A Boltzmann Brain, haphazardly formed through the unlikely but still possible random assembly of physical particles, is a conscious brain having experiences just like an ordinary person. The skeptical possibility of being a Boltzmann Brain is an especially gripping one: scientific evidence suggests our actual universe’s full history may ultimately contain countless short-lived Boltzmann Brains with experiences just like yours or mine. I propose a solution to the skeptical challenge posed by these countless actual Boltzmann Brains. My key idea is (...) roughly this: the skeptical argument that you’re one of the Boltzmann Brains requires you to make a statistical inference, but the Principle of Total Evidence blocks us from making the inference. I discuss how my solution contrasts with a recent suggestion, made by Sean Carroll and David Chalmers, for how to address the skeptical challenge posed by Boltzmann Brains. And I discuss how my solution handles certain relevant concerns about what to do when we have higher-order evidence indicating that our first-order evidence is misleading. (shrink)

Whereas Bayesians have proposed norms such as probabilism, which requires immediate and permanent certainty in all logical truths, I propose a framework on which credences, including credences in logical truths, are rational because they are based on reasoning that follows plausible rules for the adoption of credences. I argue that my proposed framework has many virtues. In particular, it resolves the problem of logical omniscience.

This paper begins by raising a puzzle about what function our use of the word ‘rational’ could serve. To solve the puzzle, I introduce a view I call Epistemic Communism: we use epistemic evaluations to promote coordination among our basic belief-forming rules, and the function of this is to make the acquisition of knowledge by testimony more efficient.

This paper looks at three ways of addressing probabilism’s implausible requirement of logical omniscience. The first and most common strategy says it’s okay to require an ideally rational person to be logically omniscient. I argue that this view is indefensible on any interpretation of ‘ideally rational’. The second strategy says probabilism should be formulated not in terms of logically possible worlds but in terms of doxastically possible worlds, ways you think the world might be. I argue that, on the interpretation (...) of this approach that lifts the requirement of certainty in all logical truths, the view becomes vacuous, issuing no requirements on rational believers at all. Finally, I develop and endorse a new solution to the problem. This view proposes dynamic norms for reasoning with credences. The solution is based on an old proposal of Ian Hacking’s that says you’re required to be sensitive to logical facts only when you know they are logical facts. (shrink)

In section 1, I develop epistemic communism, my view of the function of epistemically evaluative terms such as ‘rational’. The function is to support the coordination of our belief-forming rules, which in turn supports the reliable acquisition of beliefs through testimony. This view is motivated by the existence of valid inferences that we hesitate to call rational. I defend the view against the worry that it fails to account for a function of evaluations within first-personal deliberation. In the rest of (...) the paper, I then argue, on the basis of epistemic communism, for a view about rationality itself. I set up the argument in section 2 by saying what a theory of rational deduction is supposed to do. I claim that such a theory would provide a necessary, sufficient, and explanatorily unifying condition for being a rational rule for inferring deductive consequences. I argue in section 3 that, given epistemic communism and the conventionality that it entails, there is no such theory. Nothing explains why certain rules for deductive reasoning are rational. (shrink)

White, Christensen, and Feldman have recently endorsed uniqueness, the thesis that given the same total evidence, two rational subjects cannot hold different views. Kelly, Schoenfield, and Meacham argue that White and others have at best only supported the weaker, merely intrapersonal view that, given the total evidence, there are no two views which a single rational agent could take. Here, we give a new argument for uniqueness, an argument with deliberate focus on the interpersonal element of the thesis. Our argument (...) is that the best explanation of the value of promoting rationality is an explanation that entails uniqueness. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate how the interactions of a robot with its environment can be used to create concepts that are typically represented by verbs in language. Towards this end, we utilize the notion of affordances to argue that verbs typically refer to the generation of a specific type of effect rather than a specific type of action. Then, we show how a robot can form these concepts through interactions with the environment and how humans can use these concepts (...) to ease their communication with the robots. We demonstrate that iCub, a humanoid robot, can use the concepts, which it has developed, to to understand what a human performs, perform multi-step planning for reaching a goal state as well as to specify a goal to the robot using symbolic descriptions. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a question about deductive reasoning: why am I in a position to immediately infer some deductive consequences of what I know, but not others? I show why the question cannot be answered in the most natural ways of answering it, in particular in Descartes’s way of answering it. I then go on to introduce a new approach to answering the question, an approach inspired by Hume’s view of inductive reasoning.

