I apply the Buddhist and Chinese religious understandings of miracles as natural events to a contemporary Chinese American religious healer who employs Buddhist spells, qigong, and a range of Chinese medical arts to successfully treat conditions such as a golf-ball-sized cancerous tumor, a balance and memory disorder, and stroke-induced facial hemiparesis. In doing so, I build upon the work of anthropologists and historians to do comparative philosophy on the theoretical categories of and boundaries among miracles, the natural, the supernatural, healing, (...) and religion. I engage with Morton Klass’ point on the ethnocentric presuppositions of such categories; Susan Sered’s attention to the political nature of strict binaries as opposed to more flexible continuums; Robert Campany’s distinction between ontological and epistemological miracles, where the latter uncovers the hidden wonders in the natural world; and Helen Tilley’s polyglot therapeutics, which are marked by oscillation between, and the simultaneous holding of, contradictory or incommensurable ontologies. I argue that the category of natural miracle allows reimagining of the above categories and their neat delineations. (shrink)

Upāya-kauśalya has been examined as a hermeneutical device, a Mahāyānic innovation, and a philosophy of practice. Although the paternalism of upāya-kauśalya employed in the Lotus Sūtra has been analyzed, there is little attention paid to bringing these ethical implications into a practical context. There is a tension between the motivation, even obligation, to help, and the potential dangers of projecting or imposing one’s conception of what is best for others or how best to help. I examine this issue through various (...) parables. I argue that ordinary people can use upāya-kauśalya and that the ethical implications of upāya-kauśalya involve closing two different gaps in knowledge. This has potential applications not just for individuals, but also for organizations like NPOs or NGOs that try to assist large communities. (shrink)

This paper introduces three new criteria that a theory of personal identity ought to satisfy: (1) material holism, (2) narrative unity, and (3) narrative integrity. Material holism guards against the undesirable consequence of positing the person as part and existentially distinct from the organismal whole, of which it is dependent and interconnected. Narrative unity ensures that continuity between the beginning, middle, and end of a human life is sufficiently accounted for. Narrative integrity secures fidelity and congruence between each part and (...) the whole, the whole to each part. Jeff McMahan’s Embodied Mind Account (EM) fails to satisfy each of these. On McMahan’s account, human persons and human organisms are distinct entities, human persons come into existence after its human organism, and human persons may go out of existence before their human organism. Moreover, fetuses, infants, the congenitally severely cognitively impaired, those with severe dementia, and the comatose are non-persons. A theory of personal identity that incorporates holism and narrative can provide a better explanation of human existence, life and death, and the identity paradox of dicephalic twins. If accepted, EM must either be rejected or ameliorated, and the new criteria ought to be incorporated in contemporary research of personal identity. (shrink)

Today it is commonly believed that capitalism is driven by greed. However, greed is condemned by various religious traditions. In this paper we compare how Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, and Michael Novak, a Catholic, see the possibilities of engaging in competitive business practice without the motive of greed. This discussion suggests a need to distinguish greed from self-interest. We therefore analyze whether it makes a difference in moral evaluation to claim that the real driving force of capitalism is self-interest but (...) not greed. Our analysis makes use of the rational-care theory of self-interest developed by Stephen Darwall, the discussion of which has been absent in the business ethics literature. Our conclusion is that there is a quantitative but not qualitative difference between the two. (shrink)

Research in STEM education is rapidly growing. Many terms in use have no shared meanings, making knowledge dissemination and accumulation difficult, if not impossible. With new terms constantly added to the literature, and often inconsistently used, there is a need for a common framework of STEM education terms. There is also a need to “take stock” of what has been accomplished in the field. To that end, we propose the adoption of standards and techniques from the field of ontology engineering (...) to construct a shared vocabulary system that defines a universe of terms and formal relations among them, to address this challenge. We created a reference ontology, STEM Identity Ontology (STEMIO), and a domain ontology, Science Teacher Identity Ontology (STIO), to demonstrate how ontologies can be leveraged to improve existing STEM identity data and future research in the area. Ontology engineering has been successfully deployed across research in medicine, engineering, social science, and education; it has potential to facilitate research in STEM education. (shrink)

Roughly, the view I call 'Additivism' sums up value across time and people. Given some standard assumptions, I show that Additivism follows from two principles. The first says that how lives align in time can’t, in itself, matter. The second says, roughly, that a world can’t be better unless it’s better within some period or another. These principles, while plausible, presuppose a rich underlying structure of value—presuppositions that are implicit in the standard numerical framework of population ethics but that are (...) often overlooked. A careful exploration of Additivism and the case for it reveals intricate connections between substantive questions about what value fundamentally consists in and structural questions about how to aggregate value. (shrink)

kk states that knowing entails knowing that one knows, and K¬K states that not knowing entails knowing that one does not know. In light of the arguments against kk and K¬K⁠, one might consider modally qualified variants of those principles. According to weak kk, knowing entails the possibility of knowing that one knows. And according to weakK¬K⁠, not knowing entails the possibility of knowing that one does not know. This paper shows that weak kk and weakK¬K are much stronger than (...) they initially appear. Jointly, they entail kk and K¬K⁠. And they are susceptible to variants of the standard arguments against kk and K¬K⁠. This has interesting implications for the debate on positive introspection and for deeper issues concerning the structure and limits of knowability. (shrink)

Fitch’s Paradox shows that if every truth is knowable, then every truth is known. Standard diagnoses identify the factivity/negative infallibility of the knowledge operator and Moorean contradictions as the root source of the result. This paper generalises Fitch’s result to show that such diagnoses are mistaken. In place of factivity/negative infallibility, the weaker assumption of any ‘level-bridging principle’ suffices. A consequence is that the result holds for some logics in which the “Moorean contradiction” commonly thought to underlie the result is (...) in fact consistent. This generalised result improves on the current understanding of Fitch’s result and widens the range of modalities of philosophical interest to which the result might be fruitfully applied. Along the way, we also consider a semantic explanation for Fitch’s result which answers a challenge raised by Kvanvig. (shrink)

Augment the propositional language with two modal operators: □ and ■. Define ⧫ to be the dual of ■, i.e. ⧫=¬■¬. Whenever (X) is of the form φ → ψ, let (X⧫) be φ→⧫ψ . (X⧫) can be thought of as the modally qualified counterpart of (X)—for instance, under the metaphysical interpretation of ⧫, where (X) says φ implies ψ, (X⧫) says φ implies possibly ψ. This paper shows that for various interesting instances of (X), fairly weak assumptions suffice for (...) (X⧫) to imply (X)—so, the modally qualified principle is as strong as its unqualified counterpart. These results have surprising and interesting implications for issues spanning many areas of philosophy. (shrink)

Epigenetic research has brought several important technological achievements, including identifying epigenetic clocks and signatures, and developing epigenetic editing. The potential military applications of such technologies we discuss are stratifying soldiers’ health, exposure to trauma using epigenetic testing, information about biological clocks, confirming child soldiers’ minor status using epigenetic clocks, and inducing epigenetic modifications in soldiers. These uses could become a reality. This article presents a comprehensive literature review, and analysis by interdisciplinary experts of the scientific, legal, ethical, and societal issues (...) surrounding epigenetics and the military. Notwithstanding the potential benefit from these applications, our findings indicate that the current lack of scientific validation for epigenetic technologies suggests a careful scientific review and the establishment of a robust governance framework before consideration for use in the military. In this article, we highlight general concerns about the application of epigenetic technologies in the military context, especially discrimination and data privacy issues if soldiers are used as research subjects. We also highlight the potential of epigenetic clocks to support child soldiers’ rights and ethical questions about using epigenetic engineering for soldiers’ enhancement and conclude with considerations for an ethical framework for epigenetic applications in the military, defense, and security contexts. (shrink)

