In the Islamic period, Apollonius of Tyana was well known both as “Lord of the Talismans” and as a Neo-Pythagorean-Hermetic philosopher. In his Kitāb al-Aḥjār, Jābir b. Ḥayyān cites “the Muslim advocates of Apollonius”. The reference shows that Apollonius’ most prominent work, Sirr alkhalīqa, was already famous in the Arabicspeaking world from very early on. This article gives an overview of citations of Apollonius in Islamic sources from different fields and of the works generally attributed to him. Furthermore, I review (...) Sirr al-khalīqa, its influences on the Jābirian works and its reception in the Ismā‘īlī tradition. This article additionally discusses an Arabic commentary of Sirr al-khalīqa by ‘Awn b. al-Mundhir, which is extant in a unique manuscript, and its hitherto unknown Persian translation. This Persian translation covers parts of Ibn al-Mundhir’s work not available in the Arabic excerpt and is therefore an important source for the history of Islamic alchemy. An edition of the Persian translation is given as an appendix. (shrink)

Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different guise when one (...) adopts a naturalist stance in philosophy, that is when one looks closely at scientific practice and takes it as a guide for identifying natural kinds and investigating their general features. This Element surveys existing philosophical accounts of natural kinds, defends a naturalist alternative, and applies it to case studies in a diverse set of sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

The Enlightenment philosophy, particularly the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and his concepts surrounding the State and Society, serves as a philosophical foundation for numerous subsequent discussions in the fields of social and political sciences. Hobbes’ perspective on human nature and his portrayal of the natural state versus civilization are undeniably among the central tenets of modern thought. He characterizes humanity as the ‘wolf-man’ and underscores the necessity of a social contract-based civilized state to ensure security and safeguard collective interests. Hobbes (...) is primarily concerned with peace, and his political framework, rooted in a modern scientific sense, is designed with the explicit goal of establishing and preserving peace. In the natural state, where humanity exists in an uncivilized condition, each individual is self-interested and disconnected, resulting in a landscape fraught with danger and insecurity. However, a glimmer of hope arises from the fact that human awareness of this predicament serves as the very genesis of contemplation and thought directed towards salvation. The cornerstone of security in the natural state is the equality of all individuals within it. According to Hobbes, society does not represent the spontaneous formation of a fundamental condition for collective life but, rather, the conscious regulation of a potentially volatile state perpetually on the brink of conflict. Through surveys, Hobbes asserts that a majority of people within a society willingly delegate their power and authority to an individual or a group, enabling them to consolidate the various wills into a unified collective will through a voting process. This article aims to explore a fundamental shift in ethics as we transition from classical ethics centered around ‘good’ to modern social ethics founded on ‘security’ and ‘stability.’. (shrink)

BackgroundGenetic disorders due to kindred marriages are common medical conditions in Iran; however, the legal aspects of abortion remain controversial. This study was undertaken to determine physicians' opinions regarding the termination of pregnancy for three genetic diseases: thalassemia major, hemophilia, and Down's syndrome.MethodsA questionnaire was administered to selected physicians by stratified random sampling to determine the following: age, gender, knowledge about prenatal diagnosis of diseases in high risk pregnancies, agreement with abortion, recommended gestational age for abortion, and, if opposed to (...) abortion, the reason.ResultsOf 323 physicians, who participated in the study, 91.3(295), 40.6(131), and 78.6%(254) were in agreement and 8.7(28), 59.4(192), and 21.4%(69) were opposed to abortion for thalassemia major, hemophilia, and Down's syndrome, respectively. Among 289 physicians opposed to abortion in respect of each of all three conditions, the following reasons were cited: religion, 18; emotional, 10; quality of care, 23; hope to find a new treatment option in the future, 103; miscellaneous reasons, 6; and a combination of these reasons, 129. Among 680 physicians in agreement with abortion in relation to all of the diseases, 4.6%(31) were agreed with abortion in less than 12 weeks gestation, 79.2%(538) in less than 16 weeks gestation, 5.6%(38) in less than 20 weeks gestation, 2.2%(15) in less than 24 weeks gestation, and 8.4%(58) were agreed with beyond the 24 weeks of gestational age.ConclusionThe majority of physicians were in agreement with abortion for thalassemia major and Down's syndrome because of the overall prognosis, but opposed to abortion for hemophilia. (shrink)

