Todo autor tiene su favorito entre los libros que ha escrito. El mío es Confesiones de un médico. Así se refiere el médico y filósofo estadounidense Alfred Tauber a esta obra con ya 12 años de recorrido a sus espaldas que acaba de ser traducida al castellano por Antonio Casado. Un texto que da inicio a la andadura de la epistemología moral defendida por su autor y en el que, por lo tanto, se trazan las líneas maestras de esa propuesta (...) que ocupa un lugar esencial en la obra posterior de este referente de las humanidades médicas en Estados Unidos. Confesiones de un médico se constituye, de esta manera, en la obra de presentación de la filosofía rectora de Tauber y actúa al mismo tiempo como el punto de inicio y el eje sobre el que se ha ido expandiendo su visión. (shrink)

On one classical conception of God, God has no parts, not even metaphysical parts. God is not composed of form and matter, act and potency, and he is not composed of existence and essence. God is absolutely simple. This is the doctrine of Absolute Divine Simplicity. It is claimed that ADS implies a modal collapse, i.e. that God’s creation is absolutely necessary. I argue that a proper way of understanding the modal collapse argument naturally leads the proponent of ADS to (...) reject a particular premise of the argument: namely, “the same identical cause brings about the same effect.” However, I argue that the rejection of that premise leads to a deeper problem for ADS. It leads to an explanatory gap: how can we explain the relevant type of indeterminism in an absolutely simple God? (shrink)

While previous literature provides evidence of the positive relationship between ethical climate and job satisfaction, the possible mechanisms of this relationship are still underexplored. This study aims to enhance scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of the ethical climate–job satisfaction relationship by identifying and testing two of the possible mechanisms. More specifically, this study fills an existing research gap by examining social and interpersonal mechanisms, referred to in this study as workplace isolation of colleagues and salesperson’s teamwork, of the ethical climate–job satisfaction (...) relationship. This is vital for the selling profession because job satisfaction is known to drive higher levels of salespeople’s performance. The arguments for such mechanisms are built on the foundations of social/psychological contract theory and ethical climate literature. Empirical testing using a large sample of salespeople shows higher levels of ethical climate to decrease workplace isolation and increase teamwork. Findings support hypothesized model where ethical climate positively relates to job satisfaction as partially mediated by workplace isolation and teamwork. Ethical climate is negatively related to workplace isolation and positively to teamwork. Further, findings indicate negative effect of workplace isolation on teamwork and sales performance. Job satisfaction is found to be key factor in driving performance of salespeople. (shrink)

Informed by Gloria Anzaldúa's and José Carlos Mariátegui's work, as well as by Andean cosmology, Omar Rivera turns to Inka stonework and architecture as an example of a "Cosmological Aesthetics." He articulates ways of sensing, feeling and remembering that are attuned to an aesthetic of water, earth and light. On this basis, Rivera brings forth a corporeal orientation that can be inhabited by the oppressed, one that withdraws from predominant modern/Western conceptions of the human. By providing an aesthetic analysis (...) of cosmological sensing, Rivera sets the stage for exploring physical dimensions of anti-colonial resistance, and furthers the Latinx and Latin American tradition of anti-colonial and liberatory philosophy. Seeingaesthetic involvements with the cosmos as a source for embodied modes of resistance, Rivera turns to the work of María Lugones and Enrique Dussel in order to make explicit the aesthetic dimensions of their work. Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance creates a new dialogue between art historians, artists, and philosophers working on Latin American thought, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. It weaves together a Latin American philosophy that connects pre-Columbian cosmologies with contemporary thinkers. Rivera's original approach introduces us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling current understandings of decolonial theory and opening the tradition in transformative ways. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline a general framework for cultural analysis consistent with an “analytic” approach to explanation in social science. The proposed approach provides coherent solutions to thorny problems in cultural theory. These include providing a coherent definition of culture (and the “cultural”), specifying the nature of cultural units (both simple and complex), and outlining the processes making possible episodes of cultural genesis, transformation, and reproduction within bounded units characterized as cultural causal systems.

