Düşünce tarihinin neredeyse her döneminde insanı ahlaki bir faile dönüştürebilmek amacıyla çeşitli kuramlar geliştirilmiştir. Bu kuramlarda genel olarak insanın ahlaki bir ilkeyi kendi eylemsellik alanına tatbik etmesi için gerekli olan şeyin ve erdemli davranışlarla erişilmesi hedeflenen mutluluğun ne olduğu üzerine bir düşünme faaliyeti gerçekleşir. Geliştirilen yanıtlar arasında şüphesiz çok seçkin bir yere sahip olan kuram, Kant’a aittir. Kant’a göre doğa alanında eğilim ve isteklere bağlı davranışlarla amaç olarak mutluluğa ulaşmak, insanı ahlaklı kılmaz. Bu bakımdan, insanı mutlu kılan şeyin değil, onu (...) iyi yapan, bir ahlaki faile dönüştürmenin olanağını soruşturur. En yüksek iyiyi gerçekleştirmeyi, eğilim ve isteklere bağlı bir amaç olarak belirlenen çeşitli türden mutluluklara ulaşma çabasıyla eşitleyen tüm anlayışlar karşısında Kant, en yüksek iyiyi gerçekleştirmenin ilk koşulunu ahlaklılık, ikinci koşulu olarak –birinci koşul sağlandığı takdirde- ortaya çıkacağına inandığı mutluluk olarak belirler. Ona göre yalnızca ahlak yasasıyla belirlenen erdemli davranışların sonucunda gerçekleşeceği beklenen, aklın bir ideali olarak mutluluk insanı ahlaklı kılabilir. Nitekim özerk bir biçimde kendisi için koyduğu yasayla, akıl sahibi bir varlığını kişilik sahibi bir varlığa dönüştüren insan aynı zamanda ahlaki değer taşıyan davranışlarda bulunmanın sonucunda hep bir beklentisi olan bir varlıktır. İnsanın bu beklentisine yanıt, dinden gelir. Burada Kant, geliştirdiği ahlak öğretisinin mutluluk öğretisi olarak da adlandırılabilmesinin koşulunu ortaya koyar. Buna göre sırf akıl talep ettiği için insana ödevler yükleyen yasa zemininde temellenen en yüksek iyiyi gerçekleştirme isteğiyle, aklın yasa koyuculuğu altında yaşadığımız için içimizde doğan iyiyi gerçekleştirme arzusuyla dine yönelindiğinde ancak ahlak öğretisi bir mutluluk öğretisi olabilir. Bir başka deyişle, yalnızca ahlaklılık temelinde tesis edilen bir dinsellikle mutluluk ahlaki kılınabilir. Bu yazıda mutluluğun nasıl ahlaki kılınabildiği ya da mutluluğa layık olabilmek için ne yapılması gerektiği konusu irdelenip, en yüksek iyiye yönelen insana yüklenilen ödevlerin tanrısal buyruklar olarak benimsenmesiyle mutluluktan pay alma umudunu doğuran ahlak temelli din anlayışına dikkat çekilmektedir. (shrink)

Plato’s view on pleasure in the Republic emerges in the course of developing the third proof of his central thesis that the just man is happier than the unjust. Plato presents it as the “greatest and most decisive” proof of his central thesis, so one might expect to find an abundance of scholarly work on it. Paradoxically, however, this argument has received little attention from scholars, and what has been written on it has generally been harshly critical. I believe that (...) this treatment of the argument has been unfair and that the relevant passages deserve a more careful and charitable interpretation. In this paper, I take up two serious charges that scholars have leveled against this proof, that it is inconsistent and that it involves a “fatal ambiguity”. I show that these charges result from misinterpreting Plato’s text, and I offer an alternative interpretation of the relevant passages. In doing so, I hope to shed some light on the complexities involved in Plato’s unappreciated third proof. (shrink)

Tanrı’nın varlığı kanıtlama (isbât-ı vâcib) kelâm ilminin diğer tüm meselelerin kendisine dayandığı en başta gelen gayesidir. Kelâmcıların özelliği inşa ettikleri bir bilgi teorisi ekseninde bunu ortaya koymaya çalışmalarıdır. Kelâmda mevcut, ma’dum, kadîm, muhdes, cevher, araz gibi ontolojik kavramların daha genelde bilinenler (malumat) kümesinin unsurları olmasından da anlaşılacağı üzere kelamcılar Tanrı’nın varlığı konusunu bilgiye konu olmak bakımından ele almaktadırlar. Bu durum kelâmcılara göre Allah’ın varlığının bilgisine (marifetgullah) ulaşmanın bir epistemoloji meselesi olduğunu ortaya koyar. Bu makalede Mu’tezile kelamında önemli bir yeri olan (...) Kādî Abdülcebbâr’ın (ö. 415/1025) Tanrı’nın varlığını benimsediği bilgi teorisi ekseninde nasıl ispat etmeye çalıştığı ortaya konulacaktır. Bu doğrultuda makalede öncelikle Kādî’nin bilgiyi nasıl tanımladığı ve bu tanımında kendisinden önceki kelâmcılardan benzeşip farklılaştığı yerler ele alınacaktır. Ardından Kādî’nin bilgi edinme kaynaklarını “zorunlu” ve “iktisabi” bilgi türleri kapsamında nasıl tasnif ettiği ele alınacaktır. Son olarak Kādî’nin Tanrı’nın varlığını ortaya koyduğu bilgi teorisini ekseninde akli delilere dayalı olarak nasıl ispat etmeye çalıştığı ele alınacaktır. (shrink)