Trust is a central dimension in the relation between human beings and technologies. In many discourses about technology, the relation between human beings and technologies is conceptualized as an external relation: a relation between pre-given entities that can have an impact on each other but that do not mutually constitute each other. From this perspective, relations of trust can vary between _reliance_, as is present for instance in technological extensionism, and _suspicion_, as in various precautionary approaches in ethics that focus (...) on technological risks. Against these two interpretations of trust, this article develops a third one. Based on a more internal account of the relations between human beings and technologies, it becomes possible to see that every technological development puts at stake what it means to be a human being. Using technologies, then, implies trusting ourselves _to_ technologies. We argue that this does not imply an uncritical subjection to technology. Rather, recognizing that technologies help to constitute human subjectivity implies that human beings can get actively involved in processes of technological mediation. Trust then has the character of _confidence_: deliberately trusting oneself _to_ technology. (shrink)

Summary Mats Wahlberg argues that evolutionary theodicies fail to show how an evolutionary process was necessary in order to reach the goal God is said to have had when creating our world. The authors of this article argue that Wahlberg‘s critique fails if one takes into consideration the distinction between type- and token-values. The question that guides Wahlberg‘s discussion is whether or not unique type-values require an evolution in order to be instantiated or not. He does not, however, discuss whether (...) unique token-values require evolution. This article will address this question, and argue that the theodicies he claims to fail does not do so for the reasons put forward by Wahlberg if interpreted as focusing on token-unique values. The authors will also argue that theodicies other than those evaluated by Wahlberg succeed in identifying type-unique values that can only be brought about through evolution. (shrink)

Background: One of the main concerns in critical care units is the development of humanistic approaches. In this regard, recognizing the factors affecting humanistic nursing can contribute to humanizing nursing care in these units. Objective: The objective was to recognize the influential factors of humanistic nursing in critical care units. Research design: This qualitative study was carried out using a phenomenology method. Thirty-nine in-depth unstructured interviews were performed. The data were analyzed using the phenomenological nursology approach. To guarantee trustworthiness, prolonged (...) engagement, member check, triangulation of resources, and maximum variation sampling were used. Participants and research context: Purposeful sampling was employed to select 10 nurses, 8 patients, and 4 patient’s relatives from the intensive care unit and critical care unit departments. Ethical consideration: This study was approved by the ethics committee of Lorestan University of Medical Sciences with the code of LUMS.REC.1395.121. Finding: The participants’ experiences were reflected in the following three main concepts: moral, educational, and existential nature of the two humans involved in the interaction; maintenance of the nurses’ dignity; and interactions in the cultural and social context. Discussion: The nurse and patient, organizational environment, and society give rise to a set of intertwined characteristics which influence the realization of humanistic nursing. By affecting the nurses’ educational background and maintaining their dignity, the atmosphere of the hospital and cultural readiness of the society pave the way for delivering the humanistic care. (shrink)

To counter a general belief that all the paradoxes stem from a kind of circularity (or involve some self--reference, or use a diagonal argument) Stephen Yablo designed a paradox in 1993 that seemingly avoided self--reference. We turn Yablo's paradox, the most challenging paradox in the recent years, into a genuine mathematical theorem in Linear Temporal Logic (LTL). Indeed, Yablo's paradox comes in several varieties; and he showed in 2004 that there are other versions that are equally paradoxical. Formalizing these versions (...) of Yablo's paradox, we prove some theorems in LTL. This is the first time that Yablo's paradox(es) become new(ly discovered) theorems in mathematics and logic. (shrink)

The present book contains a number of articles dipicting religion in the present age, a re-telling of Bīzhan ʻAbd al-Karīmī's account of religion, Iran.

This article investigates the conceptual foundations of technological innovation and development projects that aim to bring ethical and social issues into the design stage. Focusing on the ethics and social impact of technological innovation and development has been somewhat of a trend lately, for instance in ELSA research and in such initiatives as the Dutch Responsible Innovation programme. I argue that in order to succeed in doing social responsible and ethical sound design, a proper understanding of the relation between technology (...) and society is required. I propose to move away from an externalist framework, in which technology and society are depicted as being defined independently, towards an interdependent framework, where technology and society are regarded to be mutually defining. This move is necessary in order for such innovation projects not to reinforce outdated concepts about technology, which in the longer run will prove counterproductive to the actual aims of the projects themselves. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a unified causal account of natural kinds. Using as a starting point the widely held view that natural kind terms or predicates are projectible, I argue that the ontological bases of their projectibility are the causal properties and relations associated with the natural kinds themselves. Natural kinds are not just concatenations of properties but ordered hierarchies of properties, whose instances are related to one another as causes and effects in recurrent causal processes. The resulting account (...) of natural kinds as clusters of core causal properties that give rise to clusters of derivative properties enables us to distinguish genuine natural kinds from non-natural kinds. For instance, it enables us to say why some of the purely conventional categories derived from the social domain do not correspond to natural kinds, though other social categories may. (shrink)

