Are there practical reasons for and against belief? For example, do the practical benefits to oneself or others of holding a certain belief count in favor of that belief? I argue "No." My argument involves considering how practical reasons for belief, if there were such things, would combine with other reasons for belief in order to determine all-things-considered verdicts, especially in cases involving equally balanced reasons of either a practical or an epistemic sort.

It has been claimed that the recent wave of neuroscientific research into the physiological underpinnings of our moral intuitions has normative implications. In particular, it has been claimed that this research discredits our deontological intuitions about cases, without discrediting our consequentialist intuitions about cases. In this paper I demur. I argue that such attempts to extract normative conclusions from neuroscientific research face a fundamental dilemma: either they focus on the emotional or evolved nature of the psychological processes underlying deontological intuitions, (...) in which case the arguments rely on a blatantly fallacious inference, or they appeal to the (alleged) moral irrelevance of the factors to which deontological intuitions respond, in which case the neuroscientific results end up playing no role in the overall argument. (shrink)

Suppose we grant that evolutionary forces have had a profound effect on the contours of our normative judgments and intuitions. Can we conclude anything from this about the correct metaethical theory? I argue that, for the most part, we cannot. Focusing my attention on Sharon Street’s justly famous argument that the evolutionary origins of our normative judgments and intuitions cause insuperable epistemological difficulties for a metaethical view she calls "normative realism," I argue that there are two largely independent lines of (...) argument in Street’s work which need to be teased apart. The first of these involves a genuine appeal to evolutionary considerations, but it can fairly easily be met by her opponents. The second line of argument is more troubling; it raises a significant problem, one of the most difficult in all of philosophy, namely how to justify our reliance on our most basic cognitive faculties without relying on those same faculties in a question-begging manner. However, evolutionary considerations add little to this old problem, and rejecting normative realism is not a way to solve it. (shrink)

The linchpin of Williamson (2000)'s radically externalist epistemological program is an argument for the claim that no non-trivial condition is luminous—that no non-trivial condition is such that whenever it obtains, one is in a position to know that it obtains. I argue that Williamson's anti-luminosity argument succeeds only if one assumes that, even in the limit of ideal reflection, the obtaining of the condition in question and one's beliefs about that condition can be radically disjoint from one another. However, no (...) self-respecting defender of the luminosity of the mental would ever make such an assumption. Thus Williamson can only secure his controversial claims in epistemology by taking for granted certain equally controversial claims in the philosophy of mind. What emerges is that the best bet for defending an internalist epistemology against Williamson's attack is to take there to be a tight, intimate connection between (to take one example) our experiences and our beliefs upon reflection about the obtaining of those experiences, or between (to take another example) the rationality of our beliefs and our beliefs upon reflection about the rationality of those beliefs. (shrink)

Quasi-realists aim to account for many of the trappings of metanormative realism within an expressivist framework. Chief among these is the realist way of responding to the Euthyphro dilemma: quasi-realists want to join realists in being able to say, "It’s not the case that kicking dogs is wrong because we disapprove of it. Rather, we disapprove of kicking dogs because it’s wrong." However, the standard quasi-realist way of explaining what we are up to when we assert the first of these (...) two sentences rests on a mistaken identification of metaphysical dependence (or grounding) with counterfactual covariation. This chapter proposes a better way for expressivists to understand such sentences, on which they serve to express complex states of mind in which an attitude bears a relation of psychological dependence (or basing) to another state of mind. It is argued that this proposal is a natural, versatile, and fruitful approach for expressivists to take that helps them secure the first half of the Euthyphro contrast—but at the cost of making it difficult to see how expressivists can make sense of that contrast’s second half. (shrink)

I argue—contra moderate grounding pluralists such as Kit Fine and more extreme grounding pluralists such as Jessica Wilson—that there is fundamentally only one grounding/in-virtue-of relation. I also argue that this single relation is indispensable for normative theorizing—that we can’t make sense of, for example, the debate over consequentialism without it. It follows from what I argue that there is no metaethically-pure normative ethics.

