Turkey hosts the world’s largest community of Syrians displaced by the ongoing armed conflict. The object of this article is to explore the damaging effects of a hostile legal context on female Syrian refugees in Turkey. I base my analysis on scholarship that theorises immigration legislation as a system of legal violence and I argue that the Temporary Protection Regulation and the Law on Foreigners and International Protection that govern the legal status of refugees in Turkey inflict legal violence on (...) Syrian female refugees. This legislation keeps them in the regime of temporary protection and prevents their access to international protection. The temporary protection regime serves furthermore as the main determinant for other forms of legal violence inflicted by various actors. I explore the effects of the Turkish government’s inaction in terms of preventing and sanctioning the abuse of Syrian female refugees as unpaid sex and household workers. I show that the extended legal limbo on the conditions of employment of Syrian refugees secures female Syrians as the most precarious workforce for Turkey’s various sectors. Finally I claim that the forced confinement of Syrian beggars in refugee camps is instrumentalised for their disciplinary regulation. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the metalinguistic solution to the problem of mathematical omniscience for the possible-worlds account of propositions by combining it with a computational model of knowledge and belief. The metalinguistic solution states that the objects of belief and ignorance in mathematics are relations between mathematical sentences and what they express. The most pressing problem for the metalinguistic strategy is that it still ascribes too much mathematical knowledge under the standard possible-worlds model of knowledge and belief on which (...) these are closed under entailment. I first argue that Stalnaker's fragmentation strategy is insufficient to solve this problem. I then develop an alternative, computational strategy: I propose a model of mathematical knowledge and belief adapted from the algorithmic model of Halpern et al. which, when combined with the metalinguistic strategy, entails that mathematical knowledge and belief require computational abilities to access metalinguistic information, and thus aren't closed under entailment. As I explain, the computational model generalizes beyond mathematics to a version of the functionalist theory of knowledge and belief that motivates the possible-worlds account in the first place. I conclude that the metalinguistic and computational strategies yield an attractive functionalist, possible-worlds account of mathematical content, knowledge, and inquiry. (shrink)