This paper aims to balance the conceptual reception of Bourdieu's sociology in the United States through a conceptual re-examination of the concept of Habitus. I retrace the intellectual lineage of the Habitus idea, showing it to have roots in Claude Levi-Strauss structural anthropology and in the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, especially the latter's generalization of the idea of operations from mathematics to the study of practical, bodily-mediated cognition. One important payoff of this exercise is that the common misinterpretation of (...) the Habitus as an objectivist and reductionist element in Bourdieu's thought is dispelled. The Habitus is shown to be instead a useful and flexible way to concep-tualize agency and the ability to transform social structure. Thus ultimately one of Bourdieu's major contributions to social theory consists of his development of a new radical form of cognitive sociology, along with an innovative variety of multilevel sociological explanation in which the interplay of different structural orders is highlighted. In keeping with the usual view, the goal of sociology is to uncover the most deeply buried structures of the different social worlds that make up the social universe, as well as the "mechanisms" that tend to ensure their reproduction or transformation. Merging with psychology, though with a kind of psychology undoubtedly quite different from the most widely accepted image of this science, such an exploration of the cognitive structures that agents bring to bear in their practical knowledge of the social worlds thus structured. Indeed there exists a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, between the objective divisions of the social world . . . and the principles of vision and division that agents apply to them. (shrink)

In this book, Omar Farahat presents a new way of understanding the work of classical Islamic theologians and legal theorists who maintained that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of the norms and values of human actions. Through a reconstruction of classical Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī debates on the nature and implications of divine speech, Farahat argues that the Ashʿarī attachment to revelation was not a purely traditionalist position. Rather, it was a rational philosophical commitment emerging from debates in epistemology and (...) theology. He further argues that the particularity of this model makes its distinctive features helpful for contemporary scholars who defend a form of divine command theory. Farahat's volume thus constitutes a new reading of the issue of reason and revelation in Islam and breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics. (shrink)

Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī (1058–1111 c.e .) is well known, among other things, for his account, in al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Deliverance from error), of a struggle with philosophical skepticism that bears a striking resemblance to that described by Descartes in the Meditations . This essay aims to give a close comparative analysis of these respective accounts, and will concentrate solely on the processes of invoking or entertaining doubt that al-Ghazālī and Descartes describe, respectively. In the process some subtle differences between them (...) in this regard will be brought to light that are relevant to the comparative issue of the respective solutions at which they arrive. The latter issue will not be touched upon here, although the present discussion is intended as a prelude to a future treatment of that topic. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine Stephen Turner's critique of practice theory in light of recent neurophysiological discoveries regarding the “mirror neuron system” in the pre-frontal mo-tor cortex of humans and other primates. I argue that two of Turner's strongest objections against the sociological version of the practice-theoretical account, the problem of transmission and the problem of sameness, are substantially undermined when examined from the perspective of re-cently systematized accounts of embodied learning and intersubjective action understanding in-spired by these developments. (...) In addition, I show that the practice-theoretical framework out-lined by Pierre Bourdieu in the Logic of Practice and other works is, in contrast to Turner's por-trayal of a confused hodgepodge of logical errors and empirical impossibilities, largely consistent with the latest neurophysiological evidence and as such fundamentally foreshadowed more recent understandings of the neurocognitive foundations of the perception, understanding and structure of the motor schemes productive of action in the world. Also in line with these newer neurosci-entific developments, the practice-theoretical focus on the body as the central matrix generative of tacit understandings and analogical operations responsible for “higher order” systems of classi-fication emerges as the key to solving some of the thorniest problems in the theory of action: eliminating to need to resort to unwarranted “collective object” explanations for the origins of shared presuppositional frameworks. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to examine the notion of salesperson moral identity as a prosocial individual trait and its associated effects on customer and coworker relationships. In addition, this study examines the underlying processes in which these effects occur as well as the moderating role of internal competitive climate. Our empirical investigation of business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals reveals that moral identity has both direct and indirect effects on a salesperson’s customer- and team-directed outcomes. Specifically, our results demonstrate that (...) salesperson moral identity positively affects both salesperson-customer identification and organizational identification, which, in turn, impact customer service provision and teamwork. Our findings also indicate that internal competitive climate exacerbates the positive effects of salesperson moral identity on customer service provision and teamwork. (shrink)

The authors of the target article articulate the complicated, often conflicting demands of U.S. Food and Drug Administration roles as justification for the FDA’s delay in releasing guidelines...

