Serum lmmunglobulin and Complement Levels in the Patients With Head and Neck Carcinoma and the Evaluation of Autoantibody Positivity Ratein this study, smooth muscle antibody (SMA), anti-nücleer antibody (ANA) anti- mitochondrial antibody (AMA), anti-parietal cell antibody (PA), antiglomerular basal membrane antibody (GM), serum immunglobulins and complement-C3 levels have been searched. The positivity rate of ANA (31.91 %) and SMA (38.29 %) were found high in sera of the patients with head and neck carcinoma which had been diagnosed histopathologically. But the (...) positivity rate of AMA (4.25 %) PA (12.76 %) and GM (2.12 %) were low in the same group. ANA and SMA were detected in 1 O of 30 patients with laryngeal carcinoma; ANA were detected in 5 of 9 patients (55.5 %) and SMA were found in 4 of 9 patients (44.5 %) with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. There was no significant deviation in the levels of immunglobulins and complement-C3. The highest levels of immunoglobulins have been detected in patients with laryngeal carcinoma. Finding of high positivity rate of ANA and SMA in the patients with head and neck carcinoma showed an accordance with the other investigators' results. (shrink)

Abstract: In earlier work, I argued that individuals have a right to own firearms for personal defense, and that as a result, gun prohibition would be unjustified unless it at least produced benefits many times greater than its costs. Here, I defend that argument against objections posed by Nicholas Dixon and Jeff McMahan to the effect that the right of citizens to be free from gun violence counterbalances the right of self-defense, and that gun prohibition does not violate the right (...) of self-defense because it renders everyone overall safer. (4258 words). (shrink)

From a European perspective the US debate about gun control is puzzling because we have no such debate: It seems obvious to us that dangerous weapons need tight control and that ‘guns’ fall under that category. I suggest that this difference occurs due to different habits that generate different attitudes and support this explanation with an analogy to the habits about knives. I conclude that it is plausible that individual knife-people or gun-people do not want tight regulatory legislation—but tight knife (...) and gun legislation is morally obligatory anyway. We need to give up our habits for the greater good. (shrink)

Case studies about institutional pressures encouraging dishonesty in the US Navy.

Arguments for handgun ownership typically appeal to handguns’ value as an effective means of self-protection. Against this, critics argue that private ownership of handguns leads to more social harm than it prevents. Both sides make powerful arguments, and in the absence of a reasonable consensus regarding the merits of gun ownership, David DeGrazia proposes two gun control policies that ‘reasonable disputants on both sides of the issue have principled reasons to accept.’ These policies hinge on his claim that ‘an even-handed (...) examination of the available evidence casts considerable doubt on the thesis that handgun ownership enables more adequate self-defense and physical security in the home.’ We challenge DeGrazia’s ‘moderate gun control’ policies on both philosophical and empirical grounds. Philosophically, we show that the arguments he gives in support of his proposed gun-control measures are too narrow and incomplete to warrant his conclusions about what kind of gun control there ought to be, even if he is right about the empirical evidence. Empirically, we argue that a truly even-handed examination of the evidence makes DeGrazia’s claim that gun ownership is on average self-defeating much less plausible than he supposes. Our conclusion is that DeGrazia has failed to establish his claim that gun ownership is self-defeating and therefore has no case for the gun-control policies he suggests. (shrink)

This essay argues that gun control in America is a philosophical as well as a policy debate. This explains the depth of acrimony it causes. It also explains why the technocratic public health argument favored by the gun control movement has been so unsuccessful in persuading opponents and motivating supporters. My analysis also yields some positive advice for advocates of gun control: take the political philosophy of the gun rights movement seriously and take up the challenge of showing that a (...) society without guns is a better society, not merely a safer one. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how researchers’ metaphysical commitments can be conducive—or unconducive—to progress in animal cognition research. The methodological dictum known as Morgan’s Canon exhorts comparative psychologists to countenance the least mentalistic fair interpretation of animal actions. This exhortation has frequently been misread as a blanket condemnation of mentalistic interpretations of animal behaviors that could be interpreted behavioristically. But Morgan meant to demand only that researchers refrain from accepting default interpretations of (apparent) actions until other fair interpretations have been (...) duly considered. The Canon backfired largely because of Morgan’s background metaphysical commitment to a univocal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric account of cognitive architecture. I make the case that, going forward, comparative psychologists would do well to pair judicious use of Morgan’s Canon with an openness to the existence of non-humanlike animal minds comprising phenomena belonging to distinct cognitive and folk psychological ontologies. And I argue that this case gives us pragmatic reason to reconcile deep—e.g., psychofunctionalist—and superficial—e.g., dispositionalist—approaches to the metaphysics of belief. (shrink)

The best arguments against gun control invoke moral rights—it might be good if there were fewer guns in circulation, but there is a moral right to own firearms. Rather than emphasizing the potential benefits of gun control, this paper meets the best arguments on their home turf. I argue that there simply is no moral right to keep guns on one’s person or in one’s residence. In fact, our moral rights support the mutual disarmament of citizens and police.

Perhaps the biggest disconnect between philosophers and non-philosophers on the question of gun rights is over the relevance of arms to our dignitary interests. This essay attempts to address this gap by arguing that we have a strong prima facie moral right to resist with dignity and that violence is sometimes our most or only dignified method of resistance. Thus, we have a strong prima facie right to guns when they are necessary often enough for effective dignified resistance. This approach (...) is distinctively non-libertarian: it doesn’t justify gun rights on the basis of (mere) liberty or security. Nonetheless it is compatible with libertarian defenses of gun rights based on a liberty right to guns, and, if sound, in fact lowers the bar for gun rights in some ways, as it justifies access to guns even when nonviolent means would better achieve the liberty or security aims of potential victims. And although this defense of gun rights is most readily categorized as “conservative” or rightist, it relies upon principles and intuitions about dignity popular among progressives in other domains, such as in disability, women’s, or LGBT rights debates. (shrink)

Culture is a notoriously elusive concept. This fact has done nothing to hinder its popularity in contemporary analytic political philosophy among writers like John Rawls, Will Kymlicka, Michael Walzer, David Miller, Iris Marion Young, Joseph Raz, Avishai Margalit and Bikhu Parekh, among many others. However, this should stop, both for the metaphysical reason that the concept of culture, like that of race, is itself either incoherent or lacking a referent in reality, and for several normative reasons. I focus on the (...) following interconnected points: • The vagueness of the term allows a myriad of candidates to claim rights, and typically to the detriment of increased equality and environmental goals . • Cultural capital cannot be regulated in the way that political capital must be regulated without undermining the cultures supposedly being protected. And the possession of cultural capital is almost never democratically regulated. In particular, granting cultures political status creates intergenerational conflict, rewarding the elders and creating incentives to be conservative and restrict cultural mobility of the younger generation. •The notion of a group owning “its” culture is conceptually suspect and corrupted by the foregoing points about unequal cultural capital. In defending a group’s right to preserve its culture we do not defend equally the rights of the individuals that make it up , and we ignore altogether the rights of those who may be unfairly denied recognition as “members” of the culture. (shrink)