Jacques Lacan was a notoriously difficult and idiosyncratic thinker. But is there any value in his hermetically difficult style? By highlighting certain crucial elements of his practice, I show how Lacan enlists the notion of difficulty to press home that he did not want his readers to understand directly. Instead, as Foucault and Althusser explain so well, Lacan wished for his readers and auditors to discover themselves as subjects of desire through reading him. Indeed, in miming the language of the (...) unconscious, Lacan believed he could throw into sharp relief the notion of the unconscious itself and, paradoxically, better express himself. This temporary detour through misunderstanding indicates the programmatic value of difficulty itself. By commenting on the comedic aspect of Lacan's difficult literary dandyism, I also seek to playfully remind the reader that Lacan was a master of comedy and irony and that it is only by adopting a comparative literary approach to his work that we can appreciate how his theory of misunderstanding is at the heart of his conceptualization of madness and psychosis, allowing us to see how, for Lacan, the subject is ontologically sick. (shrink)

What accounts for how we know that certain rules of reasoning, such as reasoning by Modus Ponens, are valid? If our knowledge of validity must be based on some reasoning, then we seem to be committed to the legitimacy of rule-circular arguments for validity. This paper raises a new difficulty for the rule-circular account of our knowledge of validity. The source of the problem is that, contrary to traditional wisdom, a universal generalization cannot be inferred just on the basis of (...) reasoning about an arbitrary object. I argue in favor of a more sophisticated constraint on reasoning by universal generalization, one which undermines a rule-circular account of our knowledge of validity. (shrink)

In the polemical literature against Judaism, it is stated that Islam is the last religion, Prophet Muhammad was foretold in the Bible, and the Bible is distorted. Among the authors of such works, there are many who embraced Islam from Jews and Christians. Through their works, these converts show Muslims how serious they are in embracing Islam. In this article, the treatise under the evaluation was first brought to the agenda in 1867 by Gustav Flügel (d. 1870). Flügel claimed that (...) the author of the treatise was a Spanish or Moroccan convert Jew named Rakili. However, recent researches have revealed that Rakili is the name of the copyist and the author is an unknown Jew. Due to the Hebrew words in the text of the treatise, the author is thought to be a Jewish convert. The author of the treatise makes use of intensive quotations from Tanakh. However, it seems that the criticism of the treatise is not as strong as Ibn Hazm. The author also quotes from the Jewish oral tradition. Although the author is thought to be a Jewish convert, it is difficult to say that there is a very strong polemic of Judaism. Rather than showing that the Torah has been tampered with, using the passages of Tanakh, he wants to demonstrate that the Israelites went astray. In doing so, he tries to refute the Jewish claim of chosenness. Instead of stating that the Jews were not at the point of religious representation of God’s message, the author claims that Muhammad's followers were the addressees of this election. This method, which we occasionally encounter in other polemical treatises, appears as a much more intense and central agenda in this treatise. The most original aspect of this treatise at issue is the Ishmael-Isaac, Hagar-Sarah and Moses- Muhammad comparisons. The author insistently emphasizes that the chosen line is not the lineage of Isaac, but the lineage of Ishmael. As a natural consequence of this, he tries to prove that Muhammad is the greatest prophet to be obeyed and followed. What is interesting here is that the author, as a Jewish convert, tried to refute the idea of the chosennes of Jewish nation. According to him, there is an election not through Sarah and Isaac, but through Hagar and Ishmael. It is seen that those who have converted do such things both to prove their sincerity and to be accepted by Muslim administrators. The author’s glorifications of the Prophet Muhammad and his miracles by scorning Moses' miracles and Jewish ancestors can be described as an extreme attitude in this sense. The author also devotes a place to the subject of Biblical prophecies about the Prophet Muhammad. In this part, the author of the treatise stated that the gematria (abjad) value of some words in the Torah and the word Muhammad are equal. He claims that there are passages pointing to Muhammad. However, these passages are known in the polemical literature and are issues that were mentioned before the author. Apart from these widely known passages, there are some other passages he quoted. But these passages are also based on strained interpretations. Again, in some passages he quoted from Tanakh, it is seen that he was flexible and not loyal to the text. One of the points that the author dwells upon is the sins committed by the Israelites and the curses that were inflicted on them. The author of treatise supports this with passages different from Tanakh. Drawing attention to the fact that the Jews were cursed in their own books, which they consider sacred, the author tries to show that a nation so cursed cannot be a chosen people. The author, contrary to the Jews' expectation of the Messiah, points out that Jesus will come back, break the cross, kill the pig, and rule the earth. The writer, who reported the hadith that the Jews would be killed in the End Times, even reports that when the Jews hid behind the stones, the stones would say "There is a Jew behind me, come and kill". According to him, the time for Jews to repent has passed, because they could not take this opportunity by denying Muhammad either. The author has an interesting explanation as to why the hereafter and resurrection are not mentioned in the Torah. According to this claim, when God sent down the Torah to Moses, he ordered the Israelites to keep their orders and refrain from their prohibitions. Since God knows the hardness and stubbornness of the hearts of the Israelites, that most of them are devilish, engaged in magic and pagan cults, and prefer the world to the hereafter, he did not mention the issues such as heaven, hell, reward and punishment in the Torah. On the contrary, in many parts of the Torah, God said to them if you keep my orders, your sustenance will increase, your generation will increase, fertility will increase, and you will win victories over your enemies. (shrink)