Respect for human dignity is a basic and crucial component of nursing care. Illness with restricted physical ability and being confined to bed can compromise the dignity of patients. The views of adolescents regarding dignity in care have not previously been researched. This article details a descriptive-analytic study in which survey data was collected from all nurses and compared with a convenience sample of 180 hospitalized adolescents in two hospitals in Iran. The data was analyzed with SPSS software. A significant (...) difference between nurses and hospitalized ill adolescents’ perceptions was identified in relation to: understanding the importance of privacy (p < 0.001); observance of privacy (p < 0.001); importance of interaction between nurses and patients (p = 0.019); and the observance of interaction between nurses and patients (p < 0.001). Attention to adolescents’ views about dignity can help nurses to improve quality of care for this group. (shrink)

Virtue signaling serves to express moral and ethical values publicly, showcasing commitment to social and sustainable ideals. This research, conducted with non-WEIRD samples to mitigate the prevalent WEIRD bias (i.e., the tendency to solely rely on samples from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies), examines whether the scarcely studied virtue-signaling construct mediates the influence of consumers’ attachment anxiety (vs. avoidance) on their green purchase behavior and prosocial responses. Drawing on attachment theory and the emerging virtue-signaling literature, the current work (...) reports the results from three studies (_N_ total = 898) in which consumers’ attachment patterns were not only measured, as in most prior related research, but also manipulated. Study 1 confirmed the unique ability of measured attachment anxiety, but not attachment avoidance, to predict consumers’ green purchase behavior and prosocial tendencies, with virtue signaling mediating these links. Study 2 manipulated participants’ attachment patterns, finding further support for the mediating role of virtue signaling between attachment anxiety (vs. avoidance) and these dependent variables. Study 3 provided a more nuanced account for our virtue-signaling conceptualization by documenting that self-oriented, but not other-oriented, virtue signaling mediated the link between attachment anxiety and both our key outcomes in public contexts. From a managerial viewpoint, these findings indicate that anxiously attached consumers constitute a potentially lucrative segment for companies seeking to expand their market share of sustainable and ethically produced products. (shrink)

The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Although explicitly articulated by nineteenth-century philosophers like Mill, Whewell and Venn, it has a much older history dating back to Plato and Aristotle. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance, especially among naturalist metaphysicians and philosophers of science. Informed by detailed examination of classification in the natural and social sciences, (...) this book argues against essentialism and for a naturalist account of natural kinds. By looking at case studies drawn from diverse scientific disciplines, from fluid mechanics to virology and polymer science to psychiatry, the author argues that natural kinds are nodes in causal networks. On the basis of this account, he maintains that there can be natural kinds in the social sciences as well as the natural sciences. (shrink)

Saba Mahmood’s anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency and capacity building by the women’s dawa movement in Egypt. These women increase their virtue toward the goal of piety by following dominant, often patriarchal norms. Mahmood argues that “teleological feminism” ignores this gain in agency because this kind of feminism only focuses on opposition or resistance to these norms. In this paper I defend Mahmood’s “anti-teleological” feminist work from criticisms that her project valorizes oppression and has no vision for (...) a nonoppressive feminist future. I argue the future envisioned by teleological feminists gets caught in “the Hegelian” trap of replicating past oppression in their feminist future. I find in Mahmood’s work the tools to escape this trap. I argue, rather than a movement of overcoming oppression, Mahmood’s work suggests an immanent and creative movement that emphasizes difference for a truly new future. I turn to a Bergsonian metaphor and argue that this movement can be seen as akin to the movement of biological evolution. I conclude using the work of Eve Sedgwick that the Egyptian women that Mahmood studies are being read in a “paranoid” fashion and demonstrate using Leila Ahmed a better “reparative” reading of these women. (shrink)

Kant has explained his view on modality and modal concepts in general in different sections of the Critique of Pure Reason such as the "Metaphysical Deduction", "Schematism", and the "Postulates". However, he discusses the issue of existence in particular mainly under the topic of "The Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God." The proof—known as the "ontological argument"—was first presented by St. Anselm and later revised by Descartes, Leibniz, and contemporary philosophers like Norman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga. (...) Kant's view on existence, however, seems to lead to some problems. In the present essay two of these... (shrink)

In this paper I argue that relaxed realism can answer questions about normative language and thought without collapsing into one of the familiar views in the literature or becoming implausible. More specifically, contrary to Michael Ridge, I argue that relaxed realists can use an inferentialist approach to metasemantics without their view collapsing into naturalism or quasi-realism. The inferentialist account that I propose is that the role of normative expressions involves language-entry transitions construed as rational intuitions and language-exit transitions explained in (...) terms of rational agency. I argue that this account fits with relaxed realism and keeps the view distinct from naturalism, quasi-realism, and other familiar views in the literature. (shrink)