We agree with Lynch et al. that patients with chronic diseases and Band-Aid treatments are unlikely to benefit from a version of Operation Warp Speed or by deprioritizing standards of scientific ev...

What Russell regarded to be the ‘chief outcome’ of his 1914 Lowell Lectures at Harvard can only be fully appreciated, I argue, if one embeds the outcome back into the ‘classificatory problem’ that many at the time were heavily engaged in. The problem focused on the place and relationships between the newly formed or recently professionalized disciplines such as psychology, Erkenntnistheorie, physics, logic and philosophy. The prime metaphor used in discussions about the classificatory problem by British philosophers was a spatial (...) one, with such motifs as ‘standpoints’, ‘place’ and ‘perspectives’ in the space of knowledge. In fact, Russell’s construction of a perspectival space of six-dimensions was meant precisely to be a timely solution to the widely discussed classificatory problem. (shrink)

La filosofía posee un potencial terapéutico presente desde sus inicios griegos. De entre todas las escuelas helenísticas, podemos afirmar que la que más se preocupó por el malestar humano fue la estoica. El presente artículo analiza la gestión estoica del duelo presente en las Consolaciones de Séneca, exponiendo la operatividad terapéutica de su modelo, en tanto que metodología explicativo-experiencial de fines eudaimónicos o sapienciales.

Introduction -- Stout's proto-new-realism -- Situating G.F. Stout -- Stout's doctrine of primary and secondary qualities -- Stout and the Brentano School -- Representative function of presentations -- Sensible space and real space -- Cook Wilson's geometrical counter-example -- Stout's central question -- Ideal constructions -- Ideal constructions in psychology and epistemology -- British new realism : the language of madness -- Stout's criticisms of Alexander -- Alexander's response -- The nature of sensations, images, and other presentations -- What is (...) the metaphysical problem? -- "How can the interpretation which is supplied by the mind be a constituent of the [physical] object?" -- Some general remarks -- British new realism : the language of common-sense -- T.P. Nunn and the new realism -- Nunn and things -- Nunn's postulate -- Russell and Stout on sensible objects -- Russell, sense-data and sensibilia -- The methods of construction -- Russell's constructions and Nunn's postulate -- Constructions, psychology, and the essence of philosophy -- The methods of logical construction -- A mathematical development -- The principle of abstraction. (shrink)

A distinctive focus of 19th- and 20th-century Latin American philosophy is the convergence of identity formation and political liberation in ethnically and racially diverse postcolonial contexts. From this perspective, Omar Rivera interprets how a "we" is articulated and deployed in central political texts of this robust philosophical tradition. In particular, by turning to the work of Peruvian political theorist José Carlos Mariátegui among others, Rivera critiques philosophies of liberation that are invested in the redemption of oppressed identities as conditions (...) for bringing about radical social and political change, foregrounding Latin America's complex histories and socialities to illustrate the power and shortcomings of these projects. Building on this critical approach, Rivera studies interrelated epistemological, transcultural, and aesthetic delimitations of Latin American philosophy in order to explore the possibility of social and political liberation "beyond redemption.". (shrink)

As a continuation of the work of the third author in [5], we make further observations on the features of Galois cohomology in the general model theoretic context. We make explicit the connection between forms of definable groups and first cohomology sets with coefficients in a suitable automorphism group. We then use a method of twisting cohomology (inspired by Serre’s algebraic twisting) to describe arbitrary fibres in cohomology sequences—yielding a useful “finiteness” result on cohomology sets.Applied to the special case of (...) differential fields and Kolchin’s constrained cohomology, we complete results from [3] by proving that the first constrained cohomology set of a differential algebraic group over a bounded, differentially large, field is countable. (shrink)

