Professor Arda Denkel argues here that objects are nothing more than bundles of properties. From this point of view he tackles some central questions of ontology: how is an object distinct from others; how does it remain the same while it changes through time? A second contention is that properties are particular entities restricted to the objects they inhabit. The appearance that they exist generally, in a multitude of things, is due to the way we conceptualize them. Other problems (...) dealt with include how objects bear similarities by belonging to the same kinds, and how change in them is caused. Denkel defends a thoroughgoing particularism and offers purely qualitative accounts of individuation, identity, essences and matter. Throughout, the main alternative positions are surveyed, and the relevant historical background is traced. (shrink)

Bu çalışma Machiavelli’nin politik düşünceleri ile devlet aklı öğretisi arasında kurulan sürekliliği tartışmayı amaçlamaktadır. Machiavelli’nin teolojik ve aşkın meşruiyet unsurlarına gönderimde bulunmadan fiili güç ilişkilerini kavramaya yönelen politik öğretisi onu modern politikanın başlangıç figürü haline getirmektedir. Politikanın fiili gerçekliğiyle kavranarak ahlaki ve dinsel olan karşısında özerkleşmesi, insani etkinliği politik olanın merkezine taşımaktadır. Geleneksel yoruma göre Machiavelli’nin etik-politik görüşleriyle politikanın yapay ortaklığına dair bu vurgusu, devlet aklı kuramının klasik formülasyonunu oluşturmaktadır. Düşünürün vefatı sonrası öğretisinin bütünsel olarak Makyavelizm kavramına indirgenmesi bu kavrayışı (...) güçlendirmektedir. Ancak ahlaki ve dini olanın politika karşısında yadsınması anlamına gelen devlet aklının ilksel formları bu teorik zeminle örtüşmemektedir. On altıncı yüzyılda, devlet aklı kuramını kavramsal hale getiren Botero Machiavelli’nin öğretisiyle zıt perspektif ileri sürmektedir. Botero, Machiavelli’den farklı olarak politikanın, ahlak ve din karşısında özerkliğini sorunsallaştırır ve birbirleriyle uyumlu hale getirmeye çalışır. Çalışmamız bu doğrultuda ilk amaç olarak devlet aklı kuramının on altıncı yüzyıl bağlamında Machiavelli sonrası problematiklerini değerlendirmeyi amaçlamaktadır. İkinci bir amaç olarak bu çalışmada Machiavelli’nin devlet anlayışının, Makyavelizm ilkesi ve devlet aklı kuramıyla ilişkisi ele alınacaktır. Bu iki tartışma hattının serimlenmesi Machiavelli’nin politik öğretisinde ve yaşadığı dönem içerisinde devlet aklı kuramıyla ilgisinin düzeylerine işaret etmeye olanak sağlayacaktır. (shrink)

Analogy-making is finding analogies between different situations. In this paper, we provide a new model of computational analogy-making which uses Situation Theory as its formal background. Situation Theory is a semantic and logical theory which provides a naturalistic way to represent relations in situations. The system described in this paper is aimed at solving analogy problems made by basic geometric figures in a chessboard-like environment.

Once we assume that objects are bundles of tropes, we want to know how the latter cohere. Are they held together by a substratum, are they linked by external relations or do they cling to one another by internal relations? This paper begins by exploring the reasons for eliminating the first two suggestions. Defending that the third option can be made plausible, it advances the following thesis: Maintaining that tropes are held in a compresence by appropriately qualified internal relations avoids (...) the consequence that such properties will be essential to the object. The specific targets of the second part of the paper include, first, a more precise description of the notion of a cohesive internal relation, and second, an explanation of how alteration is possible in an object the particular properties of which hold together by qualified internal relations. (shrink)

Once we assume that objects are bundles of tropes, we want to know how the latter cohere. Are they held together by a substratum, are they linked by external relations or do they cling to one another by internal relations? This paper begins by exploring the reasons for eliminating the first two suggestions. Defending that the third option can be made plausible, it advances the following thesis: Maintaining that tropes are held in a compresence by appropriately qualified internal relations avoids (...) the consequence that such properties will be essential to the object. The specific targets of the second part of the paper include, first, a more precise description of the notion of a cohesive internal relation, and second, an explanation of how alteration is possible in an object the particular properties of which hold together by qualified internal relations. (shrink)