Kin and kinship matter to us. We are social creatures and our kin or relatives are typically high on the list of those most important to us. Kin are those we care for and who care for us. Our family ties provide a sense of where and with whom we belong. Kin matters also impose boundaries on who we relate to and how, including in sexual and other intimate matters. The study of kinship has been a cornerstone of anthropology throughout (...) its history, but kin matters matter beyond the confines of any academic discipline. -/- Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences examines three related themes in the philosophy of anthropology concerning kin matters: the nature of relations, incest and its avoidance, and the study of kinship in cultural anthropology. It develops an integrative framework for thinking about kin matters recognizing that there should be much more fluidity between the cognitive, biological, and social sciences—the fragile sciences—than one typically finds both in those sciences and in philosophical reflection on them. Along the way, Kin Matters offers a novel account of relations, challenges culture-first explanations of incest avoidance, and advocates for a redirection in the study of kinship. (shrink)

Various results show the ‘formal equivalence’ of kin and group selectionist methodologies, but this does not preclude there being a real and useful distinction between kin and group selection processes. I distinguish individual- and population-centred approaches to drawing such a distinction, and I proceed to develop the latter. On the account I advance, the differences between kin and group selection are differences of degree in the structural properties of populations. A spatial metaphor (‘K-G space’) provides a useful framework for thinking (...) about these differences: kin and group selection may be conceptualized as large, overlapping regions of K-G space. I then consider some implications of the account, defend it from possible objections, and further argue that the structural features characteristic of both kin and group selection may recur at multiple levels of biological organization. 1 Introduction2 Equivalence Results and Their Limitations2.1 An example of an equivalence result2.2 Limitations3 Individual- and Population-Centred Approaches4 Two Influences: Hamilton and Godfrey-Smith5 K and G5.1 K5.2 G5.3 K-G space6 The rb ≠ 0 Requirement7 Levels of Organization8 The Key Substantive Questions. (shrink)

This PhD dissertation examines the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the most general and most widely used framework for understanding social evolution, W. D. Hamilton's theory of kin selection. While the core idea is intuitive enough (when organisms share genes, they sometimes have an evolutionary incentive to help one another), its apparent simplicity masks a host of conceptual subtleties, and the theory has proved a perennial source of controversy in evolutionary biology. To move towards a resolution of these controversies, we (...) need a careful and rigorous analysis of the philosophical foundations of the theory. My aim in this work is to provide such an analysis. I begin with an examination of the concepts behavioural ecologists employ to describe and classify types of social behaviour. I stress the need to distinguish concepts that are often conflated: for example, we need to distinguish simple cooperation from collaboration in collective tasks, behaviours from strategies, and control from manipulation and coercion. I proceed from here to the formal representation of kin selection via George R. Price’s covariance selection mathematics. I address a number of interpretative issues the Price formalism raises, including the vexed question of whether kin selection theory is ‘formally equivalent’ to multi-level selection theory. In the second half of the dissertation, I assess the uses and limits of Hamilton’s rule for the evolution of social behaviour; I provide a precise statement of the conditions under which the rival neighbour-modulated fitness and inclusive fitness approaches in contemporary kin selection theory are equivalent (and describe cases in which they are not); and I criticize recent formal attempts to establish the controversial claim that kin selection leads to organisms behaving as if maximizing their inclusive fitness. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays focused on family estrangement and de-kinning.

This review demonstrates that the framework proposed in ``Strings from Almost Nothing'' does not establish genuine foundational uniqueness, but merely reconstructs a heavily constrained bootstrap sector after imposing strongly string-compatible assumptions from the outset. -/- The central claim of the paper, namely that string theory emerges ``inevitably'' from a small set of assumptions, is shown to be structurally overstated. The construction already presupposes ultrasoft asymptotic behavior, Regge organization, meromorphicity, infinite tower structure, crossing symmetry, and a highly restrictive minimal-zero condition. The (...) resulting Veneziano-like sector is therefore not surprising, nor fundamentally emergent. -/- Most critically, the framework possesses no global variational generator, no admissibility criterion, no ontological selection mechanism, no stability principle, and no internally self-generating closure structure. The construction therefore never reaches genuine generative closure, but only asymptotic consistency filtering inside a heavily pre-engineered scattering space. -/- In particular, the work attempts to elevate bootstrap rigidity into a principle of structural inevitability without constructing the far stronger level of globally self-generating closure required for such claims to become mathematically meaningful. -/- The review further demonstrates that the paper confuses mathematical consistency with physical ontology, and asymptotic filtering with foundational derivation. No emergence of spacetime, causality, existence, or physically realized structure is established anywhere in the framework. -/- The result is therefore not a derivation of fundamental physics, but a constrained reconstruction of a string-compatible scattering sector. (shrink)

Continuing prior work by the author, a simple classical system for personal obligation is integrated with a fairly rich system for aretaic (agent-evaluative) appraisal. I then explore various relationships between definable aretaic statuses such as praiseworthiness and blameworthiness and deontic statuses such as obligatoriness and impermissibility. I focus on partitions of the normative statuses generated ("normative positions" but without explicit representation of agency). In addition to being able to model and explore fundamental questions in ethical theory about the connection between (...) blame, praise, permissibility and obligation, this allows me to carefully represent schemes for supererogation and kin. These controversial concepts have provided challenges to both ethical theory and deontic logic, and are among deontic logic's test cases. (shrink)

Düşünce deneylerinden beklenen şeylerden biri de mevcut bilgimizi test etmesi ya da bilgimizi artırmasıdır. Ancak adından da kolayca anlaşılacağı gibi, yalnızca düşüncede yürütülen böyle bir deney, örneğin bize ne şekilde yeni bir bilgi sağlayabilir? Bu zamana kadar söz konusu soruya, bilim felsefesi literatüründe, başlıca beş temel yanıt verilmiştir. Bu makalede, tüm bu yaklaşımların -Platoncu yaklaşım hariç- ortak bir varsayımını ele alacağım. Bu varsayıma göre düşünce deneylerinin tüm yönlerini açıklayabilecek kapsayıcı bir teori bulunmaktadır. Düşünce deneylerinin doğasına ilişkin bu tekçi varsayım, en (...) azından iki yönden oldukça sorunlu görünmektedir. İlk olarak, belirli bir düşünce deneyinin tek bir yaklaşımla açıklanamayan yönleri bulunmaktadır. İkincisi, şimdiye kadar önerilen yaklaşımlar tüm düşünce deneylerini açıklayamamaktadır. Bu iddiaları temellendirmek ve bahsedilen yaklaşımların eksikliklerini belirtmek için Galileo’nun ve Darwin’in öne sürdüğü düşünce deneyi örneklerini ele alacağım. Son olarak çoğulcu bir yaklaşımın düşünce deneylerinin doğasını açıklamada çok daha uygun bir çerçeve sağladığını öne süreceğim. (shrink)

