“It’s so hard to be a saint in the city,” sings Bruce Springsteen in a ballad released 35 years ago. Judging from the national popular sentiment about the matter, he could have been talking about the complexity of being a philosopher in Turkey.

We propose a theoretical model to explain the usage of time-inconsistent behavior as a strategy to exploit others when reputation and trust have secondary effects on the economic outcome. We consider two agents with time-consistent preferences exploiting common resources. Supposing that an agent is believed to have time-inconsistent preferences with probability p, we analyze whether she uses this misinformation when she has the opportunity to use it. Using the model originally provided by Levhari and Mirman (Bell J Econ 11(1):322–334, 1980), (...) we determine the optimal degree of present bias that the agent would like to have while pretending to have time-inconsistent preferences and we provide the range of present-bias parameter under which deceiving is optimal. Moreover, by allowing the constant relative risk aversion class of utility form, we characterize the distinction between pretending to be naive and sophisticated. (shrink)

Background Ethics positions, consisting of the two fundamental dimensions of idealism and relativism, influence individuals’ decision-making significantly. Particularly in an applied field such as nursing, the ethics positions of nurses can play a significant role in clinical decisions. Therefore, it is important to know the factors affecting the ethics positions of nurses in clinical decision-making. Aim The aim of the study is to examine the factors affecting the ethics positions of nursing students in clinical decision-making. Research design This is a (...) two-phase sequential explanatory mixed methods study designed in accordance with the COREQ criteria. A participant Information Form and the Ethics Position Questionnaire were used to collect quantitative data. Qualitative data were obtained through focus group interviews. Ethical considerations This study was conducted after receiving written permission from X University Ethics Board. Additionally, permission was obtained from the participating nursing faculty. Participants Among the fourth-year nursing students, 180 students participated in the quantitative phase and 30 students in the qualitative phase of the study. Results The quantitative data analysis showed that the idealism sub-dimension mean scores of the participants were higher than the relativism sub-dimension mean scores. The analysis of the qualitative data resulted in four main themes that influence participants’ ethics positions in clinical decision-making: (1) attitudes of role models in clinical practice (staff nurses/mentors/lecturers), (2) resources related to clinical practice (labs, hospitals/classrooms), (3) health system (hospital policies/school policies), and (4) personal differences (act with emotion/act with logic). Conclusion The results showed that the health system, role models in the clinic, personal differences, and skill-related resources affect the ethics positions of nursing students in clinical decision-making. In this regard, awareness can be raised by providing training to nursing students by academic instructors on ethics positions and the factors that are determined to affect ethics positions in clinical decision-making. (shrink)

Bu çalışmada Kazvinî (ö. 1283)’nin kozmografya ve coğrafya konularında kaleme aldığı eseri Acâibü'l-Mahlûkât ve Ğarâibü'l-Mevcûdât’ın yurtiçi ve yurtdışındaki çeşitli kütüphanelerde yer alan, farklı dönemlere ait bazı Arapça, Farsça ve Türkçe nüshalarındaki Segsar Adası’nda yaşayan iki kavmin tasvirleri incelenmektedir. Zenc Denizi’nde bulunan Segsar Adası’ndaki köpek başlı insan ve kayış ayaklı insan şeklinde bildirilmiş iki farklı kavme dair hikayeler eserin Süfliyyât konulu ikinci makalesinde zikredilmektedir. Segsar Adası’nın bahsi geçen sakinleri hakkındaki malumata ve ilgili tasvirlere eserin pek çok nüshasında Bahr-i Zenc başlığı altındaki (...) Cezire-i Segsar bölümünde rastlanmaktadır. Eserde ayrıca ikinci makalenin Bahr-i Hind başlığı altındaki Cezire-i Kasr bölümünde Zülkarneyn’in askerleriyle birlikte uğradığı Billur Köşk’te yaşayan köpek başlı bir kavimden bahsedilmektedir. Ahmedî (ö. 1412-13)’nin İskendernâme isimli eserindeki Zülkarneyn’in Etvar Adası ve bir başka adadaki Billur Köşk ziyaretleriyle ilgili bölümlerde de rastlanan bu rivayetle ilgili tasvirler de mukayese amacıyla çalışmaya dahil edilmiştir. Benzer şekilde İskendernâme’de aktarılan Zülkarneyn’in Mazenderan seferinde karşılaştığı kement ayaklı devle ilgili rivayetin de muhtemelen Acâibü'l-Mahlûkât’taki kayış ayaklı kavme dair hikâyenin etkisiyle oluşturulduğu düşünüldüğünden, bu konuya ilişkin tasvirler de çalışmada yer almaktadır. Bu makale kapsamında incelenmiş 13. yüzyıldan 19. yüzyıla kadar farklı dönemlere ait ve dönemlerinin minyatür geleneğini yansıtan tüm tasvir örnekleri benzer ve farklı yönleriyle değerlendirmeye tabi tutulmaktadır. (shrink)

