The lunar month of Ramadan is an important time period for Muslims around the world. In this study, we examine whether Ramadan brings happiness to individuals. For this purpose, we conducted a survey once before Ramadan, three times during Ramadan, and once after Ramadan. Our results show that with every week in Ramadan, a small boost of happiness is reported. Yet, two weeks after Ramadan, people seem to return to their baseline level of happiness. We suggest that Ramadan is associated (...) with higher well-being due to increased socialization as non-fasting and those who fast partially also has statistically higher happiness scores than pre-Ramadan sample. Yet, those who have highest happiness scores are those who fasted fully. (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 is the point of ideology critique? Prominent Anglo-American philosophers recently proposed novel arguments for the view that ideology critique is moral critique, and ideologies are flawed insofar as they contribute to injustice or oppression. We criticize that view and make the case for an alternative and more empirically-oriented approach, grounded in epistemic rather than moral commitments. We make two related claims: (i) ideology critique can debunk beliefs and practices by uncovering how, empirically, they are produced by self-justifying power, and (...) (ii) the self-justification of power should be understood as an epistemic rather than moral flaw. Drawing on the recent realist revival in political theory, we argue that this genealogical approach has more radical potential, despite being more parsimonious than morality-based approaches. We demonstrate the relative advantages of our view by discussing the results of empirical studies on the contemporary phenomenon of neopatriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa. (shrink)

In contemporary democracies, global capitalism exerts a significant influence over how state power is exercised, raising questions about where political power resides in global politics. This question is important, since our specific considerations about justifiability of political power, i.e. political legitimacy, depend on how we characterize political power at the global level. As a partial answer to this question, I argue that our notion of global political legitimacy should be reoriented to include the structural power of the Transnational Capitalist Class (...) as its subject matter. Structural power is a social relation in which the institutional context makes some agents comply with others’ preferences regardless of actors’ intentional efforts to bring about such outcomes. Even when global business elites do not intentionally exercise power to obtain political control of global governance, their structural power has recognizable effects that partly enforce the world order. To advance my claim, I utilize the radical realists’ argument that the notion of legitimacy is applicable to a broader range of social practices that are beyond dyadic power relations, i.e. rulers intentionally exercising power over subjects. (shrink)

This article argues that Bernard Williams’ Critical Theory Principle (CTP) is in tension with his realist commitments, i.e., deriving political norms from practices that are inherent to political life. The Williamsian theory of legitimate state power is based on the central importance of the distinction between political rule and domination. Further, Williams supplements the normative force of his theory with the CTP, i.e., the principle that acceptance of a justification regarding power relations ought not to be created by the very (...) same coercive power. I contend that the CTP is an epistemic criterion of reflective (un)acceptability which is not strictly connected to the question of whether people are dominated or not. I show that there are cases of non-domination that fail the epistemic requirements of the CTP. (shrink)

This paper argues that social media companies’ power to regulate communication in the public sphere illustrates a novel type of domination. The idea is that, since social media companies can partially dictate the terms of citizens’ political participation in the public sphere, they can arbitrarily interfere with the choices individuals make qua citizens. I contend that social media companies dominate citizens in two different ways. First, I focus on the cases in which social media companies exercise direct control over political (...) speech. They exercise quasi-public power over citizens because their regulation of speech on social media platforms implies the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with citizens’ democratic contestation in the political system. Second, companies’ algorithmic governance entails the capacity to interfere with citizens’ choices about what mode of discursive engagement they endorse in their relationships with fellow citizens. By raising the cost of deliberative engagement, companies narrow citizens’ choice menu. (shrink)

This paper argues that the critique of depoliticization in Mouffe’s agonistic political theory needs to be revised. This is because her account of the political does not succeed in filtering out undesirable forms of politicization such as science denialism and other types of post-truth politics. Mouffe's conception of the common symbolic space does not accomplish the task of limiting extreme pluralism in the absence of certain standards about how to correctly apply the fundamental notions of this space. By drawing on (...) a quasi-Wittgensteinian reading of linguistic normativity, I develop principled but non-universalist limits on politicization that are needed for a healthy, well-functioning democracy. (shrink)