The Islamic philosophical, mystical, and theological sub-traditions have each made characteristic assumptions about the human person, including an incorporation of substance dualism in distinctive manners. Advances in the brain sciences of the last half century, which include a widespread acceptance of death as the end of essential brain function, require the abandonment of dualistic notions of the human person that assert an immaterial and incorporeal soul separate from a body. In this article, I trace classical Islamic notions of death and (...) the soul, the modern definition of death as "brain death," and some contemporary Islamic responses to this definition. I argue that a completely naturalistic account of human personhood in the Islamic tradition is the best and most viable alternative for the future. This corporeal monistic account of Muslim personhood as embodied consciousness incorporates the insights of pre-modern Muslim thinkers yet rehabilitates their characteristic mistakes and thus has the advantages of neuroscientific validity and modern relevance in trans-cultural ethical discourse; it also helps to alleviate organ shortages in countries with majority Muslim populations, a serious ethical impasse of recent years. (shrink)

Cuba faces a dilemma between continuing its current portfolio of biotechnology drugs and vaccines with lower profitability or renewing its product portfolio with the associated costs and risks.

By putting forward the notions of “eco-sensibilities” and “eco-permeable relationalities,” this paper explores a non-instrumentalizing mode of relation with the “non-human.” On this basis, it shows the possibility of affectively disempowering the hold of “ecological indifference” as Nancy Tuana describes it. It focuses on “animal becoming” and “elemental architecture” as “eco-sensibilities” that effect such a disempowerment.

Over the past two decades, we have seen an increase in the use of medical-legal partnerships in health-care and/or legal settings to address health disparities affecting vulnerable populations. MLPs increase medical teams' capacity to address social and environmental threats to patients' health, such as unsafe housing conditions, through partnership with legal professionals. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses guidelines, we systematically reviewed observational studies published from January 1993-January 2016 to investigate the capacity of MLPs to address (...) legal and health disparities. We identified 13 articles for qualitative analysis from an initial pool of 355 records. The resulting pool of 13 articles revealed more information regarding the capacity of MLPs to address legal outcomes than their capacity to address health outcomes; only 4 studies directly addressed the impact of MLP intervention on patient wellbeing and/or patient utilization of healthcare services. We call for further evaluation/longitudinal studies that specifically address MLPs' short and long term effects upon patient health disparities. Finally, given the demonstrated capacity of MLPs to address unmet legal needs, and their evident potential in regards to improving health outcomes, we present the MLP model as a framework to address HIV-related legal and health disparities. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that metaphysical naturalism is self-defeating, and cannot be rationally accepted. I distinguish between two different ways of understanding this argument, which I call the "probabilistic inference conception", and the "process characteristic conception". I argue that the former is what critics of the argument usually presuppose, whereas most critical responses fail when one assumes the latter conception. To illustrate this, I examine three standard objections to Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism: the Perspiration Objection, the Tu Quoque (...) Objection, and the "Why Can't the Naturalist Just Add a Little Something?" Objection. I show that Plantinga's own responses to these objections fail, and propose counterexamples to his first two principles of defeat. I then go on to construct more adequate responses to these objections, using the distinctions I develop in the first part of the paper. (shrink)