When it comes to epistemic normativity, should we take the good to be prior to the right? That is, should we ground facts about what we ought and ought not believe on a given occasion in facts about the value of being in certain cognitive states (such as, for example, the value of having true beliefs)? The overwhelming answer among contemporary epistemologists is “Yes, we should.” This essay argues to the contrary. Just as taking the good to be prior to (...) the right in ethics often leads one to sanction implausible trade-offs when determining what an agent should do, so too, this essay argues, taking the good to be prior to the right in epistemology leads one to sanction implausible trade-offs when determining what a subject should believe. Epistemic value—and, by extension, epistemic goals—are not the explanatory foundation upon which all other normative notions in epistemology rest. (shrink)

A quasi-sequel to "Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions." Covers some of the same ground, but also extends the basic argument in an important way.

Teknoloji ve medya araçlarının gelişmesi ve farklılaşmasıyla birçok yeniliğin hayatlarımıza girdiğine, buna bağlı olarak markaların da reklam ve pazarlama stratejilerini değiştirdiklerine tanık olmaktayız. Geleneksel reklamcılık anlayışının haricinde son zamanlarda sosyal medya ortamlarında sıklıkla gördüğümüz ve markaların önemli yatırım bütçeleri ayırdığı influencer reklamcılık/pazarlama içerikleri hatırı sayılır bir şekilde çocukları ve ergenleri de hedeflemektedir. Bununla birlikte ergenlerin influencer pazarlama/reklamcılık karşısında reklam okuryazarlık becerilerini nasıl işe koştukları hakkındaki mevcut duruma ilişkin bilgimiz sınırlıdır. Bu çalışma, ergenlerin bilişsel, duygusal ve ahlaki reklam okuryazarlığı becerilerinin influencer (...) pazarlama/reklamcılığın ikna edici doğasıyla mücadelede nasıl kullandığını anlamak amacıyla yürütülmüştür. Yorumlayıcı nitel bir metodolojiyi benimseyen çalışmanın verileri 15-17 yaşları arasındaki ergen katılımcılardan yarı yapılandırılmış görüşmeler yoluyla elde edilmiştir. Yönlendirilmiş niteliksel içerik analiziyle irdelenen verilerden ulaşılan bulgular, ergenlerin bilişsel reklam okuryazarlığı becerilerinin gelişmiş olmasına karşın influencerlarla kurdukları parasosyal ilişkinin duygusal ve ahlaki reklam okuryazarlık becerilerinin devreye alınmasını engelleyebileceğini göstermektedir. (shrink)

Bu çalışmada İslam düşünce tarihinde çokça ele alınan yönetime gelmede “nass ile tayin” anlayışına yönelik genelde Mu‘tezile’nin özelde ise bir Mu‘tezilî âlim Ebû Tâhir Rüknüddin et-Tureysisî’nin eleştirileri konu edinilmektedir. “Nass ile tayin” anlayışı Kur’ân âyetleri ve hadisler üzerinden temellendirilmeye çalışılan bir husustur. Şii çevrelerle özdeşleşen bu anlayış bazı Sünnî ekollerde de dillendirilmiştir. Genelde dördüncü halife Ali’nin imâmeti çerçevesinde konu tartışılsa da bazı çevrelerde birinci halife Ebû Bekir’in imâmeti için de nass ile tayin iddia edilmiştir. Mu‘tezile temelde Şîa’nın imâmet anlayışına birçok (...) eleştiri yöneltmiştir. Bu iddialar doğrudan Kur’ân metni üzerinden yapıldığı için âyetler bağlamında yeniden konunun değerlendirilmesi gerekmektedir. Bu noktada Mu‘tezilî bilgin Tureysisî’nin yaklaşımı önem arz etmektedir. O, mezheplerin görüşlerini temellendirmede esas aldıkları âyetleri dilin ve aklın sınırında anlama çabası içerisinde olduğu Müteşâbihü’l-Kur’ân adlı eserinde “nass ile tayin” fikrine yönelik eleştirilerini sürdürmektedir. Hem İmâmiyye’nin hem de Bekriyye’nin iddialarını âyetler bağlamında ele almakta ve bu fırkaları tenkid etmektedir. (shrink)

