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)

The ever-increasing technological advances of modern medicine have increased physicians’ capacity to carry out a wide array of clinical interventions near the end-of-life. These new procedures have resulted in new “types” of living where a patient’s cognitive functions are severely diminished although many physiological functions remain active. In this biomedical context, patients, surrogate decision-makers, and clinicians all struggle with decisions about what clinical interventions to pursue and when therapeutic intent should be replaced with palliative goals of care. For some patients (...) and clinicians, religious teachings about the duty to seek medical care and the care of the dying offer ethical guidance when faced with such choices. Accordingly, this paper argues that traditional Sunni Islamic ethico-legal views on the obligation to seek medical care and Islamic theological concepts of human dignity and inviolability provide the ethical grounds for non-intervention at the end-of-life and can help calibrate goals of care discussions for Muslim patients. In closing the paper highlights the pressing need to develop a holistic ethics of healthcare of the dying from an Islamic perspective that brings together multiple genres of the Islamic intellectual tradition so that it can meet the needs of the patients, clinicians and Muslim religious leaders interacting with the healthcare system. (shrink)

The ever-increasing technological advances of modern medicine have increased physicians’ capacity to carry out a wide array of clinical interventions near the end of life. These new procedures have resulted in new “types” of living where a patient’s cognitive functions are severely diminished although many physiological functions remain active. In this biomedical context, patients, surrogate decision-makers, and clinicians all struggle with decisions about what clinical interventions to pursue and when therapeutic intent should be replaced with palliative goals of care. For (...) some patients and clinicians, religious teachings about the duty to seek medical care and the care of the dying offer ethical guidance when faced with such choices. Accordingly, this paper argues that traditional Sunni Islamic ethico-legal views on the obligation to seek medical care and Islamic theological concepts of human dignity and inviolability provide the ethical grounds for non-intervention at the end of life and can help calibrate goals of care discussions for Muslim patients. In closing, the paper highlights the pressing need to develop a holistic ethics of healthcare of the dying from an Islamic perspective that brings together multiple genres of the Islamic intellectual tradition so that it can meet the needs of the patients, clinicians, and Muslim religious leaders interacting with the healthcare system. (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)

The amount of realist positions put forward by philosophers of religion and theologians is impressive. one can certainly doubt whether there is a need for yet another alternative. However, most realist positions employed in studies on religion fall prey to Hilary Putnam’s criticism against metaphysical realism. This gives rise to a dilemma that I aim at solving by introducing yet another realist position, namely non-metaphysical realism.

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 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.

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)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (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)

In On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World from 1975, Quine formulated a thesis of underdetermination roughly to the effect that every scientific theory has an empirically equivalent but logically incompatible rival, one that cannot be discarded merely as a terminological variant of the former. For Quine, the truth of this thesis was an open question. If true, some would argue that it undermines any belief in scientific theories that is based purely on their empirical success. But despite its potential (...) significance, surprisingly little has been done by way of establishing or refuting it. My aim is to establish the thesis for as large a class of theories as possible. Under various precisifications of the concepts involved, I show that it holds for all consistent and recursively axiomatizable theories that postulate infinitely many theoretical entities. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that recent sociological theory has become increasingly bifurcated into two mutually incompatible styles of theorizing that I label formalist and behavioral-realist. Formalism favors mathematization and proposes an instrumentalist ontology of abstract processes while behavioral-realist theory takes at its basis the "real" physical individual endowed with concrete biological, cognitive and neurophysiological capacities and constraints and attempts to derive the proper conceptualization of social behavior from that basis. Formalism tends to lead toward a conceptually independent sociology that (...) in principle requires only minimal reference to the empirical and ontological storehouse of other disciplines, while behavioral-realist theory leads to an interdisciplinary sociology that can be located within a hierarchy of behavioral sciences, leading to questions regarding the relationship between sociology and other disciplines as well as issues of transdisciplinary unification and possible interdisciplinary reduction. I explore the consequences of this split for the project of explanatory sociological theory within the context of how it has manifested itself in sociological network theory and social psychology. I close with a critique and assessment of formalist tendencies in sociological theorizing. (shrink)

