Tarihte herhalde çok az soru Tanrı’nın varlığı sorusu kadar sık sorulmuş, çok yanıtlanmış ve verilen birbirinden farklı onca yanıta rağmen kesin bir sonuca ulaştırılamayıp tartışılmaya devam etmiştir. Yine de geçmişe dönüp baktığımızda bu soruya verilen farklı yanıtların farklı uygarlıkların inşa edilmesine, bazılarının yıkılmasına, acımasız çatışmalara ve her şeye rağmen kucaklaşmalara da vesile olduğunu görüyoruz. Tanrı var mı? Varsa onu nasıl bilebiliriz? Tanrı yoksa her şey mubah mı? İnsan aklı ilahi olanı kavrayabilir mi? Tanrı’nın varlığı ahlaklı olmanın şartı mı? Evren akıllı (...) bir tasarımcının imzasını taşıyor mu? Bu kitapta felsefeci William David Beck, bu sorulara tarihte verilen yanıtları ve bu konudaki tartışmaları ele alarak meselenin genel ve tarihsel bir tablosunu bize sunuyor. Platon, Aristoteles, Marcus Aurelius gibi Eski Yunan ve Roma düşünürlerinden Anselmus, Thomas Aquinas, Augustinus ve Yahudi-Hıristiyan geleneğine, Doğu’nun bilgelerine, İbni Rüşd, Fârâbî ve Gazzâlî gibi İslam düşünürlerinden Alvin Plantinga, Graham Oppy, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Max Tegmark gibi Batılı modern ilahiyatçılara, bilim insanlarına ve Yeni Ateizm hareketine kadar uzanan bir çizgide “Tanrı var mı?” sorusuna verilen çeşitli yanıtları ve bu yanıtlara sunulan akılcı gerekçeleri ortaya koyarak soruya felsefece bir yanıt vermenin nasıl bir iş olduğunu da gösteriyor. (shrink)

Bir şey, Tanrı onu emrettiği için mi iyidir ya da kötüdür? sorusunu merkeze alarak oluşturulan ve yakın dönem içerisinde gerek din felsefesi ve gerekse ahlak felsefesi içerisinde tartışılan konulardan biriside “İlahi Buyruk Teorisi”dir. Bu teori kısaca, ahlaki değerlerin kaynağının, Tanrı’nın buyruklarında, yani onun emir ve yasaklarında belirlendiğini açıklamaya çalışmaktadır. Eylemlerimizin iyi ya da kötü olarak nitelendirilmesinin Tanrı’nın buyruklarıyla mı, yoksa onların Tanrı’dan bağımsız, yani, kendi doğalarından mı kaynaklandığı tartışması, ilk olarak ahlak felsefesi içerisinde Platon’un “Euthyphro” diyaloğunda kendisine yer bulmuştur. Bununla (...) beraber Hristiyan teolojisi içerisinde Aziz Augustinus, Duns Scotus ve Thomas Aquinas isimler; İslam düşüncesi içerisinde ise, “Hüsün ve Kubuh” meselesi adı altında Mu’tezile, Eş’ariyye ve Matüridiyye gibi ekoller konuya dair yaklaşımlarını ortaya koymaya çalışmıştır. Son olarak daha yakın dönemde din felsefesi içerisinde Philip L. Quinn, Robert M. Adams ve Janine Marie Idziak gibi birçok isim bu teoriye yönelik kapsamlı çalışmalar ve argümanlar geliştirmiştir. (shrink)

