We review the evidence for the concept of the “initial” or prototype brain. We outline four possible modes of brain evolution suggested by our new findings on the evolutionary status of the dolphin brain. The four modes involve various forms of deviation from and conformity to the hypothesized initial brain type. These include examples of conservative evolution, progressive evolution, and combinations of the two in which features of one or the other become dominant. The four types of neocortical organization in (...) extant mammals may be the result of selective pressures on sensory/motor systems resulting in divergent patterns of brain phylogenesis. A modular “modification/multiplication” hypothesis is proposed as a mechanism of neocortical evolution in eutherians. Representative models of the initial ancestral group of mammals include not only extant basal Insectivora but also Chiroptera; we have found that dolphins and large whales have also retained many features of the archetypal or initial brain. This group evolved from the initial mammalian stock and returned to the aquatic environment some 50 million years ago. This unique experiment of nature shows the effects of radical changes in environment on brain-body adaptations and specializations. Although the dolphin brain has certain quantitative characteristics of the evolutionary changes seen in the higher terrestrial mammals, it has also retained many of the conservative structural features of the initial brain. Its neocortical organization is accordingly different, largely in a quantitative sense, from that of terrestrial models of the initial brain such as the hedgehog. (shrink)

The paper introduces mathematical encoding for subjective experience and meaning in natural cognition. The code is based on a quantum-theoretic qubit structure supplementing classical bit with circular dimension, functioning as a process-causal template for representation of contexts relative to the basis decision. The qubit state space is demarcated in categories of emotional experience of animals and humans. Features of the resulting spherical map align with major theoreties in cognitive and emotion science, modeling of natural language, and semiotics, suggesting several generalizations (...) and improvements. The developed model bridges psychological, quantum-theoretic, and semiotic perspectives, allowing for an integrative account of subjectivity, agency, and meaning in living Nature.Graphical abstract. (shrink)

The article considers the logical and philosophical doctrine of sophists, which, according to some modern researchers, was more philosophical than their ancient critics recognized. A comparison of the provisions of Aristotle's hermeneutics with preserved fragments of Protagoras and Gorgias shows that the doctrine of sophists was a kind of holistic philosophy, which anticipated the philosophy of dialogue of the XX century. Despite the fact that the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle tried to overcome the relativism and anti-ontologism of the doctrine (...) of sophists, some elements of its dialogism were preserved in subsequent philosophy in dialectics and rhetoric. The first thing you should pay attention to is the difference between the dialogical form of the presentation of philosophy in Plato and dialogue as the fundamental basis of thinking that we find among sophists. The dialogism preserved in the dialectic of Plato and the rhetoric of Aristotle is more a technical method of convincing the interlocutor than a hermeneutical basis, which it is in the philosophy of dialogue and in the method of Socratic discussion. The linguistic turn that occurred in the philosophy of the 20th century includes not only an increased interest in language and accuracy of expression. No less important is the new formulation of the question of the nature of the language. Is language a tool for the formulation of thought as Aristotle believed and followed by representatives of modern analytical philosophy, or does it have its own fundamental status, as representatives of the philosophy of dialogue believe? In this context, it is very important for the philosophy of dialogue to find in the thinking of the pre-Socratics those predecessors who already charted the paths for modern thought two and a half thousand years ago. The second part of the article discusses the forms of the dialogic thinking that have survived in philosophy after the sophists and the role of the sophists' hermeneutics in the formation of modern philosophy of dialogue. (shrink)