Kur’ân ve hadislerde geçen müteşâbih ifadelerin nasıl anlaşılacağına dair kelâm geleneğinde ciddi tartışmalar yaşanmış ve farklı ekollere mensup âlimler tarafından birçok eser yazılmıştır. Mâtürîdî bir âlim olan Nâsırüddîn es-Semerkandî de bu çalışmada tenkitli neşri sunulan Fethu’l-ğalak fi’t-tevhîd adlı eseri kaleme almıştır. Günümüze ulaşan Arapça elyazması Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi Fatih koleksiyonunda 3142 demirbaş numarasıyla bulunmaktadır. Bildiğimiz kadarıyla bu alanda müstakil olarak kaleme alınmış olup günümüze ulaşan tek Mâtürîdî eser olma özelliğine sahiptir. Akıl ve şeriatten hareketle yapılması gerektiğini savunduğu te’vîlin belirli ilkeler çerçevesinde (...) özellikle de luğavî anlamın dışına çıkmadan müteşâbih ifadelerin muhkemlere hamlederek yapılması gerektiğini belirtmektedir. Bu noktada çizdiği çerçevede olmayan ve uç noktalar olarak gördüğü Bâtinîlerin ve Hanbelîlerin te’vîl anlayışlarını da eleştirmektedir. Müteşâbih ifadeleri te'vîl etmeyi uygun gören Mâtürîdî-Hanefî geleneğin yaklaşımını ortaya koymasının yanında geç bir dönemde yazılan eser bu konuda ele alınan ifadelerin yorumuna dair zengin ve bilgilendirici bir içerik sunmakta ve müteşâbihlerin bütünsel anlaşılması yönünde imkân sağlamaktadır. Bu çalışma kapsamında müteşâbihe dair bir giriş, es-Semerkândî’nin hayatı ve eserin tenkitli neşri dikkatlere sunulacaktır. (shrink)

Moral properties are explained by other properties. And moral principles tell us about moral properties. How are these two ideas related? In particular, is the truth of a given moral principle part of what explains why a given action has a given moral property? I argue “No.” If moral principles are merely concerned with the extension of moral properties across all possible worlds, then they cannot be partial explainers of facts about the instantiation of those properties, since in general necessitation (...) does not suffice for explanation. And if moral principles are themselves about what explains the moral properties under their purview, then by their own lights they are not needed in order to explain those moral properties’ instantiation—unless, that is, the principles exhibit an objectionable form of metaphysical circularity. So moral principles cannot explain why individual actions have moral properties. Nor, I also argue, can they explain why certain other factors explain why those actions have the moral properties that they do, or in some other way govern or mediate such first-order explanations of particular moral facts. When it comes to the explanation of an individual action’s specific moral features, moral principles are explanatorily idle. (shrink)

Cohen and Meskin 2006 recently offered a counterfactual theory of information to replace the standard probabilistic theory of information. They claim that the counterfactual theory fares better than the standard account on three grounds: first, it provides a better framework for explaining information flow properties; second, it requires a less expensive ontology; and third, because it does not refer to doxastic states of the information-receiving organism, it provides an objective basis. In this paper, I show that none of these is (...) really an advantage. Moreover, the counterfactual theory fails to satisfy one of the basic properties of information flow, namely the Conjunction principle. Thus, I conclude, there is no reason to give up the standard probabilistic theory for the counterfactual theory of information. (shrink)

Once upon a time, coherentism was the dominant response to the regress problem in epistemology, but in recent decades the view has fallen into disrepute: now almost everyone is a foundationalist (with a few infinitists sprinkled here and there). In this paper, I sketch a new way of thinking about coherentism, and show how it avoids many of the problems often thought fatal for the view, including the isolation objection, worries over circularity, and concerns that the concept of coherence is (...) too vague or metaphorical for serious theoretical use. The key to my approach is to take a familiar tool from discussions of the regress problem -- namely, directed graphs depicting the support relations between beliefs -- and to use that tool in a more sophisticated manner than it is standardly employed. (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 90, Issue 1, Page 183-185, March 2012.