With his new riddle of induction, Goodman raised a problem for enumerative induction which many have taken to show that only some ‘natural’ properties can be used for making inductive inferences. Arguably, however, (i) enumerative induction is not a method that scientists use for making inductive inferences in the first place. Moreover, it seems at first sight that (ii) Goodman’s problem does not affect the method that scientists actually use for making such inferences—namely, classical statistics. Taken together, this would indicate (...) that (iii) ‘naturalness’ is not such a relevant concept for the problem of induction, after all. I have no objections against (i) and (iii). But, contrary to (ii), I argue that classical statistics does face a version of Goodman’s problem, which I call the statistical riddle of induction. Given that his problem merely is an instance of the more general problem of underdetermination, this is hardly surprising. Perhaps more importantly, I also show how my riddle can be used for exposing a common fallacy in probabilistic reasoning, without relying on Bayesian assumptions. (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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

This paper examines the interrelations between astronomical images of nebulae and their observation. In particular, using the case of the ‘Great Spiral’ , we follow this nebula beginning with its discovery and first sketch made by the third Earl of Rosse in 1845, to giving an account, using archival sources, of exactly how other images of the same object were produced over the years and stabilized within the record books of the Rosse project. It will be found that a particular (...) ‘procedure’ was employed using ‘working images’ that interacted with descriptions, other images and the telescopic object itself. This stabilized not only some set of standard images of the object, but also a very potent conception of spirality as well, i.e. as a ‘normal form’. Finally, two cases will be contrasted, one being George Bond's application of this spiral conception to the nebula in Orion, and the other Wilhelm Tempel's rejection of the spiral form in M51. (shrink)

Some realists claim that theoretical entities like numbers and electrons are indispensable for describing the empirical world. Motivated by the meta-ontology of Quine, I take this claim to imply that, for some first-order theory T and formula δ(x) such that T ⊢ ∃xδ ∧ ∃x¬δ, where δ(x) is intended to apply to all and only empirical entities, there is no first-order theory T′ such that (a) T and T′ describe the δ:s in the same way, (b) T′ ⊢ ∀xδ, and (...) (c) T′ is at least as attractive as T in terms of other theoretical virtues. In an attempt to refute the realist claim, I try to solve the general problem of nominalizing T (with respect to δ), namely to find a theory T′ satisfying conditions (a)–(c) under various precisifications thereof. In particular, I note that condition (a) can be understood either in terms of syntactic or semantic equivalence, where the latter is strictly stronger than the former. The results are somewhat mixed. On the positive side, even under the stronger precisification of (a), I establish that (1) if the vocabulary of T is finite, a nominalizing theory can always be found that is recursive if T is, and (2) if T postulates infinitely many δ:s, a nominalizing theory can always be found that is no more computationally complex than T. On the negative side, even under the weaker precisification of (a), I establish that (3) certain finite theories cannot be nominalized by a finite theory. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate various notions of empirical equivalence in relation to the two main arguments for realism in the philosophy of science, namely the no-miracles argument and the indispensability argument. According to realism, one should believe in the existence of the theoretical entities postulated by empirically adequate theories. According to the no-miracles argument, one should do so because truth is the the best explanation of empirical adequacy. According to the indispensability argument, one should do (...) so because the theoretical terms employed in the formulation of an empirically adequate theory are practically indispensable for the formulation of its empirical content. The no-miracles argument might be refuted if one can establish an underdetermination thesis to the effect that every theory has empirically equivalent rivals that are incompatible with each other. Insofar as truth cannot explain the empirical adequacy of two incompatible theories, there is an obvious conflict between the underdetermination thesis and the no-miracles argument. I show that, under certain assumptions, some but not all notions of empirical equivalence support the underdetermination thesis. The indispensability argument might be refuted if one can establish a dispensability thesis to the effect that, for any theory with a practical formulation, there is an empirically equivalent theory with a practical formulation in purely empirical terms. I show that some but not all notions of empirical equivalence support this thesis. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a critical examination of Warren Schmaus’s recently systematized “functionalist” approach to the study of collective representations. I examine both the logical and the conceptual viability of Schmaus’s brand of “functionalism” and the relation between his rational reconstruction and philosophical critique of Durkheim and the latter’s original set of proposals. I conclude that, due to its reliance on certain problematic philosophical theses, Schmaus’s functionalism ultimately falls short of providing a coherent alternative to the Durkhemian position or (...) serving as a useful starting point from which to understand the origins of abstract categories in concrete experience. (shrink)

