This paper reports the results of a survey study examining the knowledge, motivations and concerns of egg-share donors and recipients, and assesses the clinical and policy implications of these findings. The survey, combining quantitative and qualitative items, was completed by 48 donors and 38 recipients who took part in an egg-sharing scheme at the London Women's Clinic between 2007 and 2009. Although the most important motivation for all egg-sharers was to have a baby, both donors and recipients displayed multiple motivations, (...) including elements of self-interest and altruism. Many viewed egg-sharing as a reciprocal process in which two women with different needs help one another. The results are reassuring from an ethical and policy perspective: they suggest that if information about egg-sharing was more widely available (especially through general practitioners), more women may consider becoming egg-share donors, gaining swift access to their own treatment and reducing the UK's egg donor shortage. (shrink)

In this series of lectures, a distinguished group of international contributors from a variety of disciplines debate the current position of the recent achievements in engineering and computer science. (Technology & Industrial).

One of the prevalent inference methods the mutakallimūn uses is qiyās al-ghaib ‘ala al-shahid (analogy from the visible world to the invisible world). Mu‘tazila, who accepts this method as an absolute criterion in the divine attributes, rejects the possibility of difference between shahid and ghaib about the reality of attributes. By rejecting the concept of kalām nafsī adopted by Ahl al-Sunnah, they mention the divine speech in the category of actual attributes and claim that kalāmullāh (God’s speech), like human speech, (...) is an accident consisting of words and sounds. Mu‘tazila, who defines mutakallim as the agent of kalām, claims that God is also the agent of the word. In this regard, Mu‘tazila, who defends the origin of the kalāmullāh and the createdness of the Qur’ān, focuses on the explanation of the nature of the kalām at the beginning of these theological subjects. As an extension of the issue of whether the ḥikāyah and maḥkī are the same or not, which is the subject of discussion in the context of the possibility of creating something similar to the Qur’ān, Mu‘tazila, who disagree on whether kalām (word) is a kind of sound (ṣawt) or not, examine the problem of the nature of the word by expanding it to include sounds. Although they agree that sounds are accidents created by humans through tawlīd, they propound different theories about the physical formation of sound and kalām. These theories are differentiated according to discussions about the essential factors for the formation of sounds. Some scholars claim that i‘timād generates sounds, and the substrate (maḥall) is enough to form the sounds. In contrast, others claim the necessity of a specific structure (binya), movement (ḥaraka), and air added to the substrate. In this regard, this study will deal with the effect of these factors mentioned above to the formation of the sounds and the physical examples which every group mentioned to prove its opinions rightfulness. The most detailed explanations about this topic are seen in the works of Baṣrian Mu‘tazila. Therefore, this study will examine the opinions about the production of sounds, which argued around metaphysical issues in the context of the createdness of the Qur’ān and the attribute of kalām, which are submitted by Abū ‘Alī al-Jubbā'ī (d. 303/916), Abū Hāshim al-Jubbā'ī (d. 321/933), and their followers Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), Abū Rashīd al-Nīsābūrī (d. first half of the 5./11. century), and Ibn Mattawayh (d. first half of the 5./11. century), the representatives of Baṣrian Mu‘tazila, who adopt atomic universe understanding. The study aimed to form an opinion about the theologians’ way of discussing a particular physical phenomenon to constitute a basis for solving metaphysical problems. To clarify the problem, first, it will deal with the essence of sounds in the Baṣrian Mu‘tazilites tradition, and then it will tackle the discussions about the formation of the sounds. (shrink)

Causation The question, “What is causation?” may sound like a trivial question—it is as sure as common knowledge can ever be that some things cause another; that there are causes and they necessitate certain effects. We say that we know that what caused the president’s death was an assassin’s shot. But when asked why, we … Continue reading Causation →.

