The present piece focuses on the influence of Plotinus' understanding of time and eternity as articulated in Plotinus' third and fifth Enneads upon Mīr Dāmād's (d. 1631–2) conception of eternity, perpetuity, and time found in his Book of Blazing Brands (Kitab al‐Qabasāt). Although Mīr Dāmād's conception of eternity, perpetuity, and time resembles that of Plotinus' cosmology and ontology, he departs from Plotinus' hypostases in establishing strict parameters for each domain. Unlike Plotinus, Mīr Dāmād argues that the realm of eternity is (...) reserved for God alone, while the realm of Perpetuity contains the Platonic Forms. For Mīr Dāmād, the realm of time is an effect of the realm of Perpetuity and a tool for human beings to understand how to measure events in the temporal world. Unlike many other Shī'ite philosophers, Mīr Dāmād's articulation of these three cosmological realms incorporates thought found in the works of both prominent Sunni and Shī'ite scholars such as Ibn Sīnā, Abū Ḥāmid al‐Ghāzālī, Suhrawardī, and Naṣīr al‐Dīn Ṭūsī. Although his most successful student, Mullā Ṣadrā Shirazī, had ultimately disagreed with his teacher's cosmological doctrine, he remained influenced by the multitude of sources that his teacher had used. (shrink)

“Suu ulimwengu bahari tesi [This world is a tempestuous sea],” laments the poet Sayyid Abdallah bin Ali bin Nasir in his poem Al-Inkishafi, in which he seeks a stable point in the stormy ocean of historical upheavals. Al-Inkishafi has been translated as “The Soul’s Awakening”, as self-examination or revelation. Against the backdrop of a depiction of the economic decline of the Pate sultanate at the end of the seventeenth century, the poem dwells on the vanity of earthly life and (...) worldly pleasures and questions the presence of the self in the world and whether the self can withdraw itself from the world in search of a transcendent stable point. The poem arose in the context of an ongoing poetic discourse along the East African coast, where Sufism and religious asceticism found expression in poetry, and my paper reads it alongside other poems from this period as evidence of the constitution of introspection, interiority, and a new kind of self-consciousness. I will specifically examine the role of attention in this process. In addition to being a cognitive filter that removes confusion and error from thought and ensures the self—a relational construct arising from the interaction of reason, passions, and the world—constructs an adequate intellectual representation of the world, attention acquires ethical and pragmatic connotations in facilitating the self’s resistance to temptation as well as its focus on salvation. It is, effectively, only thanks to attention that the self is able to discriminate both cognitively and morally and, crucially, to maintain agency through exercising control over its desires and actions. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine several commentaries and glosses on the prolegomenon of Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī’s (d. 675/1276–77) Shamsiyya that relate to debates on the Aristotelian and Ibn Sīnān theory of science in the postclassical period. Chief among the commentaries of the Shamsiyya is Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 766/1365) Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya. This commentary, rather than the base text of the Shamsiyya, set the stage for later interpretations by Mirak al-Bukhārī (fl. 733/1332), Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Qāshānī (d. 755/1354), Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (...) (d. 792/1390), al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413), Dāwūd al-Khwāfī (fl. 839/1465) and ʿIṣām al-Dīn Isfarāyinī (d. 945/1538). I focus on three issues that were raised in these interpreta­tions of the Shamsiyya’s prolegomenon: (1) the place of the elements of sciences in logical corpus, (2) the notion of the prolegomenon and its content, and (3) the real essence of a science. I attend to the particular debates and contentions on these issues to reveal the general idea of science at that time. (shrink)

Sayings of Sayyid Ḥusain Aḥmad Madnī, 1878-1957, Indian Muslim religious leader.

Background Few studies have been conducted to assess the quality of orientation practices for ethics advisory committees that conduct ethics consultation. This survey study focused on several Harvard teaching hospitals, exploring orientation quality and committee members’ self-evaluation in the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities ethics consultation competencies. Methods We conducted a survey study that involved 116 members and 16 chairs of ethics advisory committees, respectively. Predictor variables included professional demographics, duration on committees and level of training. Outcome variables included (...) familiarity with and preparedness in the ASBH competencies and satisfaction with orientations. We hypothesised that responses would be associated with both the aforementioned predictors and whether or not participants had encountered the ASBH competencies in training. Results A majority of respondents found their orientation curricula to be helpful, although a significant portion of respondents did not receive any orientation or were unsatisfied with their orientation. Familiarity with ASBH competencies was a statistically significant predictor of respondents’ self-evaluation in particular categories. Standard educational materials were reported as offered during orientation, such as readings and case studies ; different medium resources were less evidenced such as videos on ethics consultation. Conclusions Institutions should re-evaluate orientation practices for ethics committee members that perform ethics consultation. Integrating ASBH competencies and useful methods into a resourceful pedagogy will help improve both member satisfaction with orientation and preparation in consultation. (shrink)

Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are intelligent algorithms derived on the principles inspired by human immune system. In this research work, electroencephalography (EEG) signals for four distinct motor movement of human limbs are detected and classified using Negative Selection Classification Algorithm (NSCA). For this study, a widely studied open source EEG signal database (BCI IV - Graz dataset 2a, comprising 9 subjects) has been used. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) are extracted as selected feature from recorded EEG signals. Dimensionality reduction of (...) data is carried out by applying two hidden layered stacked auto-encoder. Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimized detectors (Artificial Lymphocytes) are trained using Negative Selection Algorithm (NSA) for detection and classification of four motor movements. The trained detectors consist of four sets of detectors, each set is trained for detection and classification of one of the four movements from the other three movements. The optimized radius of detector is small enough not to mis-detect the sample. Euclidean distance of each detector with every training dataset sample is taken and compared with optimized radius of detector as a non-self detector. Our proposed approach achieved a mean classification accuracy of 86.39% for limb movements over 9 subjects with a maximum individual subject classification accuracy of 97.5 % for subject number eight. (shrink)

This article focuses on the interrelationship of law and life in human rights. It does this in order to theorize the normative status of contemporary biopower. To do this, the case law of Article 2 on the right to life of the European Convention on Human Rights is analysed. It argues that the juridical interpretation and application of the right to life produces a differentiated governmental management of life. It is established that: 1) Article 2 orients governmental techniques to lives (...) in order to ensure that both deprivation and protection of lives is lawful; 2) A proper application of Article 2 grounds itself on a proper discrimination of lives which causes Article 2 to be applied universally but not uniformly to all juridical subjects; 3) The jurisprudence of Article 2 is theoretically appreciable only in a ‘politics of life’. Finally, the article ends with a plea to analyse other fundamental human rights in the context of ‘biopolitical governmentality’. (shrink)

Letters, speeches, articles and memos written by a pioneer Muslim educationalist.

COVID-19 vaccine research success and emergency use authorizations have shown the life sciences’ potential for positive health impact. But they also underscore potentially divergent and conf...

This project investigates the ethical frameworks in place for Pakistani television news journalists reporting cases of domestic violence. It also examines the provision and structure of training for Pakistani media professionals to support accurate and balanced reporting of such violence. The research comprised in-depth semi-structured interviews with a small group of television journalists. The findings reveal that there was no formalized code of ethics guiding how journalists represent incidents of this crime, its victims, or perpetrators. Moreover, it was revealed that (...) due to a paucity of formal professional development opportunities, journalists negotiate the challenges of reporting domestic violence on-the-job, resulting in instances of irresponsible reporting practices. (shrink)

This inquiry examines the question how the category of ‘religion’ generates a complex form of power oriented to the government of subjects. It does this through a critical reading of the right to freedom of religion, offered from the perspective of governmentality. It is argued that the right to freedom of religion enables the rational goals of government to relate to religiosity in such a manner that those subject to them are made at once freer and more governable ‘in this (...) world’. (shrink)

Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logics are used to model events with imprecise, incomplete, and uncertain information. Researchers have developed numerous methods and techniques to cope with fuzziness or uncertainty. This research intends to introduce the novel concepts of complex neutrosophic relations and its types based on the idea of complex neutrosophic sets. In addition, these concepts are supported by suitable examples. A CNR discusses the quality of a relationship using the degree of membership, the degree of abstinence, and the degree (...) of nonmembership. Each of these degrees is a complex number from the unit circle in a complex plane. The real part of complex-valued degrees represents the amplitude term, while the imaginary part represents the phase term. This property empowers CNRs to model multidimensional variables. Moreover, some interesting properties and useful results have also been proved. Furthermore, the practicality of the proposed concepts is verified by an application, which discusses the use of the proposed concepts in statistical decision-making. Additionally, a comparative analysis between the novel concepts of CNRs and the existing methods is carried out. (shrink)

Three ethical conflicts in particular are paradigmatic of what we define as “clerkship ethics.” First, a distinction that differentiates the clerkship student from the practicing physician involves the student’s principal role as a learner. The clerkship student must skillfully balance her commitment to her own education against her commitment to patient care in a fashion that may compromise patient care. While the practicing physician can often resolve the tension between these two goods when they come into conflict, the clerkship student (...) is left with a more ambiguous set of choices. Second, evaluative scrutiny during clinical clerkships often forces medical students to balance doing what is morally fitting against the perceived expectations of the medical teams in which they work. Third and finally, a deeply entrenched culture of medical hierarchy presents a particular challenge to innovation and improvement in ethics education during the clerkship years. Students regard faculty as exemplars, but are not provided with the tools to assess when technical medical competence is not matched by moral competence; moreover, these faculty are unlikely to have experienced the ethics education in which students are asked to demonstrate mastery. (shrink)

The canonical view of a 3‐domain (3D) tree of life was recently challenged by the discovery of Asgardarchaeota encoding eukaryote signature proteins (ESPs), which were treated as missing links of a 2‐domain (2D) tree. Here we revisit the debate. We discuss methodological limitations of building trees with alignment‐dependent approaches, which often fail to satisfactorily address the problem of ‘‘gaps.’’ In addition, most phylogenies are reconstructed unrooted, neglecting the power of direct rooting methods. Alignment‐free methodologies lift most difficulties but require employing (...) realistic evolutionary models. We argue that the discoveries of Asgards and ESPs, by themselves, do not rule out the 3D tree, which is strongly supported by comparative and evolutionary genomic analyses and vast genomic and biochemical superkingdom distinctions. Given uncertainties of retrodiction and interpretation difficulties, we conclude that the 3D view has not been falsified but instead has been strengthened by genomic analyses. In turn, the objections to the 2D model have not been lifted. The debate remains open. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/-6TBN0bubI8. (shrink)

I suggest that virtue ethics can learn from Foucault’s critical observations on biopolitics and governmentality, which identify how a good cannot be disassociated from power and freedom. I chart a way through which virtue ethics internalizes this critical point. I argue that this helps address concerns that both virtue ethics and the critical scholarship inspired by Foucault otherwise ignore. I apply virtue ethics to the contexts of refugee arrival, asylum procedure, and immigrant integration in Western Europe; I then see how (...) Foucault’s critical thought provides a counterpoint to virtue ethics; I finally analyze how incorporating that critique allows virtue ethics to make sense of both the context and the stakes involved. (shrink)

During periods of scarcity, or the fear of it, many health systems create or adopt triage protocols to determine how to best allocate limited resources. Interest in such protocols has become acute...

Today the issue of ethics and most importantly moral values are being seen as merely based upon opinions and emotions. This has led towards a relativisation of moral values and thus towards the erosion of values amongst societies. This paper would analyze and suggest ways of preserving values for the structuring of developmental ideas for thinkers in developing countries. Coming from an Islamic standpoint the ideas of virtues have to be rooted within the transcendent or the Absolute. Such defense of (...) virtues are definitely beyond the grasp of usual western philosophy as the philosophy that is propagated by Islam is not a mere intellectual exercise but a transformative exercise which connects the profane to the sacred, the outer to the inner and the physical world to the spiritual world. The loci or the focus point is the human being thus developing the idea of being human via the inculcation of and preservation of virtues is of utmost importance. The virtues most important in Islam such as justice, moderation or temperance have been discussed by various muslim philosophers. These virtues are rooted in the Absolute and through His presence in the various levels of existences are they known. For Using ideas from malay cosmology and soteriology based upon the writings of Malay scholars, this paper would highlight ways to preserve and ensure Malay society does not fall under the threat of relativism of moral values. (shrink)

This article examines ḥikma as it was practiced by Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, or Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1640), in explaining the connection between the divine names and the attributes of God. This is done via a translation of the fourth part of his al-Maẓāhir al-ilāhiyya fī asrār al-ʿulūm al-kamāliyya [The loci of divine manifestations in the secrets of the knowledge of perfection]. Ḥikma, philosophy, as it is defined here, is the combination of rational demonstrations and spiritual unveiling. Shīrāzī’s philosophy is a (...) synthesis of Ibn ʿArabī’s school of metaphysical unveiling, the Ishrāqī school led by Suhrawardī, and the rational school of the Peripatetics. The text is translated here for the first time, and includes annotations. (shrink)

Despite the ever-changing field of artificial intelligence (AI) and its preponderance of pre-print articles, Cohen offers a timely, nuanced, and self-aware overview of ChatGPT and the world of Larg...

On the status of women in Muslim society with special reference to Afghanistan.

Rahat Naqvi and Hans Smits' edited collection, "Thinking about and Enacting Curriculum in 'Frames of War'" is centered on the theme of how the current global order creates precarious conditions for human life. The contributors respond to the challenges Judith Butler posed about the fragility of life and questions about how we apprehend, and take up ethically, our responsibilities for those who are considered "Other." The overarching objective of the book is the meaning of a call to ethics, and how (...) discussion of framing and frames is a provocation to think about our responsibilities as curriculum scholars and practitioners"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This paper examines the contest between Canadian American industrialist Cyrus Eaton and the Pugwash scientists’ leadership for influence over the early Pugwash scientists’ conferences. Eaton's activism has generally been dismissed in the historical literature as ineffective, naive and too uncritical of the Soviet Union. This paper argues that he was genuinely committed to international peace and security, that Eaton shared with Pugwash scientists a belief in the importance of intellectuals to global unity, and that he worked to bring about greater (...) international peace and understanding through both his personal activism and his own conferences held in the town of Pugwash. Eaton, however, favoured a broader push for peace, which included participation by a wider range of intellectuals and a call for rapprochement with the Soviet Union. These differences between Eaton and the Pugwash scientists, I argue, were more than simply about approach: they represented different internationalist visions and manifested in different conceptualizations for the Pugwash scientists’ conferences. Eaton hoped to incorporate non-scientists and humanism into the conferences, and integrate them into his own broader conference programme at his Thinkers’ Lodge at Pugwash. The scientists, however, wanted to keep their conferences as distinctly scientists’ events, tied to science and its authority. (shrink)

