Epistemic dependence refers to our social mechanisms of reliance in practices of knowledge production. Epistemic oppression concerns persistent and unwarranted exclusions from those practices. This article examines the relationship between these two frameworks and demonstrates that attending to their relationship is a fruitful practice for applied epistemology. Paying attention to relations of epistemic dependence and how exclusive they are can help us track epistemically oppressive practices. In order to show this, I introduce a taxonomy of epistemic dependence. I argue that (...) this particular taxonomy is useful for tracking epistemically oppressive practices in institutional contexts. This is because, first, the forms of epistemic dependence in this taxonomy yield, what I call, diagnostic questions. These are questions that help us track how relations of epistemic dependence could become exclusive and that thus help reveal epistemic oppression in institutional contexts. Second, the forms of epistemic dependence in the taxonomy are interrelated. Paying attention not just to each of three forms of epistemic dependence but also to the way in which they are interrelated is useful for illuminating epistemically oppressive practices. I conclude by demonstrating how the diagnostic questions can be used in analyses of concrete institutional practices in asylum law and higher education. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to show that mainstream liberal accounts of civil disobedience fail to fully capture the latter’s specific characteristics as a genuinely political and democratic practice of contestation that is not reducible to an ethical or legal understanding either in terms of individual conscience or of fidelity to the rule of law. In developing this account in more detail, I first define civil disobedience with an aim of spelling out why the standard liberal model, while providing (...) a useful starting point, ultimately leads to an overly constrained, domesticated and sanitized understanding of this complex political practice. Second, I place the political practice of civil disobedience between two opposing poles: symbolic politics and real confrontation. I argue that the irreducible tension between these poles precisely accounts for its politicizing and democratizing potential. Finally, I briefly examine the role of civil disobedience in representative democracies, addressing a series of recent challenges made in response to this radically democratic understanding of disobedience. (shrink)

Rationale: High-frequency oscillations in intracranial EEG are used to delineate the epileptogenic zone during presurgical diagnostic assessment in patients with epilepsy. HFOs are historically divided into ripples, fast ripples, and their co-occurrence. In a previous study, we had validated the rate of FRandRs during deep sleep to predict seizure outcome. Here, we ask whether epileptic FRandRs might be confounded by physiological FRandRs that are unrelated to epilepsy.Methods: We recorded iEEG in the medial temporal lobe MTL in 17 patients while they (...) performed cognitive tasks. The three cognitive tasks addressed verbal working memory, visual working memory, and emotional processing. In our previous studies, these tasks activated the MTL. We re-analyzed the data of these studies with the automated detector that focuses on the co-occurrence of ripples and FRs.Results: For each task, we identified those channels in which the HFO rate was modulated during the task condition compared to the control condition. However, the number of these channels did not exceed the chance level. Interestingly, even during wakefulness, the HFO rate was higher for channels within the seizure onset zone than for channels outside the SOZ.Conclusion: Our prospective definition of an epileptic HFO, the FRandR, is not confounded by physiological HFOs that might be elicited by our cognitive tasks. This is reassuring for the clinical use of FRandR as a biomarker of the EZ. (shrink)

One of the recent attempts to explore epistemic dimensions of forced displacement focuses on the institution of gender-based asylum and hopes to detect forms of epistemic injustice within assessments of gender related asylum applications. Following this attempt, I aim in this paper to demonstrate how the institution of gender-based asylum is structured to produce epistemic injustice at least in the forms of testimonial injustice and contributory injustice. This structural limit becomes visible when we realize how the institution of asylum is (...) formed to provide legitimacy to the institutional comfort the respective migration courts and boards enjoy. This institutional comfort afforded to migration boards and courts by the existing asylum regimes in the current order of nation-states leads to a systemic prioritization of state actors’ epistemic resources rather than that of applicants, which, in turn, results in epistemic injustice and impacts the determination of applicants’ refugee status. (shrink)

This book provides an overview of recent debates about critical theory from Pierre Bourdieu via Luc Boltanski to the Frankfurt School. Robin Celikates investigates the relevance of the self-understanding of ordinary agents and of their practices of critique for the theoretical and emancipatory project of critical theory.