Erken dönem Mu’tezile kelâmcılarından biri olan Ebû Ca’fer Muhammed b. Abdullah el-İskâfî, kelâm ilmi ile ilgili sahip olduğu bilgi birikimini kullanarak İslam inanç ilkelerini daha çok akli ilkelerle savunmuştur. Mu’tezilenin genel metoduna uygun olarak tevhid, zat sıfat ilişkisi, halku’l-Kur’an, adalet, hüsün ve kubuh gibi konuları teşbihten uzak tenzihi önceleyen bir bakış açısıyla açıklamaya çalışmıştır. Allah’ın varlığını akli olarak ispat etmek amacıyla âlemin bütün unsurlarıyla hâdis olduğunu savunmuştur. Ayrıca yaşadığı dönemde sosyal bir problem olan imâmet konusu ile ilgili daha faziletli imâm (...) varken faziletli olanın imâm olmasını meşru görerek Şia ile diğer Müslümanlar arasındaki bu sorunu çözmeye çalışmıştır. Makalede müellifin ilahiyat ve âlem ile ilgili görüşleri daha çok klasik kelâm kaynaklarından, imâmet ile ilgili düşünceleri ise müellifin eserlerinden faydalanılarak tespit edilmeye çalışılmıştır. Çalışmamız, İslam düşüncesinin teşekkül döneminde İslam inancını savunan kelâmcıların görüşlerini dönemin şartları gözetilerek tarafsız bir şekilde ortaya koymayı hedeflemektedir. Bilindiği gibi İslam kelâmının oluşumuna katkı sunan ilk dönem kelâmcılarının yazdığı eserlerin büyük bir kısmı günümüze ulaşmamıştır. İslam kelâmının hangi şartlarda oluştuğu ve şekillendiğinin doğru bir şekilde öğrenilmesi açısından erken dönem kelâmcılarının görüşlerinin bilinmesi önem arz etmektedir. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs efforts towards reconciling the thought of Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno gained momentum in the last decade, it seems an array of essential discrepancies have been failing to receive due attention. This article aims to foreground and explore one particular philosophical difference which stands in the way of such endeavours, focussing on Adorno’s and Arendt’s conceptualization of nature. It is argued that while Adorno’s philosophy is poised to redeem nature from the pangs of false enlightenment, Arendt’s redefinition of political (...) existence upholds not only the careful separation of politics from nature but also emphasizes the former’s superiority. Revisiting a set of arguments raised by Adorno against fundamental ontology such as the questions of hypostasis and tautology, it is explored in what ways Arendt’s conceptualization of nature as eternal recurrence markedly and perhaps irreconcilably differs from the normative import of Adorno’s understanding, which emphasizes the concrete unity of nature with history. (shrink)