"(...) Felsefeye ilişkin Arapça ve Fransızca bazı eserleri mütalaa ettiğim sırada felsefi terimlerin bu iki dilde tesadüf ettiğim karşılıklarını bir mecmuaya kaydetmiştim. Bunların perişan bir halde kalmasına ve sarfettiğim emeğin bu şekilde heder olmasına gönlüm razı olmadı. Gerçekten de bu konuda sarfedilen mesai öyle pek kolay feda edilecek bir şey değildi. Çünkü bu işe en evvel, felsefeyi İbn Bâcce'nin en seçkin öğrencilerinden tahsil etmiş olan meşhur Musevi hakîm Ebû İmrân Musa bin Meymun'un Delâletü'l-Hâirîn başlıklı eserinden başlamış idim. Bu kitap (...) İbrani harfleriyle, Arap dili üzere yazılmış olduğundan felsefeye ait fasıllarının Fransızca tercümesiyle tatbikinde pek ziyade güçlük çekmiş idim. Bu eser Avrupaca Guide des Égarés başlığıyla tanınıp, mütekellimlerin mezhebi hakkında en önemli bilgi kaynağı sayılmıştır. Bunu müteakiben, bir taraftan Aristoteles'in bazı eserlerini ve diğer taraftan İbn Rüşd'ün bunlardan iktibâsen yazdığı Telhîsât'ı, Kütübhâne-i Hidivî'den istinsâh ettirerek mütalaa ettim. Sonra da Şehristânî'nin Kitâbü'l-Milel ve'n-Nihal'i, Zevzenî'nin Muhtasar Târîh-i Hukemâ'sı, Fârâbî ile İbn Sînâ'nın bazı eserleri, Ebû Abdullâh el-Kâtib'in Mefâtîhu'l-Ulûm'u, İbnu'n-Nedîm Bağdâdî'nin Kitâbü'l-Fihrist'i gibi Avrupa'da basılmış birtakım nadir kitapları ve diğer birçok mantık kitaplarını gözden geçirerek, bunlardan her ne buldumsa aldım. Bu şekilde cem ettiğim kelimeler ve tabirler büyücek bir mecmua teşkil etmiş ise de bunlar mantık ve eski felsefeye ait olduğundan yeni terimlerin de karşılıklarını bulmak lazım geldi. Bu noksanı da âcizâne kütüphanemde mevcut lûgat kitaplarından Fransız ve İngiliz ve Arap ve Fars dillerine ait olan kamuslara müracaat ederek ve bunlarla maksadın temini mümkün olamadığı halde kelimelerin etimolojik anlamlarına nazaran birer tabir bulmak suretiyle mümkün mertebe ikmal etmek üzere bu Lûgatçe'nin tertip ve tanzimine başladım. Ve Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie başlığıyla yayınlanmakta olan süreli yayının bazı numaralarında, 1904 senesinden beri yer almış ve bu kere son bulmuş ise de henüz ayrıca kitap şeklinde toplanmamış olan Yeni Felsefe Lûgatçesi'ni başlıca kaynak kabul ederek, buna dâhil edilmiş olan yeni terimlerin hemen hepsini aldım. E. Goblot'nun Felsefe Lûgatçesi'yle diğer lûgatçelerde mananın açıklık kazanmasına hizmet ediyor gördüğüm özet bilgileri de ait oldukları kelimelere ilave ettim. Kısacası bu naçiz eser, diğer lûgatlerin hiçbirine henüz geçmemiş olan yeni felsefe terimlerinden başka felsefeyle ilgili olan tıp bilimine ve sosyal ve ekonomik bilimlere ait bir hayli kelimeleri de içermektedir. Bununla beraber âcizâne eserimin pek noksan olduğunu ve ancak ilim ve irfan erbabının tashih kalemleri için hazırlanmış bir müsveddecik teşkil edebileceğini itiraf ederim. Yegâne emelim mütalaa erbabına naçizâne bir hizmette bulunarak hayır ile yâd olunmaya hak kazanmaktan ibaret olduğundan görülecek hataların iyi niyetime bağışlanacağı ümidindeyim". İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul. (shrink)

After introducing Millianism and touching on two problems raised by genuinely empty names for Millianism (section I), I provide a brief exposition of the Gappy Proposition View (GPV) and of how different versions of this view can reply to the problems in question (section II). In the following sections I develop my reasons against the GPV. First, I will try to argue that apparently promising arguments for the claim that gappy propositions are propositions are not successful (section III). Then, I (...) will develop two arguments against GPs via demonstrating two odd consequences of the GPV: (a) that there can be an atomic proposition which contains other propositions that are not the semantic contents of any part of the .. (shrink)

