The current IASP definition of pain has come under renewed criticisms recently. There is a new momentum for its revision as reflected by the fact that IASP has now a Presidential Task Force dedicated to look into whether there is enough warrant to update the definition. I critically review all the major criticisms of the current definition in detail, and raise new difficulties rarely discussed before. I show that none of the major criticisms has enough warrant to force us to (...) substantially revise the current definition. Combined with the discussion of the new difficulties, there is nonetheless a need to restate the definition using slightly different terminology that will make the original intent of the current definition clearer and more precise. A restatement of the definition is proposed and its potential is discussed in light of some empirical questions that remain. [The IASP Council has now approved a revised definition and published its rationale here: Pain 2020 Sep 1; 161(9), pp. 1976–1982. The new definition follows (most of) my recommendations.]. (shrink)

I distinguish between two claims of transparency of experiences. One claim is weaker and supported by phenomenological evidence. This I call the transparency datum. Introspection of standard perceptual experiences as well as bodily sensations is consistent with, indeed supported by, the transparency datum. I formulate a stronger transparency thesis that is entailed by representationalism about experiential phenomenology. I point out some empirical consequences of strong transparency in the context of representationalism. I argue that pain experiences, as well as some other (...) similar experiences like itches, tickles, orgasms, hedonic valence, etc., are not transparent in this strong sense. Hence they constitute empirical counterexamples to representationalism. Given that representationalism is a general metaphysical doctrine about all experiential phenomenology for good reasons, I conclude that representationalism about phenomenal consciousness is false. Then, I outline a general framework about how the introspection of phenomenal qualities in perceptual experience works in light of the transparency datum, but consistent with the rejection of strong transparency. The result is a form of qualia realism that is naturalist and intentionalist, and has close affinities to the adverbialist views developed in the latter part of the last century. I then apply this framework to pain experiences and their bodily locations. (shrink)

Denken geschieht an einem Ort. Zugleich gilt es zu bedenken, was einen Ort zum Ort werden lasst. Offenbar setzt also das Denken, wie auch jedes Sprechen und Handeln, einen Standort bzw. einen Standpunkt voraus, die selbst wiederum zum Thema philosophischer Betrachtung werden bzw. gemacht werden mussen. Dabei kann freilich Ort ein Mehrfaches bedeuten, etwa den Korper, die politische Schicht, den sozialen Status, das sozialisierte Geschlecht, die Sprache, kulturelle Geflechte, Lebenswelten und nicht zuletzt geographische Landschaften sowie geschichtliche Zeitraume. All dies sind (...) - je nach Konstellation - Orte, die das Denken bedingen. Andererseits haben verschiedene Denkweisen in der Geschichte und Gegenwart immer wieder den Anspruch erhoben, universal zu agieren, d. h. in Unabhangigkeit von allen Milieus, Raumen, Zeiten, Sprachen, Geschlechtern usw. diese uberschreiten zu konnen. Von dieser vielschichtigen Fragestellung ausgehend setzt der vorliegende Band diesseits inter- wie transkultureller Selbstverstandigungen an. Anstatt jedoch von einer antagonistischen Gegenuberstellung auszugehen, wonach man sich einer der beiden Diskurslandschaften - wie etwa Universalismus hier, Relativismus/Partikularismus dort - anzuschliessen hatte, wird hier vielmehr die Abhangigkeit und Reziprozitat beider betont. In diesem Sinne, und dies ware der Leitfaden dieses Buches, bedeutet Ort/e des Denkens zugleich Denken des Ortes wie der Orte. (shrink)

Born as φαντασία in Greek philosophy, the concept of imagination that today we understand from has a different meaning and contains different functions. This study attempts to reveal the conceptual contents and functions by examining the conceptual transformation of the concept in Ancient Greece and Aristotle’s terminology and epistemological function.

According to the current administrative division, the subject of our study is the Old Mosque located in Ankara Province, Çamlıdere District of Çukurören Neighborhood. The work was built by Mehmed Halil Usta in 1872 according to the date expression on the harim door and wooden ceiling. It has a rectangular plan in the north-south direction and a roof system with a hipped roof over a flat wooden ceiling. After being closed for many years, it was made ready for worship again (...) after the repair that was completed in 2019. During the repairs, it was determined that it had a rich decoration program, and these decorations were replicated and reworked on the wall surfaces. In our study, which was prepared in order to eliminate this deficiency, it was aimed to determine the place and importance of the work in Anatolian Turkish architecture with a comprehensive evaluation by introducing the work in detail in terms of its plan, architectural and ornamental features. As a method in our study, first of all, existing literature information was scanned, on-site examinations were made at regular intervals, in the meantime, photographs were taken and surveys were taken, and some verbal information was obtained from the village headman and its residents. As a result of our work completed in the light of these data, Çukurören Old Mosque appears as a provincial mosque that exhibits the general characteristics of Westernization-era mosques in terms of its plan, mass, wooden ceiling and hand-carved decoration program. (shrink)

