On May 13, 2014, a fire due to the combustion of accumulated methane gas in the Soma Eynez Mine in Turkey killed 301 miners. This case chronicles the events on the day of the accident and investigates the factors leading up to it. It depicts the chaos and confusion resulting from missing emergency protocol, inadequate responses of major stakeholders such as safety experts in the mine, company executives, and the political leadership at the ministry and prime ministry levels. It shows (...) how the interplay of a culture of leniency towards mining safety, insufficient mining policies and even less effective inspections coupled with nepotism and the local population’s desperation for work, all led to serious neglect in a major mine resulting in needless deaths. The Soma Eynez Mine disaster highlights how corporate greed fed into breaches of mining protocol and ethical conduct, eventually leading to the bankruptcy of a mining conglomerate and the imprisonment of 14 men. (shrink)

Recent developments in theories for responsible innovation have focused on the importance of actively accounting for values in our technological designs. Leading among these theories is that of Value Sensitive Design which attempts to guide the design process on the basis of evaluative analysis. However, values often come into conflict and VSD has been criticized for not providing a proper method to resolve such inevitable conflicts. This paper examines three such methods and argues that although each has its merits, they (...) all fail to account for a common source of value conflicts known as value incommensurability. Drawing on literature from the field of axiology, this paper argues that by incorporating the evaluative relation of ‘parity’ each of these three methods, and the VSD framework in general, will be able to properly understand the relation which holds between conflicting design options stemming from the incommensurable of values and be able to guide designers in making rational decision in the face of such conflicts. (shrink)

The split between analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy has mainly preoccupied scholars of philosophy so far, but in fact, it has broader pedagogical implications. This article argues that conventions of argumentative writing, as taught in colleges today, have their roots in analytic philosophy and its assumptions regarding ways of disseminating knowledge. Behind writing instructors’ emphasis on the ‘thesis and evidence’ structure lie analytic tendencies such as verifiability and intersubjectivity. By contrast, Continental philosophy emphasises the subjective human experience, which leads to (...) a more experimental form of writing. This split and the embeddedness of argumentation in analytic philosophy is indispensable in comprehending the rationale behind the conventions of academic writing taught in colleges today. (shrink)

Unintentional plagiarism abounds at universities. The literature offers several explanations for students’ difficulties with acquiring standards of good academic practice. In this paper, I propose an alternative account: unintentional plagiarism can only be understood in the context of implicit but irreconcilable forms of knowledge. While higher education institutions mainly operate within the framework of propositional epistemology, institutions of primary and secondary education tend to furnish students with encyclopedic epistemology. Accordingly, universities and institutions of pre-college education tend to propagate conflicting assumptions (...) regarding the nature of knowledge. Put simply, propositional epistemology is characterized by dialogue, agency and the exchange of ideas, which are ideally made explicit in academic writing. By contrast, encyclopedic epistemology tends to present knowledge monologically, leaving the scholarly conversation around it out. It is highly likely that the hardwired legacy of encyclopedic epistemology among students impedes the acquisition of the dialogism of academic inquiry at universities, resulting in cases of unintentional plagiarism. (shrink)

In this paper we provide the first comprehensive insight into corporate community involvement activities of companies in Turkey. Drawing upon an extensive database compiled from corporate websites and archive documents in addition to a primary survey of 77 of Turkey’s largest companies, we examine the pattern of corporate community activities in Turkey and juxtapose these against existing evidence for other countries and distinctive elements of Turkey’s institutional environment. Our analysis highlights the historical role played by leading philanthropists in stimulating corporate (...) community involvement activities in Turkey and shows that overall giving is very heavily concentrated among the largest givers. We also highlight the concentration of giving among consumer good producers, suggesting a clear strategic rationale for the majority of CCI activity in Turkey, the very low levels of giving by foreign owned and controlled companies, and the strong orientation of CCI in Turkey to projects concerned with education, healthcare and the arts. (shrink)