We provide experimental evidence that subjects blame others based on events they are not responsible for. In our experiment an agent chooses between a lottery and a safe asset; payment from the chosen option goes to a principal who then decides how much to allocate between the agent and a third party. We observe widespread blame: regardless of their choice, agents are blamed by principals for the outcome of the lottery, an event they are not responsible for. We provide an (...) explanation of this apparently irrational behavior with a delegated-expertise principal-agent model, the subjects’ salient perturbation of the environment. (shrink)

This paper consists of four parts. Part 1 is an introduction. Part 2 evaluates arguments for the claim that there are no strict empirical laws in biology. I argue that there are two types of arguments for this claim and they are as follows: (1) Biological properties are multiply realized and they require complex processes. For this reason, it is almost impossible to formulate strict empirical laws in biology. (2) Generalizations in biology hold contingently but laws go beyond describing contingencies, (...) so there cannot be strict laws in biology. I argue that both types of arguments fail. Part 3 considers some examples of biological laws in recent biological research and argues that they exemplify strict laws in biology. Part 4 considers the objection that the examples in part 3 may be strict laws but they are not distinctively biological laws. I argue that given a plausible account of what distinctively biological means, such laws are distinctively biological. (shrink)

Research suggests that organizational justice has important impacts on work-related attitudes and behaviors, such as organizational citizenship behavior. In this article, we explore the extent to which individualism moderates the relationship between organizational justice and OCB among citizens in Kyrgyzstan. We make additional contributions to the literature because we know very little about these constructs in this former Soviet Union country, Kyrgyzstan, an under-researched and under-represented region of the world. Results of our data collected from 402 managers and employees in (...) Kyrgyzstan offer the following new discoveries. All three justice constructs are related to OCB. Individualism moderates only the distributive and interactive justice to OCB relationships. We develop an intricate theory with provocative implications: Procedural justice produces obedience. For “individualists,” interactional justice inspires loyalty and, interestingly, distributive justice “can only buy” participation, but “can’t buy” loyalty. Therefore, for individualists, interactional justice outweighs distributive justice for organizational loyalty. Based on Kyrgyz citizens’ justice, OCB, and individualism, our theory reveals novel insights regarding culture, money attitude, and intrinsic motivation and provides critical and practical implications to the field of business ethics. (shrink)

This study presents the case of a Metropolitan Municipality in the Aegean Region of Turkey, which undertook a series of initiatives to conduct projects on environmental protection and sustainability. This case study was conducted as two separate studies as a part of Horizon 2020-funded ECHOES project under Work Package 6, aiming to gain insight into the collective magnitudes of energy-related choices and behavior. The starting point of the process is marked, in 2015, by the municipality becoming a party to the (...) Covenant of Mayors movement, joining around 8,000 signatories from over 50 countries. In line with European Union’s climate targets and associated energy-related policies, signatories of the Covenant of Mayors aim to decrease carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 and by 40% by 2030. In order to enhance the design and operationalization of policies for achieving these targets, each partner in the Covenant of Mayors is required to develop a Sustainable Energy Action Plan. The SEAP is to be prepared within 2 years of becoming a party to the Covenant of Mayors and involves action plans and projects in order to operationalize the strategies for achieving the associated targets. To this end, this study analyzes the Metropolitan Municipality’s SEAP and its components, which include zero-emission public transportation project, transformation of existing buildings to a more energy-efficient standard and related energy audit studies, a project for decreasing waiting periods in traffic via a Smart Traffic System, a pedestrianization project, and a project for increasing the use of geothermal energy for district heating. This study set out to identify the internal and external factors, as well as bottom-up and top-down mechanisms involved in various phases of the preparation and implementation of the SEAP. The research method was expert interviews, incorporating viewpoints and perceptions of stakeholders from different levels of the municipality. Among the key results are understanding the roles of enthusiasts and frontrunners in such initiative and the importance of top-management and central government support. (shrink)