Zamanda özdeşlik problemi felsefe tarihinin en önemli ve temel problemlerinden birisidir. Fakat bu özdeşlik problemi sadece fiziksel nesnelerde değil, bilincin özdeşliğinde de kendisini gösterir. Bilincin özdeşliği problemi onun salt bir tanımlama mı yoksa kendi içinde bir varlık olarak ontolojik bir statüsü olup olmadığı mı sorusuyla ilgilidir. Bu makalede demet teorisi gibi önde gelen bilinç teorilerinin bilincin geçişi veya bölünmüş zihin gibi temel problemlerin çözümünün açıklanmasında yetersiz olduklarını zaman felsefesinin bir kuramı olan dört-boyutçuluğun özdeşliğin geçişi konusundaki çözümlere yönelik yaklaşımını uyarlayarak savunacağım. (...) Bu amaçla Theseus’un gemisi ve Chisholm’un kahve kupası gibi felsefenin bilinen örneklerini verecek ve aynı örnekleri bilincin geçişine uygulayacağım. Bu örneklerden hareket ederek, B-serisi yargılamalarıyla (özellikle Ezelicilikle) ışınlanma paradoksunun çözümünü öne süreceğim. Bilinç benzeri nesnelerden kastın, bilincin var olmasını sağlayan bir zamansal ilişki mi yoksa bu ilişkilerden soyut bir ontolojik statü mü olduğu sorununa da değineceğim. Eğer bilinç ve nesneler arasındaki bu ilişki ortaya konulursa Parfit ve diğer filozofların ortaya koyduğu benzeri sorunların çözülebileceğini düşünüyorum. Bunu yaparak bilincin diğer tüm uzay zaman nesneleri gibi mereolojik (parça bütün ilişkisi bağlamında) bir özü olduğunu ileri süreceğim. Bu sebeple de demet teorisini ve Parfit’in çözümünü, Sider’ın Perry ve Prior’a karşı argümanlarından analojiyle reddedeceğim. Bu sayede argümanımı özdeşliğin analitik metafizik konumu lehine güçlendireceğim. (shrink)

Müslümanların kitabı olan Kur’an inzal olduğu zamanlardan beri hem Müslümanları hem de diğer din mensuplarını ilgilendire geldi. Kur’an’ın mesajını doğru bir şekilde anlamak için mütekellimler fakihler, filozoflar ve sufiler birtakım görüş açıları geliştirerek Kur'an'ı kendi zaviyelerinden anlama çabasına girdiler. Her grup Kur'an'ı doğru bir şekilde anlama faaliyetlerinde umum-husus muhkem-müteşabih, siyak-sibak hakikat-mecaz gibi bazı açıklama mekanizmalarına başvurdu. Bu makalede, genel olarak Kur'an’ı anlamak üzere geliştirilmiş bazı bakış açılarına değinilirken Öztürk’ün söz konusu makalesi özgülünde, Kur’an’ı anlamak üzere yeni bir bakış açısı olarak (...) geliştirilmiş ‘Tarihselci Perspektif’ de eleştirilecek ve tarihselci perspektifin teolojik/itikadî açıdan ortaya çıkaracağı olası birtakım sorunlara da işaret edilecek. Böylece Kur’an’ı anlamak üzere geliştirilen tarihselcilik başta olmak üzere bazı yaklaşımlara yönelik kendi fikrimizi beyan etmiş olacağız. (shrink)

