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Publication Open Access A principle of universal strife: Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty's critiques of Marxist universalism, 1953-1956(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) Department of Philosophy; Chouraqui, Frank; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesPublication Open Access Dilemma for epistemic infinitism(Beytulhikme Felsefe Çevresi, 2020) Department of Philosophy; Demircioğlu, Erhan; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 193390I argue that epistemic infinitism can offer a non-skeptical stance only by forgoing the very ground for thinking that it is true. / Epistemik sonsuzluğun, ancak, doğru olduğunu düşünmek için zemin hazırlayarak kuşkucu-olmayan bir duruş sunabileceğini iddia ediyorum.Publication Open Access Epistemic infinitism and the conditional character of inferential justification(Springer, 2018) Department of Philosophy; Demircioğlu, Erhan; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesIn this paper, I will present and defend an argument from the conditional character of inferential justification (the argument from conditionality) against the version of epistemic infinitism Klein advances. More specifically, after proposing a distinction between propositional and doxastic infinitism, which is based on a standard distinction between propositional and doxastic justification, I will describe in considerable detail the argument from conditionality, which is mainly an argument against propositional infinitism, and clarify some of its main underlying assumptions. There are various responses to be found in Klein's works to this argument, and my aim is to show that none of those responses can be plausibly held without infinitism losing its title to being a genuine non-skeptical alternative.Publication Open Access Harman on mental paint and the transparency of experience(Institute of Philosophy (SAS), 2020) Department of Philosophy; Demircioğlu, Erhan; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 193390Harman famously argues that a particular class of anti-functionalist arguments from the intrinsic properties of mental states or events (in particular, visual experiences) can be defused by distinguishing "properties of the object of experience from properties of the experience of an object" and by realizing that the latter are not introspectively accessible (or are transparent). More specifically, Harman argues that we are or can be introspectively aware only of the properties of the object of an experience but not the properties of the experience of an object and hence that the fact that functionalism leaves out the properties of the experience of an object does not show that it leaves out anything mentally relevant. In this paper, I argue that Harman's attempt to defuse the anti-functionalist arguments in question is unsuccessful. After making a distinction between the thesis of experiencing-act transparency and the thesis of mental-paint transparency, (and casting some doubt on the former,) I mainly target the latter and argue that it is false. The thesis of mental-paint transparency is false, I claim, not because mental paint involves some introspectively accessible properties that are different from the properties of the objects of experiences but because what I call the identity thesis is true, viz. that mental paint is the same as (an array of) Properties of the object of experience. The identification of mental paint with properties of the object of experience entails that the anti-functionalist arguments Harman criticizes cannot be rightly accused of committing the fallacy of confusing the two.Publication Open Access In defense of conditional uniqueness(University of Warsaw, 2022) Department of Philosophy; Demircioğlu, Erhan; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 193390The Uniqueness Thesis (U), defended by the uniquer and rejected by the permissivist, asserts that, necessarily, there is at most one rational doxastic attitude one can take towards a proposition, given a particular body of evidence. U faces a well-known, paralyzing objection from the permissivist, which I call “the simplicity objection,” which rests on the idea that evidence is not the sole determinant of rationality. In this paper, after maintaining that the ongoing dialectic between the uniquer and the permissivist has led to an exaggeration of differences, I bring into focus another, non-equivalent yet substantive (non-trivial) thesis in the vicinity, which I call “the Conditional Uniqueness Thesis” (U*), according to which if evidence is the sole determinant of rationality, then U is true. The hope is to achieve a rapprochement between the uniquer and the permissivist by showing that U* is true. To this end, I examine the argument Roger White offers in favor of U, which I call “the argument from evidential support” (AES), and argue that it is both unpersuasive for the defender of the simplicity objection and unnecessarily strong for establishing its own conclusion. I then offer a sufficiently weakened version of AES, which I call AES*, and argue that AES* is sound, if interpreted as an argument for U*.Publication Open Access Nietzsche’s science of love(De Gruyter, 2015) Department of Philosophy; Chouraqui, Frank; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesIn this paper, I examine the possibility of constructing an ontological phenomenology of love by tracing Nietzsche’s questioning about science. I examine how the evolution of Nietzsche’s thinking about science and his increasing suspicion towards it coincide with his interest for the question of love. Although the texts from the early and middle period praise