Schwerpunkt der Zeitschrift für Praktische Philosophie zum Anlass, um aktuelle systematische Fragen der Theorie der Gerechtigkeit aufzugreifen, kritisch zu evaluieren und konstruktiv weiter zu entwickeln. (shrink)

Background: It is stated that the communication and disease experiences of paediatric patients, especially paediatric oncology patients, with healthcare professionals are completely different from those of adults. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the definitions of a good physician and good nurse provided by elementary school-age oncology patients. Research design: In this qualitative research, data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews. The data were evaluated thorough thematic analysis. Participants and research context: Eighteen children hospitalised due to cancer (...) in paediatric oncology and haematology clinics of a university hospital in Turkey. Ethical considerations: Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the Institution’s Ethics Committee. The objectives of this study were explained to the participants and families, and written consent was obtained from them. Also, participants were assured that necessary measures would be taken to protect their anonymity and confidentiality. Findings: The definitions of children were based on five main themes: interpersonal relationships, virtues, professional responsibility, security and individual characteristics. Conclusion: Children conveyed important messages to health professionals. They emphasised that a good physician and good nurse should communicate well, not only with themselves but also with their family. In addition, children were sensitive about health professionals who played with them and actively participated in the treatment by informing them about the disease. Meeting the expectations of children can be possible by improving the communication skills of physicians and nurses and by adding games and activities to the treatment and care plan. (shrink)

One of the most significant factors that harms a society in the long term is the gradual distancing from its shared values ​​and potential to bring differences together. In this study, we will discuss the transformation of Hebrew from a sacred scriptural language into a language used in daily life, which was thought of years before the establishment of Israel in 1948. The journey began with Prophet Joseph and his eleven brothers arriving in Egypt, who, after Joseph's death, gradually became (...) a minority and the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. Their journey, initiated by Prophet Moses’s saviorship, was thwarted because they refused to enter the land of Canaan by fighting, and from that day on, nomadism and statelessness became their main problems. Consequently, before 1948, Jews were seen trying many ways to survive in different countries around the world. For a while, Jews lived in their own neighborhoods but chose to assimilate in the lands they lived in under various guidance, under the influence of the enlightenment period known as Haskalah. This allowed them to occupy many previously forbidden professions, including ministries. However, the Dreyfus Affair that occurred in France and the pogroms that started under the Russian Tsardom disrupted the assimilation process, leading to the maturation of Zionist thought. Meanwhile, in a world where Jews used the language of the countries they lived in with different regulations, a young man named Ben-Yehuda alone began the process of making Hebrew a spoken language and the banker Rothschild family supported this young man financially until the end. Despite all obstacles and difficulties, Hebrew was declared the official language in Palestine in 1922 and was made compulsory in kindergartens. The purpose of this study is to give a concrete example of the dilemma of what can I do alone, of humanity, who was turned into witnesses to the genocide that took place, especially after October 7, and also the importance of investing in people and the belief that the right goal will eventually be achieved one day. Thus, Zionism, summarized as Jewish nationalism, used religious motives over the promised land as a value that could keep all Jews together, while solving the critical aspect of a common language which was its most important pillar, in the early 1900s, and only the land part remained. (shrink)

This paper takes a first-hand look at the creation of multiple identities through multiple avatars by a single user in Second Life®. This phenomenon, together with its non-virtual predecessors such as the literary nom de plume, challenges the validity of the notion of the undivided 'self', particularly in the context of creative practices. 'alpha.tribe' is an experimental group of avatars who have founded a virtual fashion business in Second Life®. The creative output of this enterprise provides the visual context through (...) which the primarily self-observational study of the author will be presented. Within this framework, references from presence studies, cyberpsychology and ludology will also be drawn upon. A designer and artist, as well as an art educator, the author wished to investigate whether the consistency of the creative self is in fact a given and whether it might not be challenged. Thus five avatars, of both sexes, human as well as non-human, have pooled their resources in the operation of a design enterprise, within which each virtual identity pursues his/her own line of creative inquiry, culminating in different lines of output. A discussion of this ongoing experiment, supplemented with a visual documentation of the work engendered, forms the bulwark of this text. (shrink)

This article discusses the transformation of a tiny three-dimensional artwork created in the metaverse that takes its inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges’s story of ‘the Aleph’ – a tale that revolves around a minute artefact that is ‘one of the points in space that contains all other points’. The visualization of a concept as complex as ‘the Aleph’ led the author of the project through a process that started from Cartesian precepts, from where it transformed itself into an investigation of (...) ‘code’ as a basal, life-giving presence that is abstract, enigmatic and hermetic in its essence. This correlation between ‘code’ and the magical nature of ‘the Aleph’ has led to further considerations regarding the significance of such a marvellous object within virtual worlds. Accordingly, this text will conclude with the description of an intriguing, novel usage for ‘the Aleph’ that materializes as a time machine for virtual-world avatars. (shrink)

In this article we wish to present the typographic experimentations of four designers, each of whom looks at typography and its implementations from different viewpoints; however with similar goals – namely to investigate how typographic systems can be implemented, their attributes as carriers of semantic meaning be redefined, and/or their functions be improved upon within the digital medium that presents challenges as well as opportunities that enable graphic designers to reach well beyond the traditional medium of typographic work; i.e., printed (...) paper. The article will examine these four projects under the umbrella concept of Deconstruction, also extending into a consideration of Legibility; setting them forth as examples of the impact that the digital medium has brought to bear upon typographic practice in recent decades. (shrink)