İlahî vahyin son halkası olan Kur’ân, şirk, küfür, nifak ve zulmün her türlüsünden insanlığı kurtarmak için gönderilmiştir. Kur’ân, kendini yeni bir medeniyyet tasavvuru olarak insanlığa takdim etmiştir. Bunun için kendisine inananların, onu okuma, anlama ve hayatlarına rehber olmasını istemektedir. Müslümanlar, Kur’ân’ı sadece telaffuz ederek onun istediği bu rehberliği yerine getirmiş olamazlar. Müslümanlar, hem ellerinde bulunan Kur’ân âyetlerinden ve hem de çevrelerinde yer alan ve her gün yüz yüze kaldıkları kâinattaki âyetlerden gereğince istifade etmek zorundadırlar. Kur’ân, kendisini kabul edenlerin inanç, ibadet, (...) kişilik, kimlik, düşünce yapısı ve davranışlarının tevhide göre şekillenmesini ister. Şâyet Kur’ân’a inananların bu özelliklerinde bir değişim meydana gelmiyorsa, burada sorgulanması gereken çok ciddi problemler var demektir. Hiç kuşkusuz bugünkü Kur’ân eğitimi yöntemiyle, Kur’ân’ın istediği medeniyet seviyesini ve mü’min kişilikleri oluşturmamız mümkün değildir. Bu makalede hem Kur’ân’la olan ilişkilerimizin nasıl olması gerektiğini hem de toplumsal anlamda değişim ve dönüşümün esaslarını belirlemeye çalıştık. (shrink)

The present study discusses the action of burning the Holy Quran in Malmö, Sweden, by the Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan, in more than 300 points in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, especially in terms of evolving into social events that turned into riots and fueled Islamophobic debates. The purpose of the study will be to understand the discussion universe formed by the acceptance of the Swedish State in an Islamophobic and racist act, such as the burning of the holy book (...) by Paludan, with a high incitement and humiliating power. In the present study, which has a qualitative design, books, articles and newspapers on the subject were examined by using the document analysis method. As a result, since the motto of unlimited freedom of expression of the Scandinavian model gives the right to swear at far-right politicians, especially insulting religion, the Muslim society living in Europe has become the target of politicians with a kind of state policy armor, making them increasingly sensitive and vulnerable in the position of hate objects. In this regard, there is a need to redefine where the limits of freedom of thought must end. (shrink)

Perspectives of Islamic philosophy; articles.

We argue that the debate about the normativity of belief thesis has been hampered by the slogan, ‘belief aims at truth’. We show that the slogan provides no content to the normativity of belief. The slogan encourages formulations of the norm as a prescriptive norm. There are well-known problems with such formulations. We provide a new formulation of the thesis as a prohibitive norm. This captures the key intuition most normativists about belief want to endorse.

According to Millianism, the semantic content of a proper name is its semantic referent. Many names, however, lack semantic referent; hence, so-called ‘empty’ names. Empty names raise various problems for Millianism. T.C. Ryckman, Fred Adams, Garry Fuller, Robert Stecker, Kenneth Taylor, and Nicole Wyatt, among others, have defended Millianism against these problems by appeal to pragmatics . I introduce Millianism and the problems raised by empty names for the view, then examine Pragmatic Millianism , its strength, its varieties, and why (...) the previous arguments against PM do not succeed. I then provide my argument against PM: the view oversimplifies the complex phenomenon of association between names and descriptions. I discuss an objection to my argument and rebut that. Finally, I try to draw an outline of a positive view. (shrink)

I study definability and types in the linear fragment of continuous logic. Linear variants of several definability theorems such as Beth, Svenonus and Herbrand are proved. At the end, a partial study of the theories of probability algebras, probability algebras with an aperiodic automorphism and AL-spaces is given.

Islamism and Post-Islamism analyzes political thought in Iran since 1979. Seyed Javad Miri engages with one of the seminal thinkers in contemporary Iranian politics, Allama Jafari, on key relevant concepts.

Name der Zeitschrift: Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 2 Seiten: 189-208.

This article explores contemporary development of a minority of Muslim in the largest Muslim country Indonesia. It closely examines the minority Muslim Papuan and looks at the construction and the institutionalisation of Muslim identity in post-special autonomy of Papua. Through a series of fieldwork in Jayapura, the capital of the Papua Province, in 2016 and reviews of documents, the article argues that the Council of Papuan Muslim serves not only a the association of minority Muslim Papuan but also as a (...) political instrument for the minority to fight for equality in Papuan public sphere. Importantly, the Muslim Papuan try reconcile the popular, but contradicted, notion of Muslim -and Islam- as newcomer -if not to mention as the colonial- in Papua and the presence of Muslim as a symbolic expectation for progress of the Papuan in general. Thus, the institutionalization of Islam, through the establishment of The Majelis Muslim Papua in Papua resorts as an ample case where multiculturalism is tested in contemporary Indonesia. (shrink)

Beyond Death: The Mystical Teachings of ʿAyn al-Quḍāt al-Hamadhānī. By Firoozeh Papan-Matin. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 75. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pp. x + 242. $150.