science as an antidote to asceticism, the later texts seem to associate the scientific spirit with asceticism. I argue that this shift is motivated by Nietzsche’s realization that asceticism and science share the same fetish of facts. It is now for Nietzsche no longer a matter of proving the socalled facts of the backworlds wrong (something science is very capable of doing), but a matter of rejecting the very structure of thought that reduces a shapeless reality into a series of facts, subjects and objects. It is this second attitude that Nietzsche regards as the common core of science and asceticism. From this critique of science and its correlative critique of facts, Nietzsche begins searching for a counter-attitude able to perform the reduction of the factual attitude. This is the attitude he calls love. Although Nietzsche’s concept of love has often been elucidated in terms of its object or its subject, I argue that such interpretations precisely defeat Nietzsche’s point, which is to recover a ground that precedes the division of the world into facts, subjects and objects. Love becomes the name of this intra-relationship of being, opening up to new perspectives on Nietzsche’s ontology of the will to power.Publication Open Access On understanding a theory on conscious experiences(Philosophy Documentation Center, 2018) Department of Philosophy; Demircioğlu, Erhan; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesMcGinn claims, among other things, that we cannot understand the theory that explains how echolocationary experiences arise from the bat's brain. One of McGinn's arguments for this claim appeals to the fact that we cannot know in principle what it is like to have echolocationary experiences. According to Kirk, McGinn's argument fails because it rests on an illegitimate assumption concerning what explanatory theories are supposed to accomplish. However, I will argue that Kirk's objection misfires because he misapprehends McGinn's argument. Further, I will articulate and briefly assess some ways in which McGinn's argument can be blocked.Publication Open Access Should we be modest? Dummett and McDowell on theories of meaning(Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi, 2022) Department of Philosophy; Özaltun, Eylem; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 219281In this paper I engage with a certain debate between Michael Dummett and John McDowell on the possibility of the full-blooded theories of meaning. This is a debate on what sort of semantic theories can be of use in giving an account of the speaker’s knowledge of a language. After defining modesty and full-bloodedness for a theory of meaning, I proceed to uncover Dummett’s reasons for his two central claims: Truth-conditional theories of meaning are modest and a theory of meaning must be full-blooded. Then I critically evaluate McDowell’s and Richard Kimberly Heck’s takes on the latter claim. I conclude that with the same descriptions of our linguistic competence it is impossible to characterize our language use as a rational activity and also give a full-blooded theory of meaning that can be used to study thought. / Bu makale Michael Dummett and John McDowell’ın güçlü anlam kuramlarının imkânı üzerine yürüttükleri tartışmayı incelemeyi hedefler. Bu tartışma, bir dilin kullanıcılarının o dile dair bilgisini açıklamakta ne tür semantik kuramların faydalı olacağına odaklanır. Bir anlam teorisini betimlemek için kullanılan mütevazı ve güçlü kavramları tanımlandıktan sonra, Dummett’ın, “Doğruluk koşullu anlam kuramları mütevazıdır” ve “Anlam kuramları güçlü olmalıdır” biçimindeki iki temel iddiasının dayandığı nedenler açıklanır. Ardından, McDowell ve Heck’in ikinci iddiaya ilişkin düşüncelerinin bir eleştirisi sunulur. İncelemenin sonunda ise, aynı betimleyicilere başvurarak hem dili kullanışımızı rasyonel bir eylem olarak tasvir etmenin hem de düşünceyi irdelemeye yetkin güçlü bir anlam kuramı inşa etmenin mümkün olmadığı sonucuna varılır.Publication Open Access Smooth infinitesimals in the metaphysical foundation of spacetime theories(Springer Nature, 2022) Department of Philosophy; Chen, Lu; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 329122I propose a theory of space with infinitesimal regions called smooth infinitesimal geometry (SIG) based on certain algebraic objects (i.e., rings), which regiments a mode of reasoning heuristically used by geometricists and physicists (e.g., circle is composed of infinitely many straight lines). I argue that SIG has the following utilities. (1) It provides a simple metaphysics of vector fields and tangent space that are otherwise perplexing. A tangent space can be considered an infinitesimal region of space. (2) It generalizes a standard implementation of spacetime algebraicism (according to which physical fields exist fundamentally without an underlying manifold) called Einstein algebras. (3) It solves the long-standing problem of interpreting smooth infinitesimal analysis (SIA) realistically, an alternative foundation of spacetime theories to real analysis (Lawvere Cahiers de Topologie et Geometrie Differentielle Categoriques, 21(4), 277-392, 1980). SIA is formulated in intuitionistic logic and is thought to have no classical reformulations (Hellman Journal of Philosophical Logic, 35, 621-651, 2006). Against this, I argue that SIG is (part of) such a reformulation. But SIG has an unorthodox mereology, in which the principle of supplementation fails.Publication Open Access The paradox of experience: black art and black idiom in the work of Amiri Baraka(Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Press, 2003) Department of Philosophy; Roney, Patrick; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities