For the ancients, dreaming was an experience that we find quite difficult to understand today. The nature of dreams, dreamers and interpreters of the dreams was a matter of curiosity for philosophers, scholars and sages as well as for the ordinary ancients. Ancient philosophers who enquired the experience of dreaming reached quite different conclusions: there were philosophers who regarded dreaming as a mystical experience and oneiroscopy as a skilful or prophetic work, on the other hand, there were those who thought otherwise and rejected both the divinity of dreams and oneiroscopy. However, there was an Ancient school, Stoicism, which seemed to have found a way to reconcile these opposing poles. The Stoics adopted both views in certain respects with their approach to dreams and oneiroscopy and sought ways to make room for both reason and belief with their theories on divination and its special type, oneiroscopy. The views of the Stoics on this subject are subsidiary and meaningless today but trying to understand what the ancient philosophers thought about such a subject and how they found a way is a call for us to reflect on the limits of science and pseudoscience, mysticism and physiology, reason and belief. Therefore, it is the purpose of this article to follow this call and to examine the Stoic dreaming experience in detail. For this purpose, the Stoic approach, which can be defined as a “scientific mysticism” or a “mystical scientism”, is examined and it is discussed whether this is a consistent thinking.

According to Aristophanes, as reflected in the play of the Knights, despite all its defects and the wrong decisions taken by the demos, the Athenian democratic regime does not have incorrigible structural problems. The regime, especially after Pericles, suffered a great wound in the administration of the new social strata, which had never had a say in the city administration and were enriched later by commercial activities. The demagogues, especially Kleon, who identifying themselves with demos but only think of their own interests and gains, instead of leading the demos or considering the public intererest, are seen as the main reason for the current problematic situation of the administration. Demos is deceived the wrong leaders who were elected. Aristophanes accuses these elected leaders for various reasons by using the unique characterictics of comedy style in his play of the Knight; on the other hand, he believes that a reformist attitude should be displayed in order to Athenian administration to regain its former glory. The general content of the reform, on the other hand, consists of demos turning his face on the noble classes that supported Athens throughout its glorious history, and turning its back on new type of leaders like Kleon. In this respect, the Knights, on the one hand, point to a break between the political classes that represent the power, and on the other hand, it criticizes the new type of politician typology. In this article, based on an elite Athenian poet the Aristophanes’ comedy of Knights, the political situation of the Athenian administration in the 5th century BC and poet’s expectations for administration will be tried to be questioned.

The role of values in science has been intensely debated, especially since the second half of the 20th century. To argue that science should be independent of values, has essentially meant defending its objectivity and credibility. When feminist philosophers of science explain that this ideal is constructed through the exclusion of women, they steered the discussion on the roles of values in science to a different and very important direction. In this study, by departing from a survey on feminist standpoint theory -which represents a very important position in feminist philosophy of science- it will be argued that besides being an indispensable part of science, ethical and political values can also contribute to the development of science. Furthermore, it will be argued that including certain values to science has positive contributions not only to science but at the same tame to the sphere of values.

Logical positivism divides our beliefs into two groups, factual ones and those about the language we choose. A number system, a physical language, etc. are the languages that we choose. We talk about the world in these languages. According to logical positivists, these judgments are synthetic. On the other hand, we make judgments about the languages and frames that we choose. Logical positivists regard these judgments as analytic. For Quine, the analytic-synthetic distinction is untenable. He introduces a holistic model in which beliefs are not divided into factual and linguistic ones. However, in Quine’s model, there is a distinction that evokes the analytic-synthetic distinction: the center-periphery distinction. Beliefs at the periphery are more sensitive to experience than the beliefs at the center. To erase the traces of the analytic-synthetic distinction from Quine’s model, Gila Sher proposes a dynamical version of the center-periphery model. In the dynamical center-periphery model, beliefs do not have fixed locations. In this work, first, we evaluate Sher’s dynamic model. Then, we propose an alternative model, which does not have center-periphery distinction. The model that we propose is more advantageous than the center-periphery model in two respects. Firstly, it completely eliminates the analytic-synthetic distinction. Secondly, our model is more in line with Quine’s pragmatism.