This paper aims to accessibly present, and then critique, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber's recent proposals for the evolutionary function of human reasoning. I take a critical look at the main source of experimental evidence that they claim as support for their view, namely the confirmation or “myside” bias in reasoning. I object that Mercier and Sperber did not adequately argue for a claim that their case rests on, namely that it is evolutionarily advantageous for you to get other people (...) to believe whatever you antecedently believe. And I give my own argument that this claim is false. I also critically look at their suggestion that reasoning has a justificatory function, functioning as a kind of reputation management tool. I argue this suggestion does not amount to a plausible evolutionary function. (shrink)

We give a Bayesian argument showing that, even if your total empirical evidence confirms that you have zillions of duplicate Boltzmann Brains, that evidence does not confirm that you are a Boltzmann Brain. We also try to explain what goes wrong with several of the sources of the temptation for thinking that such evidence does have skeptical implications.

I object to Markos Valaris’s thesis that reasoning requires a belief that your conclusion follows from your premisses. My counter-examples highlight the important but neglected role of suppositional reasoning in the basis of so much of what we know.

This article focuses on recent discussions about holobionts and evolutionary individuality to evaluate the merits of integrative pluralism. I argue that integrative pluralism is the wrong approach to take when it comes to holobiont research because integrative pluralism is not liberal enough to accommodate both single-species and multispecies individuals. I conclude by suggesting two points. First, a pluralistic view helps us better understand holobiont research. Second, the case of holobionts helps us develop a better account of scientific pluralism.

The main question of this paper is: how do we manage to know what our own degrees of belief are? Section 1 briefly reviews and criticizes the traditional functionalist view, a view notably associated with David Lewis and sometimes called the theory-theory. I use this criticism to motivate the approach I want to promote. Section 2, the bulk of the paper, examines and begins to develop the view that we have a special kind of introspective access to our degrees of (...) belief. I give an initial assessment of the view by examining its compatibility with leading theories of introspection. And I identify a challenge for the view, and explain why I'm optimistic that the view can overcome it. (shrink)

I develop a new version of the ordinary language response to skepticism. My version is based on premises about the practical functions served by our epistemic words. I end by exploring how my argument against skepticism is interestingly non-circular and philosophically valuable.

True beliefs and truth-preserving inferences are, in some sense, good beliefs and good inferences. When an inference is valid though, it is not merely truth-preserving, but truth-preserving in all cases. This motivates my question: I consider a Modus Ponens inference, and I ask what its validity in particular contributes to the explanation of why the inference is, in any sense, a good inference. I consider the question under three different definitions of ‘case’, and hence of ‘validity’: the orthodox definition given (...) in terms of interpretations or models, a metaphysical definition given in terms of possible worlds, and a substitutional definition defended by Quine. I argue that the orthodox notion is poorly suited to explain what's good about a Modus Ponens inference. I argue that there is something good that is explained by a certain kind of truth across possible worlds, but the explanation is not provided by metaphysical validity in particular; nothing of value is explained by truth across all possible worlds. Finally, I argue that the substitutional notion of validity allows us to correctly explain what is good about a valid inference. (shrink)