According to statistics, there is an increasing gun-related deaths, violence and trafficking of small arms are emergent consequents of failure towards gun regulation and irresponsible gun ownership worldwide. Thus, this study was conducted to examine the implementation of the Gun Control Policy in Caraga Region focusing on the aspect of enforcement and monitoring. Also, the study aimed to investigate the problems encountered in the implementation of the gun control policy in enforcement and monitoring with the gun owners/operators and PNP personnel (...) as respondents. This study was conducted using the descriptive correlational research design. The study revealed the following findings: Majority of the Gun Operator/Owner respondents are college level, employed to private institutions who owned 1 to 2 guns, license for 1-5 years, mostly under type-1 category. For the PNP Personnel respondents, most of them are purely Baccalaureate holders who served the organization for 6-10 years and have 5 to 10 years’ experience as licensing officers. In terms of the enforcement and monitoring of the gun control policies, the respondents basically rated it as Highly Implemented. On the test of significance, there was a significant difference on the assessment of the respondents in gun control policy monitoring but showed to have no significant difference on the respondent’s assessment in enforcement. Both Gun owners and PNP respondents considered the problems encountered in enforcement and monitoring as highly prevalent problems. On the test of significance, there was no significant difference in the assessment of the respondents for both enforcement and monitoring of Gun Control policies. On the test of significant relationship, there was a significant relationship on the Gun control policies enforcement and monitoring with its problems encountered. It can be concluded that the Gun Control policies were fairly implemented by the government despite the challenges like the problems encountered in its enforcement and monitoring. The problems encountered in enforcement and monitoring were highly prevalent thus it needs serious actions by the PNP organization. It can further be concluded that there is a correlation between the Gun control policies and its problems encountered. Thus, the PNP must conduct series of orientation and forum among the gun owners / operators to strengthen the implementation of the gun control policies, must adopt technology in a form of online app design to hasten the documentation and tracing of expired gun licenses, create more information campaign to prevent gun violence in the future maximizing various platforms, must create “hotline” call center as support mechanism in monitoring unregistered and lost firearms and create online gun licensing system. (shrink)

Long Range and short range, guns and violence, everyday life in cities and streets, between social and group identity and faith and religious belief, the vision to the "things of the world that cannot be seen" (Heróis do Mar).

This article responds to Tim Hsiao's "The Moral Case for Gun Ownership".

A man, carrying a gun in his waistband, robs a food vendor. In making his escape, the gun discharges, critically injuring the robber. About such instances, it is common to think, “he got what he deserved.” This Article seeks to explore cases like that—cases of “natural punishment.” Natural punishment occurs when a wrongdoer faces serious harm that results from her wrongdoing and not from anyone seeking retribution against her. The Article proposes that U.S. courts follow their peers and recognize natural (...) punishment as genuine punishment for legal, specifically constitutional, purposes. Were U.S. courts to do so, they would need to reduce the amount of punishment they would otherwise bestow on wrongdoers upon conviction if a natural punishment has occurred or foreseeably will occur. A handful of foreign jurisdictions already accept something like this Article’s proposal, but natural punishment has no formal legal recognition in the United States. The goal of this Article is twofold: first, it offers a rigorous and defensible definition of natural punishment by distinguishing it from nearby notions and dispelling any association with supernatural ideas; second, it demonstrates that recognizing natural punishment as genuine punishment will not much disturb existing American legal institutions and understandings. -/- As an added bonus, the concept of natural punishment can be employed to solve a longstanding problem in criminal law theory, the Mystery of Credit for Time Served. The Mystery surrounds the common practice of giving prisoners credit toward their prison sentences for their time served in jail awaiting trial. The Mystery poses a dilemma about whether the detention time was punishment: If it was punishment, then the detainee was punished before trial in violation of Due Process; however, if the time was not punishment, there is no reason to discount the prison sentence. Seeing the time in detention as an instance of natural punishment resolves the Mystery. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconcile two claims that have long been thought to be incompatible: that we compositionally determine the meaning of complex expressions from the meaning of their parts, and that prototypes are components of the meaning of lexical terms such as fish, red, and gun. Hypotheses and are independently plausible, but most researchers think that reconciling them is a difficult, if not hopeless task. In particular, most linguists and philosophers agree that is not negotiable; so (...) they tend to reject. Recently, there have been some attempts to reconcile these claims, but they all adopt an implausibly weak notion of compositionality. Furthermore, parties to this debate tend to fall into a problematic way of individuating prototypes that is too externalistic. In contrast, I propose that we can reconcile and if we adopt, instead, an internalist and pluralist conception of prototypes and a context-sensitive but strong notion of compositionality. I argue that each of this proposals is independently plausible, and that, when taken together, provide the basis for a satisfactory account of prototype compositionality. (shrink)

Exposome research is put forward as a major tool for solving the nature-versus-nurture debate because the exposome is said to represent “the nature of nurture.” Against this influential idea, we argue that the adoption of the nature-versus-nurture debate into the exposome research program is a mistake that needs to be undone to allow for a proper bioethical assessment of exposome research. We first argue that this adoption is originally based on an equivocation between the traditional nature-versus-nurture debate and a debate (...) about disease prediction/etiology. Second, due to this mistake, exposome research is pushed to adopt a limited conception of agential control that is harmful to one's thinking about the good that exposome research can do for human health and wellbeing. To fully excise the nature-versus-nurture debate from exposome research, we argue that exposome researchers and bioethicists need to think about the exposome afresh from the perspective of actionability. We define the concept of actionability and related concepts and show how these can be used to analyze the ethical aspects of the exposome. In particular, we focus on refuting the popular “gun analogy” in exposome research, returning results to study participants and risk-taking in the context of a well-lived life. (shrink)

Imagine you are walking through a park. Suddenly, a mugger points a gun at you, threatening to shoot you if you do not hand over your valuables. Is this an instance of domination? Many authors working within the neo-republican framework - including Philip Pettit himself - are inclined to say 'yes'. After all, the mugger case seems to be a paradigmatic example of what it means to be at someone's mercy. However, I argue that this conclusion is based on a (...) misleading, interactional account of domination that misconceives its structural character. Domination, I maintain, is a structurally constituted form of power. Whether the mugger in the park dominates you or not can only be established by analysing the wider power structures in which your interaction is embedded. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that common nouns have a dual semantic structure that includes extension-determining and non-extension-determining components. I argue that the non-extension-determining components are part of linguistic meaning because they play a key compositional role in certain constructions, especially in privative noun phrases such as "fake gun" and "counterfeit document". Furthermore, I show that if we modify the compositional interpretation rules in certain simple ways, this dual content account of noun phrase modification can be implemented in a type-driven (...) formal semantic framework. In addition, I also argue against traditional accounts of privative noun phrases which can be paired with the assumption that nouns do not have a dual semantic structure. At the most general level, this paper presents a proposal for how we can begin to integrate a psychologically realistic account of lexical semantics with a linguistically plausible compositional semantic framework. (shrink)