Turkish Version Soğuk Savaş'ın sona ermesinden bu yana Orta Asya, günümüz jeopolitiğinde Çin, ABD, AB ve Rusya gibi küresel güçlerin ilgisini çeken kritik bir arena olarak ortaya çıkmıştır. Sovyetler Birliği'nin dağılmasından sonra bölgede yeni bir güç boşluğu ortaya çıkmış ve ABD, AB ve Çin gibi küresel güçler ikili ve çok taraflı ekonomik anlaşmalar yoluyla yavaş yavaş bölgeye dahil olmuşlardır. Bu tez, "Yeni Büyük Oyun" bağlamında Rusya ve Çin'in Orta Asya'ya yönelimleri üzerine kapsamlı ve karşılaştırmalı bir çalışma yürütmektedir. On dokuzuncu yüzyılda (...) imparatorluk Rusya'sı ile Büyük Britanya arasında Orta Asya'da nüfuz sahibi olmak için yaşanan rekabetin yerini alan "Yeni Büyük Oyun" terimi, ticaret yollarına, enerji kaynaklarına ve siyasi nüfuza erişim için yaşanan rekabet ile karakterize edilmektedir. Tez araştırması, küresel güçlerin Orta Asya'ya yönelim stratejilerini, dış politika motivasyonlarını ve sonuçlarını değerlendirmek için jeopolitik ve uluslararası ilişkilerden yararlanan çok disiplinli yaklaşımları içermektedir. Bu tez, küresel güçlerin Orta Asya'ya yönelişini karşılaştırmalı ve zıt bir şekilde inceleyerek, stratejilerinin yakınsak ve ıraksak yönlerini ve bunun bölgesel ve küresel güç dengesi üzerindeki sonuçlarını açıklamaktadır. Dolayısıyla, küresel güçlerin Orta Asya'ya yönelmesine vurgu yaparak Yeni Büyük Oyun'un jeopolitiğinin karşılaştırmalı olarak incelenmesi, küresel güç rekabetinin değişen dinamiklerini anlamak açısından kritik önem taşımaktadır. Sonuçta bu karşılaştırmalı çalışma, Yeni Büyük Oyun'a ve onun 21. yüzyıldaki küresel politikaya etkilerine ilişkin bakışlara katkıda bulunmaktadır. English Version Since the end of the Cold War, Central Asia has emerged as a critical arena in contemporary geopolitics dragging the attention of the global powers such as China, U.S., EU and Russia. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new power vacuum emerged in the region, and global powers like U.S., EU amd China gradually became involved in the region through bilateral and multilateral economic deals. This thesis conducts a comprehensive comparative study of Russia's and China's respective pivots to Central Asia in the context of the "New Great Game." Hence, the term "New Great Game" as the replacement of the old nineteenth-century rivalry between imperial Russia and Great Britain for the influence of Central Asia is characterized by the competition for access to trade routes, energy resources, and political influence. The thesis research involves multi-disciplinary approaches drawing on geopolitics and international relations to assess strategies, foreign policy motivation and outcomes of global powers pivot to Central Asia. Through a comparative and contrast study of global powers pivot towards Central Asia, this thesis explains the convergent and divergent aspects of their strategies and the consequential implications for the regional and global balance of power. Hence, the comaprative study of the geopolitics of the New Great Game, with an emphasis on global powers pivot to Central Asia, is critical to understanding the shifting dynamics of global power competition. Eventually, this comparative study contributes to our understanding of the New Great Game and its implications for global politics in the 21st century. (shrink)

From mitochondria to meerkats, the natural world is full of spectacular examples of social behaviour. In the early 1960s Bill Hamilton changed the way we think about how such behaviour evolves. He introduced three key innovations - now known as Hamilton's rule, kin selection, and inclusive fitness - which have been enormously influential, but which remain the subject of fierce controversy. Hamilton's pioneering work kick-started a research program now known as social evolution theory. This is a book about the philosophical (...) foundations and future prospects of that program. Part I, "Foundations", is a careful exposition and defence of Hamilton's ideas, with a few modifications along the way. In Part II, "Extensions", Jonathan Birch shows how these ideas can be applied to phenomena including cooperation in micro-organisms, cooperation among the cells of a multicellular organism, and culturally evolved cooperation in the earliest human societies. Birch argues that real progress can be made in understanding microbial evolution, evolutionary transitions, and human evolution by viewing them through the lens of social evolution theory, provided the theory is interpreted with care and adapted where necessary. The Philosophy of Social Evolution places social evolution theory on a firm philosophical footing and sets out exciting new directions for further work. (shrink)

Psychopaths routinely disregard social norms by engaging in selfish, antisocial, often violent behavior. Commonly characterized as mentally disordered, recent evidence suggests that psychopaths are executing a well-functioning, if unscrupulous strategy that historically increased reproductive success at the expense of others. Natural selection ought to have favored strategies that spared close kin from harm, however, because actions affecting the fitness of genetic relatives contribute to an individual’s inclusive fitness. Conversely, there is evidence that mental disorders can disrupt psychological mechanisms designed to (...) protect relatives. Thus, mental disorder and adaptation accounts of psychopathy generate opposing hypotheses: psychopathy should be associated with an increase in the victimization of kin in the former account but not in the latter. Contrary to the mental disorder hypothesis, we show here in a sample of 289 violent offenders that variation in psychopathy predicts a decrease in the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders; that is, psychopathy predicts an increased likelihood of harming non-relatives. Because nepotistic inhibition in violence may be caused by dispersal or kin discrimination, we examined the effects of psychopathy on (1) the dispersal of offenders and their kin and (2) sexual assault frequency (as a window on kin discrimination). Although psychopathy was negatively associated with coresidence with kin and positively associated with the commission of sexual assault, it remained negatively associated with the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders after removing cases of offenders who had coresided with kin and cases of sexual assault from the analyses. These results stand in contrast to models positing psychopathy as a pathology, and provide support for the hypothesis that psychopathy reflects an evolutionary strategy largely favoring the exploitation of non-relatives. (shrink)

Philosophers of biology and biologists themselves for the most part assume that the concept of kin is progenerative: what makes two individuals kin is a direct or indirect function of reproduction. Derivatively, kinship might likewise be presumed to be progenerative in nature. Yet a prominent view of kinship in contemporary cultural anthropology is a kind of constructivism or performativism that rejects such progenerativist views. This paper critically examines an influential line of thinking used to critique progenerativism and support performativism that (...) cites cross-cultural diversity in what I will call kinmaking. I challenge several key assumptions made in moving from this appeal to ethnography to conclusions about kinship and progeneration, arguing that closer scrutiny of both the ethnographic record and inferences that draw on it in fact support progenerative views of both kinship and kinmaking. (shrink)

This paper constructs and names a specific logical trap facing any official who proposes to prohibit — rather than regulate — AI-driven longevity biotechnology, using "official" in the generalized sense public administration theory licenses: heads of state and national legislators, but equally state and local officials, regulatory commissioners, the career bureaucrats who actually draft binding rules, licensing boards, and judges — anyone whose decision has the practical effect of foreclosing access, whether or not they ever faced an election for the (...) power to make it. The trap has three premises: a prohibition, to be law rather than decree, must be willable as applying to its author; the author is a mortal organism with specific, named people they are attached to; and the drive to preserve one's own life and the lives of those specific people is not a policy preference revisable by argument but a constitutive feature of human motivation produced by natural selection. The paper names this the Sovereign's Death Warrant: any official who genuinely, non-hypocritically bans the technology has authored an instrument that applies, on identical terms, to their own future and their family's. The paper disaggregates what a "ban" actually forecloses — research, trials, or personal access — and shows the dilemma bites hardest on the third. It tests the argument against the actual U.S. federal Right to Try framework and its 2026 expansion, against the current regulatory non-status of aging as a disease, against the absence of any organized political constituency for prohibition, against the documented behavior of heads of state caught off-script discussing their own longevity, and against the evolutionary literature — both the kin-selection literature explaining why the drive cannot be argued away and the senescence literature explaining why aging itself was never a target of natural selection's design, only a byproduct of its declining reach. It names four distinct routes officials use to evade the dilemma without resolving it, states five falsification conditions at the precision the corpus's method requires, and closes by stating plainly what the argument does not prove: it defeats prohibition, not regulation, and it does not by itself answer the strongest surviving bioconservative case, which is not about any individual's right to try but about the terms on which people not yet born can be said to consent to the world such technology produces. (shrink)