Perspicuous representation, Wittgenstein offers, is not another methodology, but it consists in seeing the connections. The Wittgensteinian perspicuous representation is therapeutic. The method he suggests for philosophy is the same method he suggests for social sciences. In both of these cases, he tries to get us to see the confusions we become entangled in when philosophizing and theorizing. In both of these disciplines he warns us not to advance explanatory, metaphysical theories. In this paper, I connect this concern with Wittgenstein’s (...) critique of Frazer. In criticizing Frazer, Wittgenstein adopts the important part of Spengler’s view. Nonetheless, there are differences between Wittgenstein’s views and those of Spengler; this paper aims to show similarities as well as these differences. The first part of the paper briefly summarizes Frazer’s views. The second part focuses on Wittgenstein’s critique of Frazer concerning science and technology. The third part gives an account of his critique regarding method of social sciences and philosophy. The last part concentrates on Wittgenstein’s critique of Frazer pertaining to the tolerance towards alternative forms of life. Key Words: context-free vacuum • evolutionary explanation • incommensurability • methodology of social sciences • perspicuous representation • science • technology • tolerance • totem and taboo. (shrink)

This study aims to evaluate the ideas on the scope and method of economics of Joseph Schumpeter who is one of the important economists of the 20th century. The study consists of four sections: In the first section we underline the interesting points of his life to understand the roots, background, or 'vision' of his thought system. In the second section, we will examine his methodological views that he asserted in his first (but translated into English only in 2010) book. (...) Third section will be concerned with his 'analysis of economics' which refers to his critics of Leon Walras's general equilibrium analysis (as static) and his own alternative (dynamics analysis of capitalist economies) about the central subject matter of economics. In the fourth section we will treat his approach about the development/evolution process of economic thought in time. The study concludes with a brief assessment: Schumpeter is one of the rare economists who can build his own thought system in the history of economics, and he embraced a pluralist perspective in the field of the methodology of economics. (shrink)

Situated semantics can be regarded as an attempt at placing situational context (context of situation) at the center of all discussions of meaning. Situation theory is a theory of information content that takes context very seriously. Individuals, properties, relations, and spatiotemporal locations are basic constructs of situation theory. Individuals are conceived as invariants; having properties and standing in relations, they tend to persist in time and space. An anchoring function binds the location parameters to appropriate objects present in the grounding (...) situation. Anchoring plays a major role in the working of constraints that include nomic constraints, conventional constraints and conditional constraints. Situation semantics develops a theory of meaning that is based on relations between situations. Situation semantics provides a fundamental framework for realistic semantics. The ideas emerging from research into situation semantics have been combined with linguistic work and have led to numerous useful proposals. (shrink)

Context has emerged as a central concept in a variety of contemporary approaches to reasoning. The conference at which the papers in this volume were presented, CONTEXT 2001, was the third international, interdisciplinary conference on the topic of context, and was held in Dundee, Scotland on July 27-30, 2001.