It has long been suspected that attentional processes differ between olfaction and the other senses. Here, we test whether voluntary dishabituation, seen, for example, when we re-attend to the ticking of a clock, can occur in olfaction. Participants were seated in an odorized room, where at various intervals they had to evaluate what they could smell. An experimental group had one nostril open and the other closed, except during the evaluations, so that the closed side was subject to centrally driven (...) habituation, but not peripheral adaptation. A control group had both nostrils closed except during evaluations. Following exposure, the experimental group could not report the room's odor in either the centrally habituated nostril or the nostril that remained open, while the control group could. This effect could result from a number of causes, including olfaction's unique neuroanatomy, functional constraints imposed by detecting volatile chemicals, and as a consequence of limited cortical resources, with implications for the functional value of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, I will try to make clear that aspect of wisdom which relates to the practical application of revealed commands through prophetic practices and traditions of the other founders of religions. Here, I also refer to the wisdom in the Qur’an and the Old and New Testaments of the Bible as examples of the use of this concept in religion. Although both philosophy and religion require using the form of wisdom within a holistic approach, in the course of (...) time the concept of wisdom was neglected both in philosophy and religion. Because of this, after that one cannot judge the evaluation of complex situations in these two areas.Shortly, in this paper, I am going to discuss the place of wisdom in the Philosophy of Religion as a dynamic factor of thought and then propose a new understanding in the Philosophy of Religion because today this discipline is not fully appreciated by all the world religions. (shrink)

a new era of public protest began in 1999 with the Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) demonstrations, and continued through the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests and the 2013 Gezi Park insurrection in Istanbul. This new era of demonstrations differed from movements that had come before in the understanding of politics employed by the protesters, reconstructing popular imaginations about the future, bringing about a reconsideration of politics, its domain, and time itself. This article investigates the Occupy Gezi movement that began (...) in Gezi Park and led to the occupation of Istanbul’s Taksim Square. I examine the events through Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Hungarian Revolution. Arendt’s five criteria for evaluating the status of the Hungarian Revolution as a “true event” help shed light on the politics of Occupy Gezi (Arendt, “Totalitarian Imperialism” 5). In spite of the two movements’ similarly unprecedented, spontaneous, non-ideological, and un-hierarchical characters, the Gezi Park protests differed from the Hungarian Revolution in important ways. This is particularly true of the reaction of the protesters to the violence to which they were exposed. In refusing to react in kind to the state’s violence, the Gezi Park protesters created a new public domain for confronting the state. It is possible to consider this movement to have been an anti-violent rather than a non- or counter-violent resistance. Important political conclusions follow from this distinction. (shrink)

Nancy Cartwright (1983, 1999) argues that (1) the fundamental laws of physics are true when and only when appropriate ceteris paribus modifiers are attached and that (2) ceteris paribus modifiers describe conditions that are almost never satisfied. She concludes that when the fundamental laws of physics are true, they don't apply in the real world, but only in highly idealized counterfactual situations. In this paper, we argue that (1) and (2) together with an assumption about contraposition entail the opposite conclusion (...) — that the fundamental laws of physics do apply in the real world. Cartwright extracts from her thesis about the inapplicability of fundamental laws the conclusion that they cannot figure in covering-law explanations. We construct a different argument for a related conclusion — that forward-directed idealized dynamical laws cannot provide covering-law explanations that are causal. This argument is neutral on whether the assumption about contraposition is true. We then discuss Cartwright's simulacrum account of explanation, which seeks to describe how idealized laws can be explanatory. (shrink)

One and a half months after Victor Hugo died in 1885, Beşir Fuad published a biography of him, in which Fuad defended Emile Zola’s naturalism and realism against Hugo’s romanticism. This resulted in the most important dispute in nineteenth-century Turkish literary history, the hakikiyyûn and hayâliyyûn debate, with the former represented by Beşir Fuad and the latter represented by Menemenlizâde Mehmet Tahir. This article focuses on the form of this debate rather than its content, and this focus reveals how (...) the tension between classical and post-classical Islamic intellectual history had become deeply embedded in Ottoman Turkish literary history by the late 1800s. This particular event demonstrates two points: that dialectical disputation was viewed negatively as a return to the seemingly primitive practices of an antiquated mentality, as opposed to the relatively enlightened apodictic argumentation ; and that trajectories of Ottoman Turkish literary history can be understood within the context of general Islamic intellectual history. (shrink)

