This book explores the religious experiences of two notable figures who endured severe trials under authoritarian regimes: Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877–1960) within the Islamic tradition, and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) within the Russian Orthodox Christian tradition. Against the tumultuous backdrop of the twentieth century’s spiritual, social, political, and intellectual upheavals, both Nursi and Solzhenitsyn grappled with immense hardships because of their beliefs. Despite immense tribulations, both individuals demonstrated unwavering faith and resilience in the face of adversity, continuing their scholarly and literary (...) activities. The current study centers on the dichotomy of spiritual confinement and expansiveness, illustrating how people can experience spiritual distress even without physical restraints. It explores the historical and conceptual aspects of imprisonment within Christian and Muslim perspectives, explores the reasons for Nursi and Solzhenitsyn's incarceration, examines their coping mechanisms in the face of hardship, and underscores the role of faith and spirituality. The author integrates personal experiences, particularly his own incarceration during the aftermath of the 2016 Turkish staged coup attempt, within the context of the narratives of Nursi and Solzhenitsyn. The book addresses court proceedings, release, departure from Turkey, and resettlement in Australia. Throughout, the author draws parallels between their own observations and those of Nursi and Solzhenitsyn, contributing to the broader discourse on individual spirituality and collective consciousness. The book offers insights into spiritual resilience in the face of adversity, utilizing the lives of these figures to illuminate shared human experiences. A unique collation of personal narration and scholarly reflection, it is relevant to academics and students in history, political science, sociology, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, and to social scientists researching the phenomenon of exile and prison in different countries across the world. It also speaks to the work of activists and policymakers in human rights. (shrink)

Phillips et al. discuss whether knowledge or beliefs are more basic representations of others' minds, focusing on the primary function of knowledge representation: learning from others. We discuss links between emotion and “knowledge versus belief,” and particularly the role of emotions in learning from others in mechanisms such as “social epistemic emotions” and “affective social learning.”.

When people are engaged in social interaction, they can repeat aspects of each other’s communicative behavior, such as words or gestures. This kind of behavioral alignment has been studied across a wide range of disciplines and has been accounted for by diverging theories. In this paper, we review various operationalizations of lexical and gestural alignment. We reveal that scholars have fundamentally different takes on when and how behavior is considered to be aligned, which makes it difficult to compare findings and (...) draw uniform conclusions. Furthermore, we show that scholars tend to focus on one particular dimension of alignment (traditionally, whether two instances of behavior overlap in form), while other dimensions remain understudied. This hampers theory testing and building, which requires a well‐defined account of the factors that are central to or might enhance alignment. To capture the complex nature of alignment, we identify five key dimensions to formalize the relationship between any pair of behavior: time, sequence, meaning, form, and modality. We show how assumptions regarding the underlying mechanism of alignment (placed along the continuum of priming vs. grounding) pattern together with operationalizations in terms of the five dimensions. This integrative framework can help researchers in the field of alignment and related phenomena (including behavior matching, mimicry, entrainment, and accommodation) to formulate their hypotheses and operationalizations in a more transparent and systematic manner. The framework also enables us to discover unexplored research avenues and derive new hypotheses regarding alignment. (shrink)

This article focuses on images of walking in Agnès Varda's films – Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), Sans toit ni loi (1985), and Les Plages d’Agnès (2008). The activity of walking (as urban flânerie, circular travelling or walking backwards) is central to these films, and can be seen as a corporeal practice that not only interweaves striated and smooth spaces but also offer a gender-sensitive, political contemplation on the forces of striation and smoothing as well as a re-invention of (...) space. The women in movement in Varda's films embody a transgression of stratified territories such as the image-oriented society of the spectacle in Cléo, myths of adolescence and settled living in Sans toit ni loi, or the boundaries of aging in Les Plages d'Agnès. (shrink)

