Bayesian epistemology provides a promising framework for a theory of epistemic rationality. But the way in which this framework has been built upon thus far yields an unfortunately mechanical picture of rationality, on which rational agents are mere data crunchers who receive evidential input and spit out numeric credal output. This picture is rightly criticized, most prominently by Bas van Fraassen, for being too narrow and restrictive and thus failing to account for certain features which rationality plausibly has, such as a degree of permissiveness, and for certain unconventional rational phenomena, such as conversions. Unfortunately, van Fraassen’s apt criticism of mechanistic rationality overshoots its mark in seeking to topple the entire Bayesian framework. Bayesian epistemology suffers a guilt by association with the robotic picture. This dissertation aims to restore Bayesianism from the mechanistic but often implicit assumptions which corrode it, and to rebuild, from the Bayesian foundation, an alternative picture of rationality as a property of sentient agents who are capable of understanding and mentally engaging with the objects of their credences. Along the way I account for some basic Bayesian objects such as credence and evidential input. I also accord a central role to the ability of representational experiences, largely sidelined in many Bayesian discussions, to give rise to surprising evidence. On these building blocks I develop theory of rationality, Expansive Bayesianism, which evades the criticisms launched at the robotic picture and shows that Bayesianism itself is a fruitful and powerful framework for a theory of rationality.

This thesis explores two sets of issues in contemporary epistemology. The first part explores issues surrounding the category of basic knowledge (or justification) – that is, at a first-pass, knowledge (or justification) which is immediate, in the sense that one’s justification for the known proposition doesn’t rest on any justification for believing other propositions. The second part investigates issues surrounding knowledge-closure and various conditions – namely, conclusive reasons, sensitivity, and safety – which some philosophers have claimed are necessary for knowledge. Each part of the thesis is substantial (there are five chapters in the first part and four in the second), and the two sets of issues – while evidently of independent interest – are interrelated in several ways. In broad outline, part one of the thesis concludes that, even if (in the worst case) the first-pass category of basic knowledge delineated above is not ultimately tenable (on account of credible arguments against it considered in chapter 5), there is a distinct category of knowledge, aptly called ‘basic’, which is, plausibly, tenable. Part two of the thesis, meanwhile, begins by attempting to render the conclusive reasons and sensitivity conditions – conditions the adoption of which involves rejection of knowledge-closure – in as plausible a form as possible. And a rejection of knowledge-closure has implications for the viability of the first-pass category of basic knowledge delineated above, in particular. Part two closes by exploring the safety condition: a start is made at defending a novel safety condition; and a possible application of the safety condition to the legal domain is considered. The Conclusion, which includes a prospectus for further work, ties the safety condition on knowledge (chapters 8 and 9) back to the notion of failure of transmission of epistemic warrant (an absolutely central notion in part one).

This thesis integrates the epistemology of testimony with work on the epistemology, psychology, and metaphysics of language. Epistemologists of testimony typically ask what conditions must be met for an agent to gain testimonial justification or knowledge that p given that p has been asserted, and this assertion has been understood. Questions regarding the audience's ability to grasp communicated contents are largely ignored. This is a mistake. Work in the philosophy of language (and related areas) suggests that the determination and recovery of communicated contents is far from straightforward, and can go wrong in many ways. This thesis investigates the epistemology of testimony in light of this work, with a special focus on miscommunication. The introduction provides a brief overview of some relevant work on testimony, the philosophy of language, and psychology, and argues that there is good reason to investigate the three. One obvious problem in this area is that if testimonial knowledge requires knowledge of what is said then the risk of miscommunication will block testimonial knowledge. Chapter two argues that testimonial knowledge does not require knowledge of what is said. The remaining four chapters discuss problems which do to arise from miscommunication. Chapters three and four focus on the epistemic uncertainty of communication with context sensitive terms. Chapter three argues that many beliefs formed on the basis of context sensitive testimony are unsafe and insensitive. Chapter four argues that speakers often have plausible deniability about the contents of their assertions. Chapters five and six explore types of miscommunication which arise as a result of background mental states affecting our linguistic understanding. Chapter five explores the social/ethical consequences of this, arguing that certain groups are disproportionately subject to harmful misinterpretation. Chapter six argues that testimonial anti-reductionists make the wrong predictions about a range of cases of cognitive penetration.

This thesis centers on two trends in epistemology: (i) the dissatisfaction with the reductive analysis of knowledge, the project of explicating knowledge in terms of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions, and (ii) the popularity of virtue-theoretic epistemologies. The goal of this thesis is to endorse non-reductive virtue epistemology. Given that prominent renditions of virtue epistemology assume the reductive model, however, such a move is not straightforward—work needs to be done to elucidate what is wrong with the reductive model, in general, and why reductive accounts of virtue epistemology, specifically, are lacking. The first part of this thesis involves diagnosing what is wrong with the reductive model and defending that diagnosis against objections. The problem with the reductive project is the Gettier Problem. In Chapter 1, I lend credence to Linda Zagzebski's grim 1994 diagnosis of Gettier problems (and the abandonment of the reductive model) by examining the nature of luck, the key component of Gettier problems. In Chapter 2, I vindicate this diagnosis against a range of critiques from the contemporary literature. The second part involves applying this diagnosis to prominent versions of (reductive) virtue epistemology. In Chapter 3, we consider the virtue epistemology of Alvin Plantinga. In Chapter 4, we consider the virtue epistemology of Ernest Sosa. Both are seminal and iconic; nevertheless, I argue that, in accord with our diagnosis, neither is able to viably surmount the Gettier Problem. Having diagnosed what is wrong with the reductive project and applied this diagnosis to prominent versions of (reductive) virtue epistemology, the final part of this thesis explores the possibility of non-reductive virtue epistemology. In Chapter 5, I argue that there are three strategies that can be used to develop non-reductive virtue epistemologies, strategies that are compatible with seminal non-reductive accounts of knowledge and preserve our favorite virtue-theoretic concepts.

