Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 3, Page 718-740, July 2022.

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 3, Page 718-740, July 2022.

The Mongols’ invasion of the territories of the Islamic world, especially Baghdad, the seat of the Islamic Caliphate, had great consequences, including the fall of Baghdad and the Bani Abbas Caliphate, the killing of the Caliph, and extensive destruction in the geography of their invasion. About half a century after the invasion of the Mongols, Ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328), regardless of historical documents, accused Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, a prominent thinker, of collusion and cooperation with Hulagu Khan. After Ibn Taymiyyah Harrani, these (...) accusations were followed and disseminated in religious, historical, rijal (the study of hadith narrators and their personality), and even moral books by his students, such as Ibn Qayyim al Jawziyya (1292-1350). This article is an attempt to deny these accusations. Relying on the earliest historical documents, it tries to describe the historical event as it happened. In this regard, the article first provides the text of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s short treatise “On the Baghdad Incident”, included in Aladdin Atamalik Juveyni’s “Tarikh-i Jahangusha”, and then presents its descriptive interpretation separately. Although this treatise is short, it contains all the important points, from Hulagu Khan’s decision to go to war to the conquest of Baghdad and the analysis of the internal factors of the fall of the caliphate. This treatise, above all, is a very solid argument. For its author first of all was the witness of the Baghdad events. Secondly, in this writing, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi examines the Mongols’ attack on Baghdad but does not mention his own activity or role in the attack on Baghdad. Thirdly, if he had an activity and a role in this incident, or if he had an intention to take revenge on his religious opponents considering the situation, he should at least have hinted and expressed his approval, which is not the case at all. (shrink)

The medieval Islamic philosophers held a certain conception of the divine unity that assumes the necessary existent to be both one and simple. The oneness of the necessary existent meant that it is the only necessary existent and its simplicity meant that it admits no composition whatsoever – it is pure essence and its essence is necessary existence. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers al-Ġazālī presents, with elaboration, an exposition of the philosophers' conception of the divine unity, several arguments for (...) its two components, and his critique of these arguments. In this paper I focus on six of the arguments attributed to the philosophers. Following the textual evidence, I reconstruct these arguments and offer two possible interpretations of them. The first interpretation, which I call the many-argument interpretation, sees one of the arguments as employing the simplicity of the necessary existent to establish its oneness and the other five arguments as invoking oneness to establish simplicity. The second interpretation, which I call the one-argument interpretation, doesn't offer a new reading for the first argument but sees the other five arguments as defending the simplicity of the necessary existent based on its basic concept. I argue for the superiority of the one-argument interpretation. Résumé Les philosophes de l'Islam classique ont une doctrine de l'unité divine selon laquelle l'existant nécessaire est à la fois unique et simple. Son unicité signifie qu'il est le seul existant nécessaire, sa simplicité qu'il n'admet aucune sorte de composition; il est pure essence et son essence est existence nécessaire. Dans la Destruction des Philosophes, al-Ġazālī présente avec force détails un exposé de la doctrine de l'unité divine des philosophes, plusieurs arguments en faveur de ses deux composantes, ainsi que sa critique de ces arguments. Je me concentre ici sur six des arguments qu'il attribue aux philosophes. En suivant les données textuelles, je reconstruis ces arguments et en propose deux interprétations possibles. La première, que j'appelle l'interprétation “à arguments multiples”, identifie l'un des arguments comme s'appuyant sur la simplicité de l'existant nécessaire pour établir son unicité, et les cinq autres comme s'appuyant sur son unicité pour établir sa simplicité. La seconde, que j'appelle l'interprétation “à argument unique”, conserve la première lecture du premier argument mais voit dans les cinq autres une défense de la simplicité de l'existant nécessaire fondée sur sa notion fondamentale. J'argumente en faveur de la supériorité de l'interprétation “à argument unique”. (shrink)

It is a fundamental intuition about truth that the conditions under which a sentence is true are given by what the sentence asserts. My aim in this paper is to show that this intuition captures the concept of truth completely and correctly. This is conceptual deflationism, for it does not go beyond what is asserted by a sentence in order to define the truth status of that sentence. This paper, hence, is a defense of deflationism as a conceptual account of (...) truth. This defense is developed in four stages. In the first stage I present a distinction between two types of deflationism, conceptual and metaphysical. This is the central stage of the argument and its main conclusion is that conceptual deflationism when joined with the principle of bivalence is inconsistent with metaphysical deflationism, that is, conceptual deflationism together with bivalence entails a non-deflationary metaphysical account of truth. In the second and third stages of the argument I argue that the totality of the Tarskian biconditionals, when interpreted as definitional biconditionals, offers a description of the nature of truth. In the fourth, and final, stage of the argument I advance a positive case for conceptual deflationism. I explain how the revision theory of truth provides this sort of deflationism with its best evidence: a clear demonstration of its consistency and a compelling argument for its material adequacy. (shrink)