Günümüzde hızla yayılan, insanların hayat kalitesini ve mutluluğunu olumsuz olarak etkileyen yalnızlık, özellikle Amerika ve Avrupa’da en önemli toplumsal sorunlardan birine dönüşmüştür. İngiltere’de yalnızlıktan sorumlu bakanlık kurulmasına kadar varan bu olgunun, Türkiye’de özellikle genç nesli temsil eden üniversite öğrencilerinde ne düzeyde olduğu, bu araştırmanın temel araştırma konularından birini oluşturmaktadır. Bu araştırma, Ordu üniversitesinin değişik fakültelerinde öğrenim gören 416 öğrenci örneklemi üzerinde yürütülmüştür. Anket formunda; UCLA yalnızlık ölçeği, dini başa çıkma ve hayat memnuniyeti ölçekleri kullanılmıştır. Ayrıca katılımcıların bireysel dindarlık algıları ve (...) sosyal medya kullanım düzeylerini belirlemeye yönelik sorular oluşturulmuştur. SPSS istatistik programıyla yapılan analizler sonucunda; dindarlık algısı ile yalnızlık, olumsuz dini başa çıkma, sosyal medyada görünürlük düzeyi ve kullanılan sosyal medya sayısı arasında negatif yönde; dindarlıkla olumlu dini başa çıkma arasında ise pozitif yönde bir ilişki tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca öznel dindarlık algısı cinsiyet üzerinde farklılığa açmazken, hayat memnuniyeti üzerinde farklılığa yol açtığı anlaşılmıştır. Yalnızlık ile olumlu dini başa çıkma, hayat memnuniyeti ve mesajlaşma arasında negatif yönde ilişki ve etkileşim tespit edilirken, hayat memnuniyeti ile olumlu dini başa çıkma arasında pozitif, olumsuz dini başa çıkma arasında negatif yönde ilişki ve etkileşimin varlığı bulgulanmıştır. Bu çalışma birçok değişkenin birbiri ile ilişki ve etkileşimini ele alması bakımından önemlidir. (shrink)

Planlama --- bir amaca ulaşmak üzere bir aksiyonlar bütünü tasarlamak --- yapay zekadaki en temel problemlerden biridir. Bu yazıda, robotikte planlama konusuna mantıkçı (logicist) yaklaşım ele alınmaktadır. [Planning --- devising a plan of action to reach a given goal --- is a fundamental problem in AI. This paper reviews the logicist approach to planning in robotics.].

The notion of context arises in assorted areas of artificial intelligence (AI), including knowledge representation, natural language processing, intelligent information retrieval, etc. Although the term ‘context’ is frequently employed in descriptions, explanations, and analyses of computer programs in these areas, its meaning is frequently left to the reader’s understanding. -/- My aim in this paper is to offer a swift review of context in AI. I will first identify the role of context in various fields of AI. I will then (...) consider the enterprise of formalising context. The focus of my discussion will be McCarthy's (1993) proposal – a landmark study that inspired almost every logical theory of context since then – and its close variants, studied by his students. -/- (The author is grateful to Prof. Carlo Penco for his invaluable assistance with this work.). (shrink)

This is a short introduction to the puzzling -- even mysterious -- subject that there is a place for minds in a material world.

This paper addresses an important issue that has been commonly debated in moral psychology, namely the normative and metaethical implications of our differing intuitive responses to morally indistinguishable dilemmas. The prominent example of the asymmetry in our responses is that people often intuitively accept pulling a switch and deny pushing as a morally permissible way of sacrificing an innocent person to save more innocent people. Joshua Greene traces our negative responses to actions involving “up close and personal” harm back to (...) our evolutionary past and argues that this undermines the normative power of deontological judgments. I reject Greene’s argument by arguing that our theoretical moral intuitions, as opposed to concrete and mid-level ones, are independent of direct evolutionary influence because they are the product of autonomous moral reasoning. I then explain how both consequentialist and deontological theoretical intuitions, which enable us to make important moral distinctions and grasp objective moral facts, are produced by the exercise of autonomous moral reasoning and the process of cultural evolution. My conclusion will be that Greene is not justified in his claim that deontology is normatively inferior to consequentialism. (shrink)