In this interview, Brian Massumi discusses the possibility of a collective practice of experimentation beyond the infernal alternatives between the state authoritarianism and a narrow and exclusionary notion of freedom based on the individual, reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic. This requires diagnosing the mix of forces at play, in other words, examining the interlinkages of various modes of power. Analysis of the ecology of powers then invokes a positive project that is inventing an aesthetics of the earth. An aesthetics of (...) the earth is a call for a more-than-human relational ethics, which takes place in intricate co-composition with the earth and its emergent strata of all kinds: viral, bacterial, vegetal, animal, human, technological. Thus, from the ecology of powers to an aesthetics of the earth, Massumi proposes a politics of potential that is diagnostic rather than prescriptive yet encourages experimentation towards a postcapitalist future at this critical juncture of our epoch. (shrink)

With the findings of microbiome studies, many artists have begun to focus on environments where microbe-human interactions take place. Beyond the sharp boundaries that separate human and microbe as distinct entities, they give an artistic expression to the complex symbiotic modes between them. Güneş-Helen Isitan’s work _Hybridities_: _Almost Other_ creates images of human-microbe symbiosis by mobilizing certain scientific tools and discourses and the possibilities of photographic medium. A “microbe-image” emerges as a result of multi-species interaction and is produced by traversing (...) multi-sites. Its apparatus contains its own production process as a problematic knot to be posed. This requires approaching the work with a certain ethnographic sensibility. As a result, manufacturing life through microbe-images becomes inseparable from technical, scientific, social, methodological, and philosophical issues that are weaved in _Hybridities_: _Almost Other_’s “biophotographic” apparatus. (shrink)

In _Kant on Conscience_ Emre Kazim offers the first systematic treatment of Kant’s theory of conscience. Contrary to the scholarly consensus, Kazim argues that Kant’s various discussions of conscience are philosophically coherent aspects of the same unified thing.

Prof. Berna Arda, is a graduate of Ankara University Faculty of Medicine 1987, has medical specialty and PhD degrees in History of Medicine and Ethics and, teaches at the Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine in Ankara University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey. Her main research and publication fields are science ethics, human rights, woman and bioethics, medical law, ethics education and disease concept in history of medicine. She was a visiting scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital and (...) Harvard Medical School, between February - July 2015 and a guest professor at the University College of London, History of Medicine Center, between January and June 2008. She is the founder chairperson of Turkish Bioethics Society, Member of High Disciplinary Committee of Turkish Medical Association. Governor, Vice President and Executive Committee member of World Association for Medical Law, one of the founders and the first president of International Association for Education in Ethics. (shrink)

Mellor’s theory of time includes the doctrines that (a) objectively, time does not embody tense or temporal properties other than those contained in the B-series, (b) particular objects are endurers, and (c) objectively, time does not flow. I show that these theses cannot all be true together, and that one must be rejected. Since (a) is basic to Mellor’s approach, then assuming that he would not adopt a perdurantist ontology, it follows that he should give up (c). Denying (c), however, (...) is compatible with the essentials of his position. The falsity of (c) does not imply any version of the A-theory, and the B-theory can allow for the motion of diachronically identical entities through the dates over which their careers extend. (shrink)

What gives representation its democratic essence? The recent democratic theory literature, particularly spearheaded by Nadia Urbinati, defends representative mediation as a facilitator of ongoing democratic contestation and revision. While I agree with this agonistic defence, I take issue with how Urbinati construes it. For her, representative contestation works in the teleological sense of testing opinions over time and sublimating them into ideological forms as a safeguard against the threat of immediacy. This article locates the traces of such presentism within Urbinati’s (...) own teleological framework, which I see as compromising her commitment to the agonistic vein in representative politics. When our relationship to the future is imagined from such a teleological angle, I argue, the scope of our representative options becomes significantly narrowed down and the possibility of beginning anew looks quite slim. I develop this critique by tapping into Jacques Derrida’s affirmation of untimeliness. (shrink)