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

While women in Turkey and around the world are commonly engaged in civic activism for peace and violence reduction, they are seriously underrepresented in formal politics; thus, not much has been written about their potential to affect decisions made to reduce violence in their societies. This study aims to understand how women politicians view violence in general and their solutions for two specific types of violence in Turkey: the increasing levels of violence against women, and violence created through the Kurdish (...) issue in Turkey. Turkish politicians have become increasingly concerned about both of these issues in recent years and have designed many policies and strategies to address them. This study argues that studying the women parliamentarians’ linkage between the two types of violence will help understand what accounts for the differences among women MPs in their understanding of different types of violence and their solutions to them. (shrink)

The proposed “black-box” problem and its solution are drawn from the same substance-oriented framework. This framework's assumptions have consequences that re-create the black-box problem at a foundational level. Specifically, Murayama and Jach's solution fails to explain novel behavior that emerges through an organism's development. A process-oriented theoretical shift provides an ontological explanation for emergent behavior and eliminates the black-box problem altogether.

Aristoteles ve Heidegger’in zaman görüşleri onların ontoloji temelli düşüncelerinde önemli bir yere sahip olmasına rağmen, “amaçsal araçsallık” anlayışıyla ilişkili olarak derinlemesine irdelenmez. Hâlbuki bu düşünürlerin görüşlerindeki amaçsal araçsallığın yakından incelenmesi, hem onların zaman felsefelerinin hem de genel olarak zamanın “yapıcı ve kurucu” özelliğinin daha anlaşılır olmasını sağlamaktadır. Aristoteles’in ve Heidegger’in ontolojik zaman soruşturmaları, zamanın amaçsal anlamda da araçsallığının olanaklı olabileceğine işaret etmektedir. Bu fikirden hareketle meydana getirilen bu makale, Aristoteles ve Heidegger’in zaman düşüncelerini amaçsal araçsallık ışığında incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu sebeple (...) yazının ilk bölümünde, zaman ve araçsallık kavramlarının anlamı ve içeriği kısaca betimlenmektedir. Bu betimlemenin temel nedeni, bu kavramların yaygın kullanılan anlamlarının dışına çıkabilmeyi sağlamaktır. Yazının ikinci ve üçüncü bölümlerinde ise, sırasıyla Aristoteles ve Heidegger’in zaman felsefelerinde amaçsal araçsallık fikrinin nasıl görünür olduğu gösterilmeye çalışılmaktadır. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, philosophers have defined philosophy based on their own perspectives. This situation shows that it is a difficult and meaningless endeavor to put forward an understanding of philosophy that has clear boundaries and is accepted by everyone. However, despite these differences in definitions, there are some common points. Perhaps the most important of these common points is that philosophy is a stance, a positioning activity in the face of truth. In this positioning, William James tried to (...) find the moderate path between the currents of rationalism and empiricism and took a stance based on concrete differences in life. Like the empiricists, he tried to keep people's relations with facts alive, but at the same time, he did not exclude religion by adopting a rationalist attitude. However, James argued that abstract concepts cannot have meaning unless they find their counterpart in life. According to James, a life based only on abstract principles would not be qualified. In this study, I will try reconciling William James’ attitude towards abstract principles with practical life. (shrink)

In answering my undergraduate students’ questions about what I do, I keep coming back to the term structural epistemology. If some students push me further to not hide behind terms, I tell them: I study structures (social, political, and cultural institutions and arrangements)—not all of them at the same time, obviously—and what they do to our knowledge practices (what we know and how we know). And I give some examples: how refugee regimes know “persecution,” I tell them, matters, particularly for (...) asylum seekers. I also tell them that mine is a kind of structural epistemology guided by structural concerns in women of color feminist theories. This essay is a long way of answering the question: What do I do when I do structural epistemology? I consider this question to be an important one not only as part of an effort to rethink what I take myself to be doing in professional philosophy but also as an effort to characterize commitments and strategies I am influenced by and work with as a structural epistemologist. (shrink)