The prevailing paradigm in Internet privacy literature, treating privacy within a context merely of rights and violations, is inadequate for studying the Internet as a social realm. Following Goffman on self-presentation and Altman's theorizing of privacy as an optimization between competing pressures for disclosure and withdrawal, the author investigates the mechanisms used by a sample (n = 704) of college students, the vast majority users of Facebook and Myspace, to negotiate boundaries between public and private. Findings show little to no (...) relationship between online privacy concerns and information disclosure on online social network sites. Students manage unwanted audience concerns by adjusting profile visibility and using nicknames but not by restricting the information within the profile. Mechanisms analogous to boundary regulation in physical space, such as walls, locks, and doors, are favored; little adaptation is made to the Internet's key features of persistence, searchability, and cross-indexability. The author also finds significant racial and gender differences. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the term ‘immanence’ in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and show how it relates to her historical account of sexual oppression. I argue that Beauvoir's use of Hegel's master−slave dialectic and of Claude Lévi-Strauss's reflection on the prohibition of incest lead her to claim that in all societies “woman” is constructed as “absolutely other.” I show that there is an ambiguous logic of abjection at work in Beauvoir's account that explains why men are (...) the only examples of transcendence in history, whereas women lack it. Finally, I discuss the way in which the relation between immanence and abjection helps to explain the intellectual relation between Georges Bataille and Beauvoir. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to determine what kind of religious coping activities the refugee students forced to emigrate to Turkey due to the devastating reasons such as war and violation of rights apply in order to overcome their traumatic lives and the relationship between the use of these religious coping activities and their adaptation to the culture they live in. The fact that religion has important functions in dealing with all difficulties, especially forced migration, makes it a matter (...) of interest about what kind of religious coping process refugees have experienced for making their lives bearable. Therefore, this research is based on the assumption that the refugees mostly struggle with difficulties by using positive religious coping methods and try to achieve cultural adaptation through this struggle. The sample was selected from the refugee students from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan continuing their education in different departments of Karabük University and in different high schools of Karabük National Education Directorate in 2017-2018 academic year. “Cultural Adaptation” and “Religious Coping Styles” scales were applied to the sample with an average age of 18. According to the research findings, cultural adaptation and positive religious coping levels of the sample group are above the average, and negative religious coping levels are below the average. There was found a positive meaningful correlation between cultural adaptation and positive religious coping of which relation was determined through some independent and demographic variables (r =.269). Therefore, it is thought that providing spiritual care for refugee students might increase the level of cultural adaptation.Summary: The aim of this study is to determine what kind of religious coping activities the refugee students forced to emigrate to Turkey due to the devastating reasons such as war and violation of rights apply in order to overcome their traumatic lives and the relationship between the use of these religious coping activities and their adaptation to the culture they live in. The fact that religion has important functions in dealing with all difficulties, especially forced migration, makes it a matter of interest about what kind of religious coping process refugees have experienced for making their lives bearable. Therefore, this research is based on the assumption that the refugees mostly struggle with difficulties by using positive religious coping methods and try to achieve cultural adaptation through this struggle. The study that was conducted according to correlational survey model, used the questionnaire technique by implementing the “Cultural Adaptation” and “Religious Coping Styles” scales together with a personal information form. The sample of the study was chosen by random sampling, and consisted of 112 volunteer refugee students from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, studying at different departments of Karabük University and different public high schools in Karabük. While analyzing the data, firstly, averages were calculated by obtaining total scores of the scales. In order to reveal whether students’ cultural adaptation levels differ by various variables or not, t-test (Independent Samples t-test), one-way analysis of variance (Oneway ANOVA) and Scheffe Test were applied. While analyzing relations related to religious coping, non-parametric ‘Man Whitney U’ and ‘Kruskall Wallis H’ tests were applied in accordance with the result of the normality test. In the study in which correlation test was applied to determine the relationship between cultural adaptation and religious coping, the lowest p-value was predicated as.05 to determine the level of statistical significance. According to the findings, sample group’s levels of cultural adaptation (=3,27) and positive religious coping (=3,42) were above the average, and the level of negative religious coping (=1,77) was below the average. Cultural adaptation levels of the sample group has shown significant statistical differences in terms of the nationality variable. Accordingly, Syrian students had higher cultural adaptation scores (=3,48) than Iraqi (=3,19) and Afghani students (=3,06), and the difference among them was statistically meaningful (p<.01). There wasn’t detected any significant relationship between ‘negative religious coping’ levels of the sample and demographic and other independent variables; however, there were seen statistically significant differences just in terms of nationality, gender and age range among other demographic variables. Accordingly, female students scored higher (= 64,46) in positive coping than male students (= 47,32). The difference between them is statistically meaningful (p<.01). Students at the ages of 21-24 scored higher in positive religious coping (= 70,54) and the difference between them and the students at the ages of 14-16 (= 47,47) reached meaningful level, next to this Syrian students had higher levels of positive religious coping (= 62,91) and this reached a meaningful difference (p<.01) when compared with the averages of Afghani students (= 42,63). Moreover, there was a positive significant relationship between cultural adaptation and positive religious coping (r=.269, n=112, p=.004).Forced migration caused by wars is a traumatic experience including material and moral loss. The greatest contribution of spirituality in this kind of negative experiences causing severe stress is through positive religious coping. Hence, religious and spiritual beliefs not only enable cognitive satisfaction by offering the most satisfying answers to traumatic victims’ search for meaning, yet also help them to accept the situation. This is caused due to a sense of devotion, and contribute to both their struggle with the trauma and their post-traumatic development. According to the research findings, there is a significant relationship between students’ cultural adaptation and ‘positive religious coping’ tendency. Therefore, providing these students with spiritual care and counseling might contribute to their integration process. Moreover, it has been seen that it is important to conduct value-centered projects and activities which would prevent both refugee students and locals to marginalize each other, and would improve the culture of living-together. It is also important to provide governmental and non-governmental support for these projects and activities. On the other hand, launching free language courses to resolve communication problems, which are obstacles for integration, and establishing socio-cultural networks in and around the campus for constituting more compatible relationships among the students would improve the students’ integration capability. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue from a metasemantic principle to the existence of analytic sentences. According to the metasemantic principle, an external feature is relevant to determining which concept one expresses with an expression only if one is disposed to treat this feature as relevant. This entails that if one isn’t disposed to treat external features as relevant to determining which concept one expresses, and one still expresses a given concept, then something other than external features must determine that one (...) does. I argue that, in such cases, what determines that one expresses the concept also puts one in a position to know that certain sentences are true—these sentences are thus analytic relative to this determination basis. Finally, I argue that there are such cases: some sentences are analytic relative to what determines that we express certain key concepts, and these sentences include ones that have always been thought to be the best candidates for being analytic, namely, stipulative truths, and first principles of mathematics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman develops a critique of social science to argue that current technocratic practices are prone to predictive failures and unintended consequences. However, he does not provide evidence that the cause he singles out—“ideational heterogeneity”—is in fact a non-negligible source of technocratic limitations, more than or alongside better-known problems such as missing data, measurement issues, interpretive difficulties, and researcher bias. Even if we grant ideational heterogeneity, Friedman’s preferred institutional solution of exitocracy does not necessarily follow. (...) His critical epistemology would also be compatible with radical forms of collective action. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale for measuring prospective science teachers’ awareness of waste recycling. The study was conducted with the participation of 382 prospective teachers attending a university located in northern Turkey. The five-point Likert type scale that was developed contained 82 items relating to prospective science teachers’ awareness of waste recycling. The factor analysis conducted showed that five items had factor loadings below 0.30, and five were cross loading items. Factor analysis was repeated after (...) removing these items. A further 24 items were removed from the list at the end of the factor analysis, and the remaining 48 items were grouped under ten dimensions. The reliability coefficient for the factors extracted varied between 0.717 and 0.805, and the internal reliability coefficient for the whole scale was 0.905. (shrink)