Consensus around what constitutes researcher conflicts of interest (COIs) and awareness of their influence on our research are two critical steps in ensuring the integrity of our science. In this research, data were collected from individual scholars via 2 surveys 5 years apart and from journals and associations to examine the level of social consensus and moral awareness among scholars, journals, and associations regarding researcher COIs. Although we observed increases in level of social consensus and moral awareness between 2012 and (...) 2017, results still revealed limited agreement about what relationships constitute a COI and limited awareness about the presence of and the ethical issues surrounding COIs. Although all journals and associations we examined supported COI disclosure, most did not provide researchers with detailed COI-related information, guidance, or disclosure tools. Limited social consensus and moral awareness regarding COIs is problematic because it inhibits the recognition, disclosure, and management of COIs and limits ethical decision making. We need to continue and enhance discussions about COIs and aim to create consensus and awareness where we do not have it with the goal of reducing potential scientific misconduct related to COIs. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century medical advances were entwined with a conceptual innovation: the idea that many cases of disease which were previously thought to have diverse causes could be explained by the action of a single kind of cause, for example a certain bacterial or parasitic infestation. The focus of modern epidemiology, however, is on chronic non-communicable diseases, which frequently do not seem to be attributable to any single causal factor. This paper is an effort to resolve the resulting tension. The paper criticises (...) the monocausal model of disease, so successful in the nineteenth century. It also argues that a multifactorial model of disease can only be satisfactory if it amounts to more than a mere rejection of the monocausal model. A third alternative, the contrastive model, is proposed and defended on the grounds that it links the notions of disease and of general explanation, while avoiding the philosophical naiveties and practical difficulties of the monocausal model. (shrink)

The prevailing paradigm in Internet privacy literature, treating privacy within a context merely of rights and violations, is inadequate for studying the Internet as a social realm. Following Goffman on self-presentation and Altman's theorizing of privacy as an optimization between competing pressures for disclosure and withdrawal, the author investigates the mechanisms used by a sample (n = 704) of college students, the vast majority users of Facebook and Myspace, to negotiate boundaries between public and private. Findings show little to no (...) relationship between online privacy concerns and information disclosure on online social network sites. Students manage unwanted audience concerns by adjusting profile visibility and using nicknames but not by restricting the information within the profile. Mechanisms analogous to boundary regulation in physical space, such as walls, locks, and doors, are favored; little adaptation is made to the Internet's key features of persistence, searchability, and cross-indexability. The author also finds significant racial and gender differences. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media, which describe the evolution of artifacts in terms of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal are extended to create Laws of Media Environments and Laws of Media Users. It is shown that the environment or ground in which the figures of the artifacts in the LOM operate and the users of those artifacts undergo, respectively, a similar evolution of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal paralleling McLuhan’s original LOM.

In this paper, I defend the metalinguistic solution to the problem of mathematical omniscience for the possible-worlds account of propositions by combining it with a computational model of knowledge and belief. The metalinguistic solution states that the objects of belief and ignorance in mathematics are relations between mathematical sentences and what they express. The most pressing problem for the metalinguistic strategy is that it still ascribes too much mathematical knowledge under the standard possible-worlds model of knowledge and belief on which (...) these are closed under entailment. I first argue that Stalnaker's fragmentation strategy is insufficient to solve this problem. I then develop an alternative, computational strategy: I propose a model of mathematical knowledge and belief adapted from the algorithmic model of Halpern et al. which, when combined with the metalinguistic strategy, entails that mathematical knowledge and belief require computational abilities to access metalinguistic information, and thus aren't closed under entailment. As I explain, the computational model generalizes beyond mathematics to a version of the functionalist theory of knowledge and belief that motivates the possible-worlds account in the first place. I conclude that the metalinguistic and computational strategies yield an attractive functionalist, possible-worlds account of mathematical content, knowledge, and inquiry. (shrink)

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, (...) resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power. -/- Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Basak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis. (shrink)

This essay starts with the possibility of situating Derrida’s aporetic ethics in the domain of normative ethics and argues that Derrida’s reflection on ethics is enrooted in the specific way he conceives the phenomenological notion of auto-affection. In the second section, I analyze, in the early work, auto-affection with signs and show its centrality in Derrida’s first encounter with Levinas’s philosophy. Derrida refuses to substitute the hetero-affective relation to the Other for auto-affection as the source of universal law and normativity. (...) He does not sacrifice universality and tackles the problem of autonomous ethical decision-making even though he welcomes through affectivity the signification of the singular other, which is irreducible to conceptual, emotive, and normative self-relation. This background helps us understand the rootedness of ethical aporias in a reflection on auto-affection. (shrink)

Introduction: a peculiar experiment -- Kinaesthetic knowing: the nineteenth-century biography of another kind of knowledge -- Looking: Wölfflin's comparative vision -- Affecting: Endell's mathematics of living feeling -- Drawing: the Debschitz school and formalism's subject -- Designing: discipline and introspection at the Bauhaus -- Epilogue.

