There are good reasons to reject absolutism about truth not only for theoretical purposes but also in connection with the issues of cross-cultural communication and understanding. In explaining the neorealist approach, an analogy given by Alvin Goldman is employed and it is maintained that despite its difficulties Goldman's account is on the right track vis-à-vis truth and the ontological matters related to it.

The traditional tripartite and tetrapartite analyses describe the conceptual components of propositional knowledge from a universal epistemic point of view. According to the classical analysis, since truth is a necessary condition of knowledge, it does not make sense to talk about “false knowledge” or “knowing wrongly.” There are nonetheless some natural languages in which speakers ordinarily make statements about a person’s knowing a given subject matter wrongly. In this paper, we first provide a brief analysis of “knowing wrongly” in Turkish. (...) Then, taking Allan Hazlett’s recent account of the gap between traditional analyses of knowledge and actual epistemic practices of real cognitive agents as a point of departure, we spell out a non-universalist and non-extensionalist perspective on the value of “knowing wrongly.”. (shrink)

This paper aims to describe and defend a Pluralistic Kantian, as opposed to a Tractarian, version of realism vis-à-vis the ontological basis of truthmaking relations. One underlying assumption of my position is that propositional truth is a robust property and, consequently, is normatively distinct from epistemic justification. Still, it does not follow from this realist contention that truth is generated ontologically, viz., independently of cognitive and intensional contributions of human agents. This point brings my view notably close to H. Putnam’s (...) peculiar blend of certain Wittgensteinian and Kantian themes. However, I argue that Putnam’s apparent denial of the in-itself reality with an intrinsic structure gives rise to a rather un-Kantian and problematic metaphysical picture. I suggest that the solution to the puzzle may be found in a synthesis of the best intuitions of Armstrong’s Tractarian realism and Putnam’s quasi-Kantianism. (shrink)

A significant and interesting part of the post-Gettier literature regarding the analysis of propositional knowledge is the attempt to supplement the traditional tripartite analysis by employing a fourth condition regarding the defeasibility of evidence and thus to preclude the counterexamples displayed in Gettier’s original article. My aim in this paper is to critically examine the sort of externalism that accompanies the most promising of the proposed fourth conditions, due to Pollock, in order to offer some fresh insights on this old (...) epistemological issue. I argue that Pollock’s paradigmatic treatment of the matter gives rise to a critical problem with regard to the exact role of the fourth condition and its relation with the onto-semantic or alethic condition of propositional knowledge, to wit, truth. In the light of this discussion, I draw certain conclusions about epistemic externalism and point out some of its theoretical shortcomings. (shrink)

The perennial problem of the exact nature of epistemic justification has recently become even more interesting upon Laurence BonJour's openly converting himself to foundationalism following a long and successful career built mainly around a strong defense of coherentism cum internalism. Even though the famous debate between foundationalism and coherentism is often associated with the "technical" issues of epistemic regress, basic beliefs, and so on, in this paper I will approach the debate from the standpoint of the post-Wittgensteinian literature and try (...) to provide some useful insights about the justification of those beliefs alleged by the foundationalist to constitute our ultimate touch with reality. More specifically, I will offer a neo-Kantian interpretation of the subvenient basis of supervenience relations believed to take place between the world and our basic cognitive states, and claim that such an approach has a better chance of combining the strengths of the traditional rivals in epistemology and coming up with a viable synthesis on this matter. (shrink)

Although the notion of agency presents itself as an attractive solution to the puzzle of free will, itfaces a problem vis-à-vis the nature of reasons that are purported to lie behind actions. In this paper,I first point out the significance of a paradigm shift that emerges with the agency view. Then I arguethat the agency theories nonetheless fail in general to give a satisfactory account of various sorts ofreasons underlying our actions and choices. In trying to enlighten the multi-faceted nature (...) of actionsand agency, I define a novel concept, “substantive autonomy,” and claim that it is a basic fact valid forall animals, not only humans, that are capable of initiating action. Reasons may indeed be lying behind our actions in a non-deterministic and ubiquitous manner, but agency often works in the absenceof sophisticated reasons which are evidently characteristic of humans.Keywords: agency, event causation, free will, reasons, substantive autonomy. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the putatively non-epistemic nature of propositional truth presents an interesting problem for those who reasonably believe that truth is normatively distinct from warrant or evidence and that such truth is an irreducible condition on propositional knowledge. After arguing that McDowell’s direct realist approach is rather inadequate to deal with the issue I am raising here, I introduce the notion of ‘epistemic gradient’ to show that even if one may plausibly maintain that a significant portion (...) of our empirical beliefs are presumably true in the alethic realist sense, there is no unproblematic transition from conceding that point to making the realist truth a panepistemic condition of propositional knowledge. (shrink)