The social and political problem of immigration forces us to reflect on ethical issues such as the relation of responding and bonding across sharp differences, the role that moral values play in relating to the other, and the possibility of solidarity as a way of being responsible for the others with whom we do not have any ready-made social bond. I take Levinas's notion of the ethical relation with the other as a primal society from which the third is not (...) excluded, as a starting point for thinking of social bond as solidarity. I argue that it allows for ethical social bond making in situations determined by bio-power; even in situations in which people are depersonalized and deprived of their right to rights, and of their ethical agency. I propose that the bond of solidarity with the immigrant can be a model for the ethical social bond. (shrink)

This essay explores the personalism underlying the ethical dimension of Ricceur’s discussion of the institutional justice. According to Ricoeur, “public justice” refers to civil society’s critical response to the judicial acts of justice, with reference to ethical values as negotiating or mediating between the principles of justice and concrete practices, i.e., how things are done in the world, the existing state of affairs. Public justice can force institutional justice to function when it is not functioning well because of political interference (...) and manipulation. In case the public justice is obstructed, for instance in a totalitarian regime, which intimidates the public debate, all we are left with is “personal justice,” a virtue in the Aristotelian sense that exceeds justice in the institutional sense. If institutional justice collapses and public discussion is silenced, personal justice is the only remaining relation to the third, which is irreducible to friendship. (shrink)

Although Derrida has determined experience as always "an experience of presence" in Western metaphysics, a double logic of experience can be shown to determine his deconstruction of the phenomenological concept of experience. Derrida's appeal in his recent works to the notion of experience does not only imply that he has renovated the concept of experience but also that deconstruction has to be understood in terms of experience. Derrida's reading of the notion of experience in Husserl's phenomenology leads us to the (...) notion of the experience of the trace--- a condition of the possibility and of the impossibility of experience understood in terms of presence. By investigating the relation between deconstruction and experience, I point out to the fact that deconstruction subverts the desire for an originary experience and thus opens the way for a new politics of memory. By showing the connection between the experience of the trace as an impossible experience and the aporetic notion of experience, I discuss how Derrida reads the chiasm between ethics and politics in Levinas' philosophy. Finally, I investigate the way in which sexual difference partakes in the notion of aporetic experience and cannot be excluded from it. (shrink)

Almost every state has its own legal system and there is a legal system in accordance with the social norms of the state. However, although states have autonomy with their own legal systems, the legal system of each state unites under larger legal systems. From this point of view, three major legal systems can be accepted; Anglo-Saxon Legal System (English Legal System, Common Law), Continental European Legal System (Legal system of European states based on Roman law), Social Legal System on (...) which Russian Federation is based. Apart from these systems, there is also an Islamic legal system with its unique structure. The reason why the Islamic legal system is unique is that it is based on both religious and rational sources. In general, the case-based method is used in the Anglo-Saxon Legal System, and the rule-based method is used in the Continental European Legal System. Which one of these two method used by Islamic law which takes its source from Qur’an and hadith well? Or is it use both methods? Our aim in this study, in addition to analysing the operation of these two methods in Islamic law from a logical point of view, is to analyse the integration of the rule-based method into the case-based method and the case-based method with the rule-based method. With this research it is to provide a logical proposal to extend the intended use of analogy in Islamic law. As a matter of fact, we think that different branches of science should come together in order to produce new suggestions in this field. (shrink)