This article drafts a phenomenology of artifice, an interpretation of Human Being and Human Practice, based on the extraordinary claim that design is not the initiator of change, creation and diversity, but it is the essential humanistic quality to compensate the irresistible precession, to regulate the inevitable transformation and divergence of the World. Inspired by the Sufism conception of Human Being, the argument here relies on the theory of a gradual disclosure from the kernel of Universal Man, the complete and (...) Perfect Man of unity and continuity, down to the local man of differences, discontinuity and diversity. Sufism presents a phenomenology of appearing, describing a process of disclosure motivated by a mystical passion ‘to be known’, where in the beginning the Being is manifested on the Universal Man, that then degraded and diversified down to the local man, its Self, his or her community and his or her instruments. The article presents the Universal Man disclosing, and the local man enclosing in three grades that are aligned in conditional priority where the former enables the later one: (1) The Proximate Potentials, (2) The Mediate Linguals and (3) The Distant Actuals. The enclosed species of those layers are introduced as the primal categories of artefacts: (a) future contemplations out of the potentials, (b) present conversations out of the linguals and (c) past constructions out of the actuals. Towards the end, the article carries the discussion on how the Ur-Disclosure brings the inevitable conditional precedence of the future over the past; the future potentials come before the linguals of now and the past actuals follow after. So, it is claimed that anything new principally deviates from the future, from something already exists potentially on the proximate grade, where the Universal Man degrades into the unitary Selves. In the conclusion, it is proposed that design processes can not disclose, create and image anything but enclose, cover and regulate the genesis. The theory of gradual disclosure from the Universal Man to the local individual mainstreams the experience of ability presenting potential ability as a universal human experience that can be actualized by proper practice. (shrink)

Ortadoğu bölgesindeki çatışma ve istikrarsızlık ortamının ardında İran - Suudi Arabistan rekabeti bulunmaktadır. Bununla birlikte bu rekabetin politik doğası, çoğunlukla ana akım medya tarafından aşırı derecede basitleştirilmiştir. Benzer biçimde İran – Suudi Arabistan rekabetinin içindeki kimlik politikaları üzerine yazılmış literatürün büyük bir kısmı bölgesel istikrarsızlıkların kökeni ve kaynağını ağırlıklı olarak tarihlerinin genel ve betimleyici bir hesabını sunmuş veya oyuncuların iktidar mücadeleleri içerisinde Sünni ve Şii İslam’ın politikleşmesine ve manipülasyonuna odaklanmıştır. Halen mevcut olan kimlik politikaları üzerine teorileri sentezleyen, yani Primordializm, araçsallık, (...) ve sosyal inşacılık, bu araştırmanın teorik modelini oluşturmaktadır. Bu modelde, mezhepsel kimlik – Ortadoğu toplumlarının ve yanı sıra bölgesel tarihin bir gerçeği olarak – sadece politik süreçler üzerine muazzam etkileri ölçülmedi, ayrıca politik uygulamalarda her düzeydeki politik aktörlerin kullanımıyla karşılaştırılmıştır. (shrink)

The papers you will find in this special issue of JoLLI develop letter and spirit of Turing’s original contributions. They do not lazily fall back into the same old sofa, but follow – or question – the inspiring ideas of a great man in the search for new, more precise, conclusions. It is refreshing to know that the fertile landscape created by Alan Turing remains a source of novel ideas.

Dürr-i meknūn (The hidden pearl) is one of the best-known and most frequently cited but least studied works of fifteenth-century Ottoman literature. An anonymously written encyclopedic work in Turkish, it covers a wide range of subjects, starting with the creation and ending with the day of judgment. Although no fifteenth-century copy has survived, the Dürr displays a close ideological and intertextual relationship with other well-known fifteenth-century Ottoman works that were the building blocks of an indigenous Ottoman religious, historical, political, and (...) apocalyptic literature on which later generations relied. This article critically reviews the Dürr by situating it against the backdrop of the political context of the 1460s and early 1470s, informed by Sultan Meḥmed II’s imperial policies seeking to unite the Islamic world under one rule and by the dire crusade threat menacing the Ottoman empire posed by Venice and its allies in 1472–73. I argue that the work was composed by a member of the scholarly elite to criticize Meḥmed’s imperial ambitions and, most notably, his designs to conquer the Mamluk sultanate, which the Dürr identifies as a disastrous endeavor that would lead to the conquest of Islam by the Christians. (shrink)

This is the guest editor's introduction to a JETAI special issue on philosophical foundations of AI.

In this special issue of Minds and Machines ("Situations and Artificial Intelligence") we take a close look at recent situation-theoretic research which has mostly originated within a philosophical framework but promises to have strong connotations for Artificial Intelligence workers. The seven papers which make up this special issue (three of the papers appear in Minds and Machines 9(1)) demonstrate the advantages of the situation-based approach towards problems with a definite AI flavor.