In this series of lectures, a distinguished group of international contributors from a variety of disciplines debate the current position of the recent achievements in engineering and computer science. (Technology & Industrial).

These three volumes assemble the most important essays written on Jacques Derrida's philosophy since he became established in 1967. These volumes make well-known essays easily available and also present many essays never translated in English.

This paper takes issue with those commentators of Heidegger's philosophy whose point of entry into his thinking is the inherited prejudices of others. It demonstrates that if prior judgments are suspended, so that Heidegger's texts are permitted to speak for themselves, the truth of his `position', more a wege than a static motionless point, gradually and inexorably begins to emerge. I take Pope Benedict's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, to draw the theological contours of a truly post-modern ethic. I then (...) hold up Heidegger's philosophy, as this is characterized principally though not exclusively in his lecture Der Satz Der Identität, to consider possible symmetries. Finally I offer an answer to the question: does Heidegger's thought have ethical consequences? (shrink)

Philosophy of Medicine provides a fresh and comprehensive treatment of the topic. It offers a novel theory of the nature of medicine, and proposes a new attitude to medicine, aimed at improving the quality of debates between medical traditions and facilitating medicine's decolonization.

In this paper, I argue from a metasemantic principle to the existence of analytic sentences. According to the metasemantic principle, an external feature is relevant to determining which concept one expresses with an expression only if one is disposed to treat this feature as relevant. This entails that if one isn’t disposed to treat external features as relevant to determining which concept one expresses, and one still expresses a given concept, then something other than external features must determine that one (...) does. I argue that, in such cases, what determines that one expresses the concept also puts one in a position to know that certain sentences are true—these sentences are thus analytic relative to this determination basis. Finally, I argue that there are such cases: some sentences are analytic relative to what determines that we express certain key concepts, and these sentences include ones that have always been thought to be the best candidates for being analytic, namely, stipulative truths, and first principles of mathematics. (shrink)

This paper puts forward a general framework for thought about human information processing. It is intended to avoid some of the problems of pipeline or stage models of function. At the same time it avoids the snare of supposing a welter of indefinitely many separate processes. The approach is not particularly original, but rather represents the common elements or presuppositions in a number of modern theories. These presuppositions are not usually explicit, however, and making them so reduces the danger of (...) slipping back into earlier modes of thought.The key point is to distinguish between persisting representations and the processes that translate one representation into another. Various classes or groups of persisting representations can be distinguished by the experimental treatments that interfere with them. In particular, there now seem to be several kinds of short-term or temporary storage, different from each other as well as from longterm memory; the translating processes also have several different modes or kinds. A particularly important aspect of the current position is that a model of this general type no longer requires some external agent to direct and control long sequences of behaviour. (shrink)

The current study investigated whether there are significant relationships between life satisfaction and meaning in life, hope and COVID-19 fear and the extent to which life satisfaction is predicted by these variables. The study group of this research consists of 1,186 adults with the mean age of 41.04. Study group participants are consists of different cities of different regions of Turkey. As the data collection tools, the life satisfaction scale, the meaning in life scale, the dispositional hope scale and the (...) COVID-19 fear scale were used. The results of the analyses have revealed that meaning in life, hope are significant predictors of life satisfaction as positively. Besides, it is seen COVID-19 fear, age, gender and the presence of people infected with COVID-19 around aren’t significant predictors of life satisfaction in adults. (shrink)

This paper argues that machine learning and epidemiology are on collision course over causation. The discipline of epidemiology lays great emphasis on causation, while ML research does not. Some epidemiologists have proposed imposing what amounts to a causal constraint on ML in epidemiology, requiring it either to engage in causal inference or restrict itself to mere projection. We whittle down the issues to the question of whether causal knowledge is necessary for underwriting predictions about the outcomes of public health interventions. (...) While there is great plausibility to the idea that it is, conviction that something is impossible does not by itself motivate a constraint to forbid trying. We disambiguate the possible motivations for such a constraint into definitional, metaphysical, epistemological, and pragmatic considerations and argue that “Proceed with caution” is the outcome of each. We then argue that there are positive reasons to proceed, albeit cautiously. Causal inference enforces existing classification schema prior to the testing of associational claims, but associations and classification schema are more plausibly discovered in a back-and-forth process of gaining reflective equilibrium. ML instantiates this kind of process, we argue, and thus offers the welcome prospect of uncovering meaningful new concepts in epidemiology and public health—provided it is not causally constrained. (shrink)