The construction industry is usually characterized as a fragmented system of multiple-organizational entities in which members from different technical backgrounds and moral values join together to develop a particular business or project. The greatest challenge in the construction process for the achievement of a successful practice is the development of an outstanding reputation, which is built on identifying and applying an ethical framework. This framework should reflect a common ethical ground for myriad people involved in this process to survive and (...) compete ethically in today’s turbulent construction market. This study establishes a framework for ethical judgment of behavior and actions conducted in the construction process. The framework was primarily developed based on the essential attributes of business management identified in the literature review and subsequently incorporates additional attributes identified to prevent breaches in the construction industry and common ethical values related to professional engineering. The proposed judgment framework is based primarily on the ethical dimension of professional responsibility. The Ethical Judgment Framework consists of descriptive approaches involving technical, professional, administrative, and miscellaneous terms. The framework provides the basis for judging actions as either ethical or unethical. Furthermore, the framework can be implemented as a form of preventive ethics, which would help avoid ethical dilemmas and moral allegations. The framework can be considered a decision-making model to guide actions and improve the ethical reasoning process that would help individuals think through possible implications and consequences of ethical dilemmas in the construction industry. (shrink)

Abstract:The coronavirus pandemic has challenged the ability of countries to both protect personal freedoms and effectively counteract viral infections. Attempts to reduce viral vulnerability and increase immunity based on liberal or authoritarian principles seem to be either failing or succeeding at the price of eliminating freedoms altogether. The concept of social freedom, as an alternative to that of liberal autonomy, may provide a third alternative, integrating freedom with elements of social responsibility. However, I argue that it too will fail, since (...) all attempts to ensure immunity without challenging the exploitation of natural environments from where the virus originated do not go to the source of the problem. (shrink)

In what sense, and to what extent, do rules of inference determine the meaning of logical constants? Motivated by the principle of charity, a natural constraint on the interpretation of logical constants is to make the rules of inference come out sound. But, as Carnap observed, although this constraint does rule out some non-standard interpretations, it does not rule them all out. This is known as Carnap’s problem. I suggest that a charitable interpretation of the logical constants should, as far (...) as possible, make the rules of inference both sound and complete, and I show how this idea can be brought to bear on a successful solution to Carnap’s problem in the case of classical propositional logic, as well as classical first-order logic. In fact, the solution generalizes to any logic whose rules of inference are sound and complete with respect to a bivalent semantics that is classical with respect to negation. (shrink)

This essay explains Mariátegui’s critical relationship with Breton in terms of his views on Surrealism. In order to understand this relationship, this essay engages in an analysis of (i) Mariátegui’s notion of the avant-garde as a synthesis of aesthetics and politics and of (ii) the positioning of Mariátegui’s avant-garde in relation to post First World War European bourgeoisie and fascism. This interpretation of Mariátegui’s reveals a determination of Surrealism as discipline that preserves this movement’s revolutionary task in different geo-historical sites. (...) With attention to the difficult, non-systematic character of Mariátegui’s writings, this essay also provides a series of concepts that could assist further interpretations of Mariátegui’s aesthetics and politics. (shrink)

Virtual screening is the most critical process in drug discovery, and it relies on machine learning to facilitate the screening process. It enables the discovery of molecules that bind to a specific protein to form a drug. Despite its benefits, virtual screening generates enormous data and suffers from drawbacks such as high dimensions and imbalance. This paper tackles data imbalance and aims to improve virtual screening accuracy, especially for a minority dataset. For a dataset identified without considering the data’s imbalanced (...) nature, most classification methods tend to have high predictive accuracy for the majority category. However, the accuracy was significantly poor for the minority category. The paper proposes a K-mean algorithm coupled with Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique to overcome the problem of imbalanced datasets. The proposed algorithm is named as KSMOTE. Using KSMOTE, minority data can be identified at high accuracy and can be detected at high precision. A large set of experiments were implemented on Apache Spark using numeric PaDEL and fingerprint descriptors. The proposed solution was compared to both no-sampling method and SMOTE on the same datasets. Experimental results showed that the proposed solution outperformed other methods. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation of the role of comedy in philosophical thinking, particularly of how comedy reveals the erotic dimension of philosophical thinking.In the first half of the paper, I show that the relation between comedy and Eros is a powerful means to understand in what way philosophy is not technē. Philosophy in its erotic and comedic character is, rather, engaged with an appearing of things as ‘birthed’ or ‘living.’ In the second part of the paper, I focus on (...) the role of comedy in the Laches. There I study the complex relationship between philosophy as erotic thinking and andreia or ‘manliness.’ I show that philosophy as erotic must distinguish itself from manliness and that the enactment of this differentiation is the core of the Laches. At the same time, manliness is not simply something that philosophy should not concern itself with. Philosophy must ask the question ‘what is manliness?’ as a way of enacting manliness and overcoming it, in an overcoming through which philosophy comes to its own erotic core. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation of the role of comedy in philosophical thinking, particularly of how comedy reveals the erotic dimension of philosophical thinking.In the first half of the paper, I show that the relation between comedy and Eros is a powerful means to understand in what way philosophy is not technē. Philosophy in its erotic and comedic character is, rather, engaged with an appearing of things as ‘birthed’ or ‘living.’ In the second part of the paper, I focus on (...) the role of comedy in the Laches. There I study the complex relationship between philosophy as erotic thinking and andreia or ‘manliness.’ I show that philosophy as erotic must distinguish itself from manliness and that the enactment of this differentiation is the core of the Laches. At the same time, manliness is not simply something that philosophy should not concern itself with. Philosophy must ask the question ‘what is manliness?’ as a way of enacting manliness and overcoming it, in an overcoming through which philosophy comes to its own erotic core. (shrink)