Recent work by Kahan et al. (2017) on the psychology of motivated numeracy in the context of intracultural disagreement suggests that people are less likely to employ their capabilities when the evidence runs contrary to their political ideology. This research has so far been carried out primarily in the USA regarding the liberal–conservative divide over gun control regulation. In this paper, we present the results of a modified replication that included an active reasoning intervention with Western European participants regarding both (...) the hierarchy–egalitarianism and individualism–collectivism divides over immigration policy (n = 746; considerably less than the preregistration sample size). We reproduce the motivated numeracy effect, though we do not find evidence of increased polarization of high-numeracy participants. (shrink)

[...] Rousseau bir yandan çağının yükselen değerlerinden yararlanırken diğer yandan bu değerlerin içeriden eleştirisini yapmayı başarabilen düşünürlerden biri olduğu için fikirleri ölümünden asırlar sonra bile önemini yitirmemiştir. Demokratik devletlerin meşruiyet krizinin giderek derinleştiği ve çoğunlukçu, majoritarian, ideolojilerin etraflıca sorgulanmaya başlandığı çağımızda, demokrasiyi çoğunluk kararına ek olarak “rıza”, “Yurttaşlık”, “sivil özgürlük”, “kamusal uzlaşı” ve “Genel İrade” kavramlarıyla birlikte ele alan Rousseau’yu yeniden okumak önemlidir [...] Rousseau-demokrasi ilişkisinin kazılıp ortaya çıkartılacağı bu metinde uğranılacak olan kavramsal duraklar sırasıyla: Eşitsizlik (doğal ve toplumsal), özgürlük (...) (doğal ve sivil), politik bütün (bodypolitic), Genel İrade, ortak iyi (common good) ve Egemen olmalıdır. Söz konusu kavramlar, Rousseau’nun onlara yüklediği özgün anlamları gözden kaçırılmadan sanki ilk defa karşılaşılıyormuşçasına bir zihin açıklığı ile okundukları zaman, onun demokrasi görüşü de gün ışığına çıkartılabilir. (shrink)

Tim travels back in time and tries to kill his grandfather before his father was born. Tim fails. But why? Lewis's response was to cite "coincidences": Tim is the unlucky subject of gun jammings, banana peels, sudden changes of heart, and so on. A number of challenges have been raised against Lewis's response. The latest of these focuses on explanation. This paper diagnoses the source of this new disgruntlement and offers an alternative explanation for Tim's failure, one that Lewis would (...) not have liked. The explanation is an obvious one but controversial, so it is defended against all the objections that can be mustered. (shrink)

In disagreements about trivial matters, it often seems appropriate for disputing parties to adopt a ‘middle ground’ view about the disputed matter. But in disputes about more substantial controversies (e.g. in ethics, religion, or politics) this sort of doxastic conduct can seem viciously acquiescent. How should we distinguish between the two kinds of cases, and thereby account for our divergent intuitions about how we ought to respond to them? One possibility is to say that ceding ground in a trivial dispute (...) is appropriate because the disputing parties are usually epistemic peers within the relevant domain, whereas in a more substantial disagreement the disputing parties rarely, if ever, qualify as epistemic peers, and so ‘sticking to one’s guns’ is usually the appropriate doxastic response. My aim in this paper is to explain why this way of drawing the desired distinction is ultimately problematic, even if it seems promising at first blush. (shrink)

My endeavor in this paper is to examine the ways in which exactly the general structure of perception is modified in the case of the reception of theatre performances. First, perception in general is examined and it is argued that a basic characteristic of perception is that it is sometimes interdependent with action. After the analysis of perception in general, I turn to the special case of the perception of a theatre performance (or, theatre-perception, for short) and examine the role (...) of the perception of the possibility of action in the case of watching a performance. I try to point out that theatre-perception cannot be sufficiently analyzed without taking into consideration the action-oriented character of perception. If we perceive a gun on stage we perceive it as the possibility of an action, that is, as affording certain actions. (shrink)

Torricelli elaborated the theory of ballistics as part of Galileo's theory of motion. In 1647 he had an interesting exchange of letters with G. B. Renieri, from Genoa, who complained that some experiments he had made with guns contradicted Galileo's theory. The correspondence discloses some fundamental issues of the Seventeenth century Scientific Revolution, the main one being to what extent mathematics can be applied to physics. Torricelli's view on this issue is ambivalent. He defends Galileo's kinematics as the correct description (...) of reality yet says that mathematics does not describe reality. It is suggested that this ambivalence is an outcome of the climate of uncertainty which followed Galileo's trial. (shrink)

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980) may have featured both animated corpses and hardcore sex scenes, but only recently have Re-Penetrator (2004) and Porn of the Dead (2006) managed to fully eroticise the living dead, allowing these creatures to engage in intercourse. In doing so, the usually a-subjective zombie is allotted a key facet of identity - sexuality. This development within the sub-genre needs accounting for outside of the contexts of porn studies, where it has only been briefly touched (...) upon in relation to its "extremity". -/- Moreover, the gendering of the undead opens a discussion which expand the horizons of zombie studies away from the overt critiques of capitalism, race and psychoanalysis that have pervaded analyses of these narratives. The dichotomy of binary oppositions so often associated with psychoanalytic approaches dictates that "passive (non-phallic) = female", and "active (phallic) = male". In these terms, the zombies are feminine - soft-bodied and passive, despite their murderous intent (which has been accounted for, by Barabara Creed (1993) amongst others, by invoking the vagina-dentata motif). Humans (active) are deemed masculine, not least since they tend to dispatch zombies with "phallic guns". Taking this logic to an extreme, the zombie may be read as allegorising feminism: the "feminised" figures (zombies) become fearsome in their will to exert themselves despite their seeming disempowerment in the face of "masculine" hegemony. Ultimately, by grouping together as a force, they overthrow or at least significantly damage that "normality" (an ideological paradigm usually read in terms of race, class and economics). (shrink)