This article is a response to Robert Bernasconi’s critical philosophy of race. I start by speaking of the specific style in which life and philosophy are related in his work. I argue that he devises a political phenomenology which considers the lived experiences of racialization and inquires into their historical conditions, which have become “practico-inert” in facticity. Bernasconi’s thesis that the history of race is not determined by racial essentialism and his account of race as a border concept call for (...) an expansion of the notion of race that will better serve the cause of the global fight against racism. (shrink)

Derrida donne à penser une figure de la subjectivité comme désir qui est influencée par l’hégélianisme de Bataille. Ses premiers travaux interprètent en termes lacaniens le désir métaphysique de présence qui est toujours déjà saboté par le mouvement de différance qui l’a produit : Glas montre ainsi une subjectivité vivante et désirante qui empêche la dialectique hégélienne du désir d’aboutir aux formes totalisantes de l’esprit objectif. En revanche, la pensée tardive de Derrida permet de concevoir une subjectivité éthique et politique (...) dont le caractère aporétique se donne à lire comme déconstruction de l’Autre au sens lacanien. (shrink)

The use of ensemble learning, deep learning, and effective document representation methods is currently some of the most common trends to improve the overall accuracy of a text classification/categorization system. Ensemble learning is an approach to raise the overall accuracy of a classification system by utilizing multiple classifiers. Deep learning-based methods provide better results in many applications when compared with the other conventional machine learning algorithms. Word embeddings enable representation of words learned from a corpus as vectors that provide a (...) mapping of words with similar meaning to have similar representation. In this study, we use different document representations with the benefit of word embeddings and an ensemble of base classifiers for text classification. The ensemble of base classifiers includes traditional machine learning algorithms such as naïve Bayes, support vector machine, and random forest and a deep learning-based conventional network classifier. We analysed the classification accuracy of different document representations by employing an ensemble of classifiers on eight different datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that the usage of heterogeneous ensembles together with deep learning methods and word embeddings enhances the classification performance of texts. (shrink)

Temel karakteristiği Allah, nübüvvet ve meâd konuları üzerinden şekillenen kelam, bu konuları ele alış tarzında ahlakî perspektifi merkeze almıştır. Bu açıdan kelam, bir yönüyle Allah bir yönüyle insanla ilişkilidir. Dolayısıyla kelamcılar Allah-insan ilişkisini hem ontik hem epistemik hem de ahlakî açıdan ele almışlardır. Tanrı ve insan tasavvurları tüm boyutların birlikte değerlendirilmesiyle anlam kazanmaktadır. Konu hakkındaki farklı yaklaşımlar, söylem gruplarının ya da düşünürlerin paradigmalarına göre şekillenmektedir. Mu‘tezilî bir âlim olan Arap dili ve edebiyatının yetkin isimlerinden Ebû’l-Kāsım Mahmûd b. Ömer b. Muhammed (...) el-Harezmî ez-Zemahşerî’nin (ö. 538/1144) de eserlerinde, Allah-insan ilişkisine gereken ilgiyi gösterdiği bilinmektedir. Dinî pratiğinde Hanefî aidiyete sahip olan Zemahşerî, aklı ön planda tutan, aklın işlevsel yönünü vurgulayan bir din anlayışına sahiptir. Bu sebeple ona göre takdîr gereği akıl ve irâde sahibi olarak belirli bir fıtratta yaratılan insan yaptıklarından sorumludur. İnsanı teklîf temelinde tasavvur eden Zemahşerî’de yaratmanın ilk aşamasından itibaren adaletli bir Tanrı fikri hakimdir. Dolayısıyla onun Allah tasavvuru ve bağlantılı olarak irade konusundaki değerlendirmeleri, Allah-insan ilişkisini nasıl bir temelde ele aldığına işaret etmektedir. Bu bağlamda araştırmamız Zemahşerî’nin söz konusu ilişkiyi nasıl ele aldığını ve ahlakî boyutunu konu edinmektedir. Çünkü bu çalışmayı ortaya çıkaran temel saik Zemahşerî’nin eserlerinde Allah-insan ilişkisini ahlakî olarak değerlendirdiğine dair güçlü kanıtların mevcudiyetidir. İlişkili olarak konu, Zemahşerî’nin ilahî fiiller, insan fiilleri, akıl, bilgi, taklit, hüsun-kubuh, hidâyet-dalâlet, dâî, fâil, kötü/kabîh ve fâili, hikmet, maslahat ve tüm bunları içine alacak şekilde teklîf yaklaşımını kapsamaktadır. Buna göre çalışmada öncelikle Zemahşerî’nin Allah tasavvuru daha sonra Zemahşerî’ye göre Allah-insan ilişkisi ele alınacaktır. Çalışmanın amacını belirleyen ahlakî boyuta dair veriler değerlendirmeye tabi tutulacaktır. Allah-insan ilişkisinin ilk aşaması olarak yaratma, mîsâk ve takdîr, ikinci aşaması olarak teklîf karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Teklîfin karşılığının alındığı yer olarak ahiret son aşama olup teklîf ve sonuç kısmında bahse konu olacaktır. Çalışma, söz konusu veriler ve üzerine yapılan analizlerle şekillenmiştir. Kaynak olarak kullanılan Kitâbü’l-Minhâc, Zemahşerî’nin konu hakkında genel çerçeveyi belirleyen bir eseridir. El-Keşşâf ‘an hakâik-i (gavâmizi’)t-tenzîl ve ‘uyûni’l-ekâvîl fî vücûhi’t-te’vîl isimli eseri ise Zemahşerî’nin görüşlerini ve derinliğini birçok açıdan anlama ve değerlendirme imkânı veren telîfidir. Buna göre çalışmamız, Zemahşerî’nin Allah-insan ilişkisinde ortaya koyduğu ahlakî yaklaşıma dolayısıyla insanın sorumlu olmasının ahlakîliğine dikkat çekmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Çalışma Zemahşerî ile sınırlandırılırken, gereken yerlerde mukayeseli değerlendirmelere başvurulacaktır. (shrink)