This article suggests a frame for thinking together Hegel and Schelling’s competing mature approaches to metaphysics. It argues that both reject modern metaphysics’ belief that there exists such a thing as the “world’s ontology.” In their mature philosophies, Hegel and Schelling develop metaphysical approaches based on what I call the “accountability gap.” For Hegel, reason is a matter of thinking under conceptual presuppositions we come to know and evaluate in hindsight. Hegel gives up on the modern rationalist idea that reason (...) can in principle account for what the world is like without introducing assumptions. In the Logic, he concludes that metaphysics should be reconsidered along the lines of normative authority by freeing it of the commitment to thorough accountability. I describe a similar process in Schelling’s post-1809 metaphysics. In his middle period, Schelling describes traditional metaphysics as unable to account for reason’s creative basis. Reason gets its bearings creatively in a way systematic thinking cannot account for from within. Schelling concludes that reason’s authority arises from “creative storytelling” and not from laying out the world’s ontology. This paper argues for an accountability gap as a helpful construct to draw out the stakes of Hegel and Schelling’s metaphysics. (shrink)

Resumen: Este texto consiste básicamente en una presentación general de la corriente filosófica del nuevo realismo surgida en 2007 y en la que participan autores europeos y norteamericanos. Un punto en común de las diversas posiciones dentro de esta corriente es el deslinde crítico frente a la filosofía posmoderna y a la filosofía moderna en general. Explico esta crítica y sus implicaciones para la posibilidad de un restablecimiento en la filosofía contemporánea del pensamiento metafísico.: This text is basically an overview (...) of philosophical new realism which emerged in 2007 and involves European and American authors. A common point to the various positions within this current is a critical detachment from postmodern philosophy and modern philosophy in general. i explain this criticism and its implications for the possibility of a restoration in contemporary philosophy of metaphysical thought. (shrink)

Theories of ethics that attempt to incorporate divine speech or commands as necessary elements in the construction of moral obligations are often viewed as vulnerable to a challenge based on the so-called Euthyphro dilemma. According to this challenge, opponents of theistic ethics suppose that divine speech either informs one of a preexisting set of values and obligations, which makes it inconsequential, or is entirely arbitrary, which makes it irrational. This essay analyzes some of the debates on the nature of divine (...) commands in eleventh-century works of Islamic jurisprudence. I show that Muʿtazilī jurisprudents advanced the view that divine commands were actions performed in time that had concrete manifestations, while Ashʿarīs argued that divine speech in general, and commands in particular, were eternal divine attributes. After exposing certain weaknesses in the Euthyphro-inspired objections to theistic ethics, I argue that the Ashʿarī idea of commands as divine attributes is a promising move for scholars interested in defending a divine command view of moral obligation. (shrink)

Even though the Islamic legal tradition advanced its own set of conceptions of time, modern scholarship on Islamic law has not paid much attention to these conceptions. This paper argues that Islamic jurisprudents understood time in moral terms, not as a neutral container or mere background for action, but as a series of opportunities in which the authority of divine revelation and human moral reasoning are articulated. I suggest that the debates over the manners of compliance with divine commands in (...) time were attempts at reaching some form of balance between the considerations of faithfulness to the demands of divine revelation and the practical imperatives of human temporal lives. This argument is advanced through a study of classical debates among jurists within the two major Sunnī schools of jurisprudence on the specific question of whether divine commands that are devoid of time indications should result in immediate or delayed performance. (shrink)