Hermeneutik tarihsel süreç içerisinde hukuk, teoloji, tarih, sanat ve felsefe gibi çeşitli alanlarda farklı şekillerde tanımlanmış ve kullanılmış bir kavramdır. Bu doğrultuda, hermeneutiğin tam olarak belirlenebilmesi amacıyla, hermeneutik kelimesinin kökenine ve bu disiplinin tarihine mümkün olduğunca öz bir şekilde bakma gereksinimi ortaya çıkmaktadır. Çünkü hermeneutik disiplinini tek bir perspektiften değerlendirmek, onun temel gerçekliğini anlamamıza engel olacak çarpıtmaların gün yüzüne çıkmasına sebep olabilir. Genel anlamda bir ifadenin, anlamın, metnin ya da sanat eserinin belirli bir çerçeve içerisinde yorumlanması olarak değerlendirilen hermeneutik, felsefe (...) açısından varlığın oluş tarzı, sosyoloji açısından metodolojik problemlere yönelik bir çözüm, dini açıdan ise anlaşılması güç metinlerin anlamını gün yüzüne çıkaran yorum kuralları bütünü olarak tanımlanabilir (Audi, 1999: 377). Webster’in Uluslararası İngilizce sözlüğünde hermeneutik kavramı genel ifadesiyle yorumlama ve açıklamanın metodolojik ilkelerinin soruşturulması olarak tanımlanmakta iken, daha özel anlamda ise İncil’in çevirisinin yapılabilmesi için belirlenen genel prensiplerin incelenmesi olarak belirtilmiştir (Gove, 1971: 1059). Bu çalışmada, Auguste Comte’un öncülük ettiği pozitivist anlayışın öne sürdüğü ve desteklediği doğa bilimci yöntemin ve pozitivist tarih anlayışının, insanı ve yaşantısını doğru bir kavrayışla değerlendirme noktasında etkili olamadığı vurgulanacaktır. Pozitivist düşünce doğa bilimlerinin elde etmiş olduğu başarı ve kazanımlardan yola çıkarak dönemin bilim anlayışı konusunda belirleyici olmakla birlikte, ön plana çıkardığı bilimsellik modelinin ya da kriterinin bir sonucu olarak tinsel bilimlerin ya da beşerî bilimlerin doğasına uygun olmayan yöntemleri benimsemesi hususunda belirleyici bir unsur olmuştur. Böylece, doğa bilimleri söz sahibi olmadığı bir alan içerisinde parlatılarak, bilimsellik statüsü kazanabilme kaygısıyla tinsel bilimleri yöntemsel bir kriz içerisine sürüklemiştir. Bu çerçevede, hermeneutiğin zaman içerisindeki dönüşümünün zirve noktasında yer alan düşünürlerden biri olan Wilhelm Dilthey’in tinsel bilimleri yöntemsel açıdan karşı karşıya kaldıkları kriz durumundan çıkarmak amacıyla ileri sürdüğü hermeneutik yönteme ilişkin savlarını, hermeneutiğin tarihsel süreç içerisindeki kazanımlarından yola çıkarak tartışmak gerekmektedir. (shrink)

Recent legal opinions and scholarly works invoke the political philosophy of John Locke, and his claim that there is a natural right of self-defense, to support the view that the 2nd Amendment’s right to bear arms is so fundamental that no state may disarm the people. I challenge this use of Locke. For Locke, we have a right of self-defense in a state of nature. But once we join society we no longer may take whatever measures that seem reasonable to (...) us to defend ourselves: we are bound to the law duly enacted according to the original Constitution to which we consented. For Locke, how best to avoid dissolution of government and preserve individual liberty is for the people to judge collectively, unconstrained by natural proscriptions on gun regulations, limited only by the demands that government not be arbitrary and that it serve the public good. (shrink)

Though this volume is a bit dated, there are few recent popular books dealing specifically with the psychology of murder and it’s a quick overview available for a few dollars, so still well worth the effort. It makes no attempt to be comprehensive and is somewhat superficial in places, with the reader expected to fill in the blanks from his many other books and the vast literature on violence. For an update see e.g., Buss, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology 2nd (...) ed. V1 (2016) p 265, 266, 270–282, 388–389, 545–546, 547, 566 and Buss, Evolutionary Psychology 5th ed. (2015) p 26, 96–97,223, 293-4, 300, 309–312, 410 and Shackelford and Hansen, The Evolution of Violence (2014) He has been among the top evolutionary psychologists for several decades and covers a wide range of behavior in his works, but here he concentrates almost entirely on the psychological mechanisms that cause individual people to murder and their possible evolutionary function in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation—i.e., the plains of Africa during the last million years or so). -/- Buss starts by noting that as with other behaviors, ‘alternative’ explanations such as psychopathology, jealousy, social environment, group pressures, drugs and alcohol etc. do not really explain, since the question still remains as to why these produce homicidal impulses, i.e., they are the proximate causes and not the ultimate evolutionary (genetic) ones. As always, it inevitably boils down to inclusive fitness (kin selection), and so to the struggle for access to mates and resources, which is the ultimate explanation for all behavior in all organisms. Sociological data (and common sense) make it clear that younger poorer males are the most likely to kill. He presents his own and others homicide data from industrialized nations, and tribal cultures, conspecific killing in animals, archeology, FBI data and his own research into normal people's homicidal fantasies. Much archeological evidence continues to accumulate of murders, including that of whole groups, or of groups minus young females, in prehistoric times. -/- After surveying Buss’s comments, I present a very brief summary of intentional psychology (the logical structure of rationality), which is covered extensively in my many other articles and books. -/- Those with a lot of time who want a detailed history of homicidal violence from an evolutionary perspective may consult Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined’(2012), and my review of it easily available on the net and in two of my recent ebooks. Briefly, Pinker notes that murder has decreased steadily and dramatically by a factor of about 30 since our days as foragers. So, even though guns now make it extremely easy for anyone to kill, homicide is much less common. Pinker thinks this is due to various social mechanisms that bring out our ‘better angels’, but I think it’s due mainly to the temporary abundance of resources from the merciless rape of our planet, coupled with increased police presence, with communication and surveillance and legal systems that make it far more likely to be punished. This becomes clear every time there is even a brief and local absence of the police. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems of thought viewpoint may consult my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in more of my writings on psychology may see Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century--Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization 392p (2017). For all my writings in their most recent versions, please consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 3rd Ed. 686p (2017). -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX -/- . (shrink)

When involved in a disagreement, a common reaction is to tell oneself that, given that the information about one’s own epistemic standing is clearly superior in both amount and quality to the information about one’s opponent’s epistemic standing, one is justified in one’s confidence that one’s view is correct. In line with this natural reaction to disagreement, some contributors to the debate on its epistemic significance have claimed that one can stick to one’s guns by relying in part on information (...) about one’s first-order evidence and the functioning of one’s cognitive capacities. In this article, I argue that such a manoeuvre to settle controversies encounters the problem that both disputants can make use of it, the problem that one may be wrong about one’s current conscious experience, and the problem that it is a live possibility that many of one’s beliefs are the product of epistemically distorting factors. I also argue that, even if we grant that personal information is reliable, when it comes to real-life rather than idealized disagreements, the extent of the unpossessed information about one’s opponent’s epistemic standing provides a reason for doubting that personal information can function as a symmetry breaker. (shrink)