The present article deals with the developments in Islamic theology in higher education in Europe with a focus on those in Germany. The main objectives of the study are to identify the developments regarding Islamic theology at European universities in recent years and to evaluate these developments in the context of the opportunities and problems. Since European states and nations, possessing Judeo-Christian-Western values, are in search of ways to enable Muslims to live in harmony with themselves due to the growing (...) Muslim share of the population throughout Europe. This issue has great importance for the future of Islam and Muslims in Europe. One aspect of these pursuits concerns the establishment academic programmes on/over Islamic theology at European universities. The question of “Is it possible to develop an interpretation of Islam that will live in harmony with European values?” is an important issue that is being focused on across Europe, especially in Germany. The academic studies of Islamic theology, addressing this question, started in the 2000s and has gained momentum over the past decade. Creating an understanding of Islam to live in peace with Western European values and educating people who will provide Islamic religious education and religious services within this scope are the main goals of the initiatives for introducing the Islamic theology programmes at European universities. The subject is addressed by the autobiographical methods in the light of many years of experience and the literature survey. (shrink)

In recent decades, advances in the life sciences have created an unprecedentedly detailed picture of heredity and the formation of the phenotype where clusters of simplistic reductionist and deterministic views and interpretations have begun to lose ground to more complex and holistic notions. The developments in gene regulation and epigenetics have become a vivid emblem of the ongoing ‘softening’ of heredity. Despite this headway, the outlook and rhetoric widely popular in the twentieth century favoring the ‘gene’ in the ‘genegenetic plasticityphenotypeenvironment’ (...) tetrad have not been successfully tackled but continue to exist in parallel with a new, equally monochromatic, viewpoint championing genetic plasticity. An examination of epigenetics and its presentation in the public sphere, open to a conversation with the social disciplines and philosophy, could address this dichotomy and contribute to the discourse. This article outlines key biological aspects of epigenetics and discusses the language, presentation and wider resonance of this field of life science research. (shrink)

Abstract If voters do not understand the programs of rival candidates or their likely consequences, they cannot rationally exercise control over government. An ignorant electorate cannot achieve true democratic control over public policy. The immense size and scope of modern government makes it virtually impossible for voters to acquire sufficient knowledge to exercise such control. The problem is exacerbated by voters? strong incentive to be ?rationally ignorant? of politics. This danger to democracy cannot readily be circumvented through ?shortcut? methods of (...) economizing on voter knowledge costs. A truly democratic government must, therefore, be strictly limited in scope. (shrink)

Abstact. Although it is generally known that M.M. Bakhtin viewed himself as primarily a philosopher and not a philologist, the overwhelming majority of studies of his work belong to literary criticism. The purpose of this article, relying on the oral testimony of Bakhtin himself and his philosophical texts written in the Nevel-Vitebsk period, is to restore the origin of his philosophical sources and the content of his philosophical ideas of this period. The main idea is the concept of moral philosophy (...) as a philosophical system, whose main subject is participative thinking and an answerable act as an event of being. One of the most important sources of these ideas was probably the philosophy of Neo-Kantianism represented by the teachings of H. Cohen. The article provides four examples of Bakhtin's continuity in relation to the Marburg philosopher - the idea of an answerable act concerning another person as the source of a human's self-consciousness and personal integrity, the idea of a correlative relationship between a person and his neighbor as an expression of a caring participatory being, the idea of distinguishing a moral attitude from an ethical-legal one and the idea of the philosophical system, whose subject is the process of interpersonal relations. In this case, the system consists not only in the integrity of the object but also in its openness. Revealing the continuity of Bakhtin's philosophical ideas regarding Cohen leads to a better understanding of these ideas and Bakhtin's originality of their development. It is also fruitful to compare the perception of Cohen's ideas by Bakhtin and their reception by another philosopher of dialogue, F. Rosenzweig. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe participants in this symposium raise many insightful criticisms and reservations about my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter. But none substantially undermine its main thesis: that rational political ignorance and rational irrationality are major problems for democracy that are best addressed by limiting and decentralizing government power. Part I of this reply addresses criticisms of my analysis of the problem of political ignorance and its causes. Part II assesses challenges to my proposed solution.