Moral particularists argue that because reasons for action are irreducibly context-dependent, the traditional quest in ethics for true and exceptionless moral principles is hopelessly misguided. In making this claim, particularists assume a general framework according to which reasons are the ground floor normative units undergirding all other normative properties and relations. They then argue that there is no cashing out in finite terms either (i) when a given non-normative feature gives rise to a reason for or against action, or (ii) (...) how the reasons that are present in a given context play off each other to determine one’s overall duties. However, the conjunction of these two theses leaves particularists without a coherent notion of a reason for action: posit too much irreducible context-dependence in the behavior of reasons, and the reasons-based framework breaks down. One upshot is that the particularists’ challenge to principle-based approaches to ethics has not, at present, been successfully made out; another upshot is that perhaps the best way to formulate that challenge involves renouncing the reasons-based framework all together. (shrink)

One of the issues discussed about the subject of faith in divine scripture is the preservation of the revelation. For instance, is "the preservation of revelation" possible both in terms of the Qurʾān and previous texts of revelation? What are the reasons for its possibility or impossibility with reference to the historical and sociological reality? If protection is possible, is its source the divine authority or human elements? If the divine authority is dominant, did this authority only manifest itself in (...) the Qurʾān? Could the Qurʾān be different in this respect than the previous holy books? Likewise, the recognition that the Qurʾān has survived to the present day without any changes or distortion since its revelation leads to the question of why other books lacked this quality. The answers for this question are based on the argument that the Qurʾān, unlike other holy scripts, is "under divine protection"; therefore, it is not possible to change or distort it. Thus, the study first briefly discusses issue of whether the Torah, Psalms and the Gospel preserved their originality and then draws attention to the Qurʾān. Although the protection of the authenticity of the Qurʾān is beyond dispute, the nature of this preservation and what stages it covers are controversial. In this context, the interpretations commonly made regarding the commonly cited the verse of Surah al-Hijr (15/9) were examined, and this verse was majorly interpreted by the early commentators as the preservation of the Qurʾān which concerns the revelation process. In the tafsirs written in the first three Hijri centuries in particular, it makes sense that the issue of the preservation of the Qurʾān is addressed in relation to the process of its revelation and that the protection relates to a process in which Allah and the Prophet were involved. On the other hand, in the commentaries written in later times, it is clearly seen that the interpretations evolved into the idea that the Qurʾān is under the guarantee of divine protection forever. In the present study, which was carried out to reveal what could be the reasons for the change in the interpretations of the aforementioned verse in the commentaries, we discovered particular reasons. Therefore, one could say that there are sectarian motives underlying the different interpretations of the verse in question. (shrink)

Türkiye-Suriye ilişkilerinin son 40 yıllık seyrine baktığımızda en önemli kırılma anlardan birinin 1998 yılının Ekim ayında yaşandığını söylemek mümkündür. 1990’lı yılların ilk yarısında imzalanan güvenlik protokollerine rağmen Suriye’nin PKK faaliyetlerine desteğini sürdürmesi ve Abdullah Öcalan’ın Suriye topraklarında ikamet ediyor olması, 1998 sonbaharında iki ülkeyi savaşın eşiğine getirmiştir. Ekim 1998 Krizi'nin Adana Mutabakatı'nın imzalanması ile son bulması, iki ülke ilişkilerinde yeni bir dönemin kapılarının aralanmasına neden olmuştur. Bu çalışmada PKK faaliyetlerinin Türkiye-Suriye ilişkilerinde oynadığı inşa edici rol, Ekim 1998 Krizi üzerinden analiz (...) edilmektedir. Ekim 1998 Krizi’nin Suriye yönetiminin PKK faaliyetlerine destek vermeyeceğini resmen taahhüt ederek sonlanması, iki ülke ilişkilerinde uzlaşmazlıktan her alanda işbirliği dönemine geçişin başlangıç noktası olmuştur. Bu nedenle Ekim 1998 Krizi’ni bir kırılma noktası olarak değerlendirmek mümkündür. (shrink)