We explore the ethics of using motivational interviewing, an evidence-based, client-centred and directional counselling method, in conversations with next of kin about deceased solid organ donation. After briefly introducing MI and providing some context around organ transplantation and next of kin consent, we describe how MI might be implemented in this setting, with the hypothesis that MI has the potential to bring about a modest yet significant increase in next of kin consent rates. We subsequently consider the objection that using (...) MI in this context would be manipulative. Although we cannot guarantee that MI would never be used in a problematically manipulative fashion, we conclude that its use would, nevertheless, be permissible as a potential means to increase next of kin consent to deceased solid organ donation. We propose that MI be trialled in consent situations with next of kin in nations where there is widespread public support for organ donation. (shrink)

A5 — constitutive attachment to a specifically loved other — is this corpus's most load-bearing premise and its least stress-tested one. This paper goes looking for A5's black swan: a documented human case of someone who loves no one, which would falsify the universal claim every downstream formal result depends on. It does not find one, and argues the search itself, conducted properly, reveals something the corpus had not yet stated — that A5 was never a single variable. Harry Frankfurt's (...) The Reasons of Love supplies the closest attempted counterexample — a person whose only object of love is themselves — and Frankfurt's own analysis, examined closely, shows self-love failing to be a counterexample by satisfying the same structural definition constitutive attachment requires, rather than by falling outside it. Stoic oikeiôsis, from Cicero and Diogenes Laertius through Hierocles's concentric circles, independently derives a specific ordering: self-preservation is the appetitive starting point from which other-directed concern for kin and community is a later, discounted extension, never a substitute. This corpus's own prior grounding of A5 in W. D. Hamilton's (1964) inclusive fitness mathematics, cited in the Sandbox Geometry for a different purpose, turns out to encode this exact ordering formally: Hamilton's Rule requires no discount for self-directed benefit, since relatedness to oneself is unity, while discounting other-directed benefit by a relatedness coefficient always below one — the equation the corpus had already cited, read for what it says about self versus other rather than only for why attachment exists at all. Buddhist non-attachment, examined against its own primary sources rather than its popular gloss, targets a different structure entirely: grasping, not attachment as such, with active compassion (karuṇā) toward specific suffering beings retained as a cultivated virtue throughout the tradition's ethical literature. Clinical psychopathy comes closest to a genuine null case, but even there the deficit is measured relative to a species-typical baseline the disorder is defined against, not evidence the baseline itself is optional. The paper's synthesis is that A5 decomposes into two structurally distinct components — self-directed and other-directed — that the corpus has, until now, treated as a single scalar. This sharpens rather than weakens two of this corpus's own prior findings: The Autoimmune Munus's mapping of A5 onto Esposito's communitas, shown here to describe only the other-directed half, with the self-directed half structurally closer to Esposito's own immunitas; and Grief-stage activation, for which the Antonine Plague case already inside this corpus's historical record supplies suggestive, previously unread evidence that political activation tracks non-clinging, actively caring attachment specifically, not attachment or non-attachment as undifferentiated wholes. (shrink)

This corpus has, for many papers now, run a single directional test: take MSA's collapse as given, and ask what it does to a governance structure — the Governance Paradox, the Dam Paradox, the Generative Paradox, ARSI-LRP, F2 itself, and, in the dialogue papers, Rawlsian contractualism, Buddhist soteriology, Christian consolation doctrine, and the four further traditions The Suppressed Axiom examines. That test has never carried a stated exemption clause, and this paper takes the absence of one seriously: if MSA's collapse (...) is a legitimate instrument for testing what love, obligation, and consolation looked like inside seven independent external traditions, intellectual consistency requires turning the same instrument on the corpus's own account of love and commitment — A5 — rather than treating it as the one premise MSA's collapse is used to explain everything else through but is never itself required to survive. A5's Black Swan ran a different test, closer to reflexive but not fully so: it asked whether A5 — constitutive attachment, the corpus's most load-bearing premise — is actually universal, searching for a documented human case of someone who loves no one. It found none, and found instead that A5 decomposes into two structurally distinct components: A5-self, self-directed concern requiring no relational discount, tracking Hamilton's (1964) r = 1 case exactly; and A5-other, other-directed concern discounted by relational proximity, the component the corpus's Grief-stage activation has actually been modeling. That search, examined precisely, was conducted entirely under MSA-intact background conditions. Every candidate case it tested — Frankfurt's self-lover, the Stoic sage, the Buddhist practitioner, the clinical psychopath — is a person for whom mortality remains symmetric. The question of what MSA's own collapse does to A5's structure, once that structure exists and is known to have two differently-discounted parts, was not, and could not have been, asked by a paper testing only whether the parts are present at all. This paper asks that second question, using the apparatus A5's Black Swan supplies rather than starting from loose intuition about how longevity might change love in general. Its first finding is that A5-self loses its natural ceiling. Under MSA-intact conditions, A5-self's object — continued existence — has always terminated eventually and universally, a background fact so constant it never had to be modeled as a constraint because it did the constraining silently; A5-self's real-world expression was implicitly capped by the shared impossibility of its own unbounded satisfaction. MSA's collapse removes this cap for populations with access, for the first time in the trait's evolutionary and psychological history, releasing an intensity Hamilton's own mathematics already predicted would be least discounted and hardest to suppress. This supplies a formal derivation, not previously stated this way, for why this corpus's The Sovereign's Death Warrant is correct to treat an official's own mortality and kin-selection drives as premises that "cannot be argued away": they are Hamilton's r = 1 case, and MSA's collapse is precisely what stops arguing with them from working. The paper's second finding concerns A5-other, and is more consequential for this corpus's governance apparatus. Frankfurt's (2004) three conditions for love — disinterested concern, identification with the beloved's interests, and vulnerability to the beloved's fortunes — have, under MSA-intact conditions, always cashed out the third condition receptively: vulnerability to an eventually certain, timing-uncertain, but categorically unpreventable loss, a structure this paper argues is why Grief-stage activation has historically required loss to have already occurred rather than merely threatened. MSA's collapse converts this vulnerability, for the first time, into something partially agentic: for populations with access to the relevant intervention, there is now something the lover can causally do to prevent the specific loss the vulnerability concerns. This paper argues this conversion, precisely stated, is the actual mechanism underlying this corpus's Governance Paradox and Symmetric Wound, which have so far asserted that constitutive attachment biases administrative judgment without deriving why from A5's own structure. The derivation generates a sharper, more falsifiable prediction than the corpus's existing statement: capture should concentrate specifically in officials whose institutional position gives them causal leverage over the newly agentic vulnerability, and should not appear, at comparable strength, in officials whose A5-other attachments lie in domains their office cannot causally affect. The paper's third finding is the most speculative and is labeled as such throughout: A5's Black Swan found A5-self maps onto Esposito's (2011) immunitas and A5-other onto his (2010) communitas, two terms Esposito treats as locked in permanent tension, where a self or community that over-immunizes can consume the very openness that constitutes it. This paper hypothesizes that MSA's collapse does not affect the two components independently, but tilts the balance between them: A5-self's newly unbounded intensity supplies new leverage to redirect A5-other's newly agentic vulnerability toward immunitas-serving ends — securing a specifically loved other's access, functionally continuous with self-protection once Frankfurt's identification condition is applied — rather than toward the widely extended, non-clinging, actively caring communitas this corpus's own Antonine Plague case, already in its historical record, found to be the one configuration that produced durable, reform-compatible political concentration rather than mere disruption or stalemate. (shrink)

