Skeptical theists are seeking for some reasonable solutions to the evidential problem of evil. One of the most fundamental responses of skeptical theism is that the concept of “gratuitous evil”, which cannot be a proof of the absence of God. Therefore, it is not the existence of God that skeptical theism suspects. Instead, skeptical theism contemplates whether the evil in the world really has a “gratuitous” basis. This paper focuses on Peter van Inwagen's “no-minimum claim”. No-minimum claim” stands in opposition (...) to the views that assume that God minimizes the evils that exist in the world in order to achieve justice. “No-minimum claim” acknowledges that these evils still have enormous amounts to people. Thus “no-minimum claim” suggests that the evils experienced in the world are incompatible with the “best of all possible worlds” views or the other explanations of classical theodicy. According to the “no minimum claim”, the reason why the amount of evil in the world still seems so high may be God’s deliberate calculations in effecting the distribution of these evils. In order to reach these calculations, it is not necessary for the amount of evil that God allowed to reflect on the world to be perfectly manifested at the minimum level. The purpose of this paper is to consider the skeptical theism approach within the framework of Peter van Inwagen's “no-minimum claim” and to limit his arguments to an alternative approach to skeptic theism. Our claim is that such view coincides with skeptical theism, but the “no- minimum claim” still has some ambiguities at the point of the limits of evil. From this, we can conclude that the “no minimum claim” has received many objections in the skeptical theism literature and these objections are justified at certain points. (shrink)

The geodesics and the curvature of a metric representing an isolated tachyon are investigated. It is argued that the properties are unphysical and inconsistent with observation, thus providing further evidence against the existence of tachyons.

Molla Halil’e göre insanların bu dünyada yaptıkları iyiliklere karşılık Yüce Allah onları ahirette lütfuyla nimetlendirecek ve Cennetine koyacaktır. Bu, Allah’ın insanlara bir va‘didir. Allah va‘dinden asla dönmez. Çünkü Allah’ın va‘dinden dönmesi, O’nun hakkında bir eksiklik sayılır. Ancak bu durum O’nun için vucûbiyet ifade etmez. Vucubiyet kavramı çeşitli anlamlarda kullanıldığı için anlam kargaşasına yol açabilir. Buna sebebiyet vermemek için kelamda özellikle de bu makalede “zorunluluk” anlamına kullanılacak olup bazen gereklilik anlamı da ihtiva edebilir. Allah, kötülük yapanları ise adaletiyle cezalandıracaktır. Bu da (...) Allah’ın va‘îdi olup, va‘îdi’nden dönebilir. Bu, O’nun hakkında bir noksanlığa sebebiyet vermez. Çünkü cezalandırmaktan vazgeçmesi Allah’ın merhametinin ve lütfunun bir sonucudur. Bununla birlikte ne va‘d ve ne de va‘îd Allah’a vacip değildir. Molla Halil’e göre, büyük günah insanı imandan çıkarmaz. Mu‘tezile’ye göre büyük günah işleyen kimse dünyada ne mümin olur ne de kâfir ikisinin arasında bir yerde durur. Buna da fasıklık denir. Haricîlere göre ise, ister büyük, isterse küçük olsun, her türlü günah sahibini iman dairesinden çıkarır ve küfür dairesine dahil eder. Molla Halil’e göre, ahiret hayatı ruh ve cesetle birlikte olacaktır. Bu üm-metin günahkârlarına peygamberler, şehitler ve salih kimseler şefaat edecek-tir. Mu‘tezile‘ye göre şefaat sadece iyilerin derecesinin yükselmesi içindir. Günahkârlar için şefaat olmayacaktır. Günahkâr müminler Cehenneme girseler de ebedi kalmayacaklar. Kâfirlerin azapları ise devamlı olacak ve bunlar ebedi olarak Cehennemde kalacaklardır. Biz bu makalede önce sevap ve İkâb kelimelerinin lügat ve ıstılah anlamları üzerinde duracak, sonra bu bağlamda ayet ve hadislerde verilen bilgileri ve bunların açıklamalarını ele alacağız. Daha sonra Molla Halil’in bu konulara dair görüşlerini sunmaya çalışacağız. Onun sevap ve İkâb ile ilgili tanımlarını, bunların sonuçlarına dair yaşanacakları ve varılacak yerleri ele alan yaklaşımlarını sunmaya çalışacağız. Burada farklı görüşlere sahip olmaları nedeniyle çoğunlukla Mu‘tezile’nin ve az da olsa Haricilerin görüşlerine de mukayese oluşturması için değineceğiz. Burada sadece Molla Halil’in görüşlerini değil, onun içinden geldiği Ehli Sünnetin görüşlerini, sünni kaynakları temel alarak aktarmaya çalışacağız. (shrink)