Rigveda, Hint alt kıtasının en eski metinlerinden biri olarak, antik Vedik dönemin dini, felsefi ve kültürel yaşamına dair paha biçilmez bilgiler sunar. Bu kutsal kitap, karmaşık ilahiler, ritüeller ve mitolojik anlatılar yoluyla Hindistan’ın manevi ve düşünsel mirasının temellerini şekillendirir. Bu çalışma, Hint kültürünün köklerini ve gelişimini anlamada kritik bir rol oynayarak, yüzyıllar boyunca süregelen dini ritüeller, sosyal yapılar ve kozmolojik anlayışların şekillenmesine dair önemli veriler sunar. Makale, Rigveda’da yer alan Vedik yacña (kurban) ritüelini mercek altına alır; özellikle Soma kurbanının detaylı (...) ritüellerine ve rahiplerin bu törenlerdeki kritik rollerine dikkat çeker. Bu inceleme, eski Hint toplumunda rahiplerin dini ve sosyo-ekonomik etkilerini vurgulayarak, onların toplumdaki yerini ve önemini tartışır. Seçilen ilahilerin niteliksel tematik analizi, karmaşık ritüelistik çerçeveyi çözerek rahiplerin çok yönlü işlevlerine ve Vedik toplumunun toplumsal ve ruhani dengesini korumak için çok önemli bir rahip ücretlendirme biçimi olan ‘dakşiṇā’ sisteminin etkilerine ışık tutmaktadır. Araştırma, ritüelistik performanslar ile doğal dünya arasında simbiyotik bir ilişki olduğunu ileri sürerek, bu ritüellerin etkili bir şekilde uygulanmasının başta yağış olmak üzere çevresel olayları etkilediğine inanıldığını ve böylece insan dini pratiklerinin kozmik düzenle iç içe geçtiğini öne sürmektedir. Metinsel incelemeyi bilimsel yorumlarla bütünleştiren bu çalışma, Vedik kurban uygulamalarına dair kavrayışımızı geliştirmekte ve bunları Vedik dünya görüşünün şekillenmesinde merkezi bir rol oynayan manevi niyetler, maddi sonuçlar ve kozmolojik ilkelerin sofistike bir sentezi olarak tasvir etmektedir. Çalışma, bu eski ritüellerin ruhban sınıfı ile halk arasında nasıl karşılıklı bir dinamik oluşturduğunu, sosyal hiyerarşileri güçlendirirken aynı zamanda topluluğun manevi ve maddi refahını nasıl sağladığını incelemektedir. Bulgular, Vedik ritüellerin yalnızca dini törenler olarak değil, eski Hindistan’ın kültürel ethosunu, toplumsal yapılarını ve dini doktrinlerini şekillendiren temel unsurlar olarak kalıcı etkisinin altını çizmektedir. Rigveda’da ifade edildiği şekliyle kurban uygulamaları, toplumsal uyum için kritik bir araç olarak ortaya çıkmakta, ruhani ve zamansal olanın birbirine bağlılığına dair köklü bir inancı yerleştirmekte ve böylece Vedik dinin aşkın ve pragmatik boyutlarına dair incelikli bir bakış açısı sunmaktadır. Bu çalışma, Vedik kurban ritüelleri, sosyal düzenin oluşumu ve kadim Hint düşüncesinde tanrısalın nasıl algılandığı arasındaki kompleks bağlantıyı açıklamakta, böylece bu eski törenlerin Hinduizm’deki sonraki dini ve kültürel pratikler üzerindeki kalıcı etkisini ve mirasını detaylı bir şekilde ortaya koymaktadır. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Modernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos by Thaddeus J. KozinskiMehmet CiftciModernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos by Thaddeus J. Kozinski (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico, 2019), 231 pp.Whether the names Adrian Vermeule, Fr. Edmund Waldstein, and Sohrab Ahmari provoke anxiety or glee in readers' minds will depend on where they stand on integralism, the brand of Catholic traditionalism that all three have (...) sought to promote through various websites and publications. Presenting themselves as the authentic interpreters of magisterial teachings on church–state relations, the integralists have challenged the long-standing attempt (especially in North America) to combine the Catholic faith with a commitment to political liberalism, natural rights, religious liberty, and state neutrality toward religion. For the integralists, attempting such a combination succeeds only in distorting the Catholic faith and causes us to forget what the Church taught before the Second Vatican Council, which still obliges the assent of Catholics, they claim, and is desperately needed to stand against the onward march of secularism. [End Page 966]Although Thaddeus Kozinski, former professor at Wyoming Catholic College, may not be one of the more well-known integralists, his latest book presents an interesting iteration of Catholic traditionalism that displays both what is valuable and what is most worrying about contemporary traditionalism. Kozinski's previous book was a closely argued critique of John Rawls and Jacques Maritain using the thought of Alasdair MacIntyre. It built up a cumulative case for the impossibility of resolving the political problem of religious pluralism without moving beyond philosophy by making a decision to reject or accept the political importance of the Catholic Church and its teachings.1 Although the author's preference for some sort of confessional state was already clear in that book, he preferred not to defend it, but rather to argue that it is impossible to be agnostic or neutral toward the ideal of church–state union. Now he goes on the offensive, presenting in the twenty brief chapters of Modernity as Apocalypse his "sundry attempts over the past decade to grapple with the question of modernity" (14). More precisely, he is grappling with the questions of what defines modernity, how we arrived at where we are, and what Christians should do while living in it, particularly in the fields of education and politics.The two chapters that form the first part (entitled "Modernity") use Charles Taylor's A Secular Age to argue that modernity's increasingly pluralistic and secular culture creates "an entirely new incapacity to experience the reality of a particular worldview in a naïve way, that is, without the consciousness of there being other viable options" (37). Yet the problem also reveals a blessing. "Encountering reality through the lens of other perennial traditions can serve to expose that false dichotomy in our minds that leads us to interpret other views as nothing more than full-fledged errors and our own personal lenses as nothing less than the whole truth" (21). Anyone who has read what passes for commentary on websites such as Church Militant or Rorate Caeli will find that statement surprising and refreshing.The second part ("Logos") contains four chapters that lucidly discuss contemporary disagreements in ethics between Kantians and virtue-ethicists, between new natural lawyers and MacIntyreans. Chapter 4 makes an effective and moving argument to read Plato "as a precursor to Faith, and a guide along the way home" (50). There are some brief but suggestive remarks drawing on Benedict XVI's Caritas in Veritate in [End Page 967] chapter 6 to argue that an ethics of gift can enable us to express the moral teachings of the New Testament in terms that are potentially convincing to a broader audience. "Metanoia" is the title of the third part, dedicated to education. Chapters 7–8 and 10 give not very original and yet timely arguments for the importance of the liberal arts, the need for Catholic universities to be institutions that can foster, rather than deform, the practice of philosophy, and the need for pedagogy to be rooted in the transmission of a community's tradition.2However, one cannot help but be startled when... (shrink)