Öz: Teknoloji felsefesi görece olarak genç bir akademik alt-alan olmakla birlikte, ontoloji, epistemoloji, siyaset felsefesi, etik ve estetik gibi felsefe disiplininin daha köklü alt-alanlarıyla önemli bir kavramsal ilişki ağı içinde bulunmaktadır. Ayrıca bu dalın temel bazı meselelerinin derinlemesine incelenmesinin sosyoloji, antropoloji, psikoloji ve siyasi bilimler gibi disiplinlerin birikimlerinden ve yaklaşımlarından yararlanmayı da gerekli kıldığını belirtebiliriz. Bu yazımda teknoloji felsefesi alanını genel hatlarıyla ve güncel olgular ışığında kısaca tanıttıktan sonra, bu alanda ilginç ve kuramsal yönden değerli bulduğum iki sorunsalı sergileyip irdeliyorum. (...) İlki toplumsal bir gerçek olarak teknolojinin nasıl bir doğası, karakteri veya kendini ileri taşıma itkisi olduğunun sorgulanmasıdır. Bu çerçevede, söz konusu literatüre 20. yüzyılda önemli katkılar yapmış olan Jacques Ellul, Hans Jonas ve Arnold Gehlen’in antropolojik-felsefi boyuttaki önemli bazı düşüncelerini açıklayıp tartışıyorum. İkinci olarak, Albert Borgmann’ın Heidegger’in fikirlerinden ilham alarak ürettiği “odaklı pratikler” kavramını betimleyerek onun görüşlerine gelen tepkilerden bazılarını ele alarak inceliyorum. Yazının son kısmında, çağdaş teknolojinin çoğulculuk, değişkenlik ve geçişkenlik kavramları üzerinden oluşan yeni felsefi kimliğine ilişkin bazı görüngübilimsel düşünceler sunuyorum. (shrink)

This paper presents a position called Scheme-based Alethic Realism, which reconciles a realist position on the nature of truth with a pluralistic Kantian perspective that allows for multiple environments in which truthmaking relationships are established. We argue that truthmaking functions are constrained by a stable phenomenal world and a stable cognitive architecture. This account takes truth as normatively distinct from epistemic justification while relativizing the truth conditions of our statements to what we call Frameworks. The pluralistic aspect allows that these (...) stable elements, while constraining representational and linguistic schemes, do not define a single framework for truthmaking relations. We strengthen this position by considering themes on situated rational agency from cognitive science and artificial intelligence, arguing that whatever enables or supports rational action within a particular environment must figure into some account of truth and truthmaking, and vice versa. (shrink)

Barry Allen defends a highly unorthodox and compact account of humans and their evolutionary adventure, which comprises inter alia epistemological, alethic, technological, and artistic aspects. His anthropocentric view distinguishes itself from traditional forms of realism and anti-realism by virtue of its dynamic and non-reductionist character. Allen adopts a certain perspective of techno-artistic and onto-epistemic construction, which we dub “panartifactualism,” claiming principally that nothing at all escapes the artifactualizing power of human beings. We maintain that, under closer scrutiny, various dimensions of (...) Allen’s account conflict and that his philosophical approach to “being” and “making” ultimately gives rise to a rather problematic ontological picture. Having pointed out its shortcomings and untenable results, we spell out the conceptual contours of a contemporary and far more attractive version of realism which suffers neither from the issues faced by views like panartifactualism nor from the obvious difficulties of noumenalist realism justifiably opposed by Allen. (shrink)