David Friedman posed a number of libertarian philosophical problems (Friedman 1989). This essay criticizes Walter Block’s Rothbardian responses (Block 2011) and compares them with J C Lester’s critical-rationalist, libertarian-theory responses (Lester [2000] 2012). The main issues are as follows. 1. Critical rationalism and how it applies to libertarianism. 2.1. How libertarianism is not inherently about law and is inherently about morals. 2.2. How liberty relates to property and can be maximized: carbon dioxide and radio waves. 2.3. Applying the theory to (...) flashlights. 2.4. Applying the theory to the probability of imposed risks. 2.5. “Homesteading” or initial acquisition. 2.6 What is “essential” for a “true libertarian.” 2.7. Crime and punishment. 2.8. Extent of punishment. 2.9. The libertarian response to a madman with a gun. 2.10. How contradictions in rights are possible. 2.11. The draft. 3.1. Utilitarian libertarianism and “nose counting”. 3.2. How interpersonal comparisons of utility are possible and utility monsters are not a threat. 3.3. Why it is not utilitarian in practice to kill an innocent prisoner to prevent a riot. 3.4. Why David Friedman should not be forced to give up one of his eyes. 3.5. How utilitarians can be libertarians. Conclusion: a proper theory of liberty combined with critical rationalism offers superior solutions to Friedman’s problems. Appendix: replies to two commentators. (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering a (...) wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

In the United States, police use of force experts often maintain that controversial police shootings where an unarmed person’s hand gesture was interpreted as their “going for a gun” are justifiable. If an officer waits to confirm that a weapon is indeed being pulled from a jacket pocket or waistband, it may be too late to defend against a lethal attack. This article examines police policy norms for self-defense against “uncertain threats” in three contexts: (1) known in-progress violent crimes, (2) (...) interactions with civilians behaving non-aggressively, and (3) interactions with civilians behaving aggressively. It is argued that the context of a known in-progress violent crime gives rise to threat probability-, fairness-, and lesser evil-based reasons for a norm permitting police officers to use lethal force. However, in the contexts of civilians behaving non-aggressively and civilians behaving aggressively, such a norm is not justifiable. In the former case, I introduce two conditions, the Justification condition and the Valuing Civilian Lives condition, which I argue are not presently met. In the latter case, these two conditions again are not met; aggression may moreover be excused or justified due to background injustices around race and the criminal justice system. (shrink)

Sa bawat aklatan o sabihin pang mga bookstores, hindi talaga nawawala ang sikat na sikat na mga aklat ni Ambeth Ocampo. Isa na rito ang labintatlong tomo ng Looking Back na tumatalakay sa iba’t ibang paksa sa kasaysayan ng Pilipinas. Noong mga panahong nag-aaral pa ang may-akda sa PUP ng kursong Kasaysayan, walong serye pa lamang ng Looking Back ang nailathala at sabihin pang nabasa niya—Looking Back (2010); Dirty Dancing (2010); Death by Garrote (2010); Chulalongkorn’s Elephants: The Philippines in Asian (...) History (2011); Rizal’s Teeth, Bonifacio’s Bones (2012); Prehistoric Philippines (2012); Storm Chasers (2014); at Virgin of Balintawak (2014). Hindi naglaon, tila bagang isang palos ang pagkakalathala ng mga sumunod pang mga akda—Demonyo in Tables: History in Artifacts (2015); Two Lunas, Two Mabinis (2015); Independence X6 (2016); Quezon’s Sukiyaki (2016); at Guns of the Katipunan (2017). Sa mga nabanggit na akda ni Ambeth Ocampo, ang Chulalongkorn’s Elephants: The Philippines in Asian History ang higit na pinagtuunan ng pansin at diin ng rebyuwer. Sa kasalukuyang pagkakataon, ilalatag ng rebyuwer sa papel na ito ang kanyang mga natatanging komendasyon (kalakasan) at kritik (kahinaan) hinggil sa 102-pahinang aklat ni Ocampo. Sisipatin din ang kanyang pagkakadalumat sa ugnayan ng Pilipinas sa mga Asyanikong bansa na siya naman talagang dapat maging tunguhin ng rebyung ito. (shrink)

My dissertation develops a defense of a right to self-defense against the state. I set aside anarchist theories and grant for the sake of argument that the state has legitimate political authority. My goal is to convince non-anarchists that the right to self-defense extends to individuals against the state and the state’s agents. I argue that the right to self-defense is a fundamental, negative, claim right. The right to self-defense has these characteristics: (1) it is fundamental, meaning that it is (...) not derivative of any other right—it doesn’t appeal to any other right for its justification (2) it is negative, meaning that it simply requires others to refrain from certain action, and (3) it is a claim right, rather than a permission right, which means that it logically entails correlative duties on others. I also challenge some basic tenets of the orthodox account of justified defensive force, including the imminence, necessity, and proportionality conditions. My argument is a controversial one; many will resist the idea that an individual could be justified in self-defense against the state for a variety of reasons, ranging from thinking the idea is absurd or dangerous, to thinking that even if it is morally permissible, it is impractical. I aim to rebut these objections and to provide strong moral reasons to show why individuals do in fact have this right. -/- This research explores the relationship between one of our most basic rights—the right to self-defense—with our most basic political relationship—the relationship between the individual and the state. Part of my aim is to convince non-anarchist readers of philosophical claims that are usually only supported by anarchists. The reason this is important, beyond being academically interesting, is that if I am successful, it could allow a great majority of individuals to rethink their relationship with the state; not just at a basic level, but also in other applied areas such as gun rights, drug laws, and issues surrounding punishment and imprisonment. (shrink)

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed fifteen people at their high school in Columbine, Colorado. National media dubbed the event a “school shooting.” The term grimly expanded over the next several years to include similar events at army bases, movie theaters, churches, and nightclubs. Today, we commonly use the categories “mass shooter” and “mass shooting” to organize and classify information about gun violence. I will argue that neither category is an effective tool for reducing (...) gun violence and use empirical data to show how these categories perpetuate a moral panic that harms already vulnerable demographics. I conclude that we should instead favor a narrower description of individuals and events, (e.g., “X shot Y people at Z”) because we can talk about all of the relevant cases without contributing the undue harms. (shrink)

Formal semantics has so far focused on three categories of quantifiers, to wit, Q-determiners (e.g. 'every'), Q-adverbs (e.g. 'always'), and Q-auxiliaries (e.g. 'would'). All three can be analyzed in terms of tripartite logical forms (LF). This paper presents evidence from verbs with distributive affixes (Q-verbs), in Kalaallisut, Polish, and Bininj Gun-wok, which cannot be analyzed in terms of tripartite LFs. It is argued that a Q-verb involves discourse reference to a distributive verbal dependency, i.e. an episode-valued function that sends different (...) semantic objects in a contextually salient plural domain to different episodes. (shrink)