En este escrito intento exponer la manera en que establezco una relación entre la filosofía de la ciencia social y la teoría social. Lo anterior se da “incidentalmente” a partir de mi propio trabajo en teoría social; el cual se origina en la Teoría de la Estructuración de Anthony Giddens y actualmente involucra al Naturalismo Crítico. Mi interés original en la teoría social, el cual giraba en torno al trato que Giddens le da a la dualidad agente-estructura a través de (...) su Teoría de la Estructuración, me llevó a conocer la teorización social realista de Margaret Archer. De esa forma me comienzo a empapar del Realismo Crítico de Roy Bhaskar, que en su vertiente filosófica fundamenta la teoría social de Archer, y eventual y necesariamente, como parte de mi interés actual por analizar la teoríasocial realista, empiezo a involucrarme en la discusión contemporánea de la filosofía de la ciencia social. Una primera lección que me deja dicho ejercicio, la cual ejemplifico con ciertas puntualizaciones respecto al (que considero) deficiente trato que dicha filosofía recibe en y por parte de mi academia, es la necesidad de hacer explícito (de pensar un poco en) el trasfondo filosófico que subyace toda teorización social. Ya que creo que muchos de los problemas originalmente achacados a esta última pueden ser atajados, de forma satisfactoria, desde su contraparte filosófica. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Marx's Attempt to Leave PhilosophyOmar DahbourDaniel Brudney. Marx's Attempt to Leave Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii + 425. Cloth, $45.00.In the introduction to this book, Daniel Brudney writes, "The humanist Marx has been in the shadows. I think it time he was brought into the light" (13). The way Brudney chooses to do this is by examining Marx's writings of 1844-46, along with some of (...) Feuerbach and Bauer's works, for their critique of philosophy. Brudney argues that Marx's early texts are the most intrinsically interesting, in that they contain Marx's explicit antiphilosophical claims (163). Brudney asks three questions about these claims: [1] how different was Marx's critique of philosophy from that of other Young Hegelians, particularly Feuerbach and Bauer? [2] Why was Marx so committed to "leaving philosophy"? and [3] Was he successful in justifying his critique of capitalism nonphilosophically?For this reader, the most compelling part of the book was Brudney's treatment of the first question, in which he gives Feuerbach's "antiphilosophy" a sympathetic yet critical treatment. While Brudney claims that Feuerbach ultimately can substantiate neither his critique of Christian faith nor that of speculative philosophy (73), Feuerbach's work is still of interest for his ambitious, if failed, attempt to do so. Furthermore, Marx's later antiphilosophy, Brudney ultimately concludes, is much more indebted to Feuerbach than Marx cares to admit.The treatment of Marx's early work is aimed at examining the reasons for the hostility to philosophy that infuses virtually all of Marx's texts. After carefully distinguishing between the conceptions of human nature in Marx's 1844-45 manuscripts and in the German Ideology, Brudney concludes that Marx was pessimistic about providing a philosophically compelling argument for the central importance of labor (218). Much more likely, in Marx's view, was a case made on the basis of facts, practice, or experience.But Brudney argues that this will not doóthat philosophy is required because [End Page 135] Marx's conception of labor is irreducibly normative. This is what he calls the "justification problem": how can claims about the alienation of labor, e.g., be derived from facts of the matter without some further (philosophical) interpretation of these facts? In the German Ideology, the problem is compounded: how can social critics attack the "ruling ideas" of capitalism, when they live within the society in which these ideas dominate?So far, so good: Brudney makes his case for the necessity of a normative critique of capitalist society. While Marx was genuinely antiphilosophical, this was to his detrimentóit robbed him of the ability to justify his critique. But Brudney claims that, consequently, what Marx needed was "moral philosophy." This is where the problems with his argument become manifest. Despite an exhaustively detailed treatment of Marx's early texts, Brudney paints with a very broad brush when he employs the terms "philosophy" and "moral philosophy." What exactly do they mean? Brudney refuses to specify or limit Marx's critique to what Marx very probably thought of as most essentially philosophicalónamely, Hegelianism.To limit Marx's criticisms of philosophy in this way might imply that Marx was simply wielding a different kind of philosophical apparatus, one that was, in the particular intellectual world of 1840s Germany, "antiphilosophical." Specifically, Brudney wants to avoid the conclusion that Marx was a materialist, only opposed to idealism, not to "philosophy" as such. Yet, this reader cannot escape the sense that what Brudney really is comparing Marx (and Feuerbach) to the philosophy, not of the 1840s, but of the 1990s.This is especially the case in his discussion of Marx's rejection of "morality." By "morality" Brudney seems to mean some sort of rule-governed theory of moral conduct (e.g., Kantianism). But Marx's rejection of this sort of moral theory certainly need not mean his rejection of ethics of any kind. Brudney fails to adequately confront interpretations of Marx that suggest he was influenced by earlier, particularly Aristotelian, philosophy in his criticisms of German idealism (see, e.g., Carol Gould's Marx's Social Ontology or the writers in George McCarthy [ed... (shrink)

A new interpretation of Marx’s early development and the political dimension of Young Hegelianism. Review p/c.

Drawing from Andean cosmological, mythological and aesthetic lineages, this paper is about the possibility of a phenomenology of things at catastrophic ends. In this regard, I approach things under the sway of a (de)formative emptiness. In the first part, I develop a relational ontology on the basis of the Andean notion of pacha or cosmos, which provides a phenomenological frame for a determination of “place,” “world” and “topology.” I also contrast an elemental topology of the cosmos configured by ouranic sunlight (...) with an elemental catastrophism that overturns it. In the second part, I study a chronological series of artifacts in an Andean aesthetic lineage in order to attempt a phenomenology of “things” (utensils, buildings, mountains) that “spectrally” hover in overturns of the cosmos (pachakuti). (shrink)

Desde el enfoque del pensamiento ambiental estético-complejo, el artículo presenta un esbozo de lo que podría llamarse una ontología de la agricultura. Su objetivo es aportar con algunas reflexiones para la construcción de una epistemología de los estudios agroecológicos.