The strengths and weaknesses of federalism have been debated for centuries. But one major possible advantage of building decentralization and limited government into a constitution has been largely ignored in the debate so far: its potential for reducing the costs of widespread political ignorance. The argument of this paper is simple, but has potentially important implications: Constitutional federalism enables citizens to “vote with their feet,” and foot voters have much stronger incentives to make well-informed decisions than more conventional ballot box (...) voters. The informational advantage of foot voting over ballot box voting suggests that decentralized federalism can increase citizen welfare and democratic accountability relative to policymaking in a centralized unitary state.Ballot box voters have strong incentives to be “rationally ignorant” about the candidates and policies they vote on because the chance that any one vote will have a decisive impact on an electoral outcome is vanishingly small. For the same reason, they also have little or no incentive to make good use of the information they do possess. By contrast, “foot voters” choosing a jurisdiction in which to reside have much stronger incentives to acquire information and use it rationally; the decisions they make are individually decisive. (shrink)

Educational Theory, Volume 72, Issue 1, Page 5-25, February 2022.

Türkiye'de din eğitimi bilimi, Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi'ndeki akademik disiplinler içinde doğmuş ve alanın ilk akademisyenleri bu fakültede yetişmiştir. Fakültenin açılışından uzun bir süre sonra kurulan Din Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı, yeni kurulan ilahiyat fakültelerinin din eğitimi akademisyenlerini yetiştirmede öncü rol oynamıştır. Bu makalede, alanında ilk ve lider olmasından dolayı Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi üzerine yoğunlaşılarak, din eğitiminin Türkiye'de bilimsel bir disiplin olarak gelişmesi tartışılmaktadır. Ayrıca, Türkiye'deki mevcut din eğitiminin genel kurumsal görünümü ile ilgili bilgi verilmektedir. Araştırmada, din eğitimi bölümünün tarihsel (...) gelişimini ortaya koymak amacıyla Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi arşivleri incelenmiştir. İlk elden bilgiler, Yönetim Kurulu, Profesörler ve Fakülte Kurulu karar defterlerinden alınmıştır. Din Eğitimi Bölümü'nün karakteristik özellikleri, bilimsel yönelimleri ve katkıları incelenirken, bölümün akademisyenleri tarafından yürütülen bilimsel çalışmalar ve onların lisans ve lisansüstü öğrencilerine atıfta bulunulmuştur. In this article, the theoretical and practical contributions concerning the rise and development of religious education science, its basic characteristics, orientations and fields as an academic discipline in Turkey are discussed. Religious education made its first step into academic disciplines at the Ankara University Divinity Faculty. And first academicians in the field of religious education were taught at this faculty. Department of Religious Education, which was established after a long time, took the lead in educating religious education academicians in newly established divinity faculties. Moreover; the end of this article, information is given in relation to the general institutional appearance of religious education in nowdays Turkey. During the research, in order to reveal the historical development of department of religious education, archives of Ankara University Divinity Faculty were examined. First-hand information was derived from decision books of Administrative, Professors and Faculty Board. When exploring the characteristic features, scientific orientations and contributions of Department of Religious Education, the scientific works carried out by department’s academicians and their graduate and postgraduate students were referred to. (shrink)

Our study aims to deal with different and similar conditions between Ghazali and Kant, as characters that can show two different thinking forms and two different cultural structures in their thoughts, in context of the same subject. We will deal with why and how that the approaches of both thinkers to the subject transcendental dialectic occur by passing through which stages and try to display that both cultural world incline to this subject by which aim.Çalışmamız iki ayrı düşünme biçimi ve (...) iki ayrı kültürel yapıyı düşüncelerinde gösterebilen kişilikler olarak Gazali ve Kant arasındaki benzer ve ayrık durumları aynı konu bağlamında ele almak amacındadır. Her iki düşünürün de aşkınsal diyalektik konusuna yaklaşımının hangi aşamalardan geçerek gerçekleştiğini, niçini ve nasılı ile birlikte ele alacak ve her iki kültür dünyasının hangi amaç ile bu konuya eğildiklerini göstermeye çalışacağız. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In this article, although we will focus on virtue ethics, we will not discuss the derivatives or types of virtue in depth. Here, we will talk about teleological virtue rather than the question of whether epistemological virtues or not. However, it is a fact that in Plato and Aristotle, teleology is closely related to epistemology. This is because knowledge is needed for virtue to be realized, and knowledge is ultimately acquired for a purpose. This shows us that teleology determines the (...) epistemological aspect of this highest peak of Ancient Greek wisdom. When we compare this with the utilitarian understanding of the Sophists, we see that a purpose is needed for the realization of virtue. The Sophists’ denial of absolute reality eliminates the purpose of finding virtue or vice. (shrink)