Science is, if not the most, at least one of the most important human activities which has an undeniable impact on our lives. However, it is a matter of debate that science and its various applications have many negative effects besides their numerous positive contributions. As the negative effects of the science and its applications have become more visible, the science-value relation has regained popularity in the philosophy of science. Precautionary principle is one of the central concepts of the late (...) science-value debates. We first scrutinize the science-value relation, especially whether the science is value-free or value-laden activity, from the perspective of history and philosophy of science, and argue that sciences involve both epistemic and non-epistemic values. Then we introduce the precautionary principle and discuss the possible causes and outcomes of having it as a methodological component of scientific research. Finally, we argue that, if the science-value relation can be reestablished on ethical grounds, as the precautionary principle demands, the negative effects of science and its applications on human health and environment might be minimized and science could contribute more to human happiness. -/- Bilim yaşamımızı biçimlendiren en önemli insan etkinliklerinden birisi, belki de en önemlisidir. Ancak bilimlerin ve onun çeşitli uygulamalarının insan yaşamına olumlu katkılarının yanında insan ve çevre sağlığı üzerinde pek çok olumsuz etkilerinin de olduğu tartışılmaktadır. Bilim ve uygulamalarının insan sağlığı ve çevre üzerindeki olumsuz etkilerinin her geçen gün daha çok görünür hâle gelmesi, bilim-değer ilişkisini yeniden önemli bir tartışma başlığı hâline getirmiştir. İhtiyat ilkesi bilim-değer ilişkisi üzerine yapılan tartışmaların odağında yer alan kavramlardan biridir. Biz çalışmamızda önce bilim-değer ilişkisini, bilimin değerden bağımsız bir etkinlik olup olmadığını bilim tarihi ve felsefesi perspektifinden ele alıyor ve bilimlerin hem epistemik hem de epistemik olmayan değerler içerdiğini savunuyoruz. Daha sonra ihtiyat ilkesini ele alıyor ve onun bilimsel araştırmaların yöntembilimsel bir bileşeni hâline getirilmesinin olası nedenleri ve sonuçları üzerinde duruyoruz. Son olarak, bilim-değer ilişkisinin, ihtiyat ilkesi örneğinde olduğu gibi etik temelli kurulması durumunda bilim ve uygulamalarının insan sağlığı ve çevre üzerindeki olumsuz etkilerinin azaltılabileceğini ve bilimin insan mutluluğuna daha çok katkı sağlayabileceğini tartışıyoruz. (shrink)

İngiltere, Avrupa’da en fazla Müslüman nüfusa sahip ülkelerden biridir ve ülkede Müslümanlara yönelik olumsuz tutumlar giderek artmaktadır. Yabancılara yönelik bu olumsuz tutumların birçok farklı psikolojik nedeni bulunmaktadır. Dehşet Yönetimi Kuramı kapsamında yapılan çeşitli araştırmalar, bu nedenlerden birisinin bireylere ölümün hatırlatılması olduğunu iddia etmektedir. Bu kurama göre, hayatta kalmak gibi güçlü bir motivasyona sahip olan insan aynı zamanda bu çabalarının bir gün başarısız olacağını bilir ve ölüm kaygısı yaşar. Ölümün hatırlatıldığı bireyler, ölüm kaygısının üstesinden gelmek için kendi kültürlerine yöneldiklerinde, diğer kültürlere (...) yani dış gruplara veya onların üyelerine karşı önyargı geliştirirler veya onlara karşı olumsuz tutumlar edinirler. Bu iddianın test edilmesi için 2018 yılı içerisinde İngiltere’de 50 kişinin katılımıyla bir deney gerçekleştirilmiştir. Deney grubuna ölümü hatırlatıcı video izlettirilmiş; daha sonra deney ve kontrol gruplarına Müslümanlara yönelik tutumları ölçen sorular yöneltilmiştir. Elde edilen veriler analiz edildiğinde, ölümün hatırlatıldığı bireylerin (deney grubu), Müslümanlara yönelik tutumlarının, diğer bireylerden (kontrol grubu) daha olumsuz olduğu tespit edilmiştir. (shrink)

Konjenital hipotiroidi, yenidoğan döneminde uzamış sarılığın önde gelen nedenlerinden biridir ve önlenebilir zeka geriliğinin en sık nedenidir. Bu kesitsel çalışmada Eylül 80-Mart 2005 tarihleri arasında Gaziantep Çocuk Hastanesi'ne başvuran uzamış sarılığı olan 2006 ayaktan hastada konjenital hipotiroidi sıklığı araştırıldı. Plazma total bilirubin düzeyi 5 mg/dL'nin üzerinde olan hastalar çalışmaya dahil edildi (12.3±4.6 mg/dL), direkt hiperbilirubinemisi olan hastalar çalışmaya dahil edilmedi. Hastalar 15-45 gün arasındaydı. Konjenital hipotiroidi tanı kriterleri serum TSH düzeyi 20 mU/L'nin üzerinde idi. Konjenital hipotiroidi tanısı uzamış sarılığı olan (...) 3 hastanın 4'inde (%5.6) konuldu. TSH düzeyi dört hastada 3 mU/L'nin, bir hastada ise 80 mU/L'nin üzerindeydi. Verilerimiz, konjenital hipotiroidizmin uzamış sarılığı olan yenidoğanların önemli bir bölümünü oluşturduğuna işaret etmektedir. (shrink)

Bu çalışma kitap olmayan bir kitaptır. Okur klasik kitaplarda alıştığı tamamlanmış metinler, çözümlenmiş bilimsel ve felsefi problemler beklemesin bu çalışmada. Sunduğum şey üzerinde çalıştığım konular ve o konularla ilgili geliştirdiğim düşünceler, aforizmalar yer yer dağınık önermelerdir. Bu iki nedenden dolayı böyledir: Birincisi bilgi kuramsal açıdan tamamlanmış önermeler dizgesinin yanlış olmasıdır. Quantum çağında her gün yeni bir keşif yaptığımız nesneler ile ilgili büyük anlatılar ve tamamlanmış, sistematik görüşler geliştirilemez. Geleneksel tüm kitaplar ilgilendikleri nesneyi tüm bağıntılarıyla çözdükleri iddiasındadır. Örneğin tüm çağdaş fizik (...) kitapları yaklaşık yüz yıldır atomun ağırlığını çözdüklerini düşünerek yayınlanıyordu. Ancak 2017 Ocağında quarkların dışarıdan enerji alışverişi yaptıkları ve oluşturdukları atom ağırlığının sürekli değişti keşfedildi. Bu tüm yazılmış fizik kitaplarının çöpe atılması anlamına gelir. Bu nedenlerden ötürü tamamlanmış çalışmalar değil, sürekli gelişen Wikipedia tarzında, yazılan metinlerin sürekli güncellendiği çalışmalar, bilimsel anlatıma daha uygundur. Okur, bu metnin sürekli işlenen biçimini bloğumda takip edebilecek. -/- İkincisi kişisel olarak çalışmalarımdan asla tatmin olamadım ve vardığım teorik sonuçları dışarı açarak çalışmalarıma dışsal bir motivasyon ve eleştirel bir geri dönüşüm almak istedim. O nedenle okur bu çalışmamı kendisiyle tartışmaya açtığım el yazmalarım olarak değerlendirsin. -/- Tüm bunlarla birlikte okuru son derece geniş bir entelektüel alanda yaratıcı bir çalışma ve tamamiyle sadece yazara ait yeni önermeler bekliyor. -/- Bu çalışma esas olarak aydınlanmadan başlayan ve günümüze kadar gelen, quantum fizikçilerinin de yaslandıkları, tüm sosyal kuramların sonunu ilan etmektedir. -/- Salt bu iddia bile çalışmamı dikkate değer kılar. (shrink)