According to the Epicurean tradition, there is something misleading about our common intuition that we are harmed at death. In contemporary literature, we find proponents of the anti-Epicurean view as well as staunch defenders of the no-harm theory. In this paper, I first deal with the question of the possibility of worldly presence after death and, secondly, with the idea of harm due to death of a person. The gist of my claim is that a non-absolutistic approach to the whole (...) problematic of harm seems to have a better explanatory power in this context. In the course of my discussion, I coin and elucidate the phrase “loss of vitality” and assert that it may provide us with a more useful notion in the metaphysical treatment of death and harm. I also distinguish two perspectives with regard to being harmed and claim that there is a notable issue about being harmed at death especially when the matter is regarded internally, in contrast to an external point of view. (shrink)

In this paper I present Pluralistic Kantianism as a viable alternative to other prominent accounts of the determination of the truth conditions of our ordinary empirical statements. I further claim that this sort of Kantianism is capable of handling certain theoretical difficulties faced by any scheme-based semantics. Moreover, Pluralistic Kantianism can shed some light on such crucial issues as cross-cultural communication and understanding. As a result, if the account offered here is on the right track, we may get a palatable (...) alternative to both restrictive monism and apathetic relativism, both of which ultimately fail to explicate or enlighten the successful and unsuccessful instances of cross-cultural understanding. (shrink)

Realists typically suppose that nonepistemic truth is an independent condition on propositional knowledge. Few philosophers, however, have seriously questioned the meta-epistemic consequences of combining alethic and epistemic variants of realism. In this paper I aim to show that the truth condition in the customary definition of knowledge presents an important problem for the realist at higher epistemic levels. According to my argument, traditional epistemic-logical analyses of metaknowledge fail because of their extensionalism and certain presuppositions they have about the satisfaction of (...) the truth condition. I further suggest that we need a different approach to metaknowledge if (1) we want to retain alethic realism, and (2) we want our epistemological accounts to adequately explicate the meta-epistemic states of actual, evidence-bound cognitive agents. (shrink)

In the end of the nineteenth century, there was a remarkable ‘empiricist attitude’ found among certain philosopher-scientists, an attitude which arguably emerged in the main as a reaction to the anti-scientific mood prevalent in the culture that time. Those philosopher-scientists, such as Mach and Hertz, were particularly anxious to emphasize and laud the privileged status of the empirical dimension ofour scientific knowledge, distinguishing it carefully from the theoretical constructions and hypothetical entities that are ordinarily posited by scientists. Yet, as I (...) exhibit in this article, there were certain crucial philosophical differences between these two thinkers with respect to their general conception of scientific theories and scientific norms guiding the activity. I suggest further that the most central difference in this context between Mach and Hertz can justifiably (and, perhaps, more fruitfully) be articulated and reckoned in traditional andcontemporary epistemological terms. (shrink)

Some sensory experiences are pleasant, some unpleasant. This is a truism. But understanding what makes these experiences pleasant and unpleasant is not an easy job. Various difficulties and puzzles arise as soon as we start theorizing. There are various philosophical theories on offer that seem to give different accounts for the positive or negative affective valences of sensory experiences. In this paper, we will look at the current state of art in the philosophy of mind, present the main contenders, critically (...) compare and contrast them. In particular, we want to examine how they handle the reason-giving power of affective states. We will look into two representationalist proposals (Evaluativism and Imperativism) and a functionalist proposal, and argue that, contrary to their own advertisements, the representationalist proposals don’t have good accounts of why and how sensory affect can motivate, rationalize, and justify subsequent behavior and intentional mental activity. We will show that our own functionalist proposal does a much better job in this regard, and that when the representationalist proposals are modified to do a better job, they fare better not because of their representationalist credentials but due to their functionalist ones. (shrink)

[This is the penultimate version, please send me an email for the final version]. Some sensations are pleasant, some unpleasant, and some are neither. Furthermore, those that are pleasant or unpleasant are so to different degrees. In this essay, I want to explore what kind of a difference is the difference between these three kinds of sensations. I will develop a comprehensive three-level account of sensory pleasure that is simultaneously adverbialist, functionalist and is also a version of a satisfied experiential-desire (...) account. (shrink)

[Penultimate draft] I present the perceptualist/representationalist theories of pain in broad outline and critically examine them in light of a competing view according to which awareness of pain is essentially introspective. I end the essay with a positive sketch of a naturalistic proposal according to which pain experiences are intentional but not fully representational. This proposal makes sense of locating pains in body parts as well as taking pains as subjective experiences.