In aesthetics/philosophy of art, Fichte did not produce works as great as Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment or Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. As a result, it was long believed that he had no role to play in the aesthetics of German idealism. Nevertheless, there are a few works in which we can identify the materials for developing an innovative philosophy of art. In this article, it is argued that Fichte takes two fundamental steps in aesthetics: 1) by transferring (...) the weight of the discussion of aesthetics to the philosophy of artistic creation, he makes, as it were, a Copernican revolution in aesthetics and thus transforms the aesthetics of taste into a philosophy of art based on the creative spirit; 2) he raises the status of aesthetics (in fact, the aesthetic sense) to the level of “a (or the) condition for the possibility of philosophy.”. (shrink)

Avicenna introduces the primary propositions as the most fundamental principles of knowledge. However, as far as we are aware, Avicenna’s primaries have not yet been independently studied. Nor do Avicenna scholars agree on how to characterize them in the language of contemporary philosophy. It is well-known that the primaries are indemonstrable; nonetheless, it is not clear what the genealogy of the primaries is, how, epistemologically speaking, they can be distinguished from other principles, what their phenomenology is, what the cause of (...) the assent to them is, how to explain the relationship between the ‘innate [nature] of the intellect’ and the primaries and, finally, back to their indemonstrability, in what sense they are ‘indemonstrable’. We will try to fill this gap. As a corollary, we will explain why Gutas’s view [Gutas, Dimitri.... (shrink)

Here I shall focus on Suhrawardi’s use and conception of ‘fiṭrī’, translated as ‘innate’ by Hossein Ziai (1990), Hossein Ziai and John Walbridge (Suhrawardi 1999), and Mehdi Aminrazavi (1997, 2003),1 and will try to make some points in passing regarding Cartesian innate ideas in relation to Suhrawardi’s fiṭrīāt. I will try to explain my understanding of Suhrawardi’s i‛tibārāt ‛aqliyya (beings of reason) and their relationship to fiṭrīāt. As a relevant issue, I will touch on Suhrawardi’s distinction between objective and intellectual (...) attributes. Considering Platonic forms as the godparents of Suhrawardi’s ‘innate’ ideas, I will end by justifying this question: Is Suhrawardi a Platonist?Let’s begin with Descartes. .. (shrink)

Following Darcy’s concession in 1901, Britain began oil exploration in the southwest of Iran. In 1908, economic oil was discovered, and the Anglo- Persian Oil Company (APOC) was established. This company from its establishment was under the influence of the British Government, to extend that, Britain became its major shareholder in 1917 which continued until the nationalization of Iran’s oil in 1951. In the meantime, the concession and following agreements prepared an almost autonomous status for the company. Generally, Iran had (...) never been a British colony, however; this status had evidence of colonialism and let the company build the artificial environment in Iran’s southwestern, based on its attitudes and values, as well as hierarchical structure, racial-class segregation, and closed society, which experts consider it as a type of social engineering. According to this, the building formed by the company could manifest the upstream ideas, specifically in towns that were completely shaped by it. Therefore, Masjed Soleyman and Abadan, the two main company towns of the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which were quite isolated from other parts of Iran, could be suitable platforms for displaying the company’s attitudes and values. Therefore, this research by interpretive-historical methodology, based on both primary and secondary sources from desk research and archival research, investigates the manifestation of the company’s attitudes and values in its quiet a half-century (1901-1951) building in Masjed Soleyman and Abadan, in five periods. These periods were shaped based on the most important happens including periods of exploration (1901-1908), formation (1908-1917), primary development (1917-1933), secondary development (1933-1939), and leading to the nationalization of oil (1939- 1951). In the first period, there is no evidence of architecture or urbanism, in the second and third periods, architecture, specifically bungalows appeared company values and in the fourth and fifth periods, urbanism especially, garden cities represented company values. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, the notion of belief is constitutively normative ; Shah ; Shah and Velleman (); Gibbard (); Wedgwood ). In a series of widely discussed papers, Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have developed an ingenious ‘Moral Twin Earth’ argument against ‘Cornell Realist’ metaethical views which hold that moral terms have synthetic natural definitions in the manner of natural kind terms. In this paper we shall suggest that an adaptation of the Moral Twin Earth argument to the doxastic (...) case – Doxastic Twin Earth – provides new evidence for the normativity of belief. (shrink)