This is not a perfect book, but it is unique, and if you skim the first 400 or so pages, the last 300 (of some 700) are a pretty good attempt to apply what's known about behavior to social changes in violence and manners over time. The basic topic is: how does our genetics control and limit social change? Surprisingly he fails to describe the nature of kin selection (inclusive fitness) which explains much of animal and human social life. He (...) also (like nearly everyone) lacks a clear framework for describing the logical structure of rationality (LSR—John Searle’s preferred term) which I prefer to call the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order Thought (DPHOT). He should have said something about the many other ways of abusing and exploiting people and the planet, since these are now so much more severe as to render other forms of violence nearly irrelevant. Extending the concept of violence to include the global long-term consequences of replication of someone’s genes, and having a grasp of the nature of how evolution works (i.e., kin selection) will provide a very different perspective on history, current events, and how things are likely to go in the next few hundred years. One might start by noting that the decrease in physical violence over history has been matched (and made possible) by the constantly increasing merciless rape of the planet (i.e., by people's destruction of their own descendant’s future). Pinker (like most people most of the time) is often distracted by the superficialities of culture when it’s biology that matters. See my recent reviews of Wilson’s ‘The Social Conquest of Earth’ and Nowak and Highfield’s ‘SuperCooperators’ here and on the net for a brief summary of the vacuity of ‘true altruism’ (group selection), and the operation of kin selection and the uselessness and superficiality of describing behavior in cultural terms. -/- This is the classic nature/nurture issue and nature trumps nurture --infinitely. What really matters is the violence done to the earth by the relentless increase in population and resource destruction (due to medicine and technology and conflict suppression by police and military). About 200,000 more people a day (another Las Vegas every 10 days, another Los Angeles every month), the 6 tons or so of topsoil going into the sea/person/year –about 1% of the world’s total disappearing yearly, etc. mean that unless some miracle happens the biosphere and civilization will largely collapse during next two centuries, and there will be starvation, misery and violence of every kind on a staggering scale. People's manners, opinions and tendencies to commit violent acts are of no relevance unless they can do something to avoid this catastrophe, and I don't see how that is going to happen. There is no space for arguments, and no point either (yes I'm a fatalist), so I'll just make a few comments as though they were facts. Don't imagine I have a personal stake in promoting one group at the expense of others. I am 78, have no descendants and no close relatives and do not identify with any political, national or religious group and regard the ones I belong to by default as just as repulsive as all the rest. -/- Parents are the worst Enemies of Life on Earth and, taking the broad view of things, women are as violent as men when one considers the fact that women's violence (like most of that done by men) is largely done in slow motion, at a distance in time and space and mostly carried out by proxy -by their descendants and by men. Increasingly, women bear children regardless of whether they have a mate and the effect of stopping one woman from breeding is on average much greater than stopping one man, since they are the reproductive bottleneck. One can take the view that people and their offspring richly deserve whatever misery comes their way and (with rare exceptions) the rich and famous are the worst offenders. Meryl Streep or Bill Gates or J.K Rowling and each of their kids may destroy 50 tons of topsoil each per year for generations into the future, while an Indian farmer and his may destroy 1 ton. If someone denies it that's fine, and to their descendants I say "Welcome to Hell on Earth"(WTHOE). -/- The emphasis nowadays is always on Human Rights, but it is clear that if civilization is to stand a chance, Human Responsibilities must replace Human Rights. Nobody gets rights without being a responsible citizen and the first thing this means is minimal environmental destruction. The most basic responsibility is no children unless your society asks you to produce them. A society or a world that lets people breed at random will always be exploited by selfish genes until it collapses (or reaches a point where life is so horrific it's not worth living). If society continues to maintain Human Rights as primary, to their descendants one can say with confidence "WTHOE". -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

This section reconstructs a biological grammar of survival for physis vulnerata. Starting from Hamilton’s rule and Trivers’s reciprocal altruism, it shows—mathematically and genealogically—how behaviors that appear “moral” (care, reciprocity, norm enforcement) can arise through purely mechanistic pathways of inclusive fitness, without presupposing conscious altruism. The human case is shaped by neotenic dependency: extended juvenile vulnerability selects affective substrates (gratitude, guilt, anger, empathy) that stabilize cooperation. A triadic mapping clarifies function: guilt/obligation anchor symbolic-normative coordination (Logos); anger/sanctioning manage defection and external risk (...) (Kratos); gratitude/empathy sustain provisioning bonds and reciprocal exchange (Oikos). They function tamquam esset—as-if constitutive—because alternatives proved lethal, a morphologia necessaria rather than an ethical achievement. Psychological phenomena are effects, not causes: experiential correlates of propensities selected for lineage persistence. Rejecting the naturalistic fallacy, the argument locates normativity within gene–culture coevolution and specifies the cost of violating biological parameters: predictable pathologies that erode demographic viability. Thus obligation as constraint, conscience as cicatrix: an autopoiesis vulneris where the organism persists by administering the wound rather than “healing” away the structures that make social life possible. This lays the bridge to Section C, where the psychoanalytic economy of the wound is articulated on top of these morphological necessities. -/- Keywords: physis vulnerata • wounded ontology • neoteny • vulneratio constitutiva • ritualization • sociobiology • mimetic violence • autopoiesis vulneris • grammatica vulneris • hostis necessarius • ethica speciei • textus cicatricialis vivens • biological grammar • strategic vulnerability • inclusive fitness • Hamilton’s rule • kin selection • tripartitio functionalis • morphologia necessaria • tamquam esset. (shrink)