Languages differ in the means they avail themselves of for the structural realization of information structure, where available options are word order, prosody and morphology. Turkish has long been characterized as predominantly using word order and its variation in realizing information structure, where certain positions in a sentence are associated with certain pragmatic functions related to information structure. Prosody has been proposed to play only a secondary role interacting with word order. Contrary to this widely established view, the thesis argues that the notion that sentential positions have pragmatic functions and word order variation is a syntactic means to realize these functions can be abandoned, without any loss of explanatory power, in favor of a tune-based perspective where prosody is the sole structural determinant of information structure. In this setting word order variations are argued to be prosodically motivated, in that Turkish phonology imposes some precedence constraints on intonational contours. Word order variation then turns out to be just a consequence as opposed to being a determinant in attaining the right information structure required by the discourse context. To substantiate these claims a tune-based account, based on Steedman&#039 / s account of English information structure, is proposed for the structural realization of information structure in Turkish, whereby information structural units are directly associated with prosodic phrases intonationally marked in certain ways. Validity of the account is tried to be established by intonational analysis of recorded speech data. As for the explanatory value, the information structure phenomena that has received positional explanation in the relevant literature, are tried to be captured only in prosodic terms, without committing to positions, syntactic strategies and such.

This thesis aims to understand the formation of the Russian identity in the Kazakh Steppes by examining the migration flows of Russians and the affects of state policies and pattern of inter-ethnic relations between the Russians and the Kazakhs during different historical periods. Constructionist theoryhas guided the analysis of the research. The Russian identity formation in the Kazakh Steppes is examined within the contextof three consequtive historical periods that correspond to fundamental social, political and administartive re-structuring. Firstis the period of the Russiam Empire, during which the resettlement policy of the Empire shattered the traditional social structures of the native Kazakhs and entailed extensive inter-ethnic contact between the Russians and the Kazakhs. Second period corresponds to the period of the Soviet Union, which experianced the intensification of Russian settelments in the Kazakh Steppes. The soviet policy, while encouraging Russianness as a component of soviet identity, atthe same time, granted autonomy todiverse ethnic entites. The third period, which correspondes to the current era starting with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, witnessed the emergance of Kazakh State. A large portion of the Russian population in the Kazakh Steppes remained in the independent republic of Kazakhstan and face a new challenges in tearms of identity formation due to the Kazakh nation building policies.

The aim of this study is to uncover and discuss the spaces appropriated by graffiti writers and to reveal out the possible resistances involved in the act throughout the writers&amp / #8217 / motivations, characteristics, spaces they produce and all over process they are entering into together with the specifications of graffiti in Turkey. It demands to unfold the possibilities sheltered in everyday practices looking through graffiti and subsequently revealing out possibilities in graffiti looking through everyday life. It sees the urban space as a social product, which is incomplete without the tactics of the inhabitants and redefined as a result of appropriation. It looks through the history of graffiti, graffiti writers, their motivations and descriptions, working mechanism of the act, spaces chosen and their overall relations to power placed upon urban space in regard to its predescribed theoretical framework reaching out an integrated explanation on play/game theory and resistance it describes. It claims graffiti as a game of the juveniles acting in urban space as their playground.

This dissertation investigates the case of world music in Turkey as an illustration of the discursive mechanisms involved in the production of a global cultural form from what the globality has defined as the &lsquo / local&rsquo / . The study attempts to show the complicated nature of the process by examining how the musical forms and themes supposedly belonging to the &lsquo / local&rsquo / are incorporated into and appropriated in the discourses associated with world music and into the corresponding strategies of the actors. The discursive compilations, articulations and dislocations taking place in the subspecies of the commercial category of world music in a particular locality are investigated by mapping the discursive topographies on the imaginary continuum from the global to the local. This study views locality as a space where a repertoire of discourses are contested and articulated in the production and consumption of global cultural commodities. In line with this understanding, this dissertation also investigates what is the local as it is produced through the particular brand of world music in Turkey. The study also aims to contribute to the theoretical discussions in the literature on the interaction between the global and the local by looking at the production of a global cultural form in a particular locality.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the current situation of the Crimean Karaites. This community is one of the smallest groups with a population of 800 in the Crimean Peninsula and 2,000 in total all around the world. However, they are trying to resist assimilation via launching a cultural revival project. This thesis studies the cultural loss among the Crimean Karaites and analyzes the factors leading to assimilation. It is argued that despite their efforts of cultural revival, Crimean Karaites constitute a disappearing community.

This thesis investigates fundamental questions surrounding the phenomenon of control, with an emphasis on control in Turkish, as well as the behaviour of control verbs in non-infinitival environments, which have received little attention previously. I focus solely on the cases of obligatory control (OC) which constitute the only kind of control that is conditioned by the matrix verb alone. This approach is couched in Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) where the control verb projects the necessary syntactic and semantic information. In particular, I argue that the control behaviour is an entailment associated with the verb itself, and that variable, split and partial control are instances of OC. Hence, no special mechanism/structure is needed to account for their interpretation. As to the syntactic and semantic status of the complement, I maintain that the complement is a bare VP in syntax and denotes a property in semantics. Building upon the conclusions reached about OC, I attempt to account for additional complementation patterns of OC verbs. I argue that here too the matrix verb has a crucial role in ruling in and out possible complement types. Finally, I note that control involves much more than just figuring out the reference of the &ldquo / unexpressed&rdquo / subject of the complement, and I furthermore propose that the additional frames of an OC verb provide important clues as to its lexical meaning, which are argued to be relevant for the acquisition of control.