Tanzimat’la başlayan eğitim felsefesi ve politikamız, Batı eksenli bir seyir içerisine girmiştir. Cumhuriyet’e kadar yürütülen iyileştirme ve ıslah çalışmaları ise kayda değer bir gelişme gösterememiştir. Osmanlı dönemindeki birtakım önemli girişimler ve düzenlemeler, Cumhuriyet dönemini hazırlamıştır. Islahat, Meşrutiyet ve Cumhuriyet dönemleri, Batılı paradigmaların çevresinde eğitimi konumlama ve kodlama çalışmalarıyla sürmüşse de bu eğitim paradigmasının manevî ve yerli/millî değerlerden kopuk, pozitivist eksenli olması eğitimde beklenen olumlu neticeyi vermemiştir. Bir ülkenin eğitim politikası, o ülkenin önem verdiği ve eğitim sistemine de yansımış olan değerlerle (...) başlar. Bu değerler eğitimin çerçevesini, amaçlarını ve yönünü belirler. Bir ülkenin eğitim politikası, o ülkenin önemsediği ve eğitimine de yansımış manevî, milli/yerli değerlerle başlar. Bu değerler, eğitim politikasının genel hatlarını, hedeflerini ve gidiş yönünü belirler. Manevî ve milli bir “Eğitim Felsefesinin” ve “Eğitim Politikasının” nasıl olması gerektiği konusunda yapılan akademik çalışmaların sayısı son yıllarda giderek artmaktadır. Bu çalışmalardan biri de Prof. Dr. Bayram Ali Çetinkaya’nın kaleme almış olduğu “Eğitim Politikamız ve Felsefemiz” başlıklı çalışmasıdır. (shrink)

Sober [2011] argues that some causal statements are a priori true and that a priori causal truths are central to explanations in the theory of natural selection. Lange and Rosenberg [2011] criticize Sober's argument. They concede that there are a priori causal truths, but maintain that those truths are only ‘minimally causal’. They also argue that explanations that are built around a priori causal truths are not causal explanations, properly speaking. Here we criticize both of Lange and Rosenberg's claims.

Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā Ibn al-Rāwandī(815–860 or 910), perhaps one of the most controversial figures in early Islamic history, is frequently called the “arch-heretic” (zindīq or mulḥid) of Islam. He was born in Khurasan around 815 CE. but flourished among intellectuals in ninth century in Baghdad. Around the year 854, he left Baghdad to escape political persecution and died either in 860 or in 910, according to some sources. The details of his early life are unknown, and documentation of (...) Ibn al-Rāwandī began to surface once he became an intellectual enemy of his fellow Muʿtazilites, the rationalist thinkers of Islamic thought at the time. Information on Ibn al-Rāwandī is gathered mostly from the writings of his opponents. From these sources, we learn that both Muslims and non-Muslims (especially Jews) wrote polemics against Ibn al-Rāwandī in which they acknowledged the serious threat his work posed not only to Islam, but also to Judaism and all Abrahamic religions. (shrink)

A dichotomous decision-making context in committees is considered where potential partisan members with predetermined votes can generate inefficient decisions and buy neutral votes. The optimal voting rule minimizing the expected costs of inefficient decisions for the case of a three-member committee is analyzed. It is shown that the optimal voting rule can be non-monotonic with respect to side-transfers: in the symmetric case, majority voting is optimal under either zero, mild or full side-transfer possibilities, whereas unanimity voting may be optimal under (...) an intermediate side-transfer possibility. The side-transfer possibilities depend on the power of partisans (their ability or willingness to pay for neutral votes) relative to the corruptibility of neutral members (personal cost of deliberately casting a `wrong' vote). (shrink)

PREFACE WORD -/- Hilmi Ziya Ülken was born and educated in Istanbul during the last period of the Ottoman Empire and worked in many fields of the intellectual life of the newly established Republic. Although he was interested in many fields of social sciences, he gained fame in the fields of Turkish thought and Islamic philosophy, and undertook important tasks in revealing and introducing medieval Islamic thinkers and post-Tanzimat Turkish thought. Again, due to his deep knowledge of Eastern and Western (...) philosophies, he was a thinker who made comparative studies and revealed the similarities and differences in both cultures. Apart from philosophy, which is his main field of interest, he also wrote works in the fields of sociology, anthropology, logic, history, novels, poetry, painting, miniature painting and even calligraphy. Ülken served as a bridge to the disconnect in our culture due to the Alphabet Revolution through the works he wrote and the students he trained. He made great contributions to Turkish-Islamic thought with his maturity period works, especially when he was a faculty member in the field of systematic philosophy at Ankara University Faculty of Theology. The philosophy of being, which constitutes the main axis of our study, is intertwined with metaphysics and ontology. Metaphysics, which deals with the question of "what being is", and ontology, which seeks to answer the question of "what kind of the same things exist in essence", are closely related; in fact, it is almost impossible to separate these two fields. Metaphysics, or the philosophy of being, is the most important and yet the most problematic field of philosophy. This is because throughout the history of philosophy there are many philosophers who do not see metaphysics as a field of philosophy. Especially in the Enlightenment period, metaphysics was seen as unobservable and incapable of meaningful discourse because it included topics such as God, the soul and universals. Some positivist thinkers even saw metaphysics as a continuation of animist discourse, the biggest obstacle to progress and Enlightenment, and criticized it severely. As a continuation of this understanding, metaphysics has been viewed negatively in our country since the early years of the Republic, and some philosophers have ignored an important field of philosophy by saying, "Metaphysics is not philosophy; philosophy is not metaphysics." In fact, in contemporary Western philosophy, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger. In fact, in contemporary Western philosophy, philosophers such as Heidegger (1889-1976), Sartre (1905-1980) and Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) attempted to demolish metaphysics in order to solve the problem of existence, but in doing so they themselves had to do metaphysics. When we ignore metaphysics, we ignore an important field of philosophy and an important function of the philosopher. Because in the pithy words of Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), "Man is a being who does metaphysics." Again, according to the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Bâjce (1077-1139), a virtuous society is one that emphasizes the metaphysical dimension of human beings. Although Ülken grew up in a period when metaphysics was viewed negatively, he wrote many works in this field and attached great importance to metaphysics. In fact, one of his first works was Metaphysics (1928), which is important in this respect. In addition, one of his mature works, Being and Becoming (1968), which is a summary of his philosophy, also shows the importance he attached to metaphysics. Ülken attached great importance to the philosophy of being (ontology) in his philosophical studies. He even wrote on this subject in his Felsefe Dersleri: Bilgi ve Vücûd Nazariyeleri (Metafizik) (Philosophy Lectures: Knowledge and Body Theory -Metaphysics) (1928), Aşk Ahlâkı (Love Ethics) (1931), İnsanî Vatanperverlik (Humanitarian Patriotism) (1933), and Varlık ve Oluş (Being and Becoming) (1968). These works on ontology are among the first publications in his field in Turkish. According to him, the basic subject of philosophy is existence. Other fields should be built on this philosophy. During our study, the most important problem was the change in Ülken's thought between his works. We also encountered difficulties such as the scattered nature of his works, the lack of a systematic system, the lack of methodological sensitivity in footnotes and citations, and the use of some terms in their original form instead of their Turkish equivalents. (shrink)

Plato's Parmenides is very commonly read as a turning-point in Plato's philosophical development. Most contemporary scholars agree with the view that Plato seriously criticizes his theory of Forms in this dialogue. According to some proponents of this view, Plato deemed these criticisms too damaging to his theory of Forms, and subsequently abandoned this theory. Other proponents of the serious-self-criticism view argue that, instead of abandoning his theory of Forms, Plato lays the foundations of a new and improved theory of Forms (...) in Parmenides--there is little agreement on what this new theory entails. Against this prevailing scholarly wisdom, Mehmet Tabak illustrates that Parmenides is exclusively a satirical dialogue in which Plato attempts to expose the absurd nature of the doctrines and method of his philosophical opponents. Tabak's accessible, historically-sensitive, detailed, and comprehensive account is the first decisive illustration of this view, which has been sporadically defended for many centuries. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics VII, Aristotle offers an account of akrasia that purports to salvage the kernel of truth in the Socratic paradox that people act against what is best only through ignorance. Despite Aristotle’s apparent confidence in having identified the sense in which Socrates was right about akrasia, we are left puzzling over Aristotle’s own account, and the extent to which he agrees with Socrates. The most fundamental interpretive question concerns the sense in which Aristotle takes the akratic to be (...) ignorant. The received view in the literature has been the intellectualist interpretation, which takes akratic agents to be so ignorant of the wrongness of what they do as to be unaware of it. In recent decades, many scholars have identified serious problems in this interpretation and have moved towards the non-intellectualist reading, the strong version of which takes clearheaded akrasia to be possible. There is, however, a glaring shortage of discussion of the difficulties facing the strong... (shrink)