This chapter explores the idea that causal inference is warranted if and only if the mechanism underlying the inferred causal association is identified. This mechanistic stance is discernible in the epidemiological literature, and in the strategies adopted by epidemiologists seeking to establish causal hypotheses. But the exact opposite methodology is also discernible, the black box stance, which asserts that epidemiologists can and should make causal inferences on the basis of their evidence, without worrying about the mechanisms that might underlie their (...) hypotheses. I argue that the mechanistic stance is indeed a bad methodology for causal inference. However, I detach and defend a mechanistic interpretation of causal generalisations in epidemiology as existence claims about underlying mechanisms. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce and defend a notion of analyticity for formal languages. I first uncover a crucial flaw in Timothy Williamson’s famous argument template against analyticity, when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages. Williamson’s argument targets the popular idea that a necessary condition for analyticity is that whoever understands an analytic sentence assents to it. Williamson argues that for any given candidate analytic sentence, there can be people who understand that sentence and yet who fail (...) to assent to it. I argue that, on the most natural understanding of the notion of assent when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages, Williamson’s argument fails. Formal analyticity is the notion of analyticity that is based on this natural understanding of assent. I go on to develop the notion of formal analyticity and defend the claim that there are formally analytic sentences and rules of inference. I conclude by showing the potential payoffs of recognizing formal analyticity. (shrink)

In the literature on health, naturalism and normativism are typically characterized as espousing and rejecting, respectively, the view that health is objective and value-free. This article points out that there are two distinct dimensions of disagreement, regarding objectivity and value-ladenness, and thus arranges naturalism and normativism as diagonal opposites on a two-by-two matrix of possible positions. One of the remaining quadrants is occupied by value-dependent realism, holding that health facts are value-laden and objective. The remaining quadrant, which holds that they (...) are non-objective but value-free, is unexplored. The article endorses a view in the latter quadrant, namely, the view that health is a secondary property. The article argues that a secondary property framework provides the resources to respond to the deepest objections to a broadly Boorsean account of natural function, and so preserves the spirit, though not the letter, of that account. Treating health as a secondary property permits a naturalistic explanation—specifically, an evolutionary explanation—of the health concept, in terms of the assistance such a concept might have provided to the survival and reproduction of those organisms that had it. This provides the explanation, missing from Boorse's account, for the fact that function is determined with reference to the contribution to the goals of survival and reproduction, relative to the age of the sex of the species, rather than some other equally natural goals or reference classes. _1_ Introduction _2_ Two Ways to Disagree about Health _3_ Secondary Properties _4_ Health as a Secondary Property _5_ Conclusion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman develops a critique of social science to argue that current technocratic practices are prone to predictive failures and unintended consequences. However, he does not provide evidence that the cause he singles out—“ideational heterogeneity”—is in fact a non-negligible source of technocratic limitations, more than or alongside better-known problems such as missing data, measurement issues, interpretive difficulties, and researcher bias. Even if we grant ideational heterogeneity, Friedman’s preferred institutional solution of exitocracy does not necessarily follow. (...) His critical epistemology would also be compatible with radical forms of collective action. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale for measuring prospective science teachers’ awareness of waste recycling. The study was conducted with the participation of 382 prospective teachers attending a university located in northern Turkey. The five-point Likert type scale that was developed contained 82 items relating to prospective science teachers’ awareness of waste recycling. The factor analysis conducted showed that five items had factor loadings below 0.30, and five were cross loading items. Factor analysis was repeated after (...) removing these items. A further 24 items were removed from the list at the end of the factor analysis, and the remaining 48 items were grouped under ten dimensions. The reliability coefficient for the factors extracted varied between 0.717 and 0.805, and the internal reliability coefficient for the whole scale was 0.905. (shrink)