Though this volume is a bit dated, there are few recent popular books dealing specifically with the psychology of murder and it’s a quick overview available for a few dollars, so still well worth the effort. It makes no attempt to be comprehensive and is somewhat superficial in places, with the reader expected to fill in the blanks from his many other books and the vast literature on violence. For an update see e.g., Buss, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology 2nd (...) ed. V1 (2016) p 265, 266, 270–282, 388–389, 545–546, 547, 566 and Buss, Evolutionary Psychology 5th ed. (2015) p 26, 96–97,223, 293-4, 300, 309–312, 410 and Shackelford and Hansen, The Evolution of Violence (2014). He has been among the top evolutionary psychologists for several decades and covers a wide range of behavior in his works, but here he concentrates almost entirely on the psychological mechanisms that cause individual people to murder and their possible evolutionary function in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation—i.e., the plains of Africa during the last million years or so). -/- Buss starts by noting that as with other behaviors, ‘alternative’ explanations such as psychopathology, jealousy, social environment, group pressures, drugs and alcohol etc. do not really explain, since the question still remains as to why these produce homicidal impulses, i.e., they are the proximate causes and not the ultimate evolutionary (genetic) ones. As always, it inevitably boils down to inclusive fitness (kin selection), and so to the struggle for access to mates and resources, which is the ultimate explanation for all behavior in all organisms. Sociological data (and common sense) make it clear that younger poorer males are the most likely to kill. He presents his own and others homicide data from industrialized nations, and tribal cultures, conspecific killing in animals, archeology, FBI data and his own research into normal people's homicidal fantasies. Much archeological evidence continues to accumulate of murders, including that of whole groups, or of groups minus young females, in prehistoric times. -/- After surveying Buss’s comments, I present a very brief summary of intentional psychology (the logical structure of rationality), which is covered extensively in my many other articles and books. -/- Those with a lot of time who want a detailed history of homicidal violence from an evolutionary perspective may consult Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined’(2012), and my review of it, easily available on the net and in two of my recent books. Briefly, Pinker notes that murder has decreased steadily and dramatically by a factor of about 30 since our days as foragers. So, even though guns now make it extremely easy for anyone to kill, homicide is much less common. Pinker thinks this is due to various social mechanisms that bring out our ‘better angels’, but I think it’s due mainly to the temporary abundance of resources from the merciless rape of our planet, coupled with increased police presence, with communication and surveillance and legal systems that make it far more likely to be punished. This becomes clear every time there is even a brief and local absence of the police. -/- 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)

21. yüzyılın üçüncü on yılının şafağında, insanlığın varlığı son derece tehlikeli hale geldi. Ormanlarımızı kesiyor, tatlı su akiferlerimizi tüketiyor ve hayati önem taşıyan topraklarımızı kaybediyoruz. Okyanuslarımızdaki yaşamı sıyırıp yerine yüz milyonlarca ton plastik atık koyuyoruz. Çevremizi toksik endüstriyel kimyasallarla dolduruyoruz. Kirliliğimiz, kıtalardaki yaşamın dokusunu parçalayan ısı dalgalarına, kuraklıklara ve vahşi yangınlara neden olan iklim değişikliğini tetikliyor. Ve dünyaya yeni nesiller getiriyoruz, onurlu bir varoluşun kaynaklarına erişmeye ihtiyaç duyan milyonlarca insan. Hayata yönelik tehditlerin kapsamı ve genişliği her geçen gün artmaktadır. Bu (...) sürdürülebilir bir kalkınma şekli değildir. -/- Hastalıklarımızın temel nedeni, yanlış bir düşünce tarzından kaynaklanır. Bu tam olarak ne anlama geliyor? bu, ruhsal doğamızı inkar ederken kendimizi esas olarak maddi varlıklar olarak düşündüğümüz anlamına gelir. Maddi varlıklar olarak var olduğumuzu ve başka bir şey olmadığını düşündüğümüz için öncelikle bedenlerimizi zararlardan korumaya ve maddi varlığımızı sürdürmeye önem veririz. Manevi doğamız, eğer hiç düşünülürse, fiziksel varlığımızın ikincil bir yönü olarak ele alınır - ciddiye alınmaması gereken bir şey. Bizim için önemli olan tek şey maddi dünyada ortaya çıkan fenomenlerdir - görülebilen, duyulabilen, dokunulabilen veya ölçülebilen şeyler, ancak duyularımızın bizi aldattığını biliyoruz, duyular beynin bir yapısıdır. . Gerçek bir dünya olarak kabul ettiğimiz şey bir yanılsamadır. Pozitivist ve materyalist düşüncenin tahakkümü mantıksızlığa ve yıkıma yol açar. -/- Peki bu yaklaşım bizi nereye götürdü? Bize bir mutluluk ve tatmin duygusu getirdi mi? Her günü neşeli bir işbirliği ruhu içinde, parlak umutlar ve mutlu beklentilerle dolu kalplerimizle yaşamak yerine, kendimizi diğerlerinden soyutladık ve onları rakip veya düşman olarak gördük. Düşüncelerimiz, sonsuz bir savaş, yoksulluk, açlık ve çevresel yıkım döngüsüne yol açan şüphe, korku ve açgözlülükle dolu. Yakında uyanmadıkça ve ruhsal doğamıza dikkat etmedikçe, Dünya'da insanlık için bir gelecek olmayacak. -/- Kelimeler hayattır. Kelimeler hafiftir. Kelimeler güçtür. Kelimeler enerjidir. Sözler gerçektir. Kelimeler canlandırabilir ve kelimeler de öldürebilir. Kelimeler umut verebilir veya bizi umutsuzluğa sürükleyebilir. İnsanlar barışı inşa etmek için kelimeleri, savaşmak için kelimeleri kullanırlar. Kelimeler kültürler, dinler ve milletler arasında duvarlar oluşturabilir. Ve kelimeler de köprüler kurabilir. Bir bireyin, bir ailenin, bir topluluğun, bir ülkenin ve gezegenimizin varlığı, konuştuğumuz kelimelerin gücüyle iyiye veya kötüye yönlendirilmektedir. Konuştuğumuz kelimeler bu dünyada olan her şeyden sorumludur. Bu nedenle, konuştuğumuz kelimelerden sorumlu olmalıyız. Gelecek nesiller adına, umarım her birimiz sadece parlak, ışık dolu sözler söylemek için elimizden gelen her şeyi yaparız, böylece bir gün torunlarımız ışıkla dolu bir dünyaya doğar. Kaybedecek vakit yok. Bu andan itibaren, umarım hepimiz kullandığımız kelimelere yakından bakar ve onları parlaklık ile doldurmak için sürekli çaba gösteririz. -/- Kimse bizim için hayatımızı değiştiremez. Kimse bizim için dünyayı değiştirmeyecek. Her birimizin, konuştuğumuz her kelimenin serbest bıraktığı olağanüstü, yaratıcı gücü tanımasının ve bilinçli olarak sadece şükran, teşvik ve iyi niyetle dolu kelimeleri konuşmanın zamanı geldi. Bu andan itibaren, kendimiz ve başkaları için sevgi ve bağışlama ile rezonansa giren kelimeleri seçelim. Sadece bir adım ileri gidersek bunu kesinlikle yapabiliriz. Her seferinde bir adım, her seferinde bir kelime, bilincimizdeki trajedi ve izolasyon tohumlarını söküp onları mutluluk ve uzlaşma dalgalarına dönüştürebiliriz. Kendimiz, Toprak Ana ve gelecek nesiller adına, insanlığın Dünya üzerindeki olumlu evrimine katkıda bulunan kelimeleri kullanalım. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss a new problem for moral realism, the problem of moral aliens. In the first section, I introduce this problem. Moral aliens are people who radically disagree with us concerning moral matters. Moral aliens are neither obviously incoherent nor do they seem to lack rational support from their own perspective. On the one hand, moral realists claim that we should stick to our guns when we encounter moral aliens. On the other hand, moral realists, in contrast (...) to anti-realists, seem to be committed to an epistemic symmetry between us and our moral aliens that forces us into rational suspension of our moral beliefs. Unless one disputes the very possibility of moral aliens, this poses a severe challenge to the moral realist. In the second section, I will address this problem. It will turn out that, on closer scrutiny, we cannot make any sense of the idea that moral aliens should be taken as our epistemic peers. Consequently, there is no way to argue that encountering moral aliens gives us any reason to revise our moral beliefs. If my argument is correct, the possibility of encountering moral aliens poses no real threat to moral realism. (shrink)