This paper claims that a particular interpretation of Kant`s legal-political philosophy, as it is presented in his Doctrine of Right, provides us with the much needed resolution to the question of the normativity of law, precisely because it brings in a perspective that avoids both positivism and ethicism. This particular interpretation follows a strategy of argumentation that I call the “argument for the intrinsic normativity of law”, i.e., the argument that law is defined and justified on its own grounds, without (...) any need to refer to ethics, or rational/enlightened self-interest. This argument highlights the concept of legal person with the innate right to freedom as the necessary presupposition of legal practices, and sets forth a fundamental sense of justice inherent to the concept of law that consists in the reciprocal recognition of legal personality. In the end, I come up with a distinctive conception of law that I formulate as a last resort of normativity in the face of a conflict wherein an ethical solution does not appeal to all parties. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the nature of a priori biological laws in connection with the idea that laws must be empirical. I argue that the epistemic functions of a priori biological laws in biology are the same as those of empirical laws in physics. Thus, the requirement that laws be empirical is idle in connection with how laws operate in science. This result presents a choice between sticking with an unmotivated philosophical requirement and taking the functional equivalence of laws (...) seriously and modifying our philosophical account. I favor the latter. (shrink)

There are statements in the Qur'an that Satan has an influence on human will. In many verses, it is recalled that the devil and his followers are the greatest enemy of mankind, and they set up traps to mislead humans. The expressions that are related to these satans from humans and demons make people think that they are desperate against their traps and cause some questions about whether human beings have full freedom in their actions. As a matter of fact, (...) there are some interpretations in opposition to the freedom of will in the commentary sources regarding these verses. In some passages in the Qur'an it is emphasized that the traps set up by the devil are weak and can be overcome. This situation makes it necessary to evaluate the issue in terms of theology. As a matter of fact, the attempts of the devils to divert human freedom were handled along with the subjects of human freedom and responsibility in their actions in Kalam sources; and discussed in the light of human actions, the role of will in actions and freedom of will. In this study, how misguided actions of the devil and his followers affect the human will and whether this influence brings a limitation to the free will; will be discussed together with the relevant theological discussions. (shrink)

Research into spirituality and its impact on the work environment has been bourgeoning. In an attempt to explore the role of Islamic spirituality in the workplace, this study examines the influence of Islamic spirituality on job satisfaction and organisational commitment through work ethics. Data are obtained by an online Likert-scaled questionnaire survey based on one thousand Muslim employees from various economic sectors in Indonesia and analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings demonstrate that Islamic spirituality positively influences job satisfaction (...) and organisational commitment as two dimensions of work attitudes and that work ethics mediate that influence. There is also evidence that job satisfaction positively influences organisational commitment, but work ethics does not moderate that influence. The findings related to the role of work ethics, which mediates the effect of Islamic spirituality on job satisfaction and organisational commitment, can be considered the contribution of this study. (shrink)

This paper proposes laying the groundwork for principled moral reasoning as a seminal goal of ethics interventions in higher education, and on this basis, makes a case for educating future specialists and professionals with a foundation in philosophical ethics. Identification of such a seminal goal is warranted by the progressive dissociation of scientific practice and ethical deliberation since the onset of a problematic relationship between science and ethics around the mid-19th century, and the extensive mistrust of integrating ethics in science (...) and engineering curricula beyond its “applied,” “practical,” or “professional” implications. Although calls by international scientific and educational bodies to strengthen ethics teaching in scientific education over the past quarter century have brought about a notion of combining competence in a certain field with competence in ethics, this is neither entrenched in the academic community, nor fleshed out as regards its core or instruments to realize it. The legitimate goals of ethics teaching in higher education, almost settled since the 1980s, can be subsumed under the proposed seminal goal, and the latter also would safeguard content and methods of ethics interventions against the intrusion of indoctrinative approaches. In this paper, derivation of the proposed seminal goal rests on an interpretation of the Kohlbergian cognitive-developmental conception of moral adulthood consisting in autonomous principled moral reasoning. This interpretation involves, based on Kant’s conception of the virtuous person, integrating questions about the “good life” into the domain of principled reasoning. (shrink)