This chapter conducts a structural epistemic injustice investigation, inquiring into institutionalised frames of intelligibility, to identify pathological patterns of recognition in administrative categorisation. This allows me to discern a form of misrecognition, where I understand ‘misrecognition’ as obtaining whenever administrative systems prevent people from participating in and benefiting from such systems due to institutionalised frames of intelligibility. One way such misrecognition operates is through categorisation-related administrative violence. I suggest that one particular form of this violence is recognition bluffs. Recognition bluffs (...) are a form of misrecognition where administrative systems enable new categories of legibility promising recognition for certain populations while, at the same time, they limit that category in ways that harm those populations as well. As an example, I look into how ‘gender’ was recognised and administered through the social group category in asylum administration in the U.S.A. (shrink)

Relations between Turkish authorities and their Kurdish minority have been a source of conflict for decades. On 11 April 2015, in the run-up to Turkey’s parliamentary elections, a gunfight broke out in the south-eastern province of Ağrı, resulting in six Kurdish people being killed and four Turkish military personnel wounded. Although skirmishes like this are not unusual, this caught the public imagination as it became clear that Kurdish civilians had helped wounded Turkish soldiers after the shoot-out. The government denied such (...) help and was keen to place the blame for the fight on the Kurdish opposition in its attempt to dissuade the public from voting for Kurdish-oriented parties, thereby increasing their chances of securing a parliamentary majority. The Kurds were keen to do the same to the government for the sake of votes, while the mainstream opposition saw this as an opportunity to represent the government and Kurds as poor voting options. The Turkish media, polarised and closely aligned to political interests, recontextualised events in ways which showed their political ties. This article uses critical discourse analysis to show how this was done in three national newspapers. Furthermore, the article argues that representations as such do nothing to aid in solving the decades-old problem of how Turks and Kurds can coexist peacefully. (shrink)

The fact that Sufi metaphysics is usually taken to be merely the writings of Islamic philosophers, like Ibn al-'Arabi, seems to underestimate the philosophical indications of literary texts in the Sufi tradition. When Sufi literary texts are examined for philosophical content, that content is sought within and through the traditional Sufist approach. However, there appears to be a lack of correspondence between the traditional approach on the main conceptions (of God, of the universe, etc.) in Sufism and what literary texts (...) can offer regarding those, when some literary texts are to be examined in a way in which an underlying philosophical system can be extracted from them. In this article, Ipresent a brief analysis of The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar, one of the most significant works focusing on God and written in Sufi tradition. I suggest an alternative framework for Sufi metaphysics, which overlaps with the metaphysical connotations of The Conference of the Birds, via some Spinozistic ideas on God and on God's relationship to the rest of the universe. Since The Conference of the Birds represents a metaphysical doctrine that is apart from the traditional approach, I argue that we are not justified in thinking that Sufi metaphysics is only what Islamic philosophers have so far offered us. (shrink)

Interviewet er lavet i juli 2021. Dets formål er at belyse emner, der er centrale i Celikates’ tænkning, f.eks. den voksende højrefløjspopulisme, migration, voldelige versus ikke-voldelige protester, civil ulydighed og den kritiske filosofis rolle i dag. -/- When Celikates and I sat down digitally in July 2021, the interview’s primary purpose was to examine topics central to Celikates’ thinking, such as the rise of right-wing populism, migration, violent versus non-violent protest, civil disobedience, and the role of critical philosophy today.

Social Networking Sites (SNS), particularly Facebook (FB) have become extremely popular among digital natives, especially university-level students. Moreover, they sometimes may see social networks as an extension of their lives (boyd, 2014) which can be called as a new communication platform for interpersonal communication. For the purpose of the study, interpersonal communication skills (ICS) levels explored in four sub-sections both in the social and e-social environments.1 Digital natives’ IPC skills were measured to figure out whether there is any statistically difference (...) between both environments. Interpersonal Communication Skills Inventory (Social Learning, 2002) is used as an instrument for the present study. (shrink)