Cite as: -/- Onder, O. (2025). Klinik Karar Destek Sistemleri Bağlamında Tıpta Yapay Zeka Kullanımında Etik Sorun Alanları (Publication No. 949041) [Doctoral dissertation, Istanbul University] YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi. -/- The Ethical Aspects of Artificial Intelligence Use in Medicine within the Context of Clinical Decision Support Systems -/- ABSTRACT The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and health technologies in clinical practice will lead to significant transformations in the doctor-patient relationship. Accordingly, it is a critical necessity to investigate how this (...) relationship will change with the integration of AI and health technologies in general, and Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) in particular, and to identify, analyze, and evaluate the ethical issues arising from this transformation. In response to this need, the present study aims to examine the relationship between the doctor, patient, and CDSS, focusing on the asymmetries within this relationship and the ethical dimensions of the principle of responsibility in CDSS-involved decisions. With the integration of CDSS into the doctor-patient relationship, a triadic relationship involving the doctor, patient, and CDSS is expected to gain prominence. From an ethical standpoint, this change must adopt a human-centered approach and be oriented towards enhancing patient well-being. In this context, the study defends, within a normative framework, that CDSS in the triadic clinic should function as a "care-optimizer". The concept of care optimization is elaborated in five main categories: quality of care, patient-centered care, decision-making processes, access and communication, and care practices. Following this, power and epistemic asymmetries emerging in the triadic clinic are examined through an asymmetry analysis grounded in relationalism, and the normative implications of these asymmetries on physician responsibility are evaluated. By analyzing the inherent and contingent dimensions of power asymmetry, along with the categorical and gradual forms of epistemic asymmetry, the study explores their effects on responsibility distribution in the context of meaningful human control and explainability. The theoretical foundation of this study is grounded in the postphenomenological theory of technological mediation, which emphasizes that technologies are not neutral tools but mediators shaping human experience. As a result, the study proposes a normative framework for a healthcare system that prioritizes patient well-being and develops a relational approach to address the complexities of responsibility distribution within the triadic clinic. -/- Key Words: Doctor-patient relationship, Artificial Intelligence Ethics, Clinical Decision Support Systems, responsibility, patient wellbeing -/- ÖZET Yapay zekâ (YZ) ve sağlık teknolojilerinin klinik uygulamalarda artarak kullanılması, hasta-hekim ilişkisinde önemli dönüşümlere yol açacaktır. Bu doğrultuda, genelde YZ’nin ve teknolojilerin, özelde ise Klinik Karar Destek Sistemleri’nin (KKDS) kliniğe entegrasyonuyla, hasta-hekim ilişkisinin nasıl değişeceğinin incelenmesi ve bu değişiklikten neşet eden etik sorunların tespiti, analizi ve değerlendirilmesi önemli bir ihtiyaçtır. Bu ihtiyaca binaen araştırmada, hasta-hekim ve KKDS ilişkisi ile bu ilişkideki asimetrilerin ve KKDS ile alınan kararlarda sorumluluk ilkesinin etik boyutlarının incelenmesi amaçlanmıştır. KKDS’nin hasta-hekim ilişkisine eklenmesiyle hasta-hekim-KKDS olmak üzere üçlü (triadik) bir ilişkinin ön plana çıkacağı söylenebilir. Etik açıdan konuya yaklaşıldığında bu değişiklik insanı merkeze almalı ve buna bağlı olarak hasta refahını arttırmaya yönelik olmalıdır. Bu bağlamda, araştırmada KKDS’nin hasta-hekim ilişkisinde hastanın değerler sistemine odaklanarak, onun tedavi ve bakım kalitesini iyileştirici olması gerektiği normatif bir çerçevede savunulmuştur. Tedavi ve bakım iyileştirme konsepti; bakım kalitesi, hasta odaklı bakım, karar verme süreçleri, erişim ve iletişim uygulamaları gibi kategorilerle detaylandırılmıştır. Ardından, ilişkiselcilik temelinde bir yaklaşım olarak sunulan asimetri analizi ile triadik klinikte ortaya çıkan güç asimetrisi ve epistemik asimetriler kapsamlı bir şekilde incelenmiş ve asimetrilerin hekimin sorumluluğu üzerindeki normatif etkileri değerlendirilmiştir. Güç asimetrisinin içkin ve olumsal boyutları ile epistemik asimetrilerin kategorik ve tedrici görünümleri analiz edilerek; bu asimetrilerin anlamlı insan kontrolü ve açıklanabilirlik bağlamında sorumluluk dağıtımına etkileri analiz edilmiştir. Tüm bu çalışmaların teorik genel çerçevesi olarak, postfenomenolojinin - teknolojilerin nötral araçlar olmadığı, aksine insan tecrübesini şekillendiren aracılar olduğunu savunan - teknolojik aracılık teorisi benimsenmiştir. Bu çalışmanın neticesinde hasta refahını ön planda tutan bir sağlık sistemi için normatif bir çerçeve sunulmuş ve sağlık hizmetlerinde sorumluluk dağıtımındaki karmaşıklıkları çözmeye yönelik ilişkisel bir yaklaşım geliştirilmiştir. -/- Anahtar Kelimeler: Hasta-hekim ilişkisi, Yapay Zekâ Etiği, Klinik Karar Destek Sistemleri, sorumluluk, hasta refahı -/- . (shrink)

Bu makalede temelde iki şey yapmayı amaçlıyorum. Öncelikle Spinoza’nın duygu felsefesinin temelinde yatan, bu alandaki ikincil literatürde şu âna kadar ya gözden kaçırılmış ya da yeterince vurgulanmamış bir dizi kavramsal ayrımı göz önüne seriyorum. Amsterdamlının duygu teorisi ve etiğinde sistematik bir rol oynamalarına rağmen göz ardı edildiğini veya yeterince vurgulanmadığını savunduğum ayrımlar eyleme gücü (potentia agendi) ve etkileme gücü (potentia operandi) ile arzu (cupiditas) ve varolma çabası (conatus) arasındaki ince ama hayati ayrımlardır. Makalede öncelikle bu kavram çiftlerinin her birinin tek (...) bir hadisenin farklı açılardan kavranma biçimleri olduğunu gösterecek ve bu ayrımları göz ardı ettiğimizde Spinoza’nın duygu teorisinin en basit günlük deneyimleri bile ikna edici bir şekilde açıklamaktan aciz kalacağını örnekler vererek göstereceğim. Ayrıca bu ayrımların Spinoza’nın duygu teorisine ilişkin ikincil literatürde işaret edilen temel bir sorunu çözmede işimize yarayacağını savunacağım. Makalenin ikinci kısmında Amsterdamlının duygu teorisine dair elde ettiğimiz bu yeni ve incelikli kavramsal çerçevenin onun etiğini daha iyi anlamamızı sağladığını göstereceğim. Bunu yapmak için kederlerin iyi yaşama katkı yapıp yapamayacağı, eğer yapabilecekse ne ölçüde, hangi koşullarda ve nasıl yapabileceği sorusuna odaklanacağım. Bunun için öncelikle bazı yorumcuların işaret ettiği, kederlerin iyi yaşama temelde iki açıdan katkı sunabileceği iddiasını – iyi ile kötünün bilgisini edinmemizdeki merkezî rolleri ve bizi daha kötü durumlardan koruma potansiyellerinden ötürü – ele alıyor ve makalenin ilk bölümünde yaptığım ayrımların bu iki noktayı daha sistematik bir şekilde kavramamızı mümkün kıldığını gösteriyorum. Son olarak, kederlerin iyi yaşama, literatürde daha önce ele alınmamış üçüncü bir açıdan katkıda bulunabileceğini savunuyorum. Bu üçüncü rolün Spinoza’nın iktidarın isyan korkusu ve toplumun iktidara yönelik politik öfkesinin siyasi alanda iyinin kurulması ve korunmasında biçtiği rolden kaynaklandığını savunuyorum. Sonuç olarak bu analizle Spinoza’nın duyguların doğasına dair açıklamasında ve özellikle kederlerin iyi yaşamın kurulmasındaki rollerine dair göz ardı edilen bazı noktaları daha iyi kavramamızı sağlamasını umuyor, bu yolla Spinoza’nın etik ve politikasını sadece olumlayıcı ve neşeli duygular merkezinde okuyan yorumların eksikliğini göz önüne sermeyi amaçlıyorum. (shrink)

Bilimin ne olduğunun tespit edilmesi ve bilimi sözde bilimlerden ya da bilimsel olmayan alanlardan ayırt edecek ölçütün ne olması gerektiğine yönelik tartışma, bilim felsefesinde sınır çizme sorunu olarak ele alınmaktadır. Bu makalede, öncelikle söz konusu soruna yönelik geleneksel yaklaşımlar incelenmiş ve ardından bu yaklaşımların bilimsel toplulukların doğasına ilişkin özellikleri göz ardı ettiği ortaya konmuştur. Daha önce yapılan çalışmalar bilimi daha çok önermeler, ifadeler ya da salt epistemik bir sistem olarak ele almakta ve bilimsel akıl yürütmenin biçimi ile bilimsel kuramların özelliklerine (...) odaklanmaktadır. Bu tespit çerçevesinde, sunulan çalışmada, bilimsel bir disiplinin asgari olarak iki özellik (yapısal ve kanıta dayalı olması) üzerine kurulması gerektiği vurgulanarak, sınır çizme sorununun çözümüne yönelik önerilen alternatif ölçüt bilimin sosyal yönüne dikkat çekmektedir. Bu bakımdan, makalenin asıl ilgisi, sınır çizme sorununu alternatif bir yolla ele alabilmek amacıyla bilimin ve onun uygulayıcılarının sosyal özelliklerine yönelik tespitleri, sözde bilimin uygulayıcıları ile kıyaslayarak aktarmaktır. Makale, bir disiplinin sözde bilim olarak nitelendirilebilmesi için öncelikle o disiplinin bilimsellik iddiasında bulunması, daha sonra bilimsel topluluk tarafından sürdürülen bir araştırma geleneğine kabul edilmemiş ya da bu araştırma geleneği tarafından terk edilmiş olması gerektiği düşüncesi ile sonuçlandırılmıştır. (shrink)