Sosyal, siyasî, iktisadî, psikolojik, kültürel boyutları dönemlere ve coğ-rafyalara göre çeşitlilik arz etse de savaş mefhumu insanlık tarihi kadar eski-dir. Savaşın, dünya hayatının durum ve problemlerinden kaynaklanan yönlerinin yanı sıra dinî sâiklerinin bulunması, onun tarihe mal olmuş sürekliliğinde oldukça etkilidir. Eski Ahit ve Kur’an dâhil kutsal metinlerin söz konusu sâikler arasında yer alması, pek çok farklı okumaya tâbî tutulabilecek bu metinlerin savaşa dair anlatımlar bağlamında değerlendirilmesini mümkün ve hatta gerekli kılmaktadır. Bu makalede Kur’an ve Eski Ahit’in tarih boyu insan hayatını (...) doğrudan etkilediği olgulardan biri olarak savaşla ilgili anlatımları bir araya getirilmiş, bunlar çeşitli yönlerden mukayese edilerek aralarındaki benzerlik ve farklılıklar belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu mukayeseden ulaşılan sonuçlardan hareketle, her iki metnin kendi muhataplarının zihninde oluşturduğu savaş algısına dair ipuçları elde etmek hedeflenmiştir. Savaşa dair anlatımlar incelenirken Kur’an’ın Arapça metni, Eski Ahit’in ise ulaşabildiğimiz en eski İngilizce metni ve Türkçe tercümesi esas alınmıştır. (shrink)

While discussions of the debate between Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg over ‘secularisation’ focus primarily on the methodological utility of the concept, the difference between them was also one of the philosophical commitments and substantive claims about modernity. This difference is not always obvious. One way of bringing it out is to address the different contexts in which they produced their most famous statements about secularisation. But another, and one that will be pursued here, is to consider the critical dialogue (...) that both thinkers engaged in with Nietzsche. Put briefly, while Löwith thought that Nietzsche misunderstood the ancients, Blumenberg thought that he misunderstood the moderns. For Löwith, Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return is not Greek, but an aggressive countergospel that owes much to the Christian culture it seeks to oppose; for Blumenberg, Nietzsche assumes, wrongly, that the self-belittlement of man by theology has been succeeded by the self-belittlement of man by science. In addition, Blumenberg – unlike both Nietzsche and Löwith – thinks that he can mount a robust defence of both modern science and progress. (shrink)

According to the iterative conception of sets, standardly formalized by ZFC, there is no set of all sets. But why is there no set of all sets? A simple-minded, though unpopular, “minimal” explanation for why there is no set of all sets is that the supposition that there is contradicts some axioms of ZFC. In this paper, I first explain the core complaint against the minimal explanation, and then argue against the two main alternative answers to the guiding question. I (...) conclude the paper by outlining a close alternative to the minimal explanation, the conception-based explanation, that avoids the core complaint against the minimal explanation. (shrink)

Based on content analysis and in-depth interviews with the editors of 5Harfliler, Catlak Zemin and Recel-blog, popular pro-feminist women’s websites in Turkey, this article shows that these websites constitute important projects in feminist memory work in two ways: explicitly, by commemorating women in history, the gains of the women’s movement in Turkey, and by archiving misogynist policies and gender unequal legislation; implicitly, in the essays written by anonymous women whose personal memories of feminist activism as well as oppression and patriarchy (...) experienced in everyday life become sources for discussion of feminist identity and politics and contribute to women’s history writing from below. The websites also serve as a platform where feminist identity is negotiated and the past, present and future of feminist politics are discussed in a humorous, agonistic and affective style. The source of deliberation is often women’s everyday experiences and concerns rather than formal politics. Although keeping a distance from formal politics renders these websites open to criticisms of naiveté and apoliticism, they provide a creative platform for the constructive discussion of women’s shared everyday problems which are closely connected to a larger political context. (shrink)

When is a cause of a cause of an effect also a cause of that effect? The right answer is either Sometimes or Always . In favour of Always , transitivity is considered by some to be necessary for distinguishing causes from redundant non-causal events. Moreover transitivity may be motivated by an interest in an unselective notion of causation, untroubled by principles of invidious discrimination. And causal relations appear to add up like transitive relations, so that the obtaining of the (...) overarching relation is not independent of the obtaining of the intermediaries. On the other hand, in favour of Sometimes , often we seem not to treat events that are very spatiotemporally remote from an effect as its causes, even when connected to the effect in question by a chain of counterfactual or chance-raising dependence. Moreover cases of double prevention provide counterexamples to causal transitivity even over short chains. According to the argument of this paper, causation is non-transitive. Transitizing causation provides no viable account of causal redundancy. An unselective approach to causation may motivate resisting the distance counterexamples to transitivity, but it does not help with double prevention, and even makes it more intractable. The strongest point in favour of transitivity is the adding up of causal relations, and this is the point that extant non-transitizing analyses have not adequately addressed. I propose a necessary condition on causation that explains the adding up phenomenon. In doing so it also provides a unifying explanation of distance and double prevention counterexamples to transitivity. (shrink)