Peripatetik felsefî yaklaşımın en önemli filozoflarından birisi olarak kabul edilen İbn Rüşd, dönemin felsefe paradigması içinde hemen her alana dair eserler kaleme almış bir düşünürdür. Onun kaleme aldığı eserlerin çok büyük bir kısmı, Aristoteles’in eserlerine dair şerhler oluşturmaktadır. Bu sebeple o Büyük Şarih olarak anılmıştır. Bu şerhler büyük, orta ve küçük şeklinde üç tarzda yazılmıştır. Burada Türkçeye çevirdiğimiz eser, Aristoteles’in Organon diye bilinen mantık külliyatının ikinci kitabı olarak kabul edilen Peri Hermeneias adlı eserin orta şerhidir. Bu eserin genel muhteviyatı isim, (...) fiil ve edat gibi genel lafızlarla başlar, önermenin yapısı, niteliği, niceliğiyle devam ederek ve önermelerin modalitesiyle son bulmaktadır. Ele alınan konuların kapsamı Peri Hermeneias ile aynı derece ve sıralamaya sahiptir. Yer yer İbn Rüşd, yaklaşımına dair yeni şeyler eklese de eser, daha çok bir serbest çeviriyi andırmaktadır. (shrink)

Sadrüşşerîa’nın (ö. 747/1346) Fahreddin er-Râzî’nin (ö. 606/1210) insanın ihtiyârî fiillerini nefyettiği argümanını çü- rütmeye çalıştığı ve Hanefî-Mâtürîdî geleneğin bu husustaki prensiplerini nazarî bir dille yeniden temellendirdiği dört mu- kaddimesi (mukaddimât-ı erba‘) ile Mehmed Birgivî’nin (ö. 981/1573) bu mukaddimeler üzerinden geliştirdiği açıklamaları, diyar-ı Rum’daki düşünürlerin insan fiilleri ve cüz’î iradeye dair tartışmalarına yön vermiştir. On yedinci yüzyılda Hicaz topraklarında faaliyet gösterip Eş‘arî-Ekberî geleneği merkeze alarak ihtiyârî fiillere dair yazdığı eserleriyle bu geleneğin nispeten güçlü olduğu Hicaz, Şam ve Kuzey Afrika’da etki uyandıran (...) İbrâhîm el-Kûrânî (ö. 1101/1690), Hanefî-Mâtürîdî gelenekte Sadrüşşerîa ve Birgivî’nin görüşleri etrafında cereyan eden tartışmalara da bigâne kalmamış, bu âlimlerin me- tinlerini merkeze alarak kaleme aldığı Cilâü’l-enzâr risalesiyle o zamana kadar dolaylı ve nispeten zayıf irtibatının olduğu diyar-ı Rum havzasındaki tartışmalara dahil olmuştur. Kûrânî, bu eserle yaşadığı dönemdeki hâkim Hanefî-Mâtürîdî gele- neğe yönelik eleştiri ve değerlendirmelerde bulunmuş, bu çerçevede insanın sorumluluğunun cüz’î irade ve îkâ üzerinden ispatlanıp ispatlanamayacağı, hallerin yaratmaya konu olup olmadığı ve iradenin tercihinde bir sebebe bağlı olup olmadığı gibi belli meseleleri ele almıştır. Ayrıca mutlak hürriyet (tefvîz) ile mutlak zorunluluk (cebr) arasındaki orta yolun nasıl tesis edileceği konusuna da yoğunlaşmıştır. Kûrânî’nin diğer ilim havzalarıyla kurduğu irtibatlarda olduğu gibi Hanefî-Mâtürîdî geleneğin eleştirisi üzerinden diyar-ı Rum ile kurduğu ilişkinin aynı zamanda kendisinin eğilim ve mezhepleri uzlaştıran fikirlerine alan açmaya matuf olduğunu iddia eden bu çalışma, zikri geçen risalede yer verilen eleştiri ile değerlendirmelerin ortaya çıkarılmasını ve bunun tarihî-fikrî bağlamına yerleştirilmesini amaçlamaktadır. (shrink)

Bu çalışmamızdaki amacımız, din felsefesinde tartışılan temel bir problem olan kötülük probleminin ne felsefedeki öyküsünü vermektir ne de Türk filozof Yunus Emre’de tüm ayrıntısıyla tartışmaktır. Amacımız, Türk filozof Yunus Emre’nin “gönül yıkma” ve “gönül yapma” ifadelerinin kötülük problemi açısından felsefedeki anlamını sorgulamak ve felsefi anlamlarını ortaya koymaktır.