I argue that Alvin Goldman has failed to save process reliabilism from my critique in earlier work of consequentialist or teleological epistemic theories. First, Goldman misconstrues the nature of my challenge: two of the cases he discusses I never claimed to be counterexamples to process reliabilism. Second, Goldman’s reply to the type of case I actually claimed to be a counterexample to process reliabilism is unsuccessful. He proposes a variety of responses, but all of them either feature an implausible restriction (...) on process types, or fail to rule out cases with the sort of structure that generates the worry, or both. (shrink)

Tanto en su Iǧāza como en su Fihrist, Ibn al-ʿArabī se refirió a Risāla ilà aṣḥāb al-Šayḫ ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mahdawī como a una obra separada. Este documento es una carta escrita a los discípulos del Šayḫ ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mahdawī de Túnez por el propio Ibn al-ʿArabī, y recientemente se ha determinado que también sirve como una especie de prólogo de Mašāhid al-asrār. Este prólogo cubre temas tales como quién debe estudiar el Mašāhid y cómo debe hacerlo, las explicaciones de las (...) palabras difíciles que se encuentran en él y las defensas de posibles críticas contra él. La carta de Ibn al-ʿArabī es importante por derecho propio: desarrolla los conceptos de ḫatmiyya, walāya, nubuwwa y wirāṯa en sus formas originales y hace referencia a discusiones en los círculos académicos de al-Andalus y el norte de África. Este artículo mostrará cómo debe entenderse la Risāla con los Mašāhid y explorará su contenido a la luz de las obras de Ibn al-ʿArabī y su medio social e intelectual. (shrink)

While Christian approaches to the problem of evil have been much discussed, the issue of theodicy in Islam is relatively neglected. This book discusses possible solutions to theodicy and the problem of evil through the early philosophy and theology of Islam as well as through a semantic analysis of evil in the Qur’ān. Reflecting on Said Nursi’s magnum opus, the Risale-i Nur Collection (Epistles of Light), Yesilhark Ozkan puts Nursi’s theodicy into discourse with so called ‘secular’ theodicy or ‘anthropodicy’. Her (...) study offers a fascinating new perspective on the problem of evil for scholars of comparative religion, philosophy of religion, and Islamic thought. (shrink)

Guilt and fear today have developed an unexpected quality: they contribute powerfully to the survival of humanity. The feeling of guilt proceeds from an elementary awareness: although the unequaled progress of science and technology in the twentieth century has undoubtedly ameliorated the conditions of human life, it also has given rise to an infernal logic of genocide and crimes against humanity, in which almost all nations, directly or indirectly, have participated and participate still. This awareness is joined to another, which (...) is itself accompanied by a primordial fear: for the first time in history, science and technology have endowed humanity with the power to destroy itself and the planet, without furnishing humans with the means of escaping their destined role as sorcerer's apprentice, for no science can tell us what to do with science. It is this double feeling of guilt and fear that pushes contemporary man to search feverishly for ethical foundations capable of furnishing discreet regulatory principles to underpin decisions and actions. From the point of view of contemporary humanity, ethics must be able to confer meaning and perspective on an existence which apparently has neither: “Now,” writes Hans Jonas, “we shiver in the nakedness of nihilism in which near-omnipotence is paired with near-emptiness, greatest capacity with knowing least for what ends to use it.”. (shrink)

Ten years ago, an issue of the journal L'Homme et la Société was entitled “La Mode des identités.” Most of the articles were about cultural identity, but the basic thrust of the work was “a critique of the ‘fashion’ of identity calling into question the validity of a notion as striking as it is uncertain.” Recently, a special issue of the journal Sciences Humaines, entitled “Identité et identités,” dealt with personal, familial, social, professional identities and only spoke of cultural identity (...) marginally and in a roundabout way. Finally, in a manual of Sociologie politique published by the Presses Universitaires de France, the author takes to task the notion of ethnicity inherent to cultural identity and pushes the critique of the ethnic group to the point of negating its objective existence. Must we think then that the notion of cultural identity is henceforth obsolete, that it has lost all pertinence? (shrink)

After summarizing the essential details of Anil Gupta’s account of perceptual justification in his book _Empiricism and Experience_, I argue for three claims: (1) Gupta’s proposal is closer to rationalism than advertised; (2) there is a major lacuna in Gupta’s account of how convergence in light of experience yields absolute entitlements to form beliefs; and (3) Gupta has not adequately explained how ordinary courses of experience can lead to convergence on a commonsense view of the world.