This paper investigates the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC)’s treatment of legal challenges brought against Turkey’s legal responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on a detailed examination of the TCC’s institutional features, political origins and jurisprudential trajectory, and taking three politically salient judgments of the TCC concerning Turkey’s executive-dominated pandemic control as the point of departure, the paper argues that the TCC chose to exercise judicial restraint both in protecting fundamental rights and reviewing pandemic policies of the executive. It also argues (...) that the TCC’s judicial restraint during the pandemic was simply the re-manifestation of its ‘play-it-safe’ strategy — a judicial stance the TCC willingly adopted in the aftermath of the 2016 attempted coup despite possessing strong constitutional powers of judicial review, and its established attitude of assertive scrutiny in the past. From a more theoretical perspective, the analysis also explores how the passive role to which the TCC is consigned in an increasingly authoritarian regime since the 2016 failed coup relates to the global phenomenon of judicialization of authoritarian politics. (shrink)

This article considers reasons for and reasons against postulating substrata in ontology, and argues that the case against amounts to a refutation.

Publication ethics, an important subtopic of science ethics, deals with determination of the misconducts of science in performing research or in the dissemination of ideas, data and products. Science, the main features of which are secure, reliable and ethically obtained data, plays a major role in shaping the society. As long as science maintains its quality by being based on reliable and ethically obtained data, it will be possible to maintain its role in shaping the society. This article is devoted (...) to the presentation of opinions of PhD candidate students in health sciences in Ankara concerning publication ethics. The data obtained from 143 PhD students from the fields of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary reveal limited but unique experiences. It also shows that plagiarism is one of the worst issues in the publication ethics from the perspective of these young academics. (shrink)

Contains twenty-one of the papers presented at the 3rd Islam and Bioethics International Conference held April 14-16, 2010, in Manavgat, Antalya, Turkey.

This article considers reasons for and reasons against postulating substrata in ontology, and argues that the case against amounts to a refutation.

One barrier to optimal pain management in the neonatal intensive care unit is how the healthcare community perceives, and therefore manages, neonatal pain. In this paper, we emphasise that healthcare professionals not only have a professional obligation to care for neonates in the NICU, but that these patients are intrinsically worthy of care. We discuss the conditions that make neonates worthy recipients of pain management by highlighting how neonates are vulnerable to pain and harm, and completely dependent on others for (...) pain management. We argue for a relational account of ethical decision-making in the NICU by demonstrating how an increase in vulnerability and dependence may be experienced by the healthcare community and the neonate’s family. Finally, an ethical framework for decisions around neonatal pain management is proposed, focussing on surrogate decision-making and the importance of compassionate action through both a reflective and an affective empathy. As empathy can be highly motivating against pain, we propose that, in addition to educational programs that raise awareness and knowledge of neonatal pain and pain management, healthcare professionals must cultivate empathy in a collective manner, where all members of the NICU team, including parents, are compassionate decision-makers. (shrink)

Most refugees residing in the European Union (EU) do not retain their voting rights in states of origin or lack the means to exercise them effectively. Most member states of the EU do not extend voting rights to refugees. This leaves a large population of refugees residing within the borders of the EU in a unique state of disenfranchisement. In this article, I consider this problem from a democratic perspective. Should refugees in the EU have voting rights? My answer turns (...) on three aspects characterizing the circumstances of refugees: First, refugees reside in member states for an indeterminate, and typically protracted, amount of time without any exit options. Second, the political governance of the EU and its member states significantly shapes the lives of refugees. And third, refugees lack effective voting rights, and consequently, a meaningful political membership, in any political community across the world. In turn, based on an all-subjected principle of democratic inclusion, I argue that refugees should be secured state-level voting rights in member states, albeit with a condition of the period of residency. Moreover, they should have immediate voting rights at the supranational institutions of the EU such as the European Parliament. (shrink)