There is an emergency to inform people about the biotechnological revolution and its multidirectional consequences in every day's life. Bioethical issues should be methodically analysed, since the definition of the term depends upon the educational background and the speciality of each scientist involved.An increasing international awareness is gradually expressed by the various bodies, (political authorities, educational Institutions etc), materialized through a series of declarations and legislative regulations or by establishing various assemblies responsible for bioethical issues. However the economic dimension interfering (...) in the field causes a strong pressure for acceleration of the relevant research and its applications. Thus, the role of the assemblies is deteriorated mainly to consultative recommendations hardly efficient for the acceptance of protective for the consumers countermeasures. The mean citizen is unprotected against the consequences concerning him and his environment. Therefore there is a demand for stregthening the educational initiatives addresed either to the students of particular disciplines or to the wide public which will hopefully increase the level of the respective knowledge. (shrink)

The problem of the composition of Thucydides' History, first raised by Ullrich in 1846, has evoked a mass of controversial literature. In this article I shall confine myself to the main arguments and conclusions. Thucydides' history is unfinished, not only because it breaks off at 411 b.c., but also because the style is uneven. The history of the Archidamian War to 424 b.c. and of the Sicilian War is fully polished and complete; the remainder is lacking in stylistic finish and (...) particularly in the set speeches which characterize the completed books. This unevenness can be explained by the circumstances of Thucydides' life. For the period 431–424 b.c. he could obtain full information at Athens and, after his exile in 424 b.c., at Sparta and elsewhere; for the Sicilian War he could obtain full information in Sicily from the Siceliotes and from the Athenian prisoners. He was thus in a position to complete his history for these two periods. During his exile from 424 b.c. to 404 or 403 b.c. he lacked the information from the Athenian side, which was necessary for the completion of the remainder of his work. Further light is shed on the unevenness of finish by Thucydides' method of composition. He informs us that he began his work at the beginning of the war, and that he was watching and applying his judgement throughout the Twenty-seven Years War; and the statement that he wrote the history down to the capture of the Peiraeus implies his collection of material down to 404 b.c. The working up of this material must have been conditioned partly by the circumstances of the war; in particular, the conception of the Twenty-seven Years War cannot have been formed until after 415 or 412 b.c. (shrink)

1. Las mocedades de Ortega y Gasset -- 3. Filosofía y educación -- 5. Ensayos de filosofía moderna y contemporánea.

A translation of fourteen of Lucian's dialogues, offering a cross-section of his styles and satirical targets, from serious polemic to lighter squibs and character-portrayals. Also included are How to Write History and his most famous piece, A True History, a parody of the popular vogue for fabulous traveller's tales. Each piece has a summary introduction, and notes to clarify obscure allusions in the text. The Introduction examines in some detail Lucian's importance as a dominant Atticizer in the period of the (...) Second Sophistic, as well as his extraordinarily widespread influence on later European literature. (shrink)

The target article by Bernard Baars presents a quick way of grasping the gist of his book In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind, published recently . The metaphor of consciousness as a theatre has a long history. A prototype of the theatre model may be traced back to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which we are like prisoners living in a cave just observing the shadows of reality. The modern theatre model insists on consciousness being (...) under the control of attention by introducing a searchlight metaphor . The target article explores some evidence from the viewpoint of Global Workspace theory by using a method of ‘contrastive analysis’. According to this theory, GW works as the publicity organ of the brain and has a facility for accessing, disseminating, and exchanging information, and for exercizing global coordination and control . Baars describes his GW as a theatre. ‘As the house lights begin to dim and the audience falls silent, a single spotlight pierces the descending darkness, until only one bright spot, shining on stage, remains visible. You know that the audience, actors, stagehands, and spotlight operators are there, working together under invisible direction and guided by an unknown script, to present the flow of visible events on stage. As the house lights dim, only the focal contents of consciousness remain. Everything else is in darkness’ . According to GW theory, a theatre stage with a bright spot is just a working memory. So I would like to comment on some general characteristics of the working memory and related spotlight problem. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Interactivity and Enaction in Human Cognition” by Matthew Isaac Harvey, Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen & Sune Vork Steffensen. Upshot: To sort out their differences with enactive theory, interactivity theorists would do better to focus on operational closure only insofar as it constitutes a condition of intrinsic normativity or self-regulated coupling.

In a previous paper a theoretical method permitting superluminal travel was suggested. A difficulty with the global conservation of energy and momentum is settled here.