Psychology suffers from the absence of mathematically-formalized primitives. As a result, conceptual and quantitative studies lack an ontological basis that would situate them in the company of natural sciences. The article addresses this problem by describing a minimal psychic structure, expressed in the algebra of quantum theory. The structure is demarcated into categories of emotion and color, renowned as elementary psychological phenomena. This is achieved by means of quantum-theoretic qubit state space, isomorphic to emotion and color experiences both in meaning (...) and math. In particular, colors are mapped to the qubit states through geometric affinity between the HSL-RGB color solids and the Bloch sphere, widely used in physics. The resulting correspondence aligns with the recent model of subjective experience, producing a unified spherical map of emotions and colors. This structure is identified as a semantic atom of natural thinking—a unit of affectively-colored personal meaning, involved in elementary acts of a binary decision. The model contributes to finding a unified ontology of both inert and living Nature, bridging previously disconnected fields of research. In particular, it enables theory-based coordination of emotion, decision, and cybernetic sciences, needed to achieve new levels of practical impact. (shrink)

How partners encounter each other plays a role in whether they will be able to sustain their interaction. How partners go about maintaining their interaction reveals features of their epistemological system, particularly with respect to factors like what they know, what they take to be relevant to the interpretation, and what they value. In this way, the value system (what partners want) and the epistemological system (what partners know) intersect. By focusing on the role of reasoning and understanding, I believe (...) we stand to gain a clearer picture of how expectations about interactions inform the dynamics between partners. This, in turn, affords a picture of what partners can actually achieve in and through their connection. I am particularly interested in considering what features of interaction are necessary for maximizing the affordances of the partnership. I say this not as a utilitarian interested in maximizing good simpliciter, but as a social epistemologist thinking about the contingent goods that are present in relation (e.g. care). The epistemic picture assumes that there are things that are knowable in dancing together, while the ethical picture assumes that partners are responsible for the things they ought to know. (shrink)

For decades, scholars have recognized that most citizens have little or no political knowledge, and that it is in fact rational for the average voter to make little or no effort to acquire political information. Rational ignorance is fully compatible with the so‐called “paradox of voting” because it will often be rational for citizens to vote, but irrational for them to become well informed. Furthermore, rational ignorance leads not only to inadequate acquisition of political information, but also to ineffective use (...) of the information that citizens do possess. The combination of these two problems has fundamental implications for a variety of issues in public policy and international affairs. (shrink)

