Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear sense of the source of the sound will (...) return. This ‘ventriloquist’ effect reflects the ways in which visual cognition can dominate auditory perception. And this phenomenological observation is one what you can verify or disconfirm in your own case just by the slightest reflection on what it is like for you to listen to someone with or without visual contact with them. (shrink)

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

The usual way for new cells to come into being is by division of old cells. So the zygote, which is a—new—single cell formed from two, the sperm and ovum, is an exception. Textbooks of human genetics usually say that this new cell is beginning of a new human individual. What this indicates is that they suddenly forget about identical twins.

İslam felsefesinin tartışmasız en önemli filozoflarından biri olan İbn Sina, dönemindeki yoğun Aristoteles etkisine karşılık, Aristoteles’in sisteminden bağımsız yeni bir zaman sistemi kurmuştur. Şifa isimli kitabında bu sistemi sunan İbn Sina, aynı zamanda hareket, hız, mekansal büyüklük gibi belli kavramların yanında bölünebilir bir büyüklük olan ve zorunlu bir şekilde öncelik ve sonralığa sahip olan bir kapasite olarak tanımladığı imkana dayalı bir zamanın gerçekliği savunusu yapmakla birlikte bu kavramların anlam kazanabilmesi için zaman kavramına ihtiyacımız olduğunu göstermiştir.Zamanın gerçekliği sorusu, güncel (...) felsefenin aktörlerinden de büyük dikkat çekmiştir. Bu isimlerden biri olan J. Ellis McTaggart, hayli tartışmalı olmasının yanısıra etkili de olan “Zamanın Gerçekdışılığı” başlıklı makalesinde zamanın bir illüzyondan ibaret olduğunu tartışmıştır. McTaggart, gerek bu makalede gerekse Varoluşun Doğası isimli kitabında zamanın gerçek olmadığını ve zamana dair verdiğimiz her tanımın döngüsel, çelişkili veya yetersiz olduğunu savunmuştur. McTaggart, bu ispatını zamandaki anların birbirine nispetle iki farklı şekilde sınıflandırılabileceği varsayımı üzerine kurgulamıştır. Buna göre A serisi, zamandaki anları geçmiş, şu an ve gelecek şeklinde konumlandırırken B serisi, öncelik ve sonralık ilişkisi ile konumlandırmaktadır. Bu çalışma, İbn Sina’nın sunduğu zaman sisteminin McTaggart’ın B serisi ile uyumlu olup olmadığı sorusunu cevaplamayı amaçlamaktadır.Anahtar kelimeler: İbn Sina, Zaman, Mekansal Büyüklük, İmkan, Hareket, McTaggart, B serisi. (shrink)

Trust among current and future patients is essential for the success of biobank research. The submission of an informed consent is an act of trust by a patient or a research subject, but a strict application of the rule of informed consent may not be sensitive to the multiplicity of patient interests at stake, and could thus be detrimental to trust. According to a recently proposed law on “genetic integrity” in Sweden, third parties will be prohibited from requesting or seeking (...) genetic information about an individual. Cumbersome restrictions on research may be lifted, thus creating a more favourable climate for medical research. (shrink)

Facing increased competition, universities are driven to project a positive image to their internal and external stakeholders. Therefore some of these institutions have begun to develop and implement corporate identity programs as part of their corporate strategies. This study describes a Turkish higher education institution’s social responsibility initiatives. Along with this example, the study also analyzes a specific case using concepts from the Corporate Identity and Corporate Social Responsibility literature. The motives leading the university to manage its corporate identity, the (...) social responsibility initiatives in the local and national communities, and the possible benefits of these initiatives for the parties involved are all identified. The major finding is that philanthropy is one of the main elements of Istanbul Bilgi University’s corporate identity program and that the university has altruistic motives for its social responsibility initiatives. (shrink)

The Stepford Wives, a novel by Ira Levin, provides the theme for this allegory. The men of Stepford belong to the Men’s Association. Their wives are “perfect”, in that they do nothing other than clean, cook, preen, and provide satisfaction without argument for their husbands. They are, furthermore, content with their lot, and believe that their previous interests and freedoms were self indulgent. Levin never informs his readers how the men came to obtain total mastery over their “Stepford wives”, although (...) there is the suggestion that the real wives have been replaced by robotic lookalikes. (shrink)