The role of background knowledge in human intelligence, knowledge, and consciousness has been a topic of discussion among several philosophers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Searle, Martin Heidegger, and Hubert Dreyfus. Hubert Dreyfus criticizes what he calls the mediational approach and offers the contact theory to clarify the concept within his theoretical framework. In alignment with Heidegger’s existential phenomenological perspective, he posits that our contact and our embodied coping with the world constitute a background by which we become acquainted with preunderstanding (...) that encompasses both prelinguistic and pre-propositional understandings. In this article, Dreyfus’s analysis of background knowledge is criticized by focusing on his latest writings. It is argued that, although Dreyfus claims to be defending horizontal foundationalism rather than vertical foundationalism, he primarily emphasizes the foundational nonlinguistic role of motor intentionality in absorbed coping. Furthermore, it is asserted that nonlinguistic embodied coping alone cannot provide the basis for linguistic communication and a humanly way of understanding. Rather than serving as a foundation, embodied coping is more appropriately situated within a linguistic context, because we perform deeds with words. (shrink)

Recent case law on sexual violence crimes heard before the ad hoc international criminal tribunals and courts, that interpret them in connection with ethnic conflict, raises the question of which acts can be defined as sexual violence. The International Criminal Court, in the situation of Kenya, does not regard acts of forced nudity, forcible circumcision and penile amputation as sexual violence when they are motivated by ethnic prejudice and intended to demonstrate the cultural superiority of one tribe over another. The (...) Court argues that not every act of violence that targets parts of the body commonly associated with sexuality should be considered an act of sexual violence. This recent interpretation of what counts as sexual violence provides another example of the complicity of international criminal law institutions in the ongoing construction process of female subordination. The ICC, in the Kenya situation, implicitly confirms the mutilation of female agency by interpreting penile amputation as a kind of power game between males, and by instrumentalizing the male sexual organ as an indicator of masculinity and manhood. (shrink)

Varoluşçuluk düşünce tarihi boyunca kendisine birçok taraftar bulmuş ve İslam dünyasında da çeşitli kişi ve eserlerde tezahür etmiş bir akımdır. Bu makalede varoluşçuluğun genelde İslam, özelde ise Arap dünyasındaki ilk ve en önemli temsilcisi olarak kabul edebileceğimiz Abdurrahman Bedevî ve onun varoluşçu düşünceleri incelenecektir. Çalışmada Bedevî’nin varoluşçu-luğu nasıl değerlendirdiği betimsel bir tarzda ele alınacaktır.

The work described in this report is motivated by the desire to test the expressive possibilities of action language C+. The Causal Calculator (CCalc) is a system that answers queries about action domains described in a fragment of that language. The Zoo World and the Traffic World have been proposed by Erik Sandewall in his Logic Modelling Workshop—an environment for communicating axiomatizations of action domains of nontrivial size. -/- The Zoo World consists of several cages and the exterior, gates between (...) them, and animals of several species, including humans. Actions in this domain include moving within and between cages, opening and closing gates, and mounting and riding animals. The Traffic World includes vehicles moving continuously between road crossings subject to a number of restrictions, such as speed limits and keeping a fixed safety distance away from other vehicles on the road. We show how to represent the two domains in the input language of CCalc, and how to use CCalc to test these representations. (shrink)

Thoracoabdominal normothermic regional perfusion (TA-NRP), a new method of controlled donation after circulatory death, seems to provide more and better organs for patients on organ transplant waiting lists compared to standard controlled donation after circulatory death. Despite its benefits, the ethical permissibility of TA-NRP is currently a highly debated issue. The recent statement published by the American College of Physicians (ACP) highlights the reasons for these debates. Critics’ main concern is that TA-NRP violates the Dead Donor Rule. This paper presents (...) an ethical analysis of the objections raised by the ACP against TA-NRP and argues that TA-NRP is not only morally permissible but also morally required where it is financially and technically feasible. To support this conclusion, the concepts of ‘resuscitation,’ ‘intention,’ ‘irreversibility,’ ‘permanence,’ ‘impossibility,’ and ‘respect’ in the context of TA-NRP are explored. Additionally, the ethical permissibility of this procedure is evaluated through the lenses of Utilitarianism, Kantianism, the core principles of bioethics, and the Doctrine of Double Effect. This ethical analysis demonstrates why the ACP’s objection lacks a solid moral foundation and conflates moral and legal considerations. This paper also argues that extra measures are needed to ensure the moral permissibility of TA-NRP, emphasizing the importance of informed consent, additional brain blood flow and activity monitoring, and a contingency plan to abort the organ procurement process if a sign of morally relevant brain activity is detected. (shrink)