Bu çalışma İbn Sînâ (ö. 428/1037) felsefesinde mantıkî tümelin tümel olmak bakımından değerine ve Gazzâlî’nin (ö. 505/1111) mantıkî tümel bağlamında İbn Sînâ’ya yönelttiği eleştirilere odaklanmaktadır. Bu iki düşünürün tümel ve tümel türlerini nasıl açıkladıklarına değinip, onların düşünce sisteminde tümelin tekabül ettiği manayı ortaya koyarak Gazzâlî’nin İbn Sînâ’ya yönelttiği eleştirilerinin felsefi analizi yapılmaktadır. Buna göre İbn Sînâ tümelin üç türünden bahsetmektedir. Bu tümeller tabiî, aklî ve mantıkî olarak üç türe ayrılır. Bu tümeller arasındaki ilişkiyse zâtî bir ilişkiye dayanır. Bu türden ilişkiyi (...) belirleyen ve ilke veren ise tümellerin dışında olmak zorundadır. Ona göre tümellerin anlamını ve tümel türleri arasındaki zâtî ilişkiyi varlık kavramı belirlemektedir. Bu bakımdan aklî tümel tabiî tümelin makulü; aklî tümel mantıkî tümelin lazımı olabilir. Öyleyse İbn Sînâ’da tümel kavramı varlığa ilişkindir. Gazzâlî’de ise tümelin üç türünden bahsedebiliriz. O tümelin türlerini isimlendirmez ama onları betimleyerek birbirinden ayırır. Onun ayrımında ise ortaklık kavramı bilfiil ve bilkuvve olmak bakımından ele alınır ve bu kavramsal ayrımlardan hareketle varlık taksim edilir. Bu bakımdan İbn Sînâ’nın tümellere yüklediği anlam ile Gazzâlî’nin tümellere yüklediği anlam arasında arızî bir ayrımdan söz edemeyiz. Bunun tam aksine iki düşünürünün tümellere yüklediği anlam arasında zâtî bir farklılık vardır. Bu ayrılıktan hareketle Gazzâlî’nin İbn Sînâ’ya yönelttiği eleştiriler de zâtî bir nitelik arz etmektedir. Gazzâlî’nin İbn Sînâ’ya yönelttiği eleştirilerin en açık göstergelerinden biri onun mantıkî tümele yüklediği anlam ve mantıkî tümel bağlamında verdiği örnekte yatmaktadır. Gazzâlî mantıkî tümeli bilkuvve ve bilfiil olmak bakımından ortaklığı kabul etmeyen mana olarak ele alarak ondaki ortaklığı ise tasdiğe konu olan şeyin dışında bir nedene bağlamaktadır. İbn Sînâ, Gazzâlî’nin mantıkî tümele yüklediği anlamın, söylenmenin tasdikin dışında olması hususuna katılmakla beraber tasavvura konu olmayı açıkça vurgulamaktadır. Gazzâlî ise İbn Sînâ’nın bu gönderimini göz ardı etmiş ve mantıkî tümel bağlamında verdiği “İlah” örneğinden hareketle İbn Sînâ’nın bunu kabul edeceğini vurgulamıştır. Halbuki İbn Sînâ’nın felsefi sisteminde “İlah” lafzının tasavvura konu olması mümkün değildir. Çünkü “İlah” tasavvur edilmez ama idrak edilir. Ona göre tasavvura konu olanlar bilkuvve çokluk barındırır. Ama “İlah” lafzı ancak zorunlu varlık olması bakımından tasavvurun konusu olmaya elverişli değildir. Bu bakımdan Gazzâlî’nin eleştirilerinin beş sanat bakımından cedelî mi yoksa safsata mı olduğu analiz edilebilir. Gazzâlî’nin hem mantıkî tümele yüklediği anlam hem de bu anlam için verdiği örnekler onun eleştirilerinin safsata türünden olduğunun zâtî niteliğini teşkil etmektedir. (shrink)

Assessment in ethics education faces a challenge. From the perspectives of teachers, students, and third-party evaluators like the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and the National Institutes of Health, assessment of student performance is essential. Because of the complexity of ethical case analysis, however, it is difficult to formulate assessment criteria, and to recognize when students fulfill them. Improvement in students’ moral reasoning skills can serve as the focus of assessment. In previous work, Rosa Lynn Pinkus and Claire Gloeckner (...) developed a novel instrument for assessing moral reasoning skills in bioengineering ethics. In this paper, we compare that approach to existing assessment techniques, and evaluate its validity and reliability. We find that it is sensitive to knowledge gain and that independent coders agree on how to apply it. (shrink)