In the Qur’an, human distinctiveness was first questioned by angels. These established denizens of the cosmos could not understand why God would create a seemingly pernicious human when immaculate devotees of God such as themselves existed. In other words, the angels asked the age-old question: what makes humans so special and different? Fast forward to our present age and this question is made relevant again in light of the encroaching arrival of an artificial superintelligence (ASI). Up to this point in (...) history, humans have exceeded other creatures in various respects; now a possibility has arisen that another entity, namely ASI, will exceed humans at least on the level of intelligence and power. In relation to the age of angels, pre-modern Sunni exegesis construed human distinctiveness along the axes of reproductive knowledge and stewardship. Both brittle, distinguishing markers will disappear in the age of the ASI. Conversely, a more resilient and creative Islamic response can be derived from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 1240) views on God and the imago Dei. Inspired by the Akbarian perspective, this paper construes human distinctiveness in relation to a capacity to expansively respond to God’s love to be recognized, a response that relies on (a) imitating divine virtues that operate in counterintuitive and illogical ways, and (b) exhibiting fragility and lack rather than exceptionalism. ASI, while responding already in part to God’s love, needs to make strides towards these traits before it can answer divine love as commensurately as humans can. (shrink)

Systemic epistemic failings in institutions are often explained through settler epistemologies and settler colonial frameworks that both obscure and reproduce the conditions necessary for those failings to endure. What is never questioned in the standard picture of institutional epistemic injustice is the implicit origin myth of an ‘institutional big bang’ that spawned many modern social institutions out of presumably noble orienting goals for a well-functioning society in democratic nation-states. We are concerned with the functional outcomes of institutions in settler colonial (...) societies, and how these outcomes consistently undermine whitewashed narratives of any inherent institutional design allegedly aimed at promoting testimonial justice in settler colonial societies. Institutions are built to target and maintain a status quo, especially (but not only) when they are charged with securing part of the social order or fabric of settler colonial societies. We will illustrate this concern through a discussion of various functional outcomes of the U.S. institution of asylum using Shannon Speed’s (2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. The University of North Carolina Press) analysis of the violence Indigenous women migrants from Latin America experience within the complex administrative web of U.S. migration and asylum systems. (shrink)

Fabian Freyenhagen's impressive reconstruction of Adorno's ‘practical philosophy’ provides a convincing defence of the possibility of making normative claims about the social world we live in without justifying these claims in terms of the right, the good, or human nature. More specifically, and more controversially, Freyenhagen argues that the normative resources Adorno's critique relies on are provided by a negative Aristotelianism. In this paper, I argue that this approach underestimates the extent to which Adorno follows the model of immanent critique, (...) I highlight the socio-theoretical underpinnings of what Freyenhagen calls Adorno's ‘ethics of resistance’, and I discuss the risk of overstating the danger of co-optation that collective political action faces. (shrink)

The human experience is shaped by information from different perceptual channels, but it is still debated whether and how differential experience influences language use. To address this, we compared congenitally blind, blindfolded, and sighted people's descriptions of the same motion events experienced auditorily by all participants (i.e., via sound alone) and conveyed in speech and gesture. Comparison of blind and sighted participants to blindfolded participants helped us disentangle the effects of a lifetime experience of being blind versus the task-specific effects (...) of experiencing a motion event by sound alone. Compared to sighted people, blind people's speech focused more on path and less on manner of motion, and encoded paths in a more segmented fashion using more landmarks and path verbs. Gestures followed the speech, such that blind people pointed to landmarks more and depicted manner less than sighted people. This suggests that visual experience affects how people express spatial events in the multimodal language and that blindness may enhance sensitivity to paths of motion due to changes in event construal. These findings have implications for the claims that language processes are deeply rooted in our sensory experiences. (shrink)