We study the performance of ChatGPT interpreting prompts that require legal expertise to answer. Our inputs are very close adaptations from the "Contextual Canons" section of Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner's Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (Thomson West: 2012). We report our experiments and findings for the entire section (comprising 14 canons) of the book. We conclude that as a legal reasoner ChatGPT is exceptionally successful in taking the contextual canons into account.

Commonsense reasoning about the physical world, as exemplified by "Iron sinks in water" or "If a ball is dropped it gains speed," will be indispensable in future programs. We argue that to make such predictions (namely, envisioning), programs should use abstract entities (such as the gravitational field), principles (such as the principle of superposition), and laws (such as the conservation of energy) of physics for representation and reasoning. These arguments are in accord with a recent study in physics instruction where (...) expert problem solving is related to the construction of physical representations that contain fictitious, imagined entities such as forces and momenta (Larkin 1983). We give several examples showing the power of physical representations. (shrink)

The standard propositional exposition of necessary and sufficient conditions, as available in introductory logic texts, leads to a contradiction. It should be abolished.

This article aims to examine Alvin Plantinga's speech at Biola University which name is: ‘‘Science and Religion, Where the Conflict Really Lies.’’ In order to achieve this purpose, after giving a description of the emergence of conflict between two disciplines, the ideas of Plantinga is examined through his speech and articles. The remainder of the article conducts a critical examination of his thesis in the light of Islamic viewpoint.

The importance of contextual reasoning is emphasized by various researchers in AI. (A partial list includes John McCarthy and his group, R. V. Guha, Yoav Shoham, Giuseppe Attardi and Maria Simi, and Fausto Giunchiglia and his group.) Here, we survey the problem of formalizing context and explore what is needed for an acceptable account of this abstract notion.

The principle that values cannot be derived from facts, though first explicitly formulated by David Hume, does not seem to be consistent with Hume's assertions that value becomes intelligible through experience, and that the will is determined by pleasure and pain. Moral reasoning involving pleasures and pains in the context of the peculiarities of human existence in society must be more complicated than reasoning involving ordinary, i.e. natural, pleasures and pains. Nevertheless, all pains and pleasures must be sensations. Hence Hume's (...) moral philosophy becomes an example of an ethics in which facts, namely pleasures and pains, are related to values. However, many philosophers have argued that values must have a transcendental origin. Ludwig Wittgenstein's arguments concerning ethics and aesthetics constitute an interesting contemporary example of such transcendental conceptions of value. For Wittgenstein, the voice of conscience is God; the will can affect the subject at the limits of the world, and not things in the world; therefore, ethics must be transcendental (not expressible in the way facts in the world are). It seems that this attitude in ethics and aesthetics rules out any empirical discourse on values, which can hardly be called totally fruitless. An example of such discourse may even be one describable in Wittgensteinian terms: values can be defined through facts as modifications in the limits of the world, and through facts as things "in the world". If such descriptions are possible and expressible, a reference to a transcendental realm to account for the existence of conscience would become redundant. (shrink)