İbn Arabî’nin Fusûsü’l-hikem’in Âdem Fassı’nda yer verdiği umûr-ı külliye kavramı, Fusûs şârihleri tarafından muhtelif şekillerde alımlanmıştır. Kimi sufîler bu kavramı küllilere kimisi de zihnî varlık tartışmalarına hasretmek suretiyle ele alma taraftarı olmuştur. Yakın dönemde yapılan araştırmalar bunun izinden giderek söz konusu kavramla külliler tartışması arasında irtibat kurmaya çalışmaktadır. Biz bu çalışmamızda, Meşşâî felsefe geleneğinde metafiziğin ilm-i küllî kısmının temel meselelerine karşılık gelen umûr-ı âmme kavramı ile Fusûs’da yer alan umûr-ı külliye arasında bir irtibatın imkânını sorgulayacağız. Bunu yaparken özellikle ilk şârih (...) Cendî’nin umûr-ı külliyeyi umûr-ı âmme kavramı ile karşılamasından hareket ederek bu bakış açısının sonraki dönem şârihleri arasında nasıl yankı bulduğunu Afîfüddin Tilimsânî, Abdürrezzâk el-Kâşânî, Davud el-Kayserî, Sâinüddin İbn Türke, Yazıcıoğlu Mehmed Efendi, Molla Câmî gibi düşünürlerin yorumları eşliğinde ele alacağız. Bu bağlamda umûr-ı külliyenin Tanrı ile âlem arasındaki irtibatı kurma-daki metafiziksel yönü ve ikinci akledilirler olarak değerlendirilmesi gibi on-tolojik ve epistemolojik cihetleri dikkate alınarak, umûr-ı âmme kavramı etrafında yapılan tartışmalarla benzer yönleri ortaya konulmaya çalışılacaktır. Bu sayede söz konusu yorum ve benzerliklerden yola çıkarak, bu kavram çiftinin, dile getirildikleri düşünce geleneklerinin yakınlaşmasına bir zemin teşkil edip etmeyeceği tartışılacaktır. (shrink)

Today as it was in the past, faith in shafaat is accepted by some groups while it is rejected by some others and both sides base their views on the Qur’an. When we examine the Qur'an, we see that some of the verses related to the theme refer to the existence of shafaat and the other part of it speaks the absence of shafaat. The Qur'an is a divine book which superstitious cannot get close to it in anyway. One of (...) the most important characteristics of the Qur’an is that there are no contradictory information and provisions that lie against each other. However, the Qur’an was taken as a reference for both denial and proscription of shafaat. Both the approval and rejection of the Qur'an the same intercession is a paradoxical situation incompatible with the divine word. This leads us to determine two different types of shafaat accepted and rejected according to the Qur'an and the differences between them; therefore, this leads us also to examine the related verses holistically. In this respect, we will try in this article to examine the verses about the possibility and impossibility of shafaat in the Qur’anic integrity. In the same way, we will try to determine the nature of the shafaat that the Qur’an rejects and approves of. (shrink)

As a result of the emergence of Islam on the stage of history and the subsequent conquests, new ornamental elements have entered the Islamic art. Turkish bookbinding art, which started with the Uyghur Turks, has always had a dazzling beauty by affecting the emergence of precious works in Arab and Iranian geographies. The bindings produced from the 9th to the middle of the 13th century were mostly made with geometric or rumi decorations and then there was a transition towards floral (...) patterns. After the Anatolian Seljuks, the Mamluk State and the Karamanid Principality continued the accumulation of Turkish bookbinding art and only after the conquest of Istanbul, the Ottoman binding could create its own style. Floral motifs stylized by Baba Nakkaş a mighty artist who lived in the Fatih Era influenced the decoration understanding of the period and became a highly preferred decoration element in book arts. The motifs of the bindings produced in the 15th century were different from the previous periods as well as the design schemes shemse shapes and leather colors heralded new searches. Bookbinding studies mainly focus on works from the 16th century or later, and it has been observed that academic and artistic works from previous periods are rare. In order to contribute to the studies in this field, researches were carried out in libraries and 3286 manuscripts in the Vahid Pasha Manuscript Library were examined in detail and six bookbindings belonging to the Fatih Period were identified. Bookbindings design was evaluated in terms of composition and technique and compared with the examples in other museums and libraries. (shrink)

After briefly expositing some fundamental issues in current debates about apriority, I go on to critically examine meaning-based explanations of how we acquire apriori justification.