One of the prevalent inference methods the mutakallimūn uses is qiyās al-ghaib ‘ala al-shahid (analogy from the visible world to the invisible world). Mu‘tazila, who accepts this method as an absolute criterion in the divine attributes, rejects the possibility of difference between shahid and ghaib about the reality of attributes. By rejecting the concept of kalām nafsī adopted by Ahl al-Sunnah, they mention the divine speech in the category of actual attributes and claim that kalāmullāh (God’s speech), like human speech, (...) is an accident consisting of words and sounds. Mu‘tazila, who defines mutakallim as the agent of kalām, claims that God is also the agent of the word. In this regard, Mu‘tazila, who defends the origin of the kalāmullāh and the createdness of the Qur’ān, focuses on the explanation of the nature of the kalām at the beginning of these theological subjects. As an extension of the issue of whether the ḥikāyah and maḥkī are the same or not, which is the subject of discussion in the context of the possibility of creating something similar to the Qur’ān, Mu‘tazila, who disagree on whether kalām (word) is a kind of sound (ṣawt) or not, examine the problem of the nature of the word by expanding it to include sounds. Although they agree that sounds are accidents created by humans through tawlīd, they propound different theories about the physical formation of sound and kalām. These theories are differentiated according to discussions about the essential factors for the formation of sounds. Some scholars claim that i‘timād generates sounds, and the substrate (maḥall) is enough to form the sounds. In contrast, others claim the necessity of a specific structure (binya), movement (ḥaraka), and air added to the substrate. In this regard, this study will deal with the effect of these factors mentioned above to the formation of the sounds and the physical examples which every group mentioned to prove its opinions rightfulness. The most detailed explanations about this topic are seen in the works of Baṣrian Mu‘tazila. Therefore, this study will examine the opinions about the production of sounds, which argued around metaphysical issues in the context of the createdness of the Qur’ān and the attribute of kalām, which are submitted by Abū ‘Alī al-Jubbā'ī (d. 303/916), Abū Hāshim al-Jubbā'ī (d. 321/933), and their followers Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), Abū Rashīd al-Nīsābūrī (d. first half of the 5./11. century), and Ibn Mattawayh (d. first half of the 5./11. century), the representatives of Baṣrian Mu‘tazila, who adopt atomic universe understanding. The study aimed to form an opinion about the theologians’ way of discussing a particular physical phenomenon to constitute a basis for solving metaphysical problems. To clarify the problem, first, it will deal with the essence of sounds in the Baṣrian Mu‘tazilites tradition, and then it will tackle the discussions about the formation of the sounds. (shrink)

This essay starts with the possibility of situating Derrida’s aporetic ethics in the domain of normative ethics and argues that Derrida’s reflection on ethics is enrooted in the specific way he conceives the phenomenological notion of auto-affection. In the second section, I analyze, in the early work, auto-affection with signs and show its centrality in Derrida’s first encounter with Levinas’s philosophy. Derrida refuses to substitute the hetero-affective relation to the Other for auto-affection as the source of universal law and normativity. (...) He does not sacrifice universality and tackles the problem of autonomous ethical decision-making even though he welcomes through affectivity the signification of the singular other, which is irreducible to conceptual, emotive, and normative self-relation. This background helps us understand the rootedness of ethical aporias in a reflection on auto-affection. (shrink)

This paper argues that instituting Citizen Boards of Governance (CBGs) is the optimal strategy to democratically contain Big Tech’s algorithmic powers in the digital public sphere. CBGs are bodies of randomly selected citizens that are authorized to govern the algorithmic infrastructure of Big Tech platforms. The main advantage of CBGs is to tackle the concentrated powers of private tech corporations without giving too much power to governments. I show why this is a better approach than ordinary state regulation or relying (...) on market mechanisms. My proposal follows from the critique of Big Tech’s concentrated powers, and explains how this justifies democratizing algorithms in the digital public sphere. My approach thus speaks to a core commitment in democratic theory: enhancing the autonomy of the public sphere from the centers of powers in modern societies, be it corporations or governments. (shrink)

The philosophical debate on the freedom of movement focuses almost exclusively on long-term migration, what I call, migration as settlement. The normative justifications defending border controls assume that the movement of people across political borders, independent of its purpose and the length of stay, refers to migration as settlement. “Global mobility,” “international movement,” and “immigration” are oftenused interchangeably. However, global mobility also refers to the movements of people across international borders for a short length of time such as travel, short-term (...) and circular migration. While most scholarly attention has focused on long-term migration, the vast majority of cross-border movement of people (approximately 85% of all cross-border movements in 2019) is short-term. The existing literature offers normative arguments for border controls, which are grounded on states’ right to self-determination, the freedom of (dis)association, the welfare state, the duty to compatriots, and brain drain. In this paper, I argue that these arguments do not justify excluding travelers, short-term and circular migrants from the territory. (shrink)