Kelâm’ın şerh ve hâşiye döneminin önde gelen metinlerinden biri Teftâzânî’nin Şerhu’l-Akāid adlı şerhidir. Nitekim üzerine İslâm dünyasının muhtelif bölgelerindeki âlimler tarafından birçok hâşiye çalışması yapılmıştır. Bunlar arasında öne çıkan en meşhur metinlerden birisi Hayâlî’nin yazmış olduğu Hâşiye alâ Şerhi’l-Akāidi’n-Nesefiyye adlı eserdir. Nitekim Hayâlî’nin bu hâşiyesi, Şerhu’l-Akāid üzerine yazılan hâşiyeler arasında üzerine en fazla hâşiye yazılan eserdir. Kâtib Çelebi, Leknevî ve Taşköprülüzâde gibi âlimler Hayâlî hâşiyesi hakkında övücü ifadeler kullanmıştır. Ayrıca Hayâlî’nin bu hâşiyesi Osmanlı kelâm kitapları hiyerarşisinde Şerhu’l-Akāid’den daha üst bir (...) metin olarak değer görmüştür. Bu kadar ilgi gören bir hâşiye hakkında Kâtib Çelebî’nin zikrettiği bir iddia dikkat çekmektedir. Kâtib Çelebî, Hayâlî hâşiyesinin kaynağının Memlük ulemasından İbn Ebî Şerîf’in Şerhu’l-Akāid hâşiyesi olduğu hakkında bir bilgiye yer vermektedir. Dolayısıyla Hayâlî, hâşiyesini İbn Ebî Şerîf’in hâşiyesinden alıntı yaparak kaleme almış olabilir. Bu iddianın tahkik edilmesi çalışmanın temel konusunu oluşturmaktadır. Bunu yaparken iki muhaşşînin yaşadıkları ve eserlerini kaleme aldıkları zaman dilimi göz önünde bulundurulmuştur. Diğer taraftan iki hâşiyenin muhteva analizinin yapılması da iddianın tahkik edilmesi için temel bir ölçüt konumundadır. Böylece ana konu bazında benzerlikler ve farklılıklar ortaya konularak iki hâşiyenin karşılaştırılmasına olanak sağlanmıştır. Muhteva analizinde eşyanın hakikatleri, ilim sebepleri, âlemin temel bileşenleri, Allah’ın sıfatları, rü’yetullah, insan fiilleri ve ahiret hayatı ile ilgili meseleler olmak üzere yedi konu başlığı tercih edilmiştir. Bu başlıklar altında konular detaylı bir şekilde aktarılmayıp yalnızca benzerlikler ve farklılıkların ortaya konulabilmesi için seçme pasajların verilmesi yeterli görülmüştür. Çalışmada yöntem olarak doküman çözümlemesi/analizi kullanılmıştır. Sonuç olarak bu iddia tahkik edildiğinde durumun Kâtib Çelebî’nin aktardığı gibi olmadığı tespit edilmiştir. Nitekim iki muhaşşînin doğum ve ölüm tarihleri diğer taraftan hâşiyelerini yazım tarihleri incelendiğinde bu iddianın mümkün olmadığı ortaya çıkmıştır. Hayâlî hâşiyesini yaklaşık olarak 862/1458, İbn Ebî Şerîf ise 889/1484 veya 895/1490 yılında kaleme aldığı tespit edilmiştir. Dolayısıyla tarihsel olarak Hayâlî’nin İbn Ebî Şerîf’ten alıntı yapması mümkün görünmemektedir. Kâtib Çelebî’nin aktardığı bilginin yanlışlanması tam tersi bir durumun olma ihtimalini gündeme getirir. Yani İbn Ebî Şerîf, hâşiyesini yazarken Hayâlî’den faydalanmış olabilir. Bu düşüncenin doğrulanması veya yanlışlanması için her iki hâşiye arasında muhteva analizinin yapılması gerekmiştir. İki hâşiyenin muhtevaları karşılaştırıldığında ise büyük oranda benzerliklerin olduğu görülmüştür. Öyle ki bazı yerlerde cümleler birebir aynı iken bazı yerlerde benzer ifadeler kullanılmıştır. Ancak İbn Ebî Şerîf’in hâşiyesi Hayâlî’nin hâşiyesine göre daha uzundur. Öyle görünüyor ki İbn Ebî Şerîf hâşiyesini, Hayâlî hâşiyesi temelinde inşa etmiştir. (shrink)