Proceedings of the papers presented at the Symposium on "Revisiting Turing and his Test: Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World" at the 2012 AISB and IACAP Symposium that was held in the Turing year 2012, 2–6 July at the University of Birmingham, UK. Ten papers. - http://www.pt-ai.org/turing-test --- Daniel Devatman Hromada: From Taxonomy of Turing Test-Consistent Scenarios Towards Attribution of Legal Status to Meta-modular Artificial Autonomous Agents - Michael Zillich: My Robot is Smarter than Your Robot: On the Need for (...) a Total Turing Test for Robots - Adam Linson, Chris Dobbyn and Robin Laney: Interactive Intelligence: Behaviour-based AI, Musical HCI and the Turing Test - Javier Insa, Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Sergio España - David Dowe and M.Victoria Hernandez-Lloreda: The anYnt Project Intelligence Test (Demo) - Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Javier Insa, David Dowe and Bill Hibbard: Turing Machines and Recursive Turing Tests — Francesco Bianchini and Domenica Bruni: What Language for Turing Test in the Age of Qualia? - Paul Schweizer: Could there be a Turing Test for Qualia? - Antonio Chella and Riccardo Manzotti: Jazz and Machine Consciousness: Towards a New Turing Test - William York and Jerry Swan: Taking Turing Seriously (But Not Literally) - Hajo Greif: Laws of Form and the Force of Function: Variations on the Turing Test. (shrink)

Centuries after his death, al-Ghazali remains one of the most influential figures of the Islamic intellectual tradition. Although he is best known for his _Incoherence of the Philosophers_, _Moderation in Belief_ is his most profound work of philosophical theology. In it_,_ he offers what scholars consider to be the best defense of the Ash'arite school of Islamic theology that gained acceptance within orthodox Sunni theology in the twelfth century, though he also diverges from Ash'arism with his more rationalist approach to (...) the _Quran_. Together with _The Incoherence of the Philosophers_, _Moderation in Belief_ informs many subsequent theological debates, and its influence extends beyond the Islamic tradition, informing broader questions within Western philosophical and theological thought. The first complete English-language edition of _Moderation in Belief_, this new annotated translation by Aladdin M. Yaqub draws on the most esteemed critical editions of the Arabic texts and offers detailed commentary that analyzes and reconstructs the arguments found in the work’s four treatises. Explanations of the historical and intellectual background of the texts also enable readers with a limited knowledge of classical Arabic to fully explore al-Ghazali and this foundational text for the first time. With the recent resurgence of interest in Islamic philosophy and the conflict between philosophy and religion, this new translation will be a welcome addition to the scholarship. (shrink)

_An Introduction to Metalogic_ is a uniquely accessible introduction to the metatheory of first-order predicate logic. No background knowledge of logic is presupposed, as the book is entirely self-contained and clearly defines all of the technical terms it employs. Yaqub begins with an introduction to predicate logic and ends with detailed outlines of the proofs of the incompleteness, undecidability, and indefinability theorems, covering many related topics in between.

This book reclaims logic as a branch of philosophy, offering a self-contained and complete introduction to the three traditional systems of classical logic and the philosophical issues that surround those systems. The exposition is lucid, clear, and engaging. Practical methods are favored over the traditional, and creative approaches over the merely mechanical. The author’s guiding principle is to introduce classical logic in an intellectually honest way, and not to shy away from difficulties and controversies where they arise. Relevant philosophical issues, (...) such as the relation between the meaning and the referent of a proper name, logical versus metaphysical possibility, and the conceptual content of an expression, are discussed throughout. In this way, the book is not only an introduction to the three main systems of classical logic, but also an introduction to the philosophy of classical logic. (shrink)