Since its inception some fifty years ago, cognitive science has seen a number of sea changes. Perhaps the best known is the development of connectionist models of cognition as an alternative to classical, symbol-based approaches. A more recent - and increasingly influential - trend is that of dynamical-systems-based, ecologically oriented models of the mind. Researchers suggest that a full understanding of the mind will require systematic study of the dynamics of interaction between mind, body, and world. Some argue that this (...) new orientation calls for a revolutionary new metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes, and even persons, literally extend into the environment. This book is a guide to this movement in cognitive science. Each chapter tackles either a specific area of empirical research or specific sector of the conceptual foundation underlying this research. (shrink)

Representationalism is the view that the phenomenal character of experiences is identical to their representational content of a certain sort. This view requires a strong transparency condition on phenomenally conscious experiences. We argue that affective qualities such as experienced pleasantness or unpleasantness are counter-examples to the transparency thesis and thus to the sort of representationalism that implies it.

This paper examines pain states (and other intransitive bodily sensations) from the perspective of the problems they pose for pure informational/representational approaches to naturalizing qualia. I start with a comprehensive critical and quasi-historical discussion of so-called Perceptual Theories of Pain (e.g., Armstrong, Pitcher), as these were the natural predecessors of the more modern direct realist views. I describe the theoretical backdrop (indirect realism, sense-data theories) against which the perceptual theories were developed. The conclusion drawn is that pure representationalism about pain (...) in the tradition of direct realist perceptual theories (e.g., Dretske, Tye) leaves out something crucial about the phenomenology of pain experiences, namely, their affective character. I touch upon the role that introspection plays in such representationalist views, and indicate how it contributes to the source of their trouble vis-à-vis bodily sensations. The paper ends by briefly commenting on the relation between the affective/evaluative component of pain and the hedonic valence of emotions. (shrink)

I introduce the Displaced Perception Model of Introspection developed by Dretske which treats introspection of phenomenal states as inferential and criticize it.

Pain is the most prominent member of a class of sensations known as bodily sensations, which includes itches, tickles, tingles, orgasms, and so on. Bodily sensations are typically attributed to bodily locations and appear to have features such as volume, intensity, duration, and so on, that are ordinarily attributed to physical objects or quantities. Yet these sensations are often thought to be logically private, subjective, self-intimating, and the source of incorrigible knowledge for those who have them. Hence there appear to (...) be reasons both for thinking that pains (along with other similar bodily sensations) are physical objects or conditions that we perceive in body parts, and for thinking that they are not. This apparent paradox is one of the main reasons why philosophers are especially interested in pain. One increasingly popular but still controversial way to deal with this apparent paradox is to defend a perceptual or representational view of pain, according to which feeling pain is in principle no different from undergoing other standard perceptual processes like seeing, hearing, touching, etc. But there are many who think that pains are not amenable to such a treatment. Although it was the treatment of pain as a sensory-discriminative experience that had dominated the philosophical discussions throughout most of the twentieth century, attention to pains’ affective-motivational dimension has gained prominence in recent years. (shrink)