In social systems or spaces, distance between the centre and the periphery breeds epistemic injustice. There are growing accounts of epistemic injustice in health-related fields, as in the article by Pratt and de Vries.1 The title of the article asks: ‘Where is knowledge from the global South?’ Like me, you may answer by saying: ‘Knowledge from the global South is in the global South’. That answer says a lot about how we right epistemic injustice done to actors in the global (...) South or the periphery, including in health ethics. Pratt and de Vries identified four sets of actors (individuals, institutions, journals and funders) responsible for righting epistemic injustice. For three of the four sets of actors, they recognised the need for—or the possibility of—symmetry between global North and global South. Except journals. They did not seriously consider that journals are either present in or could belong to the global South; to the periphery. Platforms for knowledge exchange, circulation, cultivation and curation—such as journals, conferences, publishers, blogs, archives, seminars, books and the media, social or traditional—are neither physically nor epistemically neutral. They are situated. The BBC cannot do for Nigeria or Australia what it does for Britain; neither can the BMJ. Many of us take our position at the centre or periphery as neutral, natural, necessary or permanent. But the African American writer Toni Morrison proved the opposite with her career: ‘I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central. l claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.’2 Although physically in the USA, Toni Morrison was writing …. (shrink)

The nomination of candidate genes underlying complex traits is often focused on genetic variations that alter mRNA abundance or result in non‐conservative changes in amino acids. Although inconspicuous in complex trait analysis, genetic variants that affect splicing or RNA editing can also generate proteomic diversity and impact genetic traits. Indeed, it is known that splicing and RNA editing modulate several traits in humans and model organisms. Using high‐throughput RNA sequencing (RNA‐seq) analysis, it is now possible to integrate the genetics of (...) transcript abundance, alternative splicing (AS) and editing with the analysis of complex traits. We recently demonstrated that both AS and mRNA editing are modulated by genetic and environmental factors, and potentially engender phenotypic diversity in a genetically segregating mouse population. Therefore, the analysis of splicing and RNA editing can expand not only the regulatory landscape of transcriptome and proteome complexity, but also the repertoire of candidate genes for complex traits. (shrink)

The normativity of mental content thesis appears to have been the most influential in contemporary philosophy of mind. Paul Boghossian (2003, 2005) has developed an argument for the normativity of mental content on the basis of two premises, i.e. firstly, the normativity of the notion of belief and secondly, the priority of the notion of belief to the notion of desire. In his recent article Alexander Miller (2008) has criticised Boghossian’s argument for the normativity of mental content. To make the (...) objection against the normativity of content, Miller has argued that the second premise of Boghossian’s argument is since belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. My purpose in this paper is to show that content normativity thesis prevails Miller's attack. In order to establish the claim I will argue that content is normative even if belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. (shrink)

Kripke uses a fictional skeptical character in order to review and refuses “cognitive meaning” theory. According to this theory, the propositions which contain reference to the meaning show the state of mind of belief which is a correct state of mind. In order to challenge this theory, Kripke uses another theory which is known as “Normativity of meaning” in philosophic literature. According to the latter theory, meaning of a word limits its application in a normative way; for example, if I (...) use ‘table’, I mean table, then I should use this word for the things which are really table. On the other hand, in meta-ethics, there is a famous argument named “motivational introversion argument”, presented by Michael Smith, whose purpose is to reject “moral cognitivism”, the sentences which include references to moral concepts in an action show state of mind of belief which is a correct state of mind. The following article is going to discuss the possibility of the developing of Michael Smith’s motivational introversion argument into the sphere of meaning. In other words, this paper is a comparative study of fields of meta-ethics and philosophy of language, i.e. it examines whether there can be an argument similar to Michael Smith’s so that one can come to reject meaningful cognitivism. (shrink)

U radu se najprije razmatra značaj Nietzscheovih ideja za genezu i razvoj književnoteorijskih koncepcija Harolda Blooma, pri čemu je najveća pažnja posvećena revizionističkim temeljima ideje »straha od utjecaja«, kao i Bloomovoj polemici s onim suvremenim teorijskim orijentacijama koje je objedinio pežorativnom oznakom »škola resantimana«. Potom se pojedini elementi Bloomove poetike sučeljavaju s ničeanskim naslijeđem prisutnim kod dvojice filozofa, Michela Foucaulta i Richarda Rortyja, da bi se ukazivanjem na sličnosti i razlike – ali i na stavove koje su o naznačenim pitanjima (...) zauzeli autori poput Gillesa Deleuza i Paula de Mana – potvrdilo kako Nietzscheovo djelo, pored ostalog i zahvaljujući mogućnostima različite interpretacije, posjeduje ona svojstva koja Bloom naziva »kanonskima «. (shrink)