A cognitive architecture aimed at cumulative learning must provide the necessary information and control structures to allow agents to learn incrementally and autonomously from their experience. This involves managing an agent's goals as well as continuously relating sensory information to these in its perception-cognition information processing stack. The more varied the environment of a learning agent is, the more general and flexible must be these mechanisms to handle a wider variety of relevant patterns, tasks, and goal structures. While many researchers (...) agree that information at different levels of abstraction likely differs in its makeup and structure and processing mechanisms, agreement on the particulars of such differences is not generally shared in the research community. A dual processing architecture has been proposed as a model of cognitive processing, and they are often considered as responsible for low- and high-level information, respectively. We posit that cognition is not binary in this way and that knowledge at any level of abstraction involves what we refer to as neurosymbolic information, meaning that data at both high and low levels must contain both symbolic and subsymbolic information. Further, we argue that the main differentiating factor between the processing of high and low levels of data abstraction can be largely attributed to the nature of the involved attention mechanisms. We describe the key arguments behind this view and review relevant evidence from the literature. (shrink)

The ideological impact of Émile Durkheim on Turkish political and social thought has long been analyzed within the framework of Ziya Gökalp’s nationalist thought. This article seeks to show that there were also liberal followers of Durkheim as seen in the works of particularly Ahmet Ağaoğlu. Ağaoğlu’s social liberalism carried Durkheimian motifs as we see in his constant emphasis on division of labor and functional differentiation as integral elements of the modern liberal mentalité, and in the importance he imputed to (...) intermediary groups to protect the rights of the individual. (shrink)

In the standard and traditional view, the concept of conditional probability is defined with what is known as the ratio formula: the probability of B given A is the ratio between the probability of A and B and the probability of A. It is well known that this definition does not match the conceptual and mathematical expectations that we have from conditional probability, especially for the probability values at the limits. Thus, as pointed out by several philosophers such as Popper (...) and Hájek, it is fair to conclude that we have yet to have a satisfactory definition for the concept of conditional probability. E.J. Lowe, in a debate with Dorothy Edgington, proposed two different definitions of conditional probability, and unfortunately his definitions have gone unnoticed in the literature. In this paper, my main aim is to renew interest in Lowe’s definitions. I achieve this aim by showing that E.J. Lowe’s definitions have great potential in providing us with a satisfactory definition of conditional probability.Standard Olasılık kuramında bir olayın bir diğer olaya koşullu olasılığı rasyo formülü olarak bilinen bir formül ile tanımlanmaktadır. Bu formüle göre B olayının A olayına koşullu olasılığı olayının olasığının sadece A olayının olasılığına bölünmesi ile bulunan değerdir. Bu standard tanımın özellikle limitlerdeki olasılık değerleri için kavramsal ve matematiksel beklentilerimizi karşılamadığı bilinen bir durumdur. Aralarında Popper ve Hájek gibi isimlerin de bulunduğu birçok felsefecinin de belirttiği gibi, bu durumdan elimizde tatmin edici bir koşullu olasılık tanımı olmadığını çıkarsamak yanlış olmayacaktır. E.J. Lowe, Dorothy Edgington ile girdiği bir tartışma bağlamında koşullu olasılığın iki alternatif tanımını önermiştir. Ne yazık ki, literatürde bu tanımlara gereken önem verilmemiştir. Literatürdeki bu eksikliği gidermeyi hedefleyen bu makalenin genel amacı, Lowe’ün önerilerinin tatmin edici bir koşullu olasılık tanımı sunma potansiyeline sahip olduğunu göstermektir. (shrink)