Bu makale, Osmanlı Devleti’nin Halep’teki en güçlü dönemi olan Kânûnî Sultan Süleyman döneminde Halep’in me ş hur alimi Radıyyüddin İ bnü’l-Hanbelî’nin dönemin en me ş hur divân-ı hümâyundaki ba ş kâtib ve ni ş ancısı Celâlzâde Mustafa Çelebi’ye ithafen yazmı ş oldu ğ u bir risalenin tahkikini içermektedir. Eser, devlette kâtiplik ve in ş â ilmi alanında yazılmı ş önemli ve litaretürde yeri olacak bir eserdir. Eseri önemi kılan birçok etken bulunmaktadır. Bu etkenlerin ba ş ında büyük bir dil âlimi (...) ve tarihçi bu iki ilimle me ş hur bir ilim ailesi mensubu bir ş ahsiyet tarafından kaleme alınmasıdır. Eseri önemli kılan bir di ğ er etken, Osmanlı Devleti’nin zirvesi addedilen Kânûnî’nin döneminde, devletin en me ş hur ba ş kâtibi ve ni ş ancısına ithafen yazılmı ş olmasıdır. Zira “Kânûnî” Sultan Süleyman’nın bu lakabı almasında en önemli rolü Celâlzâde Mustafa Çelebi üstlenmi ş tir. Eseri üç ana ba ş lık altında ele almak mümkündür. Müellif birinci ba ş lık altında, kâtiplerin ihâta etmeliri gereken Kur’an-ı Kerîm, hadis-i ş erifler, dil ve ş iir gibi alanlar hakkında örneklerle tafsilâtlı bilgiler vermektedir. İ kinci ba ş lıkta, kâtiplerin faziletleri ve üstünlükleri hakkında önemli bilgi ve ya ş anmı ş örneklerden sonra üçüncü bölümde, eserin ba ş ından beri gizledi ğ i Celâlzâde Mustafa Çelebi’nin ismini içeren ve onu meth eden bir beyt ş iiri, uzun bir kasidenin birinci harflerine gizlemi ş tir. Eserin son sayfasında beyt açık bir ş ekilde yazılmı ş eserin müellifin babası tarafından Edirne’de istinsâh edildi ğ i aktarılmaktadır. (shrink)

Chromosomal rearrangements frequently occur at specific places (“hot spots”) in the genome. These recombination hot spots are usually separated by 50–100 kb regions of DNA that are rarely involved in rearrangements. It is quite likely that there is a correlation between the above‐mentioned distances and the average size of DNA loops fixed at the nuclear matrix. Recent studies have demonstrated that DNA loop anchorage regions can be fairly long and can harbor DNA recombination hot spots. We previously proposed that chromosomal (...) DNA loops may constitute the basic units of genome organization in higher eukaryotes. In this review, we consider recombination between DNA loop anchorage regions as a possible source of genome evolution. (shrink)

One striking point of similarity is this: there is a sense in which we feel we do not know what we are talking about. By this we mean that our remarks to follow do not constitute a theory. And as evidence for this contention we cite the fact that we have no logically valid arguments to support what we say. To be sure, we believe ourselves to be in very good company in this respect, at least as far as the (...) behavioral sciences and systems of synthetic philosophy are concerned--we do not believe others know what they are talking about either. Whitehead, for example, gives us very few arguments in favor of his metaphysics--he just tells us how the world looks to him. In this paper we will be presumptuous enough to try to tell you how the world looks to us. At worst the picture we want to draw will be misleading; at best it may suggest some experimental or formal problems of interest. (shrink)

