Islam - Early works to 20th century ; Islamic ethics - Early works to 20th century.

Islamic civilization; Islam; social aspects.

Arabic literature; history and criticism.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; 1770-1831; criticism and interpretation; history; philosophy.

Four theories of political obligation are here subjected to meticulous scrutiny and found wanting, from which "We must conclude," Simmons says, "that citizens generally have no special political bonds which require that they obey and support the governments of their countries of residence". The four are consent theory, fairness theory, the natural duty of justice, and gratitude theory. As Simmons acknowledges, all four "fall squarely within the mainstream of liberal political theory", and the question is, how does Simmons draw his (...) sweeping conclusion from so limited a study? The answer is that he has arrived at the four "most plausible" theories by a process of elimination. Utilitarianism is eliminated because act utilitarianism cannot account for obligation of the sort required, while rule utilitarianism has been shown to be incoherent. The "linguistic front" is eliminated because its contention that obedience to and support of "legitimate government" are tautological begs the real questions. Finally, "a large number of widely supported answers to questions about political obligation" are eliminated by a requirement of theories of such obligation that Simmons formulates as the "particularity requirement". What remain are the four theories within the liberal mainstream, to each of which Simmons directs skillful analysis. (shrink)

Of all the distinctive features of the Buddhist religion, one of the most neglected is the sangha . Scholars give much attention to the study of texts and commentaries, the analysis of doctrines and the classification of schools. But the core of the Buddhist religion is the sangha , the community of bhikkhus around whose corporate life the religion is moulded. It is the existence and structure of the sangha which has shaped the history of Buddhism, enabled it to take (...) root in new countries, and given it the customs and rituals which have made it a religion rather than a small sect. (shrink)

Arthur Fine's use of prism models to provide local and deterministic accounts of quantum correlation experiments is presented and analyzed in some detail. Fine's claim that "there is... no question of the consistency of prism models... with the quantum theory" (forthcoming, p. 16) is disputed. Our criticisms are threefold: (1) consideration of the possibility of additional analyzer positions shows that prism models entail unacceptably high rejection rates in the relevant experiments; (2) similar considerations show that the models are at best (...) only superficially local and deterministic; and (3) in any case, Fine extracts the quantum correlation statistics from prism models only by resurrecting conceptual problems similar to those that his models were to designed to solve. (shrink)

In his account of primitive people in D.R.N. 5 Lucretius says that they led a wandering, nomadic sort of existence ; ignorant of agriculture and husbandry, they were content to eat nuts and berries and the like , while streams and springs called them to quench their thirst : denique nota vagis silvestria templa tenebant nympharum… The rest of the sentence is a lush description of the streams which welled up from those woodland shrines, washing over rocks and moss, and (...) sometimes breaking out over the plain. (shrink)

This article presents modal versions of resource-conscious logics. We concentrate on extensions of variants of linear logic with one minimal non-normal modality. In earlier work, where we investigated agency in multi-agent systems, we have shown that the results scale up to logics with multiple non-minimal modalities. Here, we start with the language of propositional intuitionistic linear logic without the additive disjunction, to which we add a modality. We provide an interpretation of this language on a class of Kripke resource models (...) extended with a neighbourhood function: modal Kripke resource models. We propose a Hilbert-style axiomatisation and a Gentzen-style sequent calculus. We show that the proof theories are sound and complete with respect to the class of modal Kripke resource models. We show that the sequent calculus admits cut elimination and that proof-search is in PSPACE. We then show how to extend the results when non-commutative connectives are added to the language. Finally, we put the l.. (shrink)

Ethical problems are continuing to expand in health care due to conflicts of technology and value. This study investigated what kind of ethical problems nurses face in clinical situations and what process they use in deciding on actions to take. Ethical theories in justice and caring were explored. Qualitative research was used and ethnographic analysis was conducted with six staff nurses from three clinical areas. An analysis of the data yielded an overarching theme of ‘Suffering and ethical caring: incompatible entities’. (...) Six domains were identified: informant definitions, preceding conditions, actions taken, intervening variables, risks and recommendations. Future research is needed in the field of client and family suffering and pain. (shrink)

This paper, a contribution to “micro set theory”, is the study promised by the first author in [M4], as improved and extended by work of the second. We use the rudimentarily recursive functions and the slightly larger collection of gentle functions to initiate the study of provident sets, which are transitive models of $\mathsf{PROVI}$, a subsystem of $\mathsf{KP}$ whose minimal model is Jensen’s $J_{\omega}$. $\mathsf{PROVI}$ supports familiar definitions, such as rank, transitive closure and ordinal addition—though not ordinal multiplication—and Shoenfield’s unramified (...) forcing. Providence is preserved under directed unions. An arbitrary set has a provident closure, and the extension of a provident $M$ by a set-generic $\mathcal{G}$ is the provident closure of $M\cup\{\mathcal{G}\}$. The improvidence of many models of $\mathsf{Z}$ is shown. The final section uses similar but simpler recursions to show, in the weak system $\mathsf{MW}$, that the truth predicate for $\dot{\varDelta}_{0}$ formulæ is $\Delta_{1}$. (shrink)

Burning fossil fuel in the North American continent contributes more to the CO2 global warming problem than in any other continent. The resulting climate changes are expected to alter food production. The overall changes in temperature, moisture, carbon dioxide, insect pests, plant pathogens, and weeds associated with global warming are projected to reduce food production in North America. However, in Africa, the projected slight rise in rainfall is encouraging, especially since Africa already suffers from severe shortages of rainfall. For all (...) regions, a reduction in fossil fuel burning is vital. Adoption of sound ecological resource management, especially soil and water conservation and the prevention of deforestation, is important. Together, these steps will benefit agriculture, the environment, farmers, and society as a whole. (shrink)

in Stochastic Processes, Physics and Geometry II, edited by S. Albeverio, U. Cattaneo, D. Merlini (World Scientific, Singapore, 1995) pp. 221-232.

Purpose: The aim of this research was to test whether Hong Kong science students would prefer a learning environment based on critical constructivism and whether a closer preferred-actual fit to such an environment would be associated with better learning outcomes. Method: The participants were 149 Hong Kong secondary school Chemistry students aged 16--19 years. They completed actual and preferred forms of a Chinese version of the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey and measures of self-efficacy and intrinsic value of their Chemistry course. (...) Their Chemistry examination scores were also obtained at the end of the course. Findings: Analysis showed that these students would prefer their Chemistry classrooms to be more personally relevant, to allow students more say and to share more control, and to encourage more negotiation with their teacher. Regression surface analysis showed that congruence of person environment fit did not influence examination results but was associated with greater valuing of the course and higher student self-efficacy. Research implications: Further research with a wider sampling from Hong Kong and elsewhere and focusing on other subject areas will be necessary to assess the generalizability of these findings. Practical implications: It seems that educational reforms based on critical constructivist principles may be of value in non-Western contexts. Original value: Educational reforms in Hong Kong and elsewhere currently are based on traditional constructivist principles. But this is the first research to support a more radical approach in what is usually regarded as a relatively conservative Asian educational context. (shrink)