Mindfulness is intentional focus of one’s attention on emotions, thoughts, or sensations occurring in the present moment with a nonjudgmental attitude. Recently there has been increased interest in the effects of mindfulness practice on psychological processes such as concentration, focus, and attention. In the present study, a prepulse inhibition/facilitation paradigm was employed to investigate the effect of brief mindfulness practice on automatic attention regulation processes. PPI occurs when a relatively weak prepulse is presented 30–500 ms before a startle-inducing stimulus, and (...) reduces the magnitude of the startle response. Prepulse facilitation is the increase in startle magnitude when the prepulse is presented 500 ms or more before the startle-eliciting stimulus. In the present study, the effect of engaging in a 23-min mindfulness exercise on PPI and PPF was investigated. Participants listened to either a mindfulness instruction or relaxing music. In a PPI/PPF pretest and posttest, a startle-eliciting noise was presented at lead intervals of 60, 120, and 2,000 ms. Results showed that engaging in brief mindfulness practice increased prepulse facilitation at the 2,000 ms lead interval in the posttest compared to the pretest. The amount of PPI did not differ between tests. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Hypothesis Concerning the Character of Islamic ArtAsli GocerWhy Islamic art has the distinctive features it has continues to generate clashing explanations. The Islamic visual treasury has no figural images, for instance, and three-dimensional sculpture or large scale oil painting, but instead contains miniatures, vegetal ornaments, arabesque surface patterns, and complex geometrical designs. To account for the phenomena the following radically opposing theories have been offered: the influence of (...) Judaism, the Quranic prohibition against making images, 1 Islamic resentment of the glory of Byzantine icons, 2 logocentricism of classical Islam, 3 the spiritual dimension of Islam, 4 tacit Islamic assertion of “otherness,” 5 and contingency of history. 6 The merits of these theories have been roundly discussed in the literature, and so I will not repeat the task here. I will insist that none of these theories offer a coherent explanation for all arts, but my presumption is that such an explanation is possible. In nonvisual arts the Muslim prefers simple tunes over that of the symphony, for instance, whirling dervishes over the ballet, and lyric poetry over dramatic literature. In my view what explains the common characteristic of all these arts is a certain kind of Islamic attitude informed by a certain philosophical outlook. Although it would be hasty to suggest the existence of a monolithic [End Page 683] Islamic art, it would be equally rash to deny some striking commonalities among its diverse examples. 7The following observation by a Muslim scholar is notable in this regard: “Whether in the great courtyard of the Delhi Mosque or the Qarawiyyin in Fez, one feels oneself within the same artistic and spiritual universe despite all the local variations in material, structural techniques, and the like.” 8 Some cite geometry as what mediates that feeling to the observer despite the cultural divergences in style. 9 Even those who have given up the search for the universal or the spiritual in Islamic art cannot help but see in it the classical ideal of beauty. 10 It is this classical heritage that in fact holds one of the important keys to the puzzle at hand. In particular I shall claim that Islamic art is the living image of what Plato has in mind for art in a theocratic state. Clearly, to refer to Plato and art in the same breath invites trouble. As is well enough known, giving a general interpretation of Plato’s views on the nature of art is a very complex endeavor. 11 Even in the face of grave difficulties in textual exegesis, however, there is sufficient evidence that Plato has some settled views on art. Those pertinent to our discussion here involve two claims, that beauty and goodness are divine and that all human endeavor (including artistic creation) must imitate the divine. 12 Although Platonic strain in Islam has been noted in other areas, its persistent legacy has been overlooked in art. 13 I shall argue that the Platonic influence on Islamic thought can be traced not only to political philosophy 14 and geometry, 15 as it has been commonly accepted, but also aesthetics. 16 A philosophical explanation of the Islamic attitude toward art may therefore be derivable from the Platonic axiom that god is the paradigm of beauty, which is the cosmological principle of [End Page 684] order and harmony; and as all created things, art, too, must reflect the divine paradigm.Before defending this ahistorical hypothesis on the character of Islamic art so reviled in recent literature, a few caveats are in order. “Islamic art” contains redundant terms. Strictly speaking all art in Islam is “Islamic,” because for the Muslim art is a crucial point of contact with the divine. That art should direct the mind to the divine is also Plato’s view. 17 Second, the categories that have traditionally been used to describe Islamic art such as “aniconic” and “nonrepresentational” are unhelpful for the problem at hand. 18 When it comes to the issue of iconography in Islamic arts, there is no consensus, for Islamicists are notably divided on the semiotic dimension of the Islamic visual language. The question of whether the geometric surface pattern is essentially iconography, for instance, is yet... (shrink)

