Can Architecture be Barbaric?

The title of this article is adapted from Theodor W. Adorno’s famous dictum: ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.’ After the catastrophic earthquake in Kocaeli, Turkey on the 17th of August 1999, in which more than 40,000 people died or were lost, Necdet Teymur, who was then the dean of the Faculty of Architecture of the Middle East Technical University, referred to Adorno in one of his ‘earthquake poems’ and asked: ‘Is architecture possible after 17th of August?’ The main objective of this article is to interpret Teymur’s question in respect of its connection to Adorno’s philosophy with a view to make a contribution to the politics and ethics of architecture in Turkey. Teymur’s question helps in providing a new interpretation of a critical approach to architecture and architectural technology through Adorno’s philosophy. The paper also presents a discussion of Adorno`s dictum, which serves for a better understanding of its universality/particularity.     

World Religions Paradigm,legal system and education. The case of the Czech Republic

The article deals with the concept of religion in the laws which regulate access of religious organisations to public education in the Czech Republic. The analysis of the laws reveals that the World Religions Paradigm (WRP) is applied here. Religious organisations representing ‘important world religions’ have a privileged position in accessing public education. Mostly Christianity-based churches have access to public education through the legal notion of ‘special rights’ granted by the state. The article provides a concise review of the key points of criticism of the WRP. The paradigm is criticised as ethnocentric, inherently theological, developed with colonialism, undefinable in practice, highly abstract, essentialist and ahistorical. Its historical development is related to the process of reification as defined by W.C. Smith. The concluding part relates the criticism of the WRP to the concept of religion in the laws regulating the access of religious organisations to public education in the Czech Republic. The application of the WRP leads to restrictions of religious pluralism.     

My point is valid,yours is not: myside bias in reasoning about abortion

The study explores whether people are more inclined to accept a conclusion that confirms their prior beliefs and reject one they personally object to even when both follow the same logic. Most of the prior research in this area has relied on the informal reasoning paradigm; in this study, however, we applied a formal reasoning paradigm to distinguish between cognitive and motivational mechanisms leading to myside bias in reasoning on value-laden topics (in this case abortions). Slovak and Polish (N?=?387) participants indicated their attitudes toward abortion and then evaluated logical syllogisms with neutral, pro-choice, or pro-life content. We analysed whether participants’ prior attitudes influenced their ability to solve these logically identical reasoning tasks and found that prior attitudes were the strongest predictor of myside bias in evaluating both valid and invalid syllogisms, even after controlling for logical validity (the ability to solve neutral syllogisms) and previous experience of logic.     

Enhanced involvement of brain vasopressin V1 receptors in cardiovascular responses to stress in rats with myocardial infarction

Stress is one of the factors provoking cardiovascular complications. The purpose of the study was to explore the role of vasopressin (VP) in central control of arterial blood pressure and heart rate under resting conditions and during stimulation by an alarming stress (air jet stress) in myocardial infarct-induced cardiac failure. Six groups of male Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were subjected either to sham surgery (sham rats) or to ligation of a left coronary artery (infarcted rats). After 5 weeks both infarcted and sham rats were subjected either to intracerebroventricular infusion of artificial cerebrospinal fluid (aCSF) (sham aCSF and infarcted aCSF), [Arg8]-VP (sham VP and infarcted VP) or VP V1a receptor antagonist (d(CH2)5[Tyr(Me)2Ala-]VP, sham V1ANT and infarcted V1ANT). Air jet stress elicited significantly greater increases in mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) and heart rate in the infarcted aCSF than in the sham aCSF rats. Intracerebroventricular infusion of V1ANT significantly reduced resting MABP and MABP and heart rate increases in response to stress in the infarcted but not in the sham rats. Intracerebroventricular infusion of VP elicited a significant increase in resting MABP in the infarcted VP but not in the sham VP rats. The results provide evidence for enhanced engagement of the brain V1 VP receptors in regulation of resting MABP and in generation of exaggerated cardiovascular responses to air jet stress during the post-infarct state.     

Exploring the tractability border in epistemic tasks

We analyse the computational complexity of comparing informational structures. Intuitively, we study the complexity of deciding queries such as the following: Is Alice’s epistemic information strictly coarser than Bob’s? Do Alice and Bob have the same knowledge about each other’s knowledge? Is it possible to manipulate Alice in a way that she will have the same beliefs as Bob? The results show that these problems lie on both sides of the border between tractability (P) and intractability (NP-hard). In particular, we investigate the impact of assuming information structures to be partition-based (rather than arbitrary relational structures) on the complexity of various problems. We focus on the tractability of concrete epistemic tasks and not on epistemic logics describing them.     

Liberation as a Correlate of Religiosity: a Christian–Muslim Perspective on Fundamental Trust

This article explores the dialectical relationship between liberating trust in reality and religious faith in God, interpreted from a Christian–Muslim perspective. An underlying conviction is that liberation constitutes a necessary mutual correlate of a “true” religiosity, i.e. liberation is to be conceived as both prerequisite for and realization of a genuine religiosity, and vice versa. As opposed to a “true” religiosity, born from liberating trust and finding its fulfilment in prophetic action aimed at liberation of human realities, religious belief and practice that stem from fundamental mistrust are likely to deteriorate into either religious fundamentalism or indifferentism. The article focuses on fundamental trust in reality as capable of evoking the liberating and uniting force of religious theory and praxis. It aims to render explicit the religious and ecumenical potential (hitherto not fully realized) of the theological–ethical considerations of Hans Küng, in particular within a Christian–Muslim framework. The first part of the article, more conceptual in character, examines Küng's views on fundamental (mis)trust and its religious implications. The second part seeks to identify theological insights that shed light on the specifically Christian and specifically Muslim interpretations of liberating trust. My hope is that this study may contribute to a truly global ecumenism whose objective is to render religion an instrument of liberation, not oppression.