ArgumentKeeping records has always been an essential part of science. Aside from natural history and the laboratory sciences, no other observational science reflects this activity of record-keeping better than astronomy. Central to this activity, historically speaking, are tools so mundane and common that they are easily overlooked; namely, the notebook and the pencil. One obvious function of these tools is clearly a mnemonic one. However, there are other relevant functions of paperwork that often go unnoticed. Among these, I argue, is (...) the strategic use made of different procedures of record keeping to prolong observational time with a target object. Highlighting this function will help us to appreciate the supporting role played by the notebook and the pencil to extend the observational time spent with a target object. With objects as delicate, faint, and mysterious as the nebulae, the procedures used to record their observations helped nineteenth-century observers overcome the temporal handicaps and limitations of large and clumsy telescopes, mounted in the altazimuth manner. To demonstrate the importance of paper and pencil, I will closely examine the observing books, the drawings found therein, and the telescopes of three nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John F. W. Herschel, Lord Rosse, and William Lassell. (shrink)

When it comes to Kripke-style semantics for quantified modal logic, there’s a choice to be made concerning the interpretation of the quantifiers. The simple approach is to let quantifiers range over all possible objects, not just objects existing in the world of evaluation, and use a special predicate to make claims about existence. This is the constant domain approach. The more complicated approach is to assign a domain of objects to each world. This is the varying domain approach. Assuming that (...) all terms denote, the semantics of predication on the constant domain approach is obvious: either the denoted object has the denoted property in the world of evaluation, or it hasn’t. On the varying domain approach, there’s a third possibility: the object in question doesn’t exist. Terms may denote objects not included in the domain of the world of evaluation. The question is whether an atomic formula then should be evaluated as true or false, or if its truth value should be undefined. This question, however, cannot be answered in isolation. The consequences of one’s choice depends on the interpretation of molecular formulas. Should the negation of a formula whose truth value is undefined also be undefined? What about conjunction, universal quantification and necessitation? The main contribution of this paper is to identify two partial semantics for logical operators, a weak and a strong one, which uniquely satisfy a list of reasonable constraints. I also show that, provided that the point of using varying domains is to be able to make certain true claims about existence without using any existence predicate, this result yields two possible partial semantics for quantified modal logic with varying domains. (shrink)

Metaphysical naturalism can be taken, roughly, to be the view that there is no God, and nothing beyond nature. Alvin Plantinga has argued that naturalism, in this sense, is self‐defeating. More specifically, he argues that an evolutionary account of human origins gives the naturalist compelling reasons for doubting the reliability of human cognitive faculties, and thus compelling reasons for doubting the truth of any of his beliefs, including naturalism itself. This argument, which has come to be known as the ‘evolutionary (...) argument against naturalism’, has generated a great deal of controversy, and a substantial literature concerning it has grown up as a result. In this paper, I will introduce readers to this literature. I begin by explaining the argument itself, and making clear its intuitive force. I then survey the main objections to it, such as the Perspiration Objection, the ‘Can’t the Naturalist Just Add a Little Something?’ Objection, and the Tu Quoque Objection: in the course of this survey, I pay particular attention to the most interesting of these, a version of the Tu Quoque Objection according to which the problem of evil results in a form of epistemic self‐defeat for the theist that is exactly analogous to the self‐defeat with which the naturalist is allegedly faced in the evolutionary argument. I go on to suggest that, despite the wide range of objections in the literature, the challenge of the evolutionary argument against naturalism is still very much with us, and I conclude by describing some promising directions for future research. (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)

Arguably, the proposition that Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens and the proposition that water is H2O are both a posteriori. Nevertheless, they both seem to be necessary. Ever since Davies and Humberstone :1–31, 1980), it has been known that two-dimensional semantics can account for this fact. But two-dimensionalism isn’t the only theory on the market that purports to do so. In this paper, I will look at two alternatives, one by Scott Soames and one by Kathrin Glüer-Pagin and Peter Pagin, (...) and argue that both of them fail. Regarding the former, I argue that the conceptually possible but metaphysically impossible worlds one is required to postulate are hard to conceive of on closer inspection. As for the latter, the proposal doesn’t work for certain modal sentences, and I show that it cannot be easily amended. (shrink)