I focus on an overlooked aspect of the challenge of irrelevant influences. The challenge is often framed in terms of whether recognizing the presence of irrelevant factors in the pedigree of a belief provides a defeater. I argue that the epistemic significance of irrelevant factors goes beyond their status as defeaters. I focus on what I call gray cases, where learning about such factors causes epistemic worry without justifying giving up the belief. I argue that in gray cases, the subject (...) finds a commendatory epistemic practical reason to engage in an activity intended to assuage that epistemic worry. (shrink)

Moral contextualism about “ought”-sentences is a semantic thesis that takes the content of moral “ought” to be a function of contextually relevant parameters. I aim to provide a theory of OUGHT-judgments at the level of thought that supplements the contextualist understanding of moral “ought”-sentences. To this aim, I suggest understanding the concept of ought as an indexical concept for which a phenomenological profile plays an extension-fixing role. Then, I will argue how my suggested view can provide a theory of OUGHT-judgments (...) that is in harmony with moral contextualism. (shrink)

Philosophical study of faith in God, nature, universe, etc., with special reference to Islam.

I present a puzzle regarding the norms of disagreement and inquiry. The puzzle mainly concerns a special type of peer disagreement that I call “mild disagreement”, in which the parties to the disagreement believe a proposition but with different degrees of confidence. The puzzle is best formulated as an inconsistent triad: (NJ1) The state of mild disagreement provides the involved parties with no epistemic reason to drop their belief regarding the disputed judgment. (NJ2) The state of mild disagreement provides a (...) practical reason for the involved parties to launch an inquiry into the disputed judgment. (NJ3) If the state of disagreement provides a reason to launch an inquiry into the disputed judgment, the involved parties have a reason to drop their belief regarding the disputed judgment. After discussing some possible responses to the puzzle, I offer my own solution, which involves introducing a new take on how to understand inquiry. This new take on the nature of inquiry can provide us with an alternative to the influential account recently defended by Jane Friedman. (shrink)

Millianism is the view that the semantic content of a proper name is its semantic referent. Empty names, names with no semantic referents, raise various problems for Millianism. To solve these problems, many have appealed to pragmatics, thus ‘Pragmatic Millianism’. Pragmatic Millianism employs the relation of association between names and descriptions as well as some pragmatic processes to substitute empty names with descriptions associated with. The resultant content should account for the intuitions raised by utterances of sentences containing empty names. (...) Here, I will try to argue against this picture: Names are associated with descriptions of different kinds in a number of ways. The complex nature of this relation is overlooked by Pragmatic Millianism. Neither the relation of association nor the pragmatic processes responsible for substituting a description or a cluster of descriptions for an empty name guarantee the fullness of what is pragmatically imparted. The moral is this: Regarding empty names, Pragmatic Millianism should be avoided. (shrink)

The ultraproduct construction is generalized to p‐ultramean constructions () by replacing ultrafilters with finitely additive measures. These constructions correspond to the linear fragments of continuous logic and are very close to the constructions in real analysis. A powermean variant of the Keisler‐Shelah isomorphism theorem is proved for. It is then proved that ‐sentences (and their approximations) are exactly those sentences of continuous logic which are preserved by such constructions. Some other applications are also given.

To a greater extent than in other technical domains, research and progress in Artificial Intelligence has always been entwined with the fictional. Its language echoes strongly with other forms of cultural narratives, such as fairytales, myth and religion. In this essay we present varied examples that illustrate how these analogies have guided not only readings of the AI enterprise by commentators outside the community but also inspired AI researchers themselves. Owing to their influence, we pay particular attention to the similarities (...) between religious language and the way in which the potential advent of greater than human intelligence is presented contemporarily. We then move on to the role that fiction, science fiction most of all, has historically played and is still playing in the discussion of AI by influencing researchers and the public, shifting the weights of different scenarios in our collectively perceived probability space. We sum up by arguing that the lore surrounding AI research, ancient and modern, points to the ancestral and shared human motivations that drive researchers in their pursuit and fascinate humanity at large. These points of narrative entanglement where AI meets the wider culture should serve to amplify the call to engage ourselves with the discussion of the potential destination of this technology. (shrink)