Bu çalışmanın odak noktası, siyaset bilgisi ile seçmen ilgilenimi arasındaki ilişkiyi analiz etmek ve siyaset bilgisini ve seçmen ilgilenimini etkileyen sosyal ve demografik faktörleri belirlemektir. Bu amaçla, Tokat ilinde yaşayan 18 yaş üstü 401 katılımcı üzerinde bir araştırma yapılmıştır. Araştırma sonuçları, siyaset bilgisi ile seçmen ilgilenimi arasında olumlu bir ilişki olduğunu göstermiştir. Ayrıca, sosyal ve demografik faktörlerin siyaset bilgisi ve seçmen ilgilenimi üzerinde etkisi olduğu belirlenmiştir. Örneğin, erkeklerin siyaset bilgisi ve ilgisi kadınlardan daha yüksek bulunmuştur. 50 yaş ve üzeri bireylerin (...) siyasete olan ilgileri, orta yaş grubundakilere kıyasla daha yüksek çıkmıştır. Eğitim düzeyi incelendiğinde, ilkokul/ortaokul mezunlarının ve lisans mezunlarının siyasete olan ilgilerinin, lise ve ön lisans mezunlarından daha düşük olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Meslek gruplarına bakıldığında, esnafların siyaset bilgisi, işsizlerden daha yüksek bulunmuştur. Memurların ve akademisyenlerin siyasete olan ilgileri, öğrenciler ve diğer meslek gruplarına kıyasla daha düşük çıkmıştır. Siyasi ve kültürel kimliklere göre farklılıklar incelendiğinde, siyasetten uzak duran bireylerin siyaset bilgisinin, diğer kesimlere kıyasla daha düşük olduğu görülmüştür. Milli görüşçü olarak kendini tanımlayanların siyasete olan ilgileri, muhafazakar/dindar, milliyetçi ve siyasetten uzak olanlara kıyasla daha yüksek çıkmıştır. Ayrıca, parti tercihinin oy verme davranışını etkilediğini düşünenlerin siyasete olan ilgileri, bu etkiden bahsetmeyenlere kıyasla daha düşük bulunmuştur. Ayrıca, mevcut partisi dışında başka bir partiye oy verebileceğini belirtenlerin siyaset bilgisi ve ilgileri, başka bir partiye kesinlikle oy vermeyeceğini ifade edenlere kıyasla daha düşük bulunmuştur. Elde edilen bulgular, siyasi partilerin seçmenlere projelerini, hedeflerini ve ideolojilerini tanıtırken ve propaganda yaparken hedef kitlelerini belirleme konusunda rehberlik edebilir. (shrink)

It might seem obvious that dealing with death anxiety in the health care system is desirable. Hence, there are either voices that demand more research on how this openness can be fostered or those who consider this topic unworthy of further investigations because of its triviality. The idea behind both deficient perspectives is that the health care system as a communication system can assume the position of a second-order observer who can account for his deficits. However, in terms of Luhmannian (...) systems theory, external perturbations cannot force a functional system to reflect and change the structure of his communications in a certain way. The health care system as a communication system cannot do more than integrating the topic of death anxiety in terms of its functional perpetuation. For example, in hospitals, neither health care staff nor external counselors are able to address existential issues without being affected by functional and structural requirements of the hospital. We present an outline for the justification of the avoidance of death-anxiety related talk in the health care system by reference to systems theory and existential philosophy. (shrink)

This essay is a sustained attempt to bring new light to some of the perennial problems in philosophy of mind surrounding phenomenal consciousness and introspection through developing an account of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Building on the information-theoretic framework of Dretske (1981), we present an informational psychosemantics as it applies to what we call sensory concepts, concepts that apply, roughly, to so-called secondary qualities of objects. We show that these concepts have a special informational character and semantic structure that closely (...) tie them to the brain states realizing conscious qualitative experiences. We then develop an account of introspection which exploits this special nature of sensory concepts. The result is a new class of concepts, which, following recent terminology, we call phenomenal concepts: these concepts refer to phenomenal experience itself and are the vehicles used in introspection. On our account, the connection between sensory and phenomenal concepts is very tight: it consists in different semantic uses of the same cognitive structures underlying the sensory concepts, such as the concept of red. Contrary to widespread opinion, we show that information theory contains all the resources to satisfy internalist intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, while not offending externalist ones. A consequence of this account is that it explains and predicts the so-called conceivability arguments against physicalism on the basis of the special nature of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Thus we not only show why physicalism is not threatened by such arguments, but also demonstrate its strength in virtue of its ability to predict and explain away such arguments in a principled way. However, we take the main contribution of this work to be what it provides in addition to a response to those conceivability arguments, namely, a substantive account of the interface between sensory and conceptual systems and the mechanisms of introspection as based on the special nature of the information flow between them. (shrink)

The ordinary conception of pain has two major threads that are in tension with each other. It is this tension that generates various puzzles in our philosophical understanding of pain. This is a short encyclopedia entry surveying some of the major philosophical puzzles about pain.