Sosyal, siyasî, iktisadî, psikolojik, kültürel boyutları dönemlere ve coğ-rafyalara göre çeşitlilik arz etse de savaş mefhumu insanlık tarihi kadar eski-dir. Savaşın, dünya hayatının durum ve problemlerinden kaynaklanan yönlerinin yanı sıra dinî sâiklerinin bulunması, onun tarihe mal olmuş sürekliliğinde oldukça etkilidir. Eski Ahit ve Kur’an dâhil kutsal metinlerin söz konusu sâikler arasında yer alması, pek çok farklı okumaya tâbî tutulabilecek bu metinlerin savaşa dair anlatımlar bağlamında değerlendirilmesini mümkün ve hatta gerekli kılmaktadır. Bu makalede Kur’an ve Eski Ahit’in tarih boyu insan hayatını (...) doğrudan etkilediği olgulardan biri olarak savaşla ilgili anlatımları bir araya getirilmiş, bunlar çeşitli yönlerden mukayese edilerek aralarındaki benzerlik ve farklılıklar belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu mukayeseden ulaşılan sonuçlardan hareketle, her iki metnin kendi muhataplarının zihninde oluşturduğu savaş algısına dair ipuçları elde etmek hedeflenmiştir. Savaşa dair anlatımlar incelenirken Kur’an’ın Arapça metni, Eski Ahit’in ise ulaşabildiğimiz en eski İngilizce metni ve Türkçe tercümesi esas alınmıştır. (shrink)

Introduces the reader to the positions Derrida took in various areas of philosophy, as well as clarifying how derrideans interpret them in the present.

In The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida’s last seminar, Derrida criticizes Lacan for making no room for animality in the Other, in the unconscious transindividual normativity of language. In this paper, I take into account the history of Derrida’s interactions with Lacan’s psychoanalysis to argue that Derrida’s early agreement with Lacan’s conception of subjectivity as split by the signifier gives place in his late thought to a deconstruction of Lacan’s fall into humanist metaphysics, which makes a sharp moral distinction between (...) the animal and the human in order to subordinate animals to the domination of mankind. (shrink)

There seems to be a shift in phenomenology in the 20th century from an ethics based on value theory to an ethics based on responsibility. This essay attempts to show the path marks of this transition. It begins with the historical development that led Husserl to address the question of ethical objectivity in terms of value theory, with a focus on Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. It then explains Husserl’s phenomenology of ethics as grounded in value theory, and takes into account (...) Heidegger’s objections to it. Finally, it considers Sartre as a transitional figure between value theory and an ethics of responsibility and attempts to show in what sense, if at all, Levinas’ phenomenology of ethics could be an absolute break with a phenomenological ethics based on values. (shrink)