Cells can transit between a range of stable epithelial and mesenchymal states and this has allowed the evolution of complex body forms. Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) and its reverse, mesenchymal to epithelial transition (MET), occur sequentially in development and organogenesis. EMT often accompanies transitions between stem‐like cells and their more differentiated progeny, as occurs at gastrulation, although the relevance of this had not been clarified. New findings from the cancer and cell reprogramming fields suggest that EMT and MET can (...) act as essential portals to stem cell character. Here, we review these findings in the broader context of EMT and MET with emphasis on stem cell biology. Using the heart as an example, we also explore the potential role of EMT/MET in organ regeneration. Understanding EMT and MET at a network level will give us new tools to probe stem cell character and enhance tissue repair. (shrink)

Establishing and maintaining reference is a crucial part of discourse. In spoken languages, differential linguistic devices mark referents occurring in different referential contexts, that is, introduction, maintenance, and re-introduction contexts. Speakers using gestures as well as users of sign languages have also been shown to mark referents differentially depending on the referential context. This article investigates the modality-specific contribution of the visual modality in marking referential context by providing a direct comparison between sign language and co-speech gesture with speech in (...) elicited narratives. Across all forms of expression, we find that referents in subject position are referred to with more marking material in re-introduction contexts compared to maintenance contexts. Furthermore, we find that spatial modification is used as a modality-specific strategy in both DGS and German co-speech gesture, and that the configuration of referent locations in sign space and gesture space corresponds in an iconic and consistent way to the locations of referents in the narrated event. However, we find that spatial modification is used in different ways for marking re-introduction and maintenance contexts in DGS and German co-speech gesture. The findings are discussed in relation to the unique contribution of the visual modality to reference tracking in discourse when it is used in a unimodal system with full linguistic structure versus in a bimodal system that is a composite of speech and gesture. (shrink)

For humans, the ability to communicate and use language is instantiated not only in the vocal modality but also in the visual modality. The main examples of this are sign languages and gestures. Sign languages, the natural languages of Deaf communities, use systematic and conventionalized movements of the hands, face, and body for linguistic expression. Co-speech gestures, though non-linguistic, are produced in tight semantic and temporal integration with speech and constitute an integral part of language together with speech. The articles (...) in this issue explore and document how gestures and sign languages are similar or different and how communicative expression in the visual modality can change from being gestural to grammatical in nature through processes of conventionalization. As such, this issue contributes to our understanding of how the visual modality shapes language and the emergence of linguistic structure in newly developing systems. Studying the relationship between signs and gestures provides a new window onto the human ability to recruit multiple levels of representation in the service of using or creating conventionalized communicative systems. (shrink)

Gregory Vlastos claims that in the Gorgias Socrates is confident that the elenchos is the only and the final arbiter of moral truth. Traditionally, the object of elenchos has been viewed as not one of moral truth, but one of simply revealing to Socratic interlocutors confusions and muddles within themselves, thereby jarring their unquestioning adherence to some moral dogma. On Vlastos' view, however, Socrates claims that he proves by elenchos that an interlocutor's thesis is false. How can he, when in (...) point of logic all he has proved is that the thesis is inconsistent with the agreed-upon premises in that argument whose truth Socrates does not undertake to establish? While Vlastos attempts to solve what he calls "the problem of elenchos" with all the ingenuity that we have come to expect from him, I argue that there are two major obstacles in his way. First, elenchos is not the only arbiter of moral truth in the Gorgias Socrates has a number of other reasons for believing certain things, but according to Vlastos, Socrates looks to elenchos, and to nothing but that, for the truth of his beliefs. I argue that, first, Vlastos' characterization of elenchos is unsatisfactory, for on his criteria it is difficult to distinguish it from other kinds of arguments. This in turn seriously hampers a proper evaluation of elenctic arguments. I then show that at least in this dialogue Socrates has certain religious beliefs that he holds without relying on elenchos, and so elenchos is not the only avenue for acquiring moral knowledge. ;Under Vlastos' correcting lenses, Socrates emerges also as a morally upright philosopher who would never knowingly conduct fallacious arguments. I argue that Socrates cheats at elenchos, and he does so in order to win over his interlocutors. I conclude that because of certain assumptions Vlastos makes about the character of the model philosopher and the model method, he exaggerates the strength of elenchos. If I am right, the Gorgias is witness to, not the power of elenchos as Vlastos would have us believe, but its limitations. (shrink)