: In the poetry of Daud Kamal, water figures as an image of mercy, as in the Quran, and as a mirror that reflects divine hidden presence. The rock pool evokes the memory of Gandhara and other foundational civilizations born in love and creative ferment. Conversely, the images of drought, heat, and dust symbolize a parched spiritual order. The river, a recurring archetypal image in Kamal’s poetry, represents the fluid self that is subsumed into collective identity to become a poetic (...) distillate of history. Key words: Daud Kamal, water imagery, drought imagery, Pakistani poetry in English, Gandhara civilization, Islamic poetry. Resumen: En la poesía de Daud Kamal, el agua figura como una imagen de misericordia, como en el Corán, y como un espejo que refleja la presencia divina oculta. El estanque evoca la memoria de Gandhara y otras civilizaciones fundamentales nacidas en el amor y el fermento creativo. Por el contrario, las imágenes de sequía, calor y polvo simbolizan un orden espiritual reseco. El río, una imagen arquetípica recurrente en la poesía de Kamal, representa el yo fluido que se subsume en la identidad colectiva para convertirse en un destilado poético de la historia. Palabras clave: Daud Kamal, imágenes de agua, imágenes de sequía, poesía paquistaní en inglés, civilización de Gandhara, poesía islámica. (shrink)

Women in the nineteenth century were the worst victims of patriarchy, socio-cultural norms and class difference. It was not a good time for women. In the Victorian era, women did not have the right to vote, own property or come out of the violent marriage. This picture has been painted by many writers of the time. Of all the Victorian novelists, Eliot and Hardy have the gifted ability to chart the women situation from all angles. Both writers show that women (...) had few rights and privileges. The socio-cultural and economic factors further contributed to women’s oppression. Women were expected to remain attached to the domestic sphere. Marriage is one such institution, which during the Victorian period became a tool for women’s exploitation and subjugation. The heroines and protagonists suffer due to social and moral taboos. Mismatch in marriage leads to several problems for the couple and their respective families. George Eliot in her novel Middlemarch and Thomas Hardy in his work The Return of the Native, portray the heroines who decide to step into life that is just contrary to their expectations and later regret their decisions. This paper would attempt to analyze the repercussions of their choices and compare their nature and the line of action these heroines take to deal with the situation they are placed into. (shrink)

This article examines ḥikma as it was practiced by Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, or Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1640), in explaining the connection between the divine names and the attributes of God. This is done via a translation of the fourth part of his al-Maẓāhir al-ilāhiyya fī asrār al-ʿulūm al-kamāliyya [The loci of divine manifestations in the secrets of the knowledge of perfection]. Ḥikma, philosophy, as it is defined here, is the combination of rational demonstrations and spiritual unveiling. Shīrāzī’s philosophy is a (...) synthesis of Ibn ʿArabī’s school of metaphysical unveiling, the Ishrāqī school led by Suhrawardī, and the rational school of the Peripatetics. The text is translated here for the first time, and includes annotations. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the interrelationship of regulation and private life in human rights. It argues three main points. Article 8 connects the question of protection of private lives and privacies with the question of their management. Thus, Article 8 orients regulatory practices to private lives and privacies. Article 8’s holders are autonomous to the extent that laws respect their private lives and privacies. They are not autonomous in a ‘pre-political’ sense, where we might expect legal rules to protect an (...) already autonomous private life or privacy. Article 8 does not simply prohibit or permit acts. In certain cases, it also ‘enables’ acts. Then, this essay introduces the idea of oikopolitics. This idea allows us to capture these three points in a useful manner. By this idea, this essay means the context where the interpretation of privacy reaches out to broader social practices and norms and where the status of rights-holders living their private lives makes them objects of attention. (shrink)

In February 2016, the Cleveland Clinic initiated the first attempt at cadaveric uterine transplantation (UTx) in the United States. The transplantation was ultimately unsuccessful, but it opened doors for further research on both live and cadaveric UTx. While initial strides toward successful transplantation have been made, questions persist on the ethics of UTx: whether the uterus is a vital organ, whether we should prioritize live or cadaveric options, and how the procedure should be covered by health insurance. If we agree (...) that the goal of the medical profession is both to treat and improve quality of life, then the question of whether or not infertility is considered a disease becomes inconsequential in the discussion. As such, the medical enterprise should move forward with research in UTx. In doing so, considering the ethical implications of UTx remains essential—and we must remember to pair innovation with regulation. (shrink)