Prior research has tended to focus on the influences upon how much organizations contribute to charitable or community cases paying relatively little attentionto the recipients of these donations or how firms develop preferences in respect of them. This study, in order to fill these gaps in the literature, focuses on two main aspects of CCI within 500 biggest companies situated in Turkey. Firstly, it aims to explore how companies manage their CCI activities. The type and level of the managers who (...) are the decision makers and the departments from which CCI decisions are taken will be examined. This helps to understand the potential objectives and strategic importance of giving. Also it shows whether a firm has a stable orientation to CCI, or a more ad hoc orientation. Secondly, it aims to analyze the preferences of companies in respect of the area of priorities and exclusions. We argue that institutional environments can shape the CCI activities. Exploring the local conditions of the countries can give reasons for investment in specific areas. (shrink)

Prior research that analyses the cross-firm variation in the prevalence of women on corporate boards has tended to emphasise the importance of firm and industry-level factors, such as firm size, the quality of corporate governance, and the proximity to final consumers. In contrast, very little research has explored the role of national institutional factors for this important phenomenon. In this study, we explore the relative importance of country, industry, and firm-level factors in explaining the cross-firm variation in the proportion of (...) directorships occupied by female directors. Findings indicate that while all levels of influence are significant, country-level effects are a highly-important and under-researched antecedent of the presence of women on corporate boards. (shrink)

A new Turkish Penal Code came into effect on 1 June 2005. Article 280 concerns health care workers’ failure to report a crime. This article removes the responsibility from health care workers to maintain confidentiality, but also removes patients’ right to confidentiality. It provides for up to one year of imprisonment for a health care worker who, while on duty, finds an indication that a crime might have been committed by a patient and who does not inform the responsible authorities (...) about it. This forces the health care worker to divulge the patient’s confidential information. A patient who thinks he or she may be accused of a crime may therefore not seek medical help, which is the universal right of every person. The article is therefore contrary to medical ethics, oaths taken by physicians and nurses, and the understanding of patient confidentiality. (shrink)

Frank Jackson’s famous Knowledge Argument moves from the premise that complete physical knowledge is not complete knowledge about experiences to the falsity of physicalism. In recent years, a consensus has emerged that the credibility of this and other well-known anti-physicalist arguments can be undermined by allowing that we possess a special category of concepts of experiences, phenomenal concepts, which are conceptually independent from physical/functional concepts. It is held by a large number of philosophers that since the conceptual independence of phenomenal (...) concepts does not imply the metaphysical independence of phenomenal properties, physicalism is safe. This paper distinguishes between two versions of this novel physicalist strategy –Phenomenal Concept Strategy (PCS) – depending on how it cashes out “conceptual independence,” and argues that neither helps the physicalist cause. A dilemma for PCS arises: cashing out “conceptual independence” in a way compatible with physicalism requires abandoning some manifest phenomenological intuitions, and cashing it out in a way compatible with those intuitions requires dropping physicalism. The upshot is that contra Brian Loar and others, one cannot “have it both ways.”. (shrink)

Calendars, as old as humanity itself, emerged out of the attempt to break down time in units and give meaning to life and time. As far as Islam is concerned, calendar as a subject gain more importance because identifying daily and yearly rituals and performing the rituals related to time on their specific time is an essential part of Islamic religious life. With a circulation of three million yearly and more than ten million readers, the calendar printed by the Presidency (...) for Religious Affairs of Turkey is a significant instrument in forming, changing and maintaining religious perceptions. We were led to do such a study by the lack of academic studies regarding this aspect of the calendars. The study is based on the texts placed on the frontal and back sides of the calendars printed and distributed by the Presidency for Religious Affairs in the years of 2002, 2007 and 2011. The texts have been analysed by the textual analysis method and the changes in religious perceptions have been pointed out. Unlike the expected institutional continuity, when the three periods compared, it is observed that considerable perception changes have taken place; many subjects have been left out while many have been introduced into the calendars. The study found out that as the years progressed and the periods passed, the calendars also changed dramatically. The most apparent change occurred in the calendars was global understanding in choosing or replacing the subjects. This means that the 2007 and 2011 calendars have excluded some national and spiritual values that were thought to be outmoded globally but included in the 2002 calendar. This also signifies a breaking point in religious perceptions of the Presidency for Religious Affairs. (shrink)

This book theorizes and applies critical communication pedagogy in mediated contexts, including social justice-oriented approaches, to the use of both traditional and new media in the classroom.