One of the ways of dividing all philosophers into two kinds is by saying of each whether he is an ordinary man's philosopher or a philosophers' philosopher. Thus Plato is a philosophers' philosopher and Aristotle an ordinary man's philosopher. This does not depend on being easy to understand: a lot of Aristotle's Metaphysics is immensely difficult. Nor does being a philosophers' philosopher imply that an ordinary man cannot enjoy the writings, or many of them. Plato invented and exhausted a form: (...) no one else has written such dialogues. So someone with no philosophical bent, or who has left his philosophical curiosity far behind may still enjoy reading some of them. (shrink)

When we dream, it is often assumed, we are isolated from the external environment. It is also commonly believed that dreams can be, at times, accurate, convincing replicas of waking experience. Here I analyse some of the implications of this view for an enactive theory of conscious experience. If dreams are, as described by the received view, “inactive”, or “cranially envatted” whilst replicating the experience of being awake, this would be problematic for certain extended conscious mind theories. Focusing specifically on (...) Alva Noë’s enactive view, according to which the vehicles of perceptual experience extend beyond the brain, I argue that dreams are a quandary. Noë’s view is that dreaming is consistent with enactivism because even if dreams are inactive and shut off from the external environment, they are not “full-blown” perceptual consciousness, and also, there is some reason to reject the inactive claim. However, this view rests on an unjustified and reductive account of dreams which is not supported... (shrink)

This considerably revised second edition of Wittgenstein's 1914-16 notebooks contains a new appendix with photographs of Wittgenstein's original work, a new preface by Elizabeth Anscombe, and a useful index by E.D. Klemke. Corrections have been made throughout the text, and notes have been added, making this the definitive edition of the notebooks. The writings intersperse Wittgenstein's technical logical notations with his thoughts on the meaning of life, happiness, and death. "When the first edition of this collection of remarks appeared in (...) 1961 we were provided with a glimpse of the workings of Wittgenstein's mind during the period when the seminal ideas of the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ were being worked out. This second edition provided the occasion to be struck anew by the breadth, rigor, and above all the restlessness of that mind."—T. Michael McNulty, S. J., _The Modern Schoolman_. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: Cognitive and sensory difficulties frequently jeopardize informed consent of frail elderly patients This study is the first to test whether preliminary research experience could enhance geriatric patients' capacity to consent. DESIGN/SETTING: A step-wise consent procedure was introduced in a study on fluid balance in geriatric patients. Eligible patients providing verbal consent participated in a try-out of a week, during which bioelectrical impedance and weight measurements were performed daily. Afterwards, written informed consent was requested. Comprehension, risk and inconvenience scores (ranges: (...) 0-10) were obtained before and after the try-out by asking ten questions about the study's essentials and by asking for a risk and inconvenience assessment on a ten-points rating scale. SUBJECTS AND RESULTS: Seventy of the 78 eligible subjects started the try-out and 53 (68%) provided written consent. The comprehension score increased from 5.0 (+/- 2.3) to 7.0 (+/- 1.9) following the try-out (P < 0.001). The number of subjects capable of weighing risks and inconveniences increased from 32 to 48 (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Research experience improved the capacity to consent, still enabling an acceptable participation rate. Therefore, experienced consent seems a promising tool to optimize informed consent in frail elderly subjects. (shrink)

In today's complex business world, the question of business ethics is increasingly gaining importance as managers and employees face numerous ethical dilemmas in their jobs. The ethical climate in the Turkish business environment is also at a critical stage, and the business community as a whole is troubled by ethical problems. This study attempts to determine the effect of individual, managerial and organizational factors on the ethical judgments of Turkish managers, and to evaluate the ethical perceptions of these managers. The (...) findings of this study reveal that the ethics score, the measure of ethical judgment, of Turkish managers differs significantly only with respect to gender and that female managers have higher ethics score than male managers. Other individual, managerial and organizational factors considered in this study do not have any significant effect on the ethical judgments of the managers. A comparative analysis between female and male managers in terms of their ranking of the eleven ethical business scenarios, ranking of the sixteen unethical acts, ranking of the factors influencing managers to engage in unethical practices, and ranking of the various parties to whom a company is socially responsible enables the researchers to enlighten the subject of business ethics in Turkey. (shrink)