Divine providence is one of the most intriguing topics of today. Despite the scientific progress, individuals are aware that they cannot lead a life isolated from destiny. It is explained by social scientists from different perspectives. This study focuses on the knowledge of destiny and fatalism tendencies of people who are convicted of different crimes. The research has been conducted on 114 people who are convicted of different crimes at the General Directorate Probation in Bursa. Knowledge of destiny and fatalism (...) tendencies of convicted people have been investigated with socio-demographic variables and survey method. A direct relationship has been determined between education and economic level of convicted people as well as being happy to come to the world and being hopeful about future. An inverse relationship has been found between age and the knowledge of destiny of those people. A significant difference has been detected between the belief in fatalism and the state of violence in our study. There is destiny but not fatalism in Islam religion. The destiny belief does not eliminate responsibility of humans; rather it offers psychological wellness to people who struggle to survive in the world of difficulties. Our research aims to further demonstrate the relationship between belief in destiny and crime by means of quantitative evaluation and qualitative analysis. (shrink)

The principle of majority, which is an indispensable tool of election and decision-making in today's democracies, is one of the main indicators of its legitimacy, as well as having a superior position in the establishment and maintenance of political power. The aim of this research is to determine the relationship of the condition of “the caliph’s Quraysh” with this principle by revealing the analysis of the Islamic scholars on the importance of the majority principle in terms of establishing political power (...) and using the authority to order and prohibit. In the grounding of this aim, firstly, the dominant role of the majority in determining the political power was emphasized and the organic relationship between them was tried to be revealed, and the nature of the support provided by the majority to the administration in the use of political power authority and its effect on the possession of the means of coercion that sustain the state apparatus were examined in the light of the views of Fiqh and Kalam scholars. Then, the condition that the caliph should be from the Quraysh lineage, which has been the subject of debate since the 9th century, when the influence of non-Arab elements on the political administration became evident, was examined within the framework of the majority principle, and the evaluations of Islamic scholars about the widespread rumor that formed the basis of this were briefly examined. At the end of the study, it was concluded that Islamic scholars adopted the principle of “majority” in the establishment and maintenance of political power, and that they accepted the requirement that the caliph be Quraysh as a qualification condition, and that the narration, which is the basis of this, shows a historical and socio-political reality brought about by the conditions that emerged in a certain time period. (shrink)

Bu çalışmada, Avrupa, Avrupalılık, Avrupa fikri ve din kavramlarının açılımı ele alınacaktır. Tüm bu kavramların içinde Türkiye‘nin kendine özgü, kendi özü içinde bir baş ya da bir ada olduğu tezi savunulacaktır. Avrupalılık ve Türkiye içerikleri bakımından özdeştir. Avrupa, Avrupalılar için gerçek bir kıta ve fikirdir, ancak, kanaatimce, bu küremizdeki insanlar ve tüm canlılar için tehdit olabilecektir. Avrupa, eninde sonunda çökecektir. Avrupa‘nın çöküşü, kanaatimce, dünyamızdaki ―Öteki Başlar‖ için çok daha önemlidir. ben başka bir fikre inanıyorum, yeni bir baş, yeni bir etki (...) yeni bir yaratıcılık için. Kendine özgü Türkiye varlığı başı Tanrı adına ve tüm canlılar adına gerçekleştirecektir. Bu bağlamda din, özellikle İslam, dünyamızı anladığımız düşünme ve yaşamımıza ait olan fikir ya da kimlik için çok önemli bir faktördür. (shrink)

Modern hayatın durdurulamaz hızı karşısında insan değerleri, dünya adını alan bağımsız değer alanlarıyla özdeşleştirilebilir mi? Bu hız değer yüklü ideaları, evirerek her bir şeyi, her bir öznel çabayı ve her bir evrensel niyeti, özdeşleştirerek değersiz mi kılmaktadır? Kime ve neye göre hareket ederek hayata kendimiz olarak cevaplar sunabiliriz? Dahası hayat bizden nasıl bir cevap bekler?