In this article, the artist/author wishes to examine corporeality in the virtual realm, through the usage of the (non)-physical body of the avatar. Two sister art installations created in the virtual world of Second Life, both of which are meant to be accessed with site-specific avatars, will provide the creative platform whereby this investigation is undertaken. While the installation Anatomia aims to propel the visitor towards reflections of an introverted nature, involving the fragility of the physical self, body parts seeks (...) to challenge the residents of virtual environments to connect with the virtual manifestations, i.e., avatars, of others in an emotionally expressive/intimate manner. (shrink)

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) present us with unprecedented opportunities in bringing together students and educators from widely disparate geographical locations, as well as diverse cultures and backgrounds to participate in a learning experience that should take into cognizance the affordances of these novel arenas in the design of both content and the environment(s) in which this content is to be implemented/enacted. While VLEs do seem to address the requirements of well-structured learning endeavours, the boundaries of which are clearly defined, they (...) are challenged where complex learning material in which boundaries are less easily defined, as is the case in art/creativity education, are concerned. Given that the learning content of the creative fields is open ended by its very nature and as such does not seem to readily lend itself to an implementation within the structure of present-day, two-dimensional virtual learning environments, can such an environment/methodology be developed in the open-ended three-dimensional structure of a metaverse, based upon the critical examination of a real-life, historic precedent? (shrink)

With this text I wish to revisit a long-standing preoccupation of mine which addresses the extent to which the digital medium may have brought about a paradigm shift in creative process; one which has been effectuated through a conversion of the creative medium itself – from atoms to bits. As a visual practitioner, what is particularly significant to my enquiry is that this change in medium is deemed to have brought about a change in language that affects the very nature (...) of autographic work which comes into being as visual output: following Goodman’s definitions of allographic and autographic output, McCullough asserts that visual artworks may now be considered to be allographic productions since they presently share the same attributes of notationally based allographic work, which has traditionally manifested only as music or as literary output. The result is a work environment which wide opens the doors to unprecedented levels of non-linear process and experimentation whilst engaged in the visually creative act. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss a project that was co-authored by a storyteller and a visual artist in the metaverse of Second Life in 2009. The aim of the project was to create a storytelling space that would be used by its visitors to create their own unique narratives, as well as their own original performances, all of which would take their trajectories by being immersed in a virtual architecture/landscape, through avatar costumes and a substantial library of dramatic poses and (...) animations that were put at their disposal by the authors at the location of the event. The project wove together several concepts: these are Roy Ascott’s tenets of ‘distributed authorship’ and ‘participatory poesis’, which were brought together with a term that was coined by Axel Bruns to describe novel collaborative electronic forms of creative output in which the roles of the ‘user’ and the ‘producer’ have become merged, manifesting as a novel type of online behaviour that the author defines as ‘Produsage’. These primary concepts were substantiated by research that combined the fields of performance art, storytelling, memory arts and the usage of mnemonic devices, including the Renaissance notion of the ‘memory theatre’ with Cyberpsychology, particularly in relation to avatar studies. (shrink)

Inspired by a Danez Smith poem, this essay is a ‘little prayer’ for LGBTQIA+ people and organizers to be able to collectively grieve the family and friends they have lost, the relations they had to end, the social privileges they never had, or lost before and after sharing their queerness. It argues for the militant force of this slow-paced, ghostly, and ambiguous grief in queer lives, and in the LGBTQIA+ movements in Turkey and elsewhere. The author draws on 4 years (...) of organizing at Boysan’s House – a living memory space, and community hub in Istanbul – and the 12-hour oral history conducted with Mother Sema, who has been mobilizing her motherhood and her grief as a pro-LGBTQIA+ organizer since 2006. The essay suggests that ambiguous grief can be relearned and re-membered as a radically transformative force that is already constitutive of queer communities. It situates the histories and presents of Mother Sema and Boysan’s House amid diverse experiences of resilience and resistance through motherhood, queer kin making, and mourning. In so doing, the essay builds on the militant activisms of the Saturday Mothers/people, the Peace Mothers, the organized family members of LGBTQIA+ people, and the trans communities in Turkey. It is thus an inquiry into ways of housing and transforming ambiguous grief in the LGBTQIA+ movement, in the post-July 2016 coup attempt Turkey. (shrink)

Increasing environmental awareness in business life has given way to Green Human Resources Management practices. The positive corporate image created by GHRM is encouraging for many employees and boosts their work engagement. GHRM practices make employees feel proud about their organization and creates a value-based ground for working in their current companies. Actually, internalized green inclinations of organizations, namely, value alignment between an organization and an employee, can make their employees feel greater psychological ownership about their companies, leading to greater (...) engagement as it is suggested in social identity theory. Being inspired from psychological ownership literature, in this study, it is assumed that being exposed to Green Human Resources Management practices can make employees feel higher levels of work engagement and psychological ownership can have a mediator effect in this relationship. The model has been a tested model among 255 Turkish white-collar employees working in a manufacturing sector. Analyses have been carried out using the AMOS structural equation program and the PROCESS program. Results confirmed the above assumptions, confirming the assumptions of social identity theory and revealed the existence of mediator effect in the relationship between GHRM and work engagement of employees, illuminating the importance of GHRM for employees' positive attitudes toward their organization. (shrink)

About Antiquities: Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire. By Zeynep Çelik. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 268, illus. $27.95.

READING ALASDAIR MACINTYRE'S AFTER VIRTUE.