Western liberal democracies tend to impose duties on public and private bodies that are often formulated as an obligation not to discriminate. For instance, the European Union prohibits direct and indirect discrimination on certain grounds in certain contexts. Under this model, indirect discrimination involves a measure that, although it does not directly (i.e. explicitly) discriminate on the basis of a proscribed ground, produces a disparate impact that correlates with such a proscribed ground. Indirect discrimination is generally viewed, both conceptually and (...) politically, as subordinate to direct discrimination. Professor John Gardner has argued that anti-discrimination law is justified on the basis of duties to respect other people's autonomy. On the base of this analysis, he argues that indirect discrimination is a secondary concept to the paradigm wrong of direct discrimination. I contend in this article that, if one adopts Gardner's autonomy-based analysis of anti-discrimination law, indirect discrimination is not a secondary concept to direct discrimination. Further, I argue that autonomy does not provide a convincing justification for the prohibition of either direct or indirect discrimination. I tentatively suggest, however, that the widespread impact of certain types of discrimination (alluded to by Gardner) may support an equality-based justification for the prohibition of both direct and indirect discrimination. (shrink)

I argue that Quine’s early critique of Carnap’s conventionalism is in serious tension with the holism of "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", since his critique of convention- alism makes a compelling case for a privileged status either for logic, or for some other principle by means of which to derive consequences. Based on this, I call for a modification of Quinean holism, on grounds internal to Quine’s views. The result motivates a rehabilitation of Carnap’s notion of framework principles, and a rethinking (...) of logic as a kind of relativised a priori. (shrink)

The paper examines the interrelationship between mathematics and logic, arguing that a central characteristic of each has an essential role within the other. The first part is a reconstruction of and elaboration on Paul Bernays’ argument, that mathematics and logic are based on different directions of abstraction from content, and that mathematics, at its core it is a study of formal structures. The notion of a study of structure is clarified by the examples of Hilbert’s work on the axiomatization of (...) geometry and Hilbert et al.’s formalist proof theory. It is further argued that the structural aspect of logic puts it under the purview of the mathematical, analogously to how the deductive nature of mathematics puts it under the purview of logic. This is then linked, in the second part, to certain aspects of Gödel’s critique of Carnap’s conventionalism, that ‘mere syntax’ cannot capture the full content of mathematics, which is revealed to be closely related to the characteristic of mathematics argued for by Bernays. Finally, this is connected with Gödel’s latter-day views about two kinds of formality, intensional and extensional, and the relationship between them. (shrink)

This essay suggests that Continental Studies of Evil need a more global approach in thinking about political evils of today. Highlighting the need for a more comparative and global perspective, I explore two proposals: first, the in-between space of the geographical binaries of East/West and Global South/Global North cultivates many political evils. Second, taking issue with the conviction in Continental philosophy that the Holocaust caused a rupture in the thinking of evil, I argue for the continuity of evils and characterize (...) the insistence on the unprecedented character of the Holocaust as an example of Eurocentrism. (shrink)

It is a widely held view that lying is defined in the traditional tripartite model as the conjunction of a statement, the false belief, and the intended deception. Much of the criticisms have been levelled at the third condition—intended deception—with contemporary counterexamples. My main criticism of the traditional and contemporary model of lying centres on that philosophers discard the social existence of the hearer. Schutz‘s phenomenological sociology gives a sheer inspiration to redefine the third condition by taking the hearer as (...) a consciously social being into account. Lying should be an intersubjective action for the Other from the perspective of the liar; it might be, thus, reasonable to assume that there should be commonsense awareness between the speaker and the hearer. This paper, by focusing on this commonsenseness and its typifications, introduces a new approach to the third condition: S must intend that H be induced to believe that p, where p is false. In this regard, once you lie, by being subjected to the taken-for-granted commonsenseness in our daily life, you must try as hard as possible to succeed in deceiving the hearer by stating that p. You, as a typical person, tell a typical lie in typical contexts for typical Others. The focus of attention, therefore, is on the hearer and it is the key to understanding that mere intent to deceive is too broad and unpragmatic for a social human being who always intends to flee the negative consequences of the context in which she has to lie. Making the extension narrower necessitates a new term, anti-social bullshit generally being replied rhetorically as "how can you expect me to believe that?" comprises the excluded cases. (shrink)