Bilime ve bilimsel bilgiye yönelik yaygın görüş, bilimin objektif bir faaliyet olduğudur. Bu görüş bilimsel bilginin elde edilmesinde, bilim insanlarının nesnel bir tavır sergilediğini ve onların sosyal faktörlerden etkilenmediğini varsaymaktadır. Yirminci yüzyılın ikinci çeyreğinde, Viyana Çevresi ve Karl Popper'ın düşünceleri ile bilimde sosyolojik ve psikolojik unsurların keşif bağlamı içerisinde görülebileceği, bilimsel kuramların ve araştırmaların gerekçelendirilmesine yönelik girişimlerin ise yalnızca nesnel, epistemik çalışmalardan oluştuğu ileri sürülmektedir. Keşif bağlamı ve gerekçelendirme bağlamı adı altında yapılan bu ayrıma ilişkin iddialar, Thomas Kuhn'un 1962 yılında (...) yayımlanmış olan 'Bilimsel Devrimlerin Yapısı' adlı kitabında vurguladığı argümanlar ile sekteye uğramaktadır. Kuhn, sosyal ve psikolojik etkenlerin her iki bağlamda da yer aldığını ifade etmekte ve bu sebeple keşif ve gerekçelendirme ayrımına karşı çıkmaktadır. Bu çerçevede makalede, Kuhn'un ulaşmış olduğu sonuçlar Güçlü Program'ın öne sürmüş olduğu argümanlar çerçevesinde desteklenerek ortaya konulmaktadır. -/- ABSTRACT That science is an objective activity is the common view towards science and scientific knowledge. This view assumes that scientists have an objective attitude isolated from social factors in the process of obtaining scientific knowledge. In the second quarter of the twentieth century, the Vienna Circle and Popper argued that sociological and psychological elements can be seen in the context of discovery and that attempts to justify scientific theories and research are merely objective, epistemic studies. The claims regarding this distinction made under the context of discovery and the context of justification are interrupted by the arguments emphasized by Kuhn in his "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" published in 1962. Kuhn opposes the distinction between discovery and justification by stating that social and psychological factors are present in both contexts. In this respect, Kuhn's conclusions are supported by the arguments put forward by the Strong Programme. (shrink)

Most people would agree that adoption is a good thing for children in need of a family. Yet adoption is often considered a second best or even last resort for parents in making their families. Against this assumption, I explore the unique value of adoption for prospective parents. I begin with a criticism of the selective focus on the value of adoption for only those people using assisted reproductive technologies. I focus on the value of adoption for all prospective parents, (...) reflecting on non-relative, non-procreative adoptions. First, adoption can meet the important need that a child has for a family, whereas procreation creates rather than meets needs. Second, adoption provides a morally noble opportunity to extend to a stranger benefits usually withheld for one's genetic kin. As such, adoption offers a unique possibility in which impartial concern for an other can be the starting point for a lifetime of love and care. Finally, adoptions can have transformative power over adoptive parents’ conception of family and self. In highlighting the unique value of adoption, I aim to challenge the widespread assumption that adoption has second best status to procreation. Indeed adoption can exemplify the human potential for moral compassion and impartial concern for the needs of others. (shrink)

Diogenes of Sinope, bilinen adıyla Diogenes ya da Sinoplu Diyojen’e yönelik yapılan bu çalışmada amacım, Dioegenes’in yaşamının, felsefi duruşunun ve benimsediği etik kuralların kapsamlı ve belgelenmiş bir şekilde sunulmasıdır. Diogenes’in hayatını ve öğretilerini güvenilir bir şekilde aktarmak aşırı derecede zordur, çünkü diğer antik filozoflardan ayrı olarak, onun yaşamına ilişkin güvenilir kaynaklar bulmak oldukça sınırlıdır. Ayrıca, fıçının içinde yaşayan bir Kinikli’ye yönelik ortaya konulmuş birçok kurmaca anekdot ile uğraşılması gerekmektedir. Güvenilir bilginin azlığı ve belgesiz atıfların yarattığı zorluklara rağmen, yine de birçok (...) kişinin hayalinde hayatta kalmayı başaran ünlü filozofun portresini ölümünden yirmi üç yüzyıl sonra yeniden inşa etmek mümkün gözükmektedir. Bu bağlamda, Diogenes’in yaşam tarzı ve felsefesine yönelik bilgiler verilecek, ardından temsil ettiği akım olan kinizmin temel öğretileri çeşitli kaynaklardan gösterilerek aktarılacaktır. Son olarak da, Diogenes’in Sinop kültürünün ve kültürel mirasımızın bir parçası olarak kabul edilmesinin mümkün olup olmadığı tartışılacaktır. (shrink)

How does moral progress occur? This paper develops a naturalistic account grounded in cultural evolution. We argue that modern morality emerged through institutions facilitating cooperation among increasingly extensive networks of strangers. This process introduced a novel normative infrastructure including expanded moral status, social individualism, moral egalitarianism, political liberalism, and a robust is-ought distinction. We begin by addressing why evolutionary accounts historically struggled to explain moral traits, particularly altruism and cooperation beyond kin groups. We then characterize modern morality and its key (...) features, focusing on the puzzle of the inclusivist anomaly: the granting of moral status to individuals independently of their strategic cooperation value. Drawing on recent research on kinship intensity and institutional development, we explain how the cultural evolution of impersonal prosociality emerged from the destruction of tight kinship institutions in Western and Central Europe over 1.5 millennia. Church policies against cousin marriage, polygamy, and other kinship practices weakened intensive kinship networks, enabling new forms of cooperation among unrelated strangers. Finally, we address whether this genealogical account debunks or vindicates modern morality. We argue that understanding the contingent historical origins of modern morality need not undermine its normative authority, while acknowledging ongoing challenges to its universalization. (shrink)

Goal: To assess public knowledge and attitudes towards the family’s role in deceased organ donation in Europe. -/- Methods: A systematic search was conducted in CINHAL, MEDLINE, PAIS Index, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science on December 15th, 2017. Eligibility criteria were socio-empirical studies conducted in Europe from 2008 to 2017 addressing either knowledge or attitudes by the public towards the consent system, including the involvement of the family in the decision-making process, for post-mortem organ retrieval. Screening and data collection (...) were performed by two or more independent reviewers for each record. -/- Results: Of the 1482 results, 467 studies were assessed in full-text form, and 33 were included in this synthesis. When the deceased has not expressed any preference, a majority of the public support the family's role as a surrogate decision-maker. When the deceased expressly consented, the respondents' answers depend on whether they see themselves as potential donors or as a deceased's next-of-kin. Answers also depend on the relationship between the deceased and the decision-maker(s) within the family, and on their ethnic or cultural background. -/- Conclusions: Public views on the authority of the family in organ donation decision-making require further research. A common conceptual framework and validated well-designed questionnaires are needed for future studies. The findings should be considered in the development of Government policy and guidance regarding the role of families in deceased organ donation. (shrink)

A hallmark of Confucian morality is its emphasis on duties to family and kin as weighty features of moral life. The virtue of ‘filiality’ or ‘filial piety’ (xiao 孝), for example, is one of the most important in the Confucian canon. This aspect of Confucianism has been of renewed interest recently. On the one hand, some have claimed that, precisely because it acknowledges the importance of kin duties, Confucianism should be seen as an ethics rooted in human nature that remains (...) a viable system of morality today. On the other hand, some have argued that the extreme emphasis on filial duties is precisely the aspect of Confucian moral philosophy that ought to be jettisoned in favor of greater impartialism; without mitigating its emphasis on filial piety, Confucianism risks irrelevance to modern concerns. In this paper, I will outline the nature of filial morality in the Confucian tradition and discuss these recent contributions to the literature. (shrink)