“Gecenin bir yarısı kalktığınızı düşünün; bedeniniz yatağın ayakları arasında tam olarak ne kadar aralık olduğunu ve ne yapması gerektiğini bilir. Bir bakıma, etrafınızdaki mekân sizinle konuşur ve incelikle kurulmuş ritim oyunları arasına yerleştirir sizi. Mekânı hareket, ses ve doku ritimleriyle özümsediğimiz —etrafımızdakilerle yankılandığımız— her gün dolu dolu yaşanan bir olaydır bu. Mekân ve zaman bedende birleşir. Bu derin beden bilinci tam da yerleşmenin tanımıdır. Bachelard mimarinin Öklidci geometriye dayanarak anlaşılmasından kurtarıp mekânın yaratıcı poetikasına ulaştırdı bizi.” -/- Gaston Bachelard’ın hayranlık uyandıran (...) mekân çalışmalarını farklı disiplinlerle birlikte kat etmeyi amaçlayan bu kitap, okurunu hem Bachelard’la hem de onun felsefi, edebi, mimari, tasarım yorumlarıyla buluşturuyor. Farklı disiplinlerin “mekân” fikrinden hareketle aslında sadece mimari için değil ilgili her disiplin için sorulması gereken soruyu gündeme getiriyor: “Mimarlar neden Bachelard okur?” Elinizdeki derleme barındırdığı metin ve görsel çeşitliliğiyle mekânların ritmini bulmaya çalışıyor. Mimari, felsefe ve edebiyat meraklısı okurların keyifle peşine düşeceği bir serüven sunduğumuzu düşünüyoruz. (shrink)

1988 yılında kurulan Tıp Fakültemiz Yurdumuzun en genç Tıp Fakültesi olarak süratle gelişmesini sürdürmekte ve her geçen gün bir eksiğini daha tamamlamaktadır. Bugün ilk sayısını çıkardığımız bu dergi ile özellikle bir Tıp Fakültesi için en önemli eksiklerden birisi olan bir bilimsel yayın organı eksikliğini de gidermiş oluyoruz. -/- Her gün baş döndürücü değişimlere sahne olan tıp dünyasında olan bitenler, günümüzün iletişim araçları ile en uç noktalara kadar çok kısa sürelerde gidebilmektedir. Bu iletişimde tıp yayınlarının önemi büyüktür. Elde edilen araştırma sonuçlarının, (...) önerilerin tıpla uğraşanlara aktarılması ile daha ekonomik bilgilenme olanağı elde edilebildiği gibi, doğruyu bulabilme açısından da meslektaşlar arasında geniş katılımlı, bir tartışma ortamının dolması ve alınacak reaksiyonlara göre de daha pozitif bir şekilde yönlenme şansı ortaya çıkmış olmaktadır. Tüm kısıtlı olanaklarımıza rağmen, amacımız, ilk sayıdan itibaren bu yöndeki işlevimizi en iyi şeklide yerine getirebilmek olacaktır. Şimdilik yılda iki kez olarak yayınlanacak olan dergimiz tıp alanında çalışan, araştıran herkese açıktır. -/- Fakültemizin yer aldığı Güneydoğu Anadolu Bölgesi tıbbi araştırmaları ve sahra çalışmaları için oldukça bakir bir saha olarak karşımızda bulunmaktadır. Araştırma olanaklarımız arttıkça özellikle bölgenin sağlık sorunlarına daha etkili bir biçimde el atacak ve onlara çözüm arayacak olan araştırıcı arkadaşlarımız için dergimiz, elde ettikleri sonuçlan diğer meslektaşlarımıza aktarmada onların kulağı ve dili olacaktır. -/- Bu vesile ile Gaziantep Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Dergisinin tüm tıp dünyasına yararlı olmasını gönülden arzu ederken; dergimizin ciddi bir periyodik olma özelliğini kazanmasında ve bu özelliğini korumasında değerli tıp çalışanlarının desteğini bekler, çalışmalarında başarılar dilerim. -/- Saygılarımla,. (shrink)