The scholarship on Frantz Fanon’s theorization of violence is crowded with interpretations that follow the Arendtian paradigm of violence. These interpretations often discuss whether violence is instrumental or non-instrumental in Fanon’s work. This reading, I believe, is the result of approaching Fanon through Hannah Arendt’s framing of violence, i.e. through a binary paradigm of instrumental versus non-instrumental violence. Even some Fanon scholars who question Arendt’s reading of Fanon, do so by employing a similar binary logic, hence repeating the same either/or (...) paradigm of instrumental versus non-instrumental violence. I aim to challenge such interpretations of Fanon by demonstrating that in the context of anticolonial armed struggle in which Fanon writes, the either/or framework of the instrumental/non-instrumental binary of violence cannot fully capture his perspective. Violence can indeed be conceived as having both constructive and instrumental aspects. My argument is supported by Fanon’s corpus, including his 1960 Accra speech, “Why We Use Violence” in Alienation and Freedom. This piece, I suggest, together with Fanon’s other writings, poses a direct challenge to the Arendtian binary of violence. My analysis resists positioning the difference between Arendt and Fanon through the instrumental/non-instrumental binary. By using Judith Butler’s notion of “frame” I complicate their difference and argue Arendt’s framing of violence prevents her from apprehending Fanon and – more importantly – interpretations of Fanon based on this Arendtian frame of violence inevitably lead to misinterpretations. (shrink)

In this dissertation I defend a Kantian notion of the given. I show that something akin to Kant's theory of intuition is necessary to make sense of the normative role perception has in forming perceptual knowledge. ;Perceptual judgments require guidance from the objects they represent. I argue that this normative aspect of perception can be explained only by appeal to a non-conceptual content caused by the object perceived. But isn't this to appeal to the mythical given? I show that it (...) is not by comparing it to the result of Sellars' famous Myth of the Given argument. Contrary to the generally accepted view, what follows from Sellars' argument is not that the given is a myth, but rather that what is immediately present to mind cannot be known. This result leaves an explanatory option which the Sellars' critique does not consider. The given might be a part of knowledge while not itself being independently knowable. ;However, because the possibility of an immediate cognitive content is thought to have been foreclosed by the Sellars argument, much subsequent epistemology has overlooked this alternative. One widespread response has been to embrace coherence theories according to which justification is regarded as a relation between beliefs. These theories regard perception as a thoroughly causal phenomenon and consequently allow no role for perception in the justification of perceptual or other beliefs. ;I argue that in perceptual contexts only perception can decide the case between equally coherent conceptual determinations. But according to the coherentist this kind of justificatory function could not involve perception since perception is a thoroughly causal phenomenon. Against this view, I argue that some notion of the given, one which circumvents Sellars' criticism, is necessary to account for the normative role perception plays in perceptual belief. I show that Kant's notion of sensible intuition circumvents the Sellars critique. The idea of the given is redeemed in Kant's account, since it makes possible a theory of the normative role that perception plays in knowledge. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics VII Aristotle describes akrasia as a disposition. Taking into account that it is a disposition, I argue that akrasia cannot be understood on an epistemological basis alone, i.e., it is not merely a problem of knowledge that the akratic person acts the ways he does, but rather one is akratic due to a certain kind of habituation, where the person is not able to activate the potential knowledge s/he possesses. To stress this point, I focus on the (...) gap between potential knowledge and its activation, whereby I argue that the distinction between potential and actual knowledge is at the center of the problem of akrasia. I suggest that to elaborate on this gap, we must go beyond the limits of Nicomachean Ethics to Metaphysics IX, where we find Aristotle’s discussion of the distinction between potentiality and actuality. I further analyze the gap between potential and actual knowledge by means of Aristotle’s discussion of practical syllogism, where I argue that akrasia is a result of a conflict in practical reasoning. I conclude my paper by stressing that for the akratic person the action is determined with respect to the conclusion of the practical syllogism, where the conclusion is produced by means of a ‘conflict’ between the universal opinion which is potential and the particular opinion which is appetitive. (shrink)