Rationalism, my target, says that in order to have perceptual knowledge, such as that your hand is making a fist, you must “antecedently” (or “independently”) know that skeptical scenarios don’t obtain, such as the skeptical scenario that you are in the Matrix. I motivate the specific form of Rationalism shared by, among others, White (Philos Stud 131:525–557, 2006) and Wright (Proc Aristot Soc Suppl Vol 78:167–212, 2004), which credits us with warrant to believe (or “accept”, in Wright’s terms) that our (...) senses are reliably veridical, where that warrant is one we enjoy by default, that is, without relying on any evidence or engaging in any positive argument. The problem with this form of Rationalism is that, even if you have default knowledge that your senses are reliable, this is not adequate to rule out every kind of skeptical scenario. The problem is created by one-off skeptical scenarios, scenarios that involve a highly reliable perceiver who, by a pure fluke, has a one-off, non-veridical experience. I claim you cannot infer that your present perceptual experience is veridical just on the basis of knowledge of your general reliability. More generally, if you infer that the present F is G, just on the basis of your knowledge that most Fs are Gs, this is what I call statistical inference, and, as I argue, statistical inference by itself does not generate knowledge. I defend this view of statistical inference against objections, including the objection that radical skepticism about our ordinary inductive knowledge will follow unless statistical inference generates knowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPopular culture has many examples of evil characters having vertically pupilled eyes. Humans have a long evolutionary history of rivalry with snakes and their visual systems were evolved to rapidly detect snakes and snake-related cues. Considering such evolutionary background, we hypothesised that humans would perceive vertical pupils, which are characteristics of ambush predators including some of the snakes, as threatening. In seven studies conducted on samples from American and Turkish samples, we found that vertical pupils are perceived as more threatening (...) on both explicit and implicit level and they are associated with physical, rather than social, threat. Findings provided partial support regarding our hypothesis about the relevance of snake detection processes: Snake phobia, and not spider phobia, was found to be related to perceiving vertical pupils as threatening, however an experimental manipulation of saliency of snakes re... (shrink)

Ehrenmord ist eine nicht selten vorkommende Tat in der Turkei. Mit fortgesetzter Wanderung in die großen Städte der Türkei und ins Ausland, wird dieses Phänomen auch in andere Regionen getragen. Daher setzt sich auch die Öffentlichkeit in zunehmenden Maße mit dieser Thematik auseinander. In diesem Artikel wird versucht, den Ehrenmord unter philosophischen Gesichtspunkten zu erklären.Hierzu werden Gedanken Engels, Butlers, Foucaults, Levi Strauss’ und auch weitere bedeutende Forschungsarbeiten zum Thema Selbstmord hinzugezogen.

The coastal area of Bangladesh is one of the most ecologically productive and it contains a rich biodiversity which includes several species that are endemic to this region. Much attention has been focused on ship breaking industries in the coastal areas because of the threat they pose to this thriving biological communities along with their other environmental impacts and the perilous working environment of the workers. The coastal environment of Sitakunda is severely contaminated by various processes related to ship-breaking i.e. (...) the disposal of different toxic wastes into the sea water, deforestation by expanding ship breaking yard, changing land-use pattern and release of toxic substance into the soil. Moreover, the workers of this industry are exposed to an extremely risky and toxic working environment which makes them vulnerable to both physical and psychological disorder as well as to accidental deaths and injury. Still, workers embrace these risks for very poor wages and most of the profits go to the already rich businessmen. Despite various negativities, this industry has gained importance due to the increasing demand of raw material for re-rolling industries and employment opportunities for the people of the coastal areas. As this industry is indispensable due to its importance in the macro and micro economy of Bangladesh, a sustainable management approach should be taken to at least minimize the environmental and health impacts of ship breaking industries. The current paper aims to investigate the extent to which this industry is affecting the ship breaking yard labors and the environment, despite the growing concern nationally and internationally, and it uses both primary and secondary data. (shrink)

South Korea created miracles out of a mess in the second half of the twentieth century. They have built an industrial production and export giant called Han Miracle and a democratic culture. They also began to create a cultural fever worldwide called the Korean Wave. However, what makes the Korean modernisation story unique compared to other development experiences in Asia is neither its industrial development nor its democratisation. The rapid Christianisation, especially the Protestantisation of Korea, which walks alongside modernisation, is (...) what makes this story special. Catholics entered Korea first, but they failed due to various reasons. Then, a peasant movement called Tonghak, which is organised around a syncretic religion named Cheondogyo, began to rise. They even started a nationwide uprising and gained massive supporters, but they could not succeed in expanding aggressively after the Japanese occupation. The latest comers, the Protestants, eventually became the largest religious group in South Korea. The Protestants studied the Catholics’ failure and the Tonghak movement’s success well and created a syncretic folk religion that did not exclude local religious elements. This syncretism was the key to their mind-blowing success in South Korea. (shrink)