This essay argues that his encounter with the Lacanian claims about the imaginary and symbolic functions incited Merleau-Ponty to transform his early phenomenology. “The Mirror Stage Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” forced Merleau-Ponty to reconsider the primacy of the notion of Leib (corps propre) in his early phenomenology. The modification of his phenomenological starting point culminates in the revision of his position on the relation of the imaginary and the symbolic functions to the (...) real from The Phenomenology of Perception to The Visible and the Invisible. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s focus on reversibility in The Visible and the Invisible should be read as an ontological elaboration of what is at the core of ‘The Mirror Stage,’ namely, the role of the imaginary and the symbolic functions in the formation of our corporeal visibility.Cet essai démontre que la convergence de Merleau-Ponty avec les revendications lacaniennes concernant l’imaginaire et les fonctions symboliques l’a incité à modifier sa première phénoménologie. « Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je telle qu’elle nous est révélée dans l’expérience psychanalytique » a forcé Merleau-Ponty à reconsidérer la primauté de la notion de Leib (corps propre) issue de sa première phénoménologie. La modification de son point de départ phénoménologique aboutit, depuis la Phénoménologie de la perception jusqu’à Le visible et l’invisible, à la révision de sa position sur la relation de l’imaginaire et des fonctions symboliques au réel. Je suppose que l’attention portée par Merleau-Ponty sur la réversibilité dans Le visible et l’invisible devrait être lue comme l’élaboration ontologique de ce qui est au coeur du « stade du miroir », à savoir le rôle de l’imaginaire et des fonctions symboliques dans la formation de notre visibilité corporelle.Il presente articolo avanza la tesi che l’incontro di Merleau-Ponty con la dimensione simbolica e la dimensione immaginaria descritte da Lacan, ha indotto il filosofo a trasformare la sua prima riflessione fenomenologica. “Lo stadio dello specchio come formatore della funzione dell’io” costrinse Merleau-Ponty a riesaminare il primato della nozione di Leib (corps propre), proprio della prima fase del suo pensiero e della sua adesione alla fenomenologia. La trasformazione del suo punto di partenza fenomenologico culmina in una revisione delle sue posizioni riguardo alla relazione delle funzioni immaginaria e simbolica rispetto al reale, che investe il passaggio da Fenomenologia della percezione al Visibile e l’invisibile. Attraverso questa lettura propongo di comprendere la nozione di reversibilità presente nel Visibile e l’invisibile, come una rielaborazione ontologica del nucleo centrale dello stadio dello specchio, ovvero il ruolo delle funzioni immaginaria e simbolica nella formazione della nostra visibilità corporea. (shrink)

This article takes up Derrida’s discussion of secularism as a development in Western Christian tradition and history and in his deconstruction of the opposition between secular and religious in “Faith and Knowledge: Two Sources of “Religion”at the Limits of Reason Alone.” What are the implications of Derrida’s discussion of originary faith in Turkey that has a majority of Muslim population, and a history of modernization and secularization? Should Turkey renounce secularism in education because it is not “really” part of its (...) own tradition? Is a secular school system an oppressive institution for people born in a Muslim family because it alienates children from their own cultural traditions? I refer to Derrida’s deconstruction of identity, his discussion of tele-technology, return of the religious, auto-immunity, and sovereignty to find answers to such questions. I think they give us valuable insights to construe a Derridean response to the present problems, even though I am also critical about Derrida’s failure to acknowledge the need for universal secular norms in school education. (shrink)

Etienne Balibar se réfère à l’idée arendtienne de la citoyenneté pour montrer que la démocratie se construit nécessairement au travers d’une aporie. D’une part, la démocratie évoque l’idéal isonomique de l’égalité pour fonder la communauté ; d’autre part, elle inscrit la différence dans l’éventualité d’une contestation permanente des principes unificateurs. Ce que je propose, c’est de contribuer à développer le dialogue entre E. Balibar et Hannah Arendt en m’interrogeant sur la possibilité d’aller au-delà de l’horizon de la violence. Le concept (...) d’agon qu’Arendt utilise pour qualifier le vivre ensemble isonomique n’est pas la concurrence entre artisans, ni le conflit entre ennemis, mais renvoie plutôt à l’institution d’un monde commun grâce aux différences. L’agir agonistique comprend le risque de se distinguer, d’être en désaccord, de se différer, non seulement par rapport aux autres mais aussi par rapport a soi-même. Il faudrait alors définir la violence comme une force qui agit sur l’agon, c’est-à-dire, sur la capacité de « devenir-autre ». C’est justement ceci qu’aussi bien la loi que la notion moderne de droits oblitère. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a survey study examining the knowledge, motivations and concerns of egg-share donors and recipients, and assesses the clinical and policy implications of these findings. The survey, combining quantitative and qualitative items, was completed by 48 donors and 38 recipients who took part in an egg-sharing scheme at the London Women's Clinic between 2007 and 2009. Although the most important motivation for all egg-sharers was to have a baby, both donors and recipients displayed multiple motivations, (...) including elements of self-interest and altruism. Many viewed egg-sharing as a reciprocal process in which two women with different needs help one another. The results are reassuring from an ethical and policy perspective: they suggest that if information about egg-sharing was more widely available (especially through general practitioners), more women may consider becoming egg-share donors, gaining swift access to their own treatment and reducing the UK's egg donor shortage. (shrink)