In this book, Yaqub describes a simple conception of truth and shows that it yields a semantical theory that accommodates the whole range of our seemingly conflicting intuitions about truth. This conception takes the Tarskian biconditionals as correctly and completely defining the notion of truth. The semantical theory, which is called the revision theory, that emerges from this conception paints a metaphysical picture of truth as a property whose applicability is given by a revision process rather than by a fixed (...) extension. The main advantage of this revision process is its ability to explain why truth seems in many cases almost redundant, in others substantial, and yet in others paradoxical. Yaub offers a comprehensive defense of the revision theory of truth by developing consistent and adequate formal semantics for languages in which all sorts of problematic sentences can be constructed. Yaqub concludes by introducing a logic of truth that further demonstrates the adequacy of the revision theory. (shrink)

It is quite common to refer to al-Ghazālī as one of the most important thinkers in the Islamic intellectual tradition. Aladdin M. Yaqub’s Al-Ghazālī’s Moderation in Belief: al-Iqtiṣād fī al-i’tiqād shows that this remark is not hyperbolic. And this volume has many characteristics of a good translation of classical texts. First of all, Aladdin M. Yaqub is very consistent with his use of terminology. He explains his preferences for Arabic philosophical terms in “Note on the Translation”. As is (...) well known, Moderation in Belief is the first text in which classical Greek logic is systematically used in Islamic theology (see the “Fourth Introduction: On explaining the methods of proof that we employ in... (shrink)

The First Islamic Reviver: Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and His Revival of the Religious Sciences. By Kenneth Garden. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 238. $65, £41.99. Al-Ghazālī’s Moderation in Belief: Al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād. Translated by Aladdin M. Yaqub. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013. Pp. xxvii + 311. $50, £35.

Aladdin.--Pan.--Jupiter.--Christophorous.--Selected bibliography.

consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.

This dissertation is a study of some recent theories of truth. The theories fall into three groups: The Revision Theories, the context-sensitive theories, and the "Chrysippian theories". ;The "Chrysippian theories" are based on the intuition that pathologicalities arising from the concept of truth can be recognized and acknowledged with the concept of truth itself. Thus, from the pathologicality of the Liar, for example, we can conclude that the Liar is not true. This leads to immediate difficulties since the Liar claims (...) just that--that it is not true--and it would thus seem to be true. The Chrysippian theories are designed to avoid these difficulties while preserving the motivating intuition. Haim Gaifman's Pointer Semantics, and Brian Skyrms' Intensional Fixed-Point Theory of Truth are examples of such theories. They are exposited and criticized. ;The context-sensitive theories dealt with are Tyler Burge's Indexical Theory of Truth and the theory of Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy. These theories claim that an ambiguity due to a contextual parameter is the reason for the difficulties we encounter. Burge offers a theory of Tarskian levels coupled with a pragmatic theory that explains the assignment of levels to occurrences of 'true'. Barwise and Etchemendy make explicit a situational parameter in their account of propositions. They consider the ambiguity with respect to the situation a propositions is about a main source of the paradoxes. ;Finally, the Revision Theories of Truth of Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap and two variations of this theory are considered. One is due to Aladdin Yaqub, the other, the "fully-varied theory", is due to Gupta and Belnap but remains largely unexplored. Revision theories are put forward as the most promising account of the difficulties. They are based on a definitional reading of all Tarski biconditionals. The circularity implied by such a reading is handled by Gupta's and Belnap's general theory of definitions. ;Yaqub's objections raised against the standard theory are examined, and his proposed solution is shown to be inadequate. The fully-varied Revision Theory is shown to provide a better solution. (shrink)

The dream of the perpetual motion charms us since millennia, the desire of machines substituting men was present already in the imperial China and the classical Rome; the medieval alchemists tried to build automata, automata showed up in the Renaissance princes’ plays. In the Aladdin fable, the sorcerer satisfies on the instant all wishes of the lamp’s owner. In other words, the fiction of omnipotence accompanies humanity from the very beginning. Is God omnipotent? So, why not humanity? Building automatic (...) factories, digital modelling of human work, both makes realistic what looked utopian. It can perhaps be achieved an unmanned production mode, and where machines can produce whatever we can desire, endlessly. Are numbers not from zero to infinity? There is, nonetheless, an obstacle. Human desires are subjective; therefore, from the standpoint of the producers, of the automatic factory’s owner, there is a very difficult problem to go through. How to manage human desires? How to transform the desire itself in an automatic factor of the production? Digital modelling of human work is not enough; the human itself must be modelled. The full control of him/her must be achieved. It means understanding a priori each of his/her desire. It means leading him/her step by step all their lives long. It means, shortly, to transform him/her into automata. The nightmare of a bees’ or ants’ society, the nightmare of losing his/her free will comes closer and looks menacing. It looks like the black clouds of a threatening thunderstorm. (shrink)