Kur’an-ı Kerim indirildiği günden bugüne hem muhtevası hem de üslubuyla gerek inananların gerekse inanmayanların hep ilgisini çekmiştir. Bu ilgi zamanla onun başka dillere tercümesini beraberinde getirmiştir. Bu tercüme faaliyetleri aynı şekilde hem Müslümanlar hem de Gayr-i Müslimler tarafından yapılmıştır. Kur’an-ı Kerim’in kendine has ve tarih boyunca benzerinin getirilemediği eşsiz bir üslubu vardır. Onun üslubunun eşsiz olması aynı zamanda başka dillere tercümesini de zorlaştırmaktadır. Ancak Kur’an hitabının tüm insanlara yönelik olması onun başka dillere tercümesini de zorunlu kılmıştır. Bugüne kadar farklı dillere (...) yapılmış Kur’an tercümelerinin sayısı yüzü aşmıştır. Bu tercümelerin her birinin Kur’an’ı doğru anlamaya katkı sunmak iddiası, tercümelerde takip edilen yöntemi de belirlemiştir. Bu yöntemlerden en çok tercih edileni hiç kuşkusuz anlamın tercümesi yöntemidir. Bu yöntemin yanı sıra harfi harfine tercüme de başvurulan yöntemlerden bir tanesidir. Merhum Muhammed Hamidullah’ın Fransızca’ya yaptığı Le Saint Coran adlı tercüme bir Müslüman âlim tarafından yapılmış ilk harfi harfine tercüme örneğidir. Muhammed Hamidullah’ın Doğu ve Batıyı bilen ve çok çeşitli alanlara hâkim bir ilim adamı olması yaptığı bu tercümeyi dikkate değer kılmıştır. Bunun yanı sıra daha başka özellikleri ile de dikkat çeken bu Fransızca çeviri Aziz Kur’an: Çeviri ve Açıklama şeklinde Türkçeye tercüme edilmiştir. Bu çalışmada, Türkiye’de hatırı sayılır derecede bir okuyucu kitlesine sahip olan Hamidullah’ın, Türkçeye aktarılmış bu tercümesi değerlendirilecektir. (shrink)

Some philosophers of physics recently expressed their skepticism about causation (Norton 2003b, 2007). However, this is not new. The view that causation does not refer to any ontological category perhaps can be attributed to Hume, Kant and Russell. On the other hand, some philosophers (Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe) view causation as a physical process and some others (Cartwright) view causation as making claims about capacities possessed by objects. The issue about the ontological status of causal claims involves issues concerning (...) the ontological status of capacity, modality and dispositional claims. In this paper, my goal is to show that without engaging metaphysical debates about the ontological status of causal claims, it can be shown that we can objectively assign truth values to these statements. I argue that for causal claims to be objective we don't need to postulate the existence of special facts (specific to causal claims) in addition to ordinary physical facts described by physical theories. This, I think, is enough to justify the usefulness of this concept in certain branches (may be all) of science. Once this is achieved, there is no need to engage in unnecessary metaphysical debates. So, even if advanced physical theories don't mention this notion, causal reasoning can still be important in understanding the world not in the sense that science discovers special ontological category called causation but in the sense that we come to know certain facts about the world. (shrink)

Snake or serpent is one the most widespread and oldest symbols which is known among different cultures folklore and mythology. As the role of symbolic notions is at the center of understanding any mythology, we would like to determine imagery meanings of the snake which could help researchers for knowing the myths more accurate and descriptive. Sometimes this motif represents the cycle of time and sometimes it does refer to Evil and even could be the symbol of divinity and eternity. (...) So this should be noted that how we can grasp any meaning from the narrations in which applied snake notion. These properties had roots in what they could be aware of snake nature and its biological attributes. As the same time, these properties are meaningful under the conditions that culture and, in some cases, religious thought prepared. The mixture of these end to some image that could be found in the mythology of their region.The very article discusses mythological aspects of snake notion in Indian and Wikings folklore, similarly to those which research on the Indo-Europian and Vikings cultural relationship and connections; except that our research is not focused on ontological and historical debates but only on the descriptive analyzing of mythological semantics. Meanwhile, it can be counted as some base which useful for whom like to dig up relations between two far distance cultures of Indians and Wikings. (shrink)

This is the first academic paper concerned with the description of intertranslational appropriations across non-literary works and to discuss this phenomenon from a novel conceptual perspective by suggesting the term “pseudo-retranslation”. “Drmrod”, a misspelling of Ormrod, served as the benchmark of the preliminary analysis to judge on the existence of pseudo-retranslations across the works. The corpus consists of one unreviewed article, two dissertations, five master’s theses, and seven articles. To identify the initial Turkish translation, Patient Zero, to detect the pseudo-retranslations (...) and to arrange them chronologically, “textual overlap” was operationalized as the primary parameter, while “erroneous referencing”, “typographical errors”, “publication year”, “publication media”, and “relationships between authors” to triangulate the findings concerning the primary parameter. A program, WCopyFind, was used to detect intertextual similarities and to harvest quantitative data by percentage and word count. A textual similarity of 70%, 1–26, 2004) was set as the threshold of significance. The author suggested a threshold of 30% to describe pseudo-retranslations in academic works and of 20% in Turkish academic papers. The unreviewed online article was revealed to be the first to misspell “Ormrod” as “Drmrod” and to translate Ormrod’s six metacognitive skills and the other 14 works to include its pseudo-retranslations. (shrink)