La science classique s'est trouvée associée à un désenchantement du monde. C'est la leçon que Jacques Monod entendait tirer des progrès de la biologie : "L'ancienne alliance est rompue. L'homme sait enfin qu'il est seul dans l'immensité indifférente de l'Univers d'où il a émergé par hasard." Notre science n'est plus ce savoir classique, nous pouvons déchiffrer le récit d'une "nouvelle alliance". Loin de l'exclure du monde qu'elle décrit, la science retrouve comme un problème l'appartenance de l'homme à ce monde. Les (...) théories scientifiques ne peuvent plus supposer la possibilité d'un savoir omniscient : nous lisons, jusque dans leurs principes, les traces d'une activité d'exploration au sein d'une nature en évolution. (shrink)

Questions concerning mediated causal effects are of great interest in psychology, cognitive science, medicine, social science, public health, and many other disciplines. For instance, about 60% of recent papers published in leading journals in social psychology contain at least one mediation test (Rucker, Preacher, Tormala, & Petty, 2011). Standard parametric approaches to mediation analysis employ regression models, and either the “difference method” (Judd & Kenny, 1981), more common in epidemiology, or the “product method” (Baron & Kenny, 1986), more common in (...) the social sciences. In this article, we first discuss a known, but perhaps often unappreciated, fact that these parametric approaches are a special case of a general counterfactual framework for reasoning about causality first described by Neyman (1923) and Rubin (1924) and linked to causal graphical models by Robins (1986) and Pearl (2006). We then show a number of advantages of this framework. First, it makes the strong assumptions underlying mediation analysis explicit. Second, it avoids a number of problems present in the product and difference methods, such as biased estimates of effects in certain cases. Finally, we show the generality of this framework by proving a novel result which allows mediation analysis to be applied to longitudinal settings with unobserved confounders. (shrink)

Advocates of ?deliberative democracy? want citizens to actively participate in serious dialogue over political issues, not merely go to the polls every few years. Unfortunately, these ideals don't take into account widespread political ignorance and irrationality. Most voters neither attain the level of knowledge needed to make deliberative democracy work, nor do they rationally evaluate the political information they do possess. The vast size and complexity of modern government make it unlikely that most citizens can ever reach the levels of (...) knowledge and rationality required by deliberative democracy, even if they were better informed than they are at present. (shrink)

Muhammad Iqbal sees each person as the “self” with an independent identity, and God as the “Absolute Self”. The human experience of the self is a constantly changing experience. This change develops around a center and eventually forms an organic unity. The independence of the self does not mean that it is closed to other-selves. It is wrong to see the essence of the self as an unchanging substance or to conceive it as an unstable flow. According to Iqbal, the (...) real personality of man is not a "thing" but an "action", a "sum of behaviors". The human being at the highest level of self-consciousness is the only being among all creatures capable of consciously participating in the creative life of the Creator. (shrink)

Based on the study of the works of domestic and foreign authors, the article presents a decompositional model of value creation when conducting business acquisition transactions with the involvement of debt capital, discloses the content of its main elements. Clarification of direct and indirect sources of value creation for debt financing transactions, as well as factors affecting their value, creates a theoretical basis for improving financial analysis and evaluating the effectiveness of LBO transactions, contributing to their development.

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 49 Heft: 1 Seiten: 149-164.

ABSTRACTThe ethics of science becomes a significant part of science and technology studies since it pays attention not exclusively to the moral impact of society on scientists but to that of scienc...

The approach proposed by Jennifer Lackey is an analytical version of social epistemology, in which the subject of the research is the nature of collective (group) beliefs. She analyzes the possibility of explaining cognitive collectivity and reducing collective knowledge to the individual one at the example of deviant knowledge types - lie and bullshit. In the given paper, the author argues that Lackey's point of view deserves criticism for neither “group" nor “belief" receive a clear definition; no criteria are proposed (...) to distinguish cognitively relevant and irrelevant social factors; the opposition of the individual and the group is retained. The author argues that the concept of collective knowledge could be much more consistent if one uses the group-grid approach elaborated by M. Douglas; one shows the social nature of the individual; one applies the entire toolkit of philosophy of language and discourse analysis for reduction of beliefs to linguistic expressions. Still the concept under criticism moves then closer to the criticalsocial epistemology, which is hardly acceptable for Lackey. What follows is. (shrink)