Tanrı-evren ilişkisi ya da Tanrı-insan ilişkisi insanlığın dini ve felsefi düşünce serüvenini açıklama arzusu, kaçınılmaz bir problem olarak her kültürde mevcuttur. Tanrının insan ile olan bağı, salt teolojik bir sorun değil her daim hem ontolojik hem de epistemolojik bir sorundur. Teolojik sorun olması, her bir din ve o dinin nesneleştirdiği kültürün kendini tanımlama zorunluluğunun ürünüdür. Ontolojik ve epistemolojik sorun olması ise, insanın bu bağ konusunda kendisini tam olarak açıklayamasa da sürekli cevap bulma çabasını imler. Kant’ın metafizik sorular dediği durum tam (...) da bunun bir sonucunda gelinen aşamayı betimler. Biz burada bu bağı açıklamanın insan zihninin temel problemi olduğu olgusundan hareketle, İslam düşüncesinin merkezi konumunu oluşturan “besmele” üzerinden bir tanımlamayla yol almaya çalışacağız. Öncelikle Kur’an’ın epistemolojik değerini onayladığımı ve insanlığın sadece bir dönemi için değil, her bir varoluş anında bu epistemolojik yapının insanın kavrayış gücüne göre sürekliğini değerli bulduğumu söyleyeceğim. (shrink)

Her bir insan önce kendi dünyasında varoluştadır. Kendi dünyasında varoluşta olan insanın özsel ideası, onu dünya içinde zenginleşmiş ve parlayan bir merak Ben’i olarak yaşamaya ve yaşanmaya açar. Bu durum, ikinci bir dünya var eder; tüm insanlık adına gösteren ve her şeyi kendi dünyasından gösteren bir dünyadır. Bu iki dünya birbirini tamamlar. İkinci dünyanın varlık bulabilmesi birinci dünyanın varoluş serüvenine bağlıdır.

Her felsefi kongre zorunlu olarak politik bir öneme sahiptir. Bu, yalnızca felsefenin özünü her zaman politik olanın özüne bağlayan bir şey yüzünden değildir. Temel ve genel olarak, bu politik ima ona [felsefe ve politika arasındaki a priori ilişkiye] ağırlık katıyor, onu daha ciddi kılıyor ve özellikle felsefi kongre aynı zamanda uluslararası bir kongre olduğunda onun ayırıcı özelliğini de belirliyor. Uluslararası bir felsefe konferansı olasılığı sınırsız bir biçimde, farklı çizgilerle birlikte ve genelliğin birçok düzeyinde araştırılabilir. En genel anlamında böyle bir olasılık, (...) felsefenin özüne aykırı olarak, ulusal felsefelerin oluşturulduğu anlamına gelir. Belirli bir anda, belirli tarihsel, politik ve ekonomik bağlamda, bu ulusal gruplar, uluslararası toplantılar düzenlemeyi, ulusal kimlikleriyle temsil edilmeyi ve burada kendi farklılıklarını belirlemeyi ya da ilişkilendirmeyi zorunlu görmüştür. Bu tür bir farklılıklar toplantısı, bir dereceye kadar sadece öğretisel bağlam veya belli bir felsefi “üslup” tarafından tanımlanan ulusal felsefi kimliklerin öngörülmüş olduğu durumlarda gerçekleşebilir. Ancak, farklılıkların ilişkilendirilmesi de ortak bir unsuru öngörür: bir toplantı ancak tüm katılımcıların paylaştığı, bu durumda felsefi söylemin evrenselliği denilen ortak bir imge ile gerçekleşebilir. Bu kelimelerle, özüyle belirli bir dil grubu ve “kültürler” ile özdeşleştirilen bir projeden daha az bir olgu belirledim. Zira açıktır ki, bu unsurun şeffaflığının başına bir şey gelmiştir. (shrink)

İdeal vatandaşlık arayışı bir ütopya mıdır? Entelektüel kişiliklerin kendi toplumlarında yabancılık duygusu yaşaması doğal mıdır? Felsefi ve teolojik bir sorun olarak, bu meselenin klasik Müslüman felsefi metinlerinde “ada metaforu”yla tartışılması ne anlama gelmektedir? Erdemli şehir ideasına dayalı bu metinler bugün ne anlam ifade etmektedir? Bu klasik metinler, günümüzde yaşadığımız “yabancılaşma”ya karşı, bir arayış tanımlaması olarak “erdemli” ya da “entelektüel” kişilik için bir değer ifade edebilir mi?