Functional near infrared spectroscopy has been gaining increasing interest as a practical mobile functional brain imaging technology for understanding the neural correlates of social cognition and emotional processing in the human prefrontal cortex. Considering the cognitive complexity of human-robot interactions, the aim of this study was to explore the neural correlates of emotional processing of congruent and incongruent pairs of human and robot audio-visual stimuli in the human PFC with fNIRS methodology. Hemodynamic responses from the PFC region of 29 subjects (...) were recorded with fNIRS during an experimental paradigm which consisted of auditory and visual presentation of human and robot stimuli. Distinct neural responses to human and robot stimuli were detected at the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex regions. Presentation of robot voice elicited significantly less hemodynamic response than presentation of human voice in a left OFC channel. Meanwhile, processing of human faces elicited significantly higher hemodynamic activity when compared to processing of robot faces in two left DLPFC channels and a left OFC channel. Significant correlation between the hemodynamic and behavioral responses for the face-voice mismatch effect was found in the left OFC. Our results highlight the potential of fNIRS for unraveling the neural processing of human and robot audio-visual stimuli, which might enable optimization of social robot designs and contribute to elucidation of the neural processing of human and robot stimuli in the PFC in naturalistic conditions. (shrink)

The post-modernist approach to architecture often presents tradition as a problem of image. Postmodernism prioritizes the display of stylized images of historic buildings in order to prompt one to deal primarily with the visual appeal of the historic forms rather than the experience of the buildings.

Claude Lefort’s theory of democratic indeterminacy has been an influential source among democratic theorists to demonstrate that democratic times lack absolute and determinate grounds on which to b...

The randomised controlled trial (RCT) constitutes a quantitative, comparative, controlled study of a particular treatment, and provides invaluable evidence regarding its pharmacotherapeutic efficacy. These studies are generally predicated upon the ethical principle of clinical equipoise. However, this may be insufficient to justify withholding treatment from a control group while assessing drug therapy in a potentially fatal disease. Thus, the criteria for randomisation, informed consent methodology and timing, and consideration of treatment options in such a scenario remain the province of medical (...) ethics. This paper addresses the need for an RCT of ribavirin in the treatment of Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever, and highlights underlying ethical concerns in light of the current medical, virological and ethical literature. (shrink)

In Turkey, there was no legal regulation of research on human beings until 1993. In that year “the amendment relating to drug researches” was issued. The main objectives of the regulation are to establish a central ethics committee and local ethics committees, and to provide administrative control.There are no compulsory clinical ethics lectures in the medical curriculum, so it is also proposed that research ethics committees play a central educational role by helping physicians to be aware of moral problems and (...) by contributing to the training of research teams. (shrink)

In Hegel’s philosophy, both truth and genuine freedom belong to the domain of the Idea. Life, as it is categorized in the Science of Logic, is the first form and stage of the Idea, and is therefore essential for a comprehension of truth and self-determination. In this paper, I explore why and to what extent Life is self-determining and true. Considering what Hegel considers to be the three fundamental features of all life, I explain how life is self-determining with respect (...) to its organic unity, relationship with the other, and reproductive process. I explicate how the living individual develops and sustains the collective unity of its objectivity, distinguishes itself from its other, yet sustains and regenerates itself through it, and how it raises its universal identity beyond its particular existence through reproduction. (shrink)

Parkinson's disease has long been perceived as a pure motor disorder, partly due to its initial description by James Parkinson, who suggested that "senses and intellect remain intact", and partly due to the fact that patients with PD did not survive long, before effective treatment became available. As the survival time of patients with Parkinson's disease has substantially increased due to modern treatment, it has become apparent that cognitive deficits and dementia are also frequent features, especially in elderly patients. With (...) the progression of the disease and age, dementia develops in a substantial number of patients and constitutes a major therapeutic challenge. Dementia has thus increasingly been the focus of research and practice in recent years and a large body of knowledge has been accumulated. Despite these developments there has been no single volume dedicated to this topic. This book provides an extensive overview of the current status of knowledge pertaining to cognitive impairment and dementia associated with Parkinson's disease, intended as a reference book for general neurologists, neurology residents and also those with a special interest in movement disorders. In this edited volume experts in the field describe in detail all aspects of cognitive impairment and dementia in Parkinson's disease, including epidemiology, spectrum of clinical features, pathology, neurochemistry and genetics, findings in auxiliary investigations, relation to other neurodegenerative disorders, diagnostic process and management, and rounded up by discussion of future research directions and expectations. The text is complemented and enriched with tables, figures and heavily referenced to encompass all relevant literature. (shrink)