This research aimed to investigate the status of children-specific metadata elements in theory (existing literature) and practice (metadata standards and children’s digital libraries). Literature reviews as well as two cases, including children’s online national libraries of Iran, and Singapore, are used to identify children-specific metadata elements and their application. The results revealed that descriptive metadata types had been mentioned more than analytical, social, and relational types; the DCMI metadata standard, besides LOM and ALTO metadata standards, can be used to develop (...) an application profile for children’s library catalogs. Two cases showed that they partially cover children-specific metadata elements, and neither has covered relational metadata elements. A deeper analysis of the children-specific metadata elements suggests that children’s catalogs should be semantic and social. The results of this study can be insightful for children’s book catalogers and children’s book publishers (for marketing purposes). (shrink)

Mankind is faced with a number of serious problems that demand an effective solution. The prevalence of injustice and the frequency of financial crises are two of the most serious of these problems. Consisting of an in-depth introduction along with a selection of eight of Muhammad Umer Chapra's essays--four on Islamic economics and four on Islamic finance--this timely book raises the question of what can be done to not only minimize the frequency and severity of the financial crises, but also (...) make the financial system more equitable. The author considers the origins of Islamic economics and outlines its development and underlying principles. He compares the approach taken to ethics and economics in Islam with that taken in the West, considering whether lessons can be applied to the global financial architecture in order to mitigate against financial crises. The book also examines the case against interest and looks at both innovation in Islamic finance, as well as challenges facing the industry. Written by a leading authority in the field, this book will be a stimulating resource for students and researchers in Islamic economics and finance, as well as providing valuable insight to all of those with an interest in financial systems and their interaction with society. (shrink)

Asle Eikrem strives to develop a systematic philosophical understanding of the constitutive structures of religious discourses. Different philosophical traditions (phenomenology, hermeneutics, pragmatics, metaphysics or analytical philosophical thinking) have articulated these structures in their own distinctive ways. The author aims to show how insights from partly conflicting traditions can be coherently reconstructed within the framework of a comprehensive philosophical presentation. The central thesis guiding his work is inspired by the deep-metaphysics of German philosopher Lorenz B. Puntel, and states that the relation (...) between the pragmatic, semantic and ontological structures of religious discourses must be understood as internally necessary. They cannot be thought independently from each other. The pragmatic and semantic structures of religious discourses must be understood as substructures in a comprehensive ontological dimension (Being) that is characterized as practicable and expressible. (shrink)

Talk about God is often the source of controversy. Theists and atheists are equally passionate when making their stand for or against belief in God. In this book, a wide range of philosophers of religion have come together to discuss how serious talk about God ought to be conducted for theists and atheists alike in what should be their common pursuit for truth. The essays both address methodological questions and provide a range of concrete samples of serious God-talk, spanning from (...) political, religion, and classical proofs of God's existence to the problem of evil. (Series: Nordic Studies in Theology / Nordische Studien zur Atheism, Vol. 4) [Subject: Religious Studies]Ã?Â?Ã?Â? (shrink)

Faith and Islam -- Honesty and veracity -- Belief in God -- Generosity and contentment -- Belief in the angels -- Fairness, selflessness and mercy -- Belief in divine books -- Friendship, hypocrisy and jealousy -- Belief in the Prophets -- Sincerity and patience -- Belief in the hereafter -- Backbiting and sinful suspicion -- Belief in divine destiny -- Humility tolerance and politeness -- Ablution and the daily prayers -- Seriousness, piety and dignity -- Prayer -- Respect to parents (...) and maintaining the bonds of kinship -- Fasting -- Secrecy and constultation -- Prescribed purifying alms and charity -- Distinction of the lawful and unlawful, loyalty and fidelity -- The major and minor pilgrimage -- Justice, chastity and modesty. (shrink)

This article examines Martin Luther’s view of Natural theology and natural knowledge of God. Luther research has often taken a negative stance towards a possibility of Natural theology in Luther’s thought. I argue, that one actually finds from Luther’s texts a limited area of the natural knowledge of God. This knowledge pertains to the existence of God as necessary and as Creator, but not to what God is concretely. Luther appears to think that the natural knowledge of God is limited (...) because of the relation between God and the Universe only one side is known by natural capacities. Scholastic Theology built on Aristotelianism errs, according to Luther, when it uses created reality as the paradigm for thinking about God. Direct experiential knowledge of the divinity, given by faith, is required to comprehend the divine being. Luther’s criticism of Natural theology, however, does not appear to rise from a general rejection of metaphysics, but from that Luther follows certain ideas of Medieval Augustinian Platonism, such as a stark ontological differentiation between finite and infinite things, as well as the idea of divine uniting contradictions. Thus the conflict between faith and reason on Luther seems to be explicable at least in part as a conflict between two different ontological systems, which follow different paradigms of rationality. (shrink)