The third sex, which for a long period of history meant the androgyne and the homosexual, took on a new sense around 1900, when it was applied to emancipated women, who were featured by novelists and analysed by psychiatrists. Assimilated with lesbians, 'desexualized' by their modern way of life, they were labelled 'neuter', worker bees in a hive-state where 'female–male' markers were tending to disappear. Neither men in sex, nor women in gender (at least according to traditional assumptions), they constituted (...) a new 'battalion' which highlighted all the anxieties of the time: the involution of dimorphism, the threat of lack of differentiation and the 'extinction of the race'. But for those who accepted the label, neuterdom evolved from a pejorative concept into an instrument of a kind of liberation and the strategic means to set up creative space cleared of sexual stigma, until political cooption, aware of the resurgence of a 'superior species', changed its meaning and tipped over into the worst sort of excess. (shrink)

This is a piece written for interdisciplinary audiences and contains very little philosophy. It looks into whether, or in what sense, pains and pleasures are emotions.

The review of literature on stakeholders reveals that there is need to understand more about firm-stakeholder relationships especially from stakeholders’ point of view. Market integration in the European Union (EU) provides an excellent context for increasing such understanding since it is creating opportunities and threats for firms and their stakeholders. This research aims to make a contribution in this direction by analyzing strategic responses of primary stakeholders to selected threat events in the history of Volkswagen (VW) since 1960.

Es durfte heute weitestgehend ausser Frage stehen, dass mit der Phanomenologie - wie sie unter dem Leitspruch Zu den Sachen selbst! erstmals konkretisiert und als Methode ausgebildet wurde - sich eine neue und gewandelte Grundstellung gegenuber der traditionellen Metaphysik ereignet hat. Im vorliegenden Sammelband wird aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven vor allem der Frage nachgegangen, ob und inwiefern es einer phanomenologisch verfahrenden Metaphysikkritik gelingt, die metaphysischen Denkvoraussetzungen zu uberwinden und einen unverstellten Blick auf die Phanomene freizugeben. Dabei besteht der Anspruch der Beitrage (...) nicht zuletzt darin, auszuloten, wie es (heute) um das Potenzial phanomenologischer Bemuhungen bestellt ist und wo genau deren Grenzen auszumachen sind. (shrink)

This book represents the author's view of humanity.

A Collective Identity Function (CIF) is a rule which aggregates personal opinions on whether an individual belongs to a certain identity into a social decision. A simple CIF is one which can be expressed in terms of winning coalitions. We characterize simple CIFs and explore various CIFs of the literature by exploiting their ability of being expressed in terms of winning coalitions. We also use our setting to introduce conditions that ensure the equal treatment of individuals as voters or as (...) outcomes. (shrink)

The current debate that surrounds the issue of patient rights and the transformation of health care, social insurance, and reimbursement systems has put the topic of patient responsibility on both the public and health care sectors' agenda. This climate of debate and transition provides an ideal time to rethink patient responsibilities, together with their underlying rationale, and to determine if they are properly represented when being called `patient' responsibilities. In this article we analyze the various types of patient responsibilities, identify (...) the underlying motivations behind their creation, and conclude upon their sensibleness and merit. The range of patient responsibilities that have been proposed and implemented can be reclassified and placed into one of four groups, which are more accurate descriptors of the nature of these responsibilities. We suggest that, within the framework of a free-market system, where health care services are provided based on the ability to pay for them, none of these can properly be justified as a patient responsibility. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding about the internal fraud and corruption problem in the Turkish construction industry. The reasons behind the internal fraud and corruption problem as well as the types of prevention methods were investigated; and as a result various recommendations were made. To this end, a risk awareness questionnaire was used to understand the behavioral patterns of the construction industry, and to clarify possible proactive and reactive measures against internal fraud and corruption. The (...) type of fraud experienced by Turkish construction companies was also surveyed in the questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent to 89 firms; and depending on the collected data, certain recommendations for construction industry professionals were provided. (shrink)

This research paper aims to investigate. the impact of inflation. on financial sector performance in Western. Balkan. countries. The topic was chosen considering the financial sector’s fundamental role and its. impact on sustainable economic growth. This impact is measured through the effect that macroeconomic determinants of financial. performance such. as inflation, GDP. growth, general government final consumption expenditure, trade, and the lending interest rate have on credit to private sector as a share of GDP and broad definition of money as (...) a ratio of GDP, which were used to proxy financial sector development. The data are provided by the World Bank as well as the Central. Banks. of the respective countries, for the period 2002–2021. The research methodology consists of different panel regression models such as OLS, OLS robust, Fixed effects, Random effects, and Generalized method of moments (GMM). Findings indicate that domestic credit to the private sector and inflation are positively correlated, whereas broad money and inflation are negatively correlated. (shrink)

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.

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)

A healthy and robust public political culture is generally regarded as being of utmost necessity for the maintenance of a stable democratic environment. Especially when a country is facing significant challenges and is in the process of devising and implementing radical reforms, the presence of satisfactory collective deliberation can ensure durability and stability. This article will focus on one type of argumentation that stands in the way of such healthy deliberation. It will explore the various forms that ad hominem arguments (...) take and consider the harmful consequences of their wide prominence in the political culture of the country. (shrink)