Consensus around what constitutes researcher conflicts of interest (COIs) and awareness of their influence on our research are two critical steps in ensuring the integrity of our science. In this research, data were collected from individual scholars via 2 surveys 5 years apart and from journals and associations to examine the level of social consensus and moral awareness among scholars, journals, and associations regarding researcher COIs. Although we observed increases in level of social consensus and moral awareness between 2012 and (...) 2017, results still revealed limited agreement about what relationships constitute a COI and limited awareness about the presence of and the ethical issues surrounding COIs. Although all journals and associations we examined supported COI disclosure, most did not provide researchers with detailed COI-related information, guidance, or disclosure tools. Limited social consensus and moral awareness regarding COIs is problematic because it inhibits the recognition, disclosure, and management of COIs and limits ethical decision making. We need to continue and enhance discussions about COIs and aim to create consensus and awareness where we do not have it with the goal of reducing potential scientific misconduct related to COIs. (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)

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.

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)

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, (...) resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power. -/- Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Basak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis. (shrink)

Introduction: a peculiar experiment -- Kinaesthetic knowing: the nineteenth-century biography of another kind of knowledge -- Looking: Wölfflin's comparative vision -- Affecting: Endell's mathematics of living feeling -- Drawing: the Debschitz school and formalism's subject -- Designing: discipline and introspection at the Bauhaus -- Epilogue.

These three volumes assemble the most important essays written on Jacques Derrida's philosophy since he became established in 1967. These volumes make well-known essays easily available and also present many essays never translated in English.

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)

The current study investigated whether there are significant relationships between life satisfaction and meaning in life, hope and COVID-19 fear and the extent to which life satisfaction is predicted by these variables. The study group of this research consists of 1,186 adults with the mean age of 41.04. Study group participants are consists of different cities of different regions of Turkey. As the data collection tools, the life satisfaction scale, the meaning in life scale, the dispositional hope scale and the (...) COVID-19 fear scale were used. The results of the analyses have revealed that meaning in life, hope are significant predictors of life satisfaction as positively. Besides, it is seen COVID-19 fear, age, gender and the presence of people infected with COVID-19 around aren’t significant predictors of life satisfaction in adults. (shrink)

The subject of this study is to examine the master's and doctoral theses in the field of Sociology of Religion, between 2005 and 2015 in Turkey and published in National Thesis Center of the Council of Higher Education, according to their subject, the main concept they deal with, their type, their advisor title, the year they were prepared and the university. This research can be described as a product of the search for a solution to the problem of looking at (...) the field holistically and quick and easy access to theses in the field of Sociology of Religion. Thanks to this research, the current status of the subject to be investigated in the field of Sociology of Religion will be seen more clearly; New and original works that are free from repetition will be enabled. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the data. According to the results of this research, the majority of the studies conducted in the field of Sociology of Religion in Türkiye consist of master's theses. In the theses between 2005 and 2015, the concept of "religious life" (n=32) was mostly discussed. Later, research was conducted on the concepts of "woman" (n=23), "religious leaders" (n=21), "piety" (n=13) and "Alevism" (n=12).When the theoretical/empirical categorical distribution of theses is examined, 114 of the scientific studies at the master's level are theoretical sociology of religion research and 134 of them are empirical studies, whereas it was observed that there are more empirical studies in doctoral theses. When the distribution of theses was examined according to general subjects of Sociology of Religion, it was seen that more studies were conducted on "Social Structure and Institutions". (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)

Shirking, the act of avoiding the demands of one’s job, is generally seen as unethical. Drawing on empirical evidence from the sociology of work, I develop a normative conception of shirking as a form of worker resistance against illegitimate managerial power. In doing so, I present a new approach to the political theory of the firm, which is more adversarial and agent-centered than available alternatives. It is more adversarial as it recognizes the political value of counterproductive and disruptive behavior in (...) capitalist firms. It is more agent-centered because it theorizes the firm from the perspective of workers, asking what pro tanto reasons they have to shirk. I show that shirking under the structural domination of capitalism has diagnostic, agential, and epistemic values. The paper contributes to the wider methodological ambition to tailor political theorizing to the positionality of social actors, by shifting attention from the institutional design of the firm to the methods of worker resistance. (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)

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)