The question of where the knowledge comes from when we conduct thought experiments has been one of the most fundamental issues discussed in the epistemological position of thought experiments. In this regard, Pierre Duhem shows a skeptical attitude on the subject by stating that thought experiments cannot be evaluated as real experiments or cannot be accepted as an alternative to real experiments. James R. Brown, on the other hand, states that thought experiments, which are not based on new experimental evidence (...) or logically derived from old data, called the Platonic thought experiment, provide intuitive access to a priori knowledge. Unlike Brown, John D. Norton strictly criticizes the idea that thought experiments provide mysterious access to the knowledge of the physical world, and states that thought experiments cannot provide knowledge that transcends empiricism. In the context of the NortonBrown debate, in this article, Brown's stance on thought experiments is supported by critically analyzing the thoughts put forward on the subject. -/- Düşünce deneylerini gerçekleştirdiğimizde sonucunda elde edilen bilginin nereden geldiği sorusu düşünce deneylerinin epistemolojik konumuna ilişkin tartışılan en temel konulardan bir tanesidir. Bu doğrultuda, Pierre Duhem düşünce deneylerinin gerçek deneyler ile aynı statüde değerlendirilemeyeceğini ve hatta düşünce deneylerinin gerçek deneylerin bir alternatifi olarak bile kabul edilemeyeceğini belirterek konuya ilişkin şüpheci bir tavır sergilemektedir. James R. Brown ise yeni deneysel kanıtlara dayanmayan ya da eski verilerden mantıksal olarak türetilmeyen, Platoncu düşünce deneyi olarak adlandırılan düşünce deneylerinin a priori bilgiye sezgisel erişim sağladığını ifade etmektedir. Brown’ın aksine, John D. Norton düşünce deneylerinin fiziksel dünyanın bilgisine gizemli bir erişim sağladığı yönündeki düşünceyi kesin bir dille eleştirmekte ve düşünce deneylerinin ampirizmi aşan bir bilgi sağlamasının mümkün olamayacağını ifade etmektedir. Norton-Brown tartışması çerçevesinde bu makalede, Brown'un düşünce deneylerine ilişkin tutumu, konuyla ilgili düşüncelerin eleştirel olarak analiz edilmesiyle desteklenmektedir. (shrink)

A patient is diagnosed with the persistent vegetative state (PVS) when they show no evidence of the awareness of the self or the environment for an extended period of time. The chance of recovery of any mental function or the ability to interact in a meaningful way is low. Though rare, the condition, considering its nature as a state outwith the realm of the conscious, coupled with the trauma experienced by the patient's kin as well as health care staff confronted (...) with painful decisions regarding the patient's care, has attracted a considerable amount of discussion within the bioethics community. At present, there is a wealth of literature that discusses the relevant neurology, that elucidates the plethora of ethical challenges in understanding and dealing with the condition, and that analyses the real-world cases which have prominently featured in the mainstream media as a result of emotionally charged, divergent views concerning the provision of care to the patient. However, there is scarcely anything in the published scholarly literature that proposes concrete and practically actionable solutions to the now widely recognized moral conundrums. The present article describes a step in that direction. I start from the very foundations, laying out a sentientist approach which serves as the basis for the consequent moral decision-making, and then proceed to systematically identify and deconstruct the different cases of discord, using the aforementioned foundations as the basis for their resolution. A major intellectual contribution concerns the fluidity of the duty of care which I argue is demanded by the sentientist focus. The said duty is shown initially to have for its object the patient, which depending on the circumstances, can change to the patient's kin, or the health care staff themselves. In conclusion, the proposed framework represents the first comprehensive proposal regarding the decision-making processes involved in the deliberation on the provision of life sustaining treatment to a patient in a PVS. (shrink)

Confucianism’s emphasis on filial piety is both a hallmark of its approach to ethics and a source of concern. Critics charge that filial piety’s extreme partialism corrupts Chinese society and should therefore be expunged from the tradition. Are the critics correct? In this article, we outline the criticism and note its persistence over the last century. We then evaluate data from the empirical study of corruption to see whether they support the claim that partialism corrupts. Finally, we report some recent (...) experimental work done with colleagues testing the claim that filial piety is associated with tolerance of corruption in Chinese societies. The results suggest that the critics are on to something. However, partialism (or kin affection) is not a cause of concern. Instead, authoritarianism (another aspect of filial piety) is associated with tolerance of corruption. We conclude that critics should reformulate their criticisms if they seek to combat corruption effectively. (shrink)

Our culture praises—indeed revels in—the beauty of the human form. And yet, in the midst of this exuberant celebration of corporeal beauty, not even the most unreflective can be unaware of the problems that have been laid at its feet. The philosopher Kathleen Higgins notes a “pervasive impression that is widespread in our culture: that beauty, or some near kin of it, is unsavory, a temptation that might get the soul off-track” (2000, 89). In response to this suspicion, some have (...) argued that beauty is in desperate need of reform or redefinition in our time. In this essay, I attempt to analyze and evaluate this counsel. How should these claims be understood? Would we be wise to follow them? (shrink)

This review article explores the concept of the bacterial other by highlighting numerous ways bacteria recognize and interact with organismal and non-organismal entities in their environment. It expounds two patterns of bacterial otherness by drawing multiple examples from basal cognition and sociomicrobiology. These two patterns are the non-organismal other, i.e., the physical entities in the bacterial environment, and the organismal other, the living entities in the bacterial environment. By detailing numerous processes such as chemotaxis, learning, memory, kin recognition, altruism, predation, (...) and cooperation, and analyzing these patterns of bacterial interactions, this review article also attempts to make a case for microbial bodily self. (shrink)

In "Nothing Is True," Will Gamester defends a form of alethic nihilism that still grants truth-talk a kind of legitimacy: an expressive role that is implemented via a pretense. He argues that this view has all of the strengths of deflationism, while also providing an elegant resolution of the Liar Paradox and its kin. For the alethic nihilist, Liar and related sentences are not true, and that is the end of the story. No contradiction arises because it does not thereby (...) follow that any of these sentences are also true, since nothing is. Gamester concludes that the simplicity of this response to the semantic paradoxes makes alethic nihilism an attractive approach. We disagree. In addition to providing insurmountable obstacles for his form of alethic nihilism, we contend that a certain form of non-nihilist deflationism is better placed to deal with the paradoxes and to account for truth-talk more generally. (shrink)

Marx’ın yapıtlarında ahlaki bir kaygı taşıdığı ve bu doğrultuda bir etik teorisine sahip olduğu düşüncesi günümüzde tartışılmaya devam eden bir meseledir. Bu tartışma genellikle Marx'ın yabancılaşma, insan doğası ve kapitalizm hakkında ileri sürmüş olduğu düşünceleri üzerinden yürütülmektedir. Bu kapsamda, ilk olarak, makalede Marx’ın yabancılaşma teorisi ve bu kavramın nasıl ortaya çıktığına ilişkin tarihsel arka plan verilmektedir. Daha sonra yabancılaşma ile insan doğası arasındaki ilişkiyi kurarak, Marx'ın insan doğası anlayışının ona bir etik teorisi imkânı sağlayıp sağlamadığı tartışılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, Marx'ın etik (...) teorisine hizmet eden evrensel bir insan doğası anlayışına sahip olduğu fikri, Louis Althusser ve Norman Geras'ın analizi ile irdelenmektedir. Yapılan tartışmalar doğrultusunda, nihai olarak, makalede Marx’ın bir etik teorisine ve ahlak anlayışına sahip olduğu sonucu desteklenmektedir. (shrink)