This paper investigates the doctrine of man’s essence and resurrection defended by the late Muʿtazilī Rukn al-Dīn b. al-Malāḥimī al-Khwārazmī (d. 536/1141). His anthropology combines substance reductionism and function organicism. Even though man is not a unitary substance additional to the sum of his atomic parts, the specific arrangement of parts we call “man” exhibits functions that are indivisible and irreducible (they are not sums of functions predicable of the indi­vidual parts). When it comes to resurrection, Ibn al-Malāḥimī abandons the (...) recreation model, the standard view of the Muʿtazilīs, in favor of the reassembly model, which he claims to be adherent to the manifest meaning of the Qur’ān as well as capable of answering an objection concerning continuity of identity (there is no way to discriminate between the resur­rected individual and an equivalent copy). For Ibn al-Malāḥimī, the identity of the resurrected becomes unproblematic once we accept that the material parts of the body persist from the moment of death to that of resurrection: when exactly reassembled, such parts unequivocally identify the individual. (shrink)

I defend an account of God’s ineffability that depends on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental truths. I argue that although there are fundamentally true propositions about God, no creature can have them as the object of a propositional attitude, and no sentence can perfectly carve out their structures. Why? Because these propositions have non-enumerable structures. In principle, no creature can fully grasp God’s intrinsic nature, nor can they develop a language that fully describes it. On this account, the ineffability (...) of God is explained in terms of the inability of our language and mental capacities to grasp God as he really is. I will motivate my account by distinguishing it from a rival proposal. According to this rival, there are no fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature. I argue that this rival proposal faces problems that my account does not face. And unlike this rival and other accounts of ineffability, my account provides a fitting explanation of why God is ineffable. God is ineffable because the structure of his intrinsic nature is infinite. (shrink)

Muslim physicians and Islamic jurists analyze the moral dimensions of biomedicine using different tools and processes. While the deliberations of these two classes of experts involve judgments about the deliverables of the other's respective fields, Islamic jurists and Muslim physicians rarely engage in discussions about the constructs and epistemic frameworks that motivate their analyses. The lack of dialogue creates gaps in knowledge and leads to imprecise guidance. In order to address these discursive and conceptual gaps we describe the sources of (...) knowledge and reasoning employed by Islamic jurists and clinicians to resolve the question of when a patient must seek healthcare. As we examine both the scriptural evidence and legal reasoning of jurists and the types of medical evidence used by clinicians to address the same question, we draw attention to the epistemic frameworks and constructs at play and identify how constructs from one field may sharpen the deliberative exercises of the other. Hence our work advances discourses at the intersection of Islam and medicine and offers building blocks for a comprehensive Islamic framework that fully integrates the deliverables of medical science within the deliberations of Islamic jurists. (shrink)

Emphasizing the embodied, physical aspect of María Lugones's decolonial feminism, this article elucidates ways in which the oppressed appears to colonizing gazes and beyond them in order to explore possibilities of resistance. It proposes “stillness” as a sentient physicality that can transgress the hold of racist/colonizing gazes and sense a multiplicity of worlds from a limen. In order to do this, it focuses on the temporality of “stillness” and on modes of appearing of resistant praxis.

This paper adds to the epistemological contributions of Latin American philosophy. In particular, I propose a “resistant epistemology” informed by contemporary indigenous Andean philosophies and cosmologies. Focusing on the work of María Lugones, Rodolfo Kusch, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, I explore ways in which communities are made and remade on the basis of knowledges from below, surviving political and ecological crises, including colonialism and modern development. These kinds of resistive knowledges draw from rituals, quotidian and cosmic rhythms, and affective withdrawals (...) from instrumental and objectifying dispositions. (shrink)

I this paper, I draw on recent research on the radically embodied and perceptual bases of conceptualization in linguistics and cognitive science to develop a new way of reading and evaluating abstract concepts in social theory. I call this approach Sociological Idea Analysis. I argue that, in contrast to the traditional view of abstract concepts, which conceives them as amodal “presuppositions” removed from experience, abstract concepts are irreducibly grounded in experience and partake of non-negotiable perceptual-symbolic features from which a non-propositional (...) “logic” naturally follows. This implies that uncovering the imagistic bases of allegedly abstract notions should be a key part of theoretical evaluation of concepts in social theory. I provide a case study of the general category of “structure” in the social and human sciences to demonstrate the analytic utility of the approach. (shrink)