In this book, after discussing the fundamental problems of current science and other philosophic concepts, beginning with controversies between Heraclitus and Parmenides, Ilya Prigogine launches into a message of great hope: the future has not been determined. Contrary to globalisation and the apparent contemporary mass culture society, individual behaviour is beginning to increasingly become the key factor which governs the evolution of both the world and society as a whole. It is a message that challenges existing widespread views, implicitly or (...) explicitly, through mass communication, moreover the importance of the individual's actions implies a reflection of each person on the responsibilities that each one assumes when taking or acting upon a decision. This responsibility is associated with the freedom of thought as well as a critical analysis of fashions, customs, preconceived ideas, and ideologies, externally imposed: exactly contrary to the ideas of those who wish us to be "perfect consumers" in a world dominated only by monetary wealth. Challenging this drive towards the elimination of freedom of though in the individual is now imperative if we are to save man and his planet from catastrophe which seems to be ever imminent and (unfortunately) irreversible. This last book of Ilya Prigogine provides a small, disputable, but nonetheless valuable contribution towards that end. (shrink)

The role of passion and more generally irrational elements in processing knowledge are discussed. This seems to be a paradox, as science by definition is beyond passion. At the same time science is the expression of a culture. This paradox is examined through the experience and work of crucial figures in physics such as Newton and Einstein. Science is a dialogue between man and nature: part of the search for the transcendental which is common to many cultural activities: art, music, (...) literature. Our time is one of expectation, anxiety, and bifurcation. Far from there being an ?end? of science, our period will see the birth of a new vision, a new science whose cornerstone encloses the arrow of time: a science that makes us and our creativity the expression of a fundamental trend in the universe. (shrink)

Abstract In Politicians Don't Pander, Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro show that politicians follow public opinion much less slavishly than conventional wisdom suggests. However, the case studies they themselves rely on show that public opinion constrains policy makers more than they claim. Conversely, to the extent that political leaders are able to ignore the public's wishes, Jacobs and Shapiro do not adequately consider the possibility that this is due in large part to severe voter ignorance of public policy. In urging (...) greater obedience to the popular will, the authors also overlook the danger that increased adherence to the often internally contradictory wishes of the electorate may be impossible or undesirable. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHélène Landemore's Democratic Reason effectively demonstrates how cognitive diversity may potentially improve the quality of democratic decisions. But in setting out the preconditions that democracy must meet in order for the many to make collectively well-informed decisions, Landemore undermines the case for voter competence more than she strengthens it. The conditions she specifies are highly unlikely to be achieved by any real-world democracy. Widespread voter ignorance and the size and complexity of modern government are severe obstacles to any effort to (...) implement Landemore's vision. Better-informed decision making is more likely to be achieved by allowing a wider range of issues to be decided by “voting with your feet” instead of at the ballot box. (shrink)

Ali Tekin, Varlık ve Akıl: Aristoteles ve Fârâbî’de Burhan Teorisi [Being and Intellect: Theory of Demonstration in Aristotle and al-Fārābī], 477 pp.

Abstract Richard Posner's Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy urges that political and legal decision makers should be guided by what he calls ?everyday pragmatism,? rather than by ?abstract? moral theory. He links his conception of pragmatic government to Sclmmpeter's unromantic view of democracy. Posner argues that judicial review should be based on a combination of pragmatism and adherence to this limited conception of democracy, rather than sticking closely to ?formalist? theories of adjudication, which demand strict adherence to traditional legal norms. However, (...) Posner's consequentialist pragmatism fails to provide an adequate guide to judicial decision making, because it does not give us any criterion for deciding which consequences are desirable. His Schumpeterian theory of democracy, too, is problematic because it does not sufficiently consider the shortcomings exposed in recent scholarship in political science and economics. (shrink)