What accounts for the resurgence of religion in Muslim countries that pursue strict secularization policies? Theories of religious resurgence have emphasized secular differentiation, religious growth, and pietist agency as animating sources behind politically engaged religions. Extending this work, I advance a typology of strategies oppositional actors employ to produce and sustain religious politics. I ground my approach in the study of Islamic resurgence in Turkey during the twentieth century. Drawing on published primary sources, secondary historiography, and multi-sited fieldwork, the analysis (...) shows that Turkish Islamists spearheaded successful resurgence not only by capitalizing on exogenous “opportunities” that punctuated the “repressive” pathway but, more importantly, by pursuing endogenous institutional change. Even though secularizing agents restricted the religious field’s autonomy, dissidents avoided open confrontation with the state. Instead, they positioned themselves within official institutions (embedding, layering), changed their logic (conversion), and supplemented these institutions with alternative ones (substitution). As a result, religious actors turned Islam into an ideological counterattack on the regime’s secular institutions. These insights can be extended to religious mobilizations throughout the Muslim world as well as to non-religious social struggles beyond it. (shrink)

The question of how literature can evoke emotions is a familiar one, as is the idea that a good work of literature arouses the right emotion in the right place through our capacity for sympathy. However, there is no consensus on how this works, partly because there is no agreement on the nature of emotions. One figure that contributes to both of these topics is Robert Musil. As a thinker and as a novelist, he had both a theory of emotions (...) and a novelistic treatment of them. His novels are notable, however, for the way in which they do not appeal to the reader’s capacity for sympathy, owing partly to the formlessness of his characters. Yet it is precisely the gap he creates between fiction and emotional reality that allows for a richer investigation of the relationship between emotions and literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce and defend a notion of analyticity for formal languages. I first uncover a crucial flaw in Timothy Williamson’s famous argument template against analyticity, when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages. Williamson’s argument targets the popular idea that a necessary condition for analyticity is that whoever understands an analytic sentence assents to it. Williamson argues that for any given candidate analytic sentence, there can be people who understand that sentence and yet who fail (...) to assent to it. I argue that, on the most natural understanding of the notion of assent when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages, Williamson’s argument fails. Formal analyticity is the notion of analyticity that is based on this natural understanding of assent. I go on to develop the notion of formal analyticity and defend the claim that there are formally analytic sentences and rules of inference. I conclude by showing the potential payoffs of recognizing formal analyticity. (shrink)

While discussions of the debate between Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg over ‘secularisation’ focus primarily on the methodological utility of the concept, the difference between them was also one of the philosophical commitments and substantive claims about modernity. This difference is not always obvious. One way of bringing it out is to address the different contexts in which they produced their most famous statements about secularisation. But another, and one that will be pursued here, is to consider the critical dialogue (...) that both thinkers engaged in with Nietzsche. Put briefly, while Löwith thought that Nietzsche misunderstood the ancients, Blumenberg thought that he misunderstood the moderns. For Löwith, Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return is not Greek, but an aggressive countergospel that owes much to the Christian culture it seeks to oppose; for Blumenberg, Nietzsche assumes, wrongly, that the self-belittlement of man by theology has been succeeded by the self-belittlement of man by science. In addition, Blumenberg – unlike both Nietzsche and Löwith – thinks that he can mount a robust defence of both modern science and progress. (shrink)