In this article, I make a distinction between two versions of non-epistemicism about seeing, and bring explicitly into view and argue against a particular version defended by Dretske. More specifically, I distinguish non-epistemic seeing as non-conceptual seeing, where concept possession is assumed to be cognitively demanding, from non-epistemic seeing as seeing without noticing, where noticing is assumed to be relatively cognitively undemanding. After showing that Dretske argues for the possibility of non-epistemic seeing in both senses of the term, I target (...) his thesis that a given subject sees all the objects that are visually differentiated in her visual field, where visual differentiation does not require that she notice those objects. I argue that the notion of a visual field deployed in the formulation of the thesis cannot be phenomenal and therefore that seeing without noticing amounts to mere visual confrontation. I further argue that since the epistemicist does not deny the existence of seeing without noticing in the sense of mere visual confrontation, there is a clear sense in which Dretske's non-epistemicism turns out to be trivial. (shrink)

In this note, I would like to focus on the two central distinctions Inan draws between varieties of ignorance. One is the distinction between “objectual” and “propositional” ignorance, and the other is the distinction between “truth-ignorance” and “fact-ignorance,” which is a distinction between two types of propositional ignorance. According to Inan, appreciating these distinctions allow us to see what is wrong with the “received view,” according to which ignorance (or awareness of it) is “always about truth,” and enables us to (...) “overcome our [philosophers’] propositional-bias.” I will argue for two theses. First, fact-ignorance appears to be a form of objectual ignorance; and, if this is so, there are no two distinctions but only one distinction that Inan in effect offers, which is between objectual and propositional ignorance. Second, what Inan calls “the received view” can raise some reasonable worries about objectual ignorance that are not taken into account by him. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Kriegel’s criticism of McGinn’s mysterianism. Kriegel objects to a particular argument for the possibility of human cognitive closure and also gives a direct argument against mysterianism. I intend to show that neither the objection nor the argument is convincing.

My aim in this paper is to cast doubt on the idea of undercutting defeat by showing that it is beset by some serious problems. I examine a number of attempts to specify the conditions for undercutting defeat and find them to be defective. Absent further attempts, and on the basis of the considerations offered, I conclude that an adequate notion of undercutting defeat is lacking.

There are two claims that are central to McGinn’s mysterianism: (1) there is a naturalist and constructive solution of the mind-body problem, and (2) we human beings are incapable in principle of solving the mind-body problem. I believe (1) and (2) are compatible: the truth of one does not entail the falsity of the other. However, I will argue that the reasons McGinn presents for thinking that (2) is true are incompatible with the truth of (1), at least on a (...) fairly standard conception of the terms ‘naturalist’ and ‘constructive’, which McGinn himself seems to take for granted. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to do three things. First, I introduce the distinction between the Uniqueness Thesis (U) and what I call the Conditional Uniqueness Thesis (U*). Second, I argue that despite their official advertisements, some prominent uniquers effectively defend U* rather than U. Third, some influential considerations that have been raised by the opponents of U misfire if they are interpreted as against U*. The moral is that an appreciation of the distinction between U and U* helps to (...) clarify the contours of the uniqueness debate and to avoid a good deal of talking past each other. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to present some of the reasons why consciousness is viewed as an intractable problem by many philosophers. Furthermore, I will argue that if these reasons are properly appreciated, then McGinn’s so-called mysterianism may not sound as far-fetched as it would otherwise sound.

My main aim in this paper is to show that Kolodny’s intriguing argument against wide-scopism – ‘the Reasoning Argument’ – fails. A proper evaluation of the Reasoning Argument requires drawing two significant distinctions, one between thin and thick rational transitions and the other between bare-bones wide-scopism (and narrow-scopism) and embellished wide-scopism (and narrow-scopism). The Reasoning Argument is intended by Kolodny both as an argument against bare-bones wide-scopism and as an argument against embellished wide-scopism. I argue that despite its formidable virtue (...) of demonstrating the need for an account of thick subjective rationality, the Reasoning Argument works neither against bare-bones wide-scopism nor against embellished wide-scopism. (shrink)