Geçmişten edinilen bilgiler ışığında insanlık; tarih boyunca salgın hastalıklar ve doğal afetler gibi sorunlarla mücadele içine girmişlerdir. Covid-19 ise, 2019 yılı sonlarında insanlığın yüz yüze kaldığı bir diğer salgın olup; bugünün dünyasında hızla yayılmış ve pandemi niteliğine bürünmüştür. Yaşanan pandeminin etkilerine karşı sadece siyasal karar alma mekanizmalarını değil; kentlerin ve kent sakinlerinin de mücadelesini gerektirmektedir.

İnsan dost olarak kendini bilir. Bu çalışma fıtratı üzerine kendini bilme eyleminde, dost kavra-mının ‘Dost etiği’ bağlamında yerini sorgulamak olacaktır. Dostu kardeş karşılığı kullanmayı denemek istiyorum. Kardeşlik ya dost, fıtrat üzere sorumluluk bilinci olanın kendisi için insanlı-ğı görme biçiminin adıdır. Dost, nesne bir örnek olan üzerinden insanlığın kendini arayış serüve-ninde her bir anda varoluşa dahil olmanın imkanıdır. Bu çalışma dost etiği başlığıyla bu imkânı Yunus Emre üzerinden betimlemeyi amaçlamaktadır.

This paper analyzes the relationship between Business Groups as a distinct way of organizing economic activities and their relation to the public good. We first analyze the phenomenon of Business Groups and discuss some of their core features. Subsequently, the paper moves to analyzing the existing literature on Business Groups and corporate social responsibility as the most common label for the topic of this Special Issue. Subsequently, specific peculiarities of Business Groups in the context of CSR and their contribution to (...) the public good are fleshed out. Based on this analysis, the paper delineates some implications for the field of CSR and the wider debate on the nature of the firm. We close with some perspectives for future research. (shrink)

Kant’s general taxonomy of duties includes substantial claims that normatively and theoretically differentiates it from other moral theories. Basing his moral theory on a conception of Right, he also made a general classification of several duties with their corresponding moral worth. The general aim of this study is to identify the basic principles and criteria that determine Kant’s classification of duties. Another aim is to trace some implications and effects of Kant’s conception of duties in the contemporary discussion of social (...) and economic rights. We argue that the normative basis of the argument against social and economic rights is very similar to that of the principles Kant uses in his classification of duties. However, from the responsibility of the state, Kant imposes legitimate obligations over individuals, albeit indirectly. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 5, May 2022.

Visual information conveyed by iconic hand gestures and visible speech can enhance speech comprehension under adverse listening conditions for both native and non‐native listeners. However, how a listener allocates visual attention to these articulators during speech comprehension is unknown. We used eye‐tracking to investigate whether and how native and highly proficient non‐native listeners of Dutch allocated overt eye gaze to visible speech and gestures during clear and degraded speech comprehension. Participants watched video clips of an actress uttering a clear or (...) degraded (6‐band noise‐vocoded) action verb while performing a gesture or not, and were asked to indicate the word they heard in a cued‐recall task. Gestural enhancement was the largest (i.e., a relative reduction in reaction time cost) when speech was degraded for all listeners, but it was stronger for native listeners. Both native and non‐native listeners mostly gazed at the face during comprehension, but non‐native listeners gazed more often at gestures than native listeners. However, only native but not non‐native listeners' gaze allocation to gestures predicted gestural benefit during degraded speech comprehension. We conclude that non‐native listeners might gaze at gesture more as it might be more challenging for non‐native listeners to resolve the degraded auditory cues and couple those cues to phonological information that is conveyed by visible speech. This diminished phonological knowledge might hinder the use of semantic information that is conveyed by gestures for non‐native compared to native listeners. Our results demonstrate that the degree of language experience impacts overt visual attention to visual articulators, resulting in different visual benefits for native versus non‐native listeners. (shrink)