The catastrophic risks posed by new technologies such as killer robots and geoengineering have triggered calls for halting new research. Arguments for restricting research typically have a slippery‐slope structure: Researching A will lead to deployment; we have decisive moral reasons against deployment; therefore, we should not research A. However, scientific uncertainty makes it difficult to prove or disprove the conclusion of slippery‐slope arguments. This article accepts this indeterminacy and asks whether and when it would be permissible to restrict research under (...) empirical and normative uncertainty. The argument starts from the ethical framework for the regulation of scientific research with human subjects and offers modifications to adapt it to the purpose of restricting new technologies. Two main questions arise in the process: whether it is permissible to impose restrictions at the research stage to prevent harms that will arise from the use of a technology and whether it is permissible to restrict research preemptively on the grounds of public fear and anxiety, before there is sufficient evidence establishing the risk of harm. I answer both questions in the affirmative and defend this position against objections. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media, which describe the evolution of artifacts in terms of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal are extended to create Laws of Media Environments and Laws of Media Users. It is shown that the environment or ground in which the figures of the artifacts in the LOM operate and the users of those artifacts undergo, respectively, a similar evolution of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal paralleling McLuhan’s original LOM.

While the Prophet's articulation of the message of tawhid resulted in the clustering of his followers around him, it also led to reactions from the majority of his interlocutors. At first, he was tried to be discouraged by not taking his message seriously or by humiliating him, and when it was seen that his followers increased over time, he was tried to be prevented by harsher methods. The polytheists claimed that the Prophet was a magician who spoke incantations from his (...) mouth, a liar who reported news he had learned from others as if it had been revealed to him, and a person who made statements contrary to the religion of ancestors because he had lost his sanity and needed to be treated. In this context, this article deals with the slander of the polytheists that the Prophet was a "majnun" and tries to understand what they meant by this claim. When the translations of the Qur'anic verses that remind us of the allegations of the polytheists are taken into consideration, it is seen that most of the translations give the word "majnun" the meaning of "madness". When we examine the meaning attributed to the expression by the Jahiliyyah Arabs, the word takes on a completely different meaning, and it is understood that the polytheists meant that the word revealed to the Prophet was taught to him not by Allah but by the jinn whom he had befriended. (shrink)

In this article, disasters as a factual reality will be discussed within the framework of Allah's justice and human responsibility on the basis of husn-qubh. In this context, the ontic structure of man and the universe, man's being in the process of being tested, the definition of good-bad/goodness-evil that enables this process, the evaluations in the literature, and the meaning of taklīf within the scope of Allah's justice (‘adl) will be discussed. The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling (...) a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and does good deeds with a universe in which evil exists. As a problem of evil, disaster is a phenomenon that must be addressed in relation to God, the universe, and human beings. While its relation with God in terms of creation appears as the legality of the universe, its relation with human beings in terms of dealing with the phenomenon and responsibility is within the scope of being subject to the offer. Therefore, a correct understanding of creation and justification of the reasonableness of the offer will answer many questions regarding disasters. The aforementioned issues and concepts in the theological literature have been discussed thoroughly (dakīk) in the schools of theology. Theologians defined God and divine action, human beings and human actions, and the universe in accordance with the paradigm of their discourse groups, and they made discussions based on the meaning they gave to these definitions and concepts. The basic determinants of the discussions are God's possession of knowledge, power, will, wisdom, and justice, and the creation of human beings in the nature of reason (‘akl). These concepts and definitions have been understood differently by the discourse groups, and the debates have moved back and forth between determination/compulsion and free will. It makes sense here that a person who experiences the phenomenon and wants to know what is happening theologically should know the Qur'anic conception of God and man. The relationship between God and man needs to be right and moral. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the topics that have been studied many times in terms of each concept together. In this respect, the article aims to seek answers to some questions about the human profile and the conception of Allah. There are three aspects to be questioned here: First, an ontological inquiry into the nature of the concepts of existence that contain moral value; second, an epistemological inquiry into whether moral value is determined by reason or revelation. In this context, the last inquiry is moral. Accordingly, what is good-bad and goodness-evil? What determines good and evil as a value? Who is the agent of the good-evil action? What is the position of the divine will if the perpetrator (fā‘ıl) is human? What is the relationship or boundary between divine will and human responsibility? What is the theological status of the perpetrator? On this basis, what is a disaster? What is the value judgment of disasters? What is the relation of disasters to God's actions? Who is the perpetrator of disasters? Are disasters a test? Are disasters a divine warning? Are disasters a divine punishment? If they are a divine punishment, what is the possibility of knowing it? These questions will be answered in the article, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. (shrink)