The racist killing of Georg Floyd in the Summer of 2020 created waves of protests not only in the U.S. but all over the globe. In Turkey, my home country, there were also street demonstrations that demanded justice for Floyd, but “Twitter activism” was more popular. Turkish-speaking-twitter became a hotbed for condemnations. Amidst an array of tweets condemning Floyd’s racist killing, one stood out and made it to the headlines of alternative media outlets. A former official of the authoritarian Turkish (...) government, Yusuf Yerkel, wrote the following tweet in Turkish on June 5, 2020, in response to Floyd’s racist killing; here, I provide an English translation of his infamous tweet (the Turkish original of which is still available on Yerkel’s account on Twitter): “The reason that protests grew to this extent in the U.S. seems to be based on a phenomenon, in H. Arendt’s terms, ‘banality of evil,’ which has become evident in the face of Floyd’s murder. An ordinary White cop’s atrocity as an “everyday job” was the tipping point.” Yerkel herein uses Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil (see esp. p. 287 of the book) to describe Derek Chauvin’s atrocious act, where the evil of racist police violence has become ordinary, banal, and “every day.”. (shrink)

The racist killing of Georg Floyd in the Summer of 2020 created waves of protests not only in the U.S. but all over the globe. In Turkey, my home country, there were also street demonstrations that demanded justice for Floyd, but “Twitter activism” was more popular. Turkish-speaking-twitter became a hotbed for condemnations. Amidst an array of tweets condemning Floyd’s racist killing, one stood out and made it to the headlines of alternative media outlets. A former official of the authoritarian Turkish (...) government, Yusuf Yerkel, wrote the following tweet in Turkish on June 5, 2020, in response to Floyd’s racist killing; here, I provide an English translation of his infamous tweet (the Turkish original of which is still available on Yerkel’s account on Twitter): “The reason that protests grew to this extent in the U.S. seems to be based on a phenomenon, in H. Arendt’s terms, ‘banality of evil,’ which has become evident in the face of Floyd’s murder. An ordinary White cop’s atrocity as an “everyday job” was the tipping point.”. (shrink)

Since 2001, Continental philosophical studies of evil suggest that we are forced to rethink the category of evil as we face acts of terrorism on a global scale. In light of this suggestion, this article traces the idea of the “inscrutability of evil” as a common lens through which we associate the category of evil with the phenomena we identify as evil. This idea finds its first modern formulation in Kant’s theory of radical evil. I argue that Hannah Arendt and (...) Emmanuel Levinas follow Kant in identifying evil as an inscrutable phenomenon. While they all agree that evil cannot be rationalized, integrated into reason, or understood within the framework of theodicy, for Kant, evil is inscrutable because it is grounded in freedom; for Arendt, evil is inscrutable because it is “banal;” and for Levinas, evil is inscrutable because it is “excessive” and “useless.” My analysis demonstrates that inscrutability is an essential marker of the concept of evil since it is found in all three accounts as a feature of evil, even though in each account a different type of evil is at stake (moral, political, and existential). (shrink)

What sorts of harms arising from changes now occurring in the Arctic are actionable, and who can and should take the actions required to respond to these harms?

Dori's narrative is a heart-touching and zany blend of actual events in the life of a young Boxer. With edgy charm, she takes us on a romp through her world in such a way we can't help but reconsider our lives. Through her we get a dog's-eye view on human exploitation of animals. This unique approach is hauntingly effective.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 1 Seiten: 138-154.

A compact, coherent introduction to the study of rational belief, this text provides points of entry to such areas of philosophy as theory of knowledge, methodology of science, and philosophy of language. The book is accessible to all undergraduates and presupposes no philosophical training.

Things and Their Place in Theories Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and ...

Our only channel of information about the world is the impact of external forces on our sensory surfaces. So says science itself. There is no clairvoyance. How, then, can we have parlayed this meager sensory input into a full-blown scientific theory of the world? This is itself a scientific question. The pursuit of it, with free use of scientific theory, is what I call naturalized epistemology. The Roots of Reference falls within that domain. Its more specific concern, within that domain, (...) is reference to concrete and abstract objects: what such reference consists in, and how we achieve it. (shrink)