Scholarship on the early modern practice of animal trials in Europe has grown substantially in the last few decades. After a critical literature review pointing at the shortcomings of positivist approaches and of the interpretation of the phenomenon as a purely religious practice, I present Foucauldian genealogy as a more rigorous framework for understanding the purpose this peculiar practice may have served. The benefits of adopting a Foucauldian perspective are twofold. First, it allows for a subtle functionalism that does not (...) treat this tradition as a homogeneous block. Second, it gives an opportunity to introduce the animal body into Foucault’s genealogy of power, which rather focuses on the human body and interhuman relationships. (shrink)

It can be said that both Plato's tripartite soul and Hippocrates' theory of temperament were influential in Galen's perception of ethics. In this respect, Galen, who presents a kind of composition of the effective philosophical and medical traditions of his day, is outside the tradition with his understanding of physicalist psychology. Considering the capacities of the soul as depending on the temperament of the body, Galen generally displays a deterministic attitude towards ethics, that is, the development of the soul. This (...) is because the natural and physical structure is difficult to change. On the other hand, Galen, whom we can call both a physician and a "philosophical therapist", argues that character traits (ethos) can be changed "to the extent that nature allows" through education and habituation at an early age. This article will try to determine and evaluate the possibility Galen ascribes to ethical change and development in humans in the context of character traits. (shrink)

A significant portion of philosophical questions concerning the Holocaust revolve around the problem of representation, that is, how the event can be represented in a concept or in an image, if at all. This article argues that Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956) by Alain Resnais and Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino (2009) respond to the problem of representation in an original way by challenging the conventions of their respective genre. The juxtaposition of past and present images in Nuit (...) et brouillard proposes a new form of remembering that liberates memory from the confines of the past in order not to lose sight of what is happening now. Inglourious Basterds, similarly, circumvents the problem of realistic representation by means of a counter-historical story in which Hitler is brutally killed in Paris. Pushing to the extreme the Americanisation that is typical of the Hollywood treatments of World War II, Tarantino offers a multi-layered spectacle of violence that culminates in the burning down of a film theatre as a symbol of Tarantino’s having done with representation. (shrink)

A significant portion of philosophical questions concerning the Holocaust revolve around the problem of representation, that is, how the event can be represented in a concept or in an image, if at all. This article argues that Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956) by Alain Resnais and Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino (2009) respond to the problem of representation in an original way by challenging the conventions of their respective genre. The juxtaposition of past and present images in Nuit (...) et brouillard proposes a new form of remembering that liberates memory from the confines of the past in order not to lose sight of what is happening now. Inglourious Basterds, similarly, circumvents the problem of realistic representation by means of a counter-historical story in which Hitler is brutally killed in Paris. Pushing to the extreme the Americanisation that is typical of the Hollywood treatments of World War II, Tarantino offers a multi-layered spectacle of violence that culminates in the burning down of a film theatre as a symbol of Tarantino’s having done with representation. (shrink)

Freud’s psychoanalysis of Little Hans is a defining moment in psychoanalytic theory, because it marks the first psychoanalytic attempt ever to analyze childhood as an actuality rather than a set of recollected experiences. This article aims to explain Deleuze and Guattari’s dismissal of Freud’s interpretation as an act of silencing the children that is meant to corroborate his own theories of psychosexual development and particularly the Oedipus complex. Deleuze and Guattari are not against psychoanalytic interpretation in and of itself as (...) a creative intervention into the lived actuality of the analysand, but they think that Freudian psychoanalysis misses the opportunity by tracing every aspect of individual existence back to familial figures and relationships. While Freud considers the case of Little Hans as a verification of his theory of sexuality, Deleuze and Guattari regard the case as a perfect example of how psychoanalytic suggestion often distorts the utterances of the analysand for its own interests, thereby failing altogether to grasp the logic of becoming as an escape from familial determinations. (shrink)

Küreselleşme, uluslararası politika ve terör üzerine yapılmış bilimsel bir değerlendirme.