Debates about global justice tend to assume normative models of global community without justifying them explicitly. These models are divided between those that advocate a borderless world and those that emphasize the self-sufficiency of smaller political communities. In the first case, there are conceptions of a community of trade and a community of law. In the second case, there are ideas of a community of nation-states and of a community of autonomous communities. The nation-state model, however, is not easily justified (...) and is one that has been criticized extensively elsewhere. The model of a community of trade underlies both advocates of market-oriented development and exponents of global schemes of redistribution of resources and incomes. I analyze the work of Charles Beitz, Peter Singer, and Thomas Pogge to show that the assumption that global interdependence is beneficial is poorly justified. The model of a community of law, as seen in the work of Henry Shue and others, is the basis for arguments against state sovereignty and in favor of international human rights regimes. I argue that this model suffers either from a problem of practicability or of hegemony. Finally, the model of a community of autonomous communities uses notions of patriotism and sovereignty to maintain that disengagement and independence are the best routes to global peace and justice. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that justice is necessarily inapplicable to the global scale, since there is no such thing as a global society in the proper sense. I examine why this is so, and criticize two types of arguments for global justice—maximalist conceptions (such as those of Charles Beitz and Allen Buchanan) that argue for a robust notion of redistribution on the global scale, and minimalist conceptions (such as those of Thomas Pogge and Iris Young) that argue for a (...) notion of redress or solidarity across borders. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that justice is necessarily inapplicable to the global scale, since there is no such thing as a global society in the proper sense. I examine why this is so, and criticize two types of arguments for global justice—maximalist conceptions that argue for a robust notion of redistribution on the global scale, and minimalist conceptions that argue for a notion of redress or solidarity across borders.

The publication of Gillian Brock's Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account in 2009 and of Richard Miller's Globalizing Justice: The Ethics of Poverty and Power in 2010 have created an important occasion for reassessing the discourse about global justice that has arisen in the last decade. Above all, these books have moved the debate about what constitutes global justice in an exciting new direction by introducing important considerations previously lacking. But most essentially, these books give us an opportunity to assess whether (...) the concept of global justice is amenable, not only to exercises in liberal moral thinking, but also to radical social theorizing about deprivation and powerlessness on the international scale. Is there a new paradigm of radical global justice?While I will argue that, ultimately, neither author makes a definitive break with the liberal paradigm, this is not so much a result of faintheartedness or failure of imagination as a deficiency with the concept of global justice itself. I think it may turn out, once these exciting new works have been fully digested, that they are actually pointing the way beyond concern for global justice, in any sense of the term currently extant. What may lie "beyond" global justice will be the object of some brief speculations at the end of this essay. (shrink)

The principle of national self-determination has usually been justified by extending to national groups an entitlement that individuals are regarded as having, namely, to the conditions necessary for their self development. In order to extend the concept of self-determination to nations in this way, an argument that it is important for nations to exist within their own political communities must be given. In this essay, I describe and criticize one type of argument for such a principle of national self-determination – (...) what I will call the communitarian argument.Contemporary communitarians usually contend that determining who rightfully has membership in a political community must precede the allocation of rights and responsibilities between members. Community is understood to mean a national community; membership in communities therefore results from the ascription of national identities to individuals and to the consequent sorting out of loyalties that follows from this ascription. A right of self-determination for nations is required, on this view, in order to ensure that political communities are legitimately formed in accordance with national identities. (shrink)

In this brief article I expound some uses that Hobbes gave to the concept of multitude. Firstly, I explain the distinction between "people" and "multitude", the confusion of which was regarded in De Cive as a cause of sedition. The plural and disunited character of the multitude is highlighted, in comparison with the unity that constitutes the people. Secondly, I show that Hobbes, beyond the cited distinction, makes a relevant use in Leviathan of the principle of representation, in order to (...) show the way in which multitude becomes State. Finally, I highlight the two-fold use given by the author to such concept: on the one hand, by attributing a theoretical role to it, which should allow thinking of the rational construction of the State; on the other, by showing the historical reality of multitude, turned into a source of madness and sedition. (shrink)

The construction industry is typically characterized as a fragmented, multi-organizational setting in which members from different technical backgrounds and moral values join together to develop a particular business or project. The most challenging obstacle in the construction process is to achieve a successful practice and to identify and apply an ethical framework to manage the behavior of involved specialists and contractors and to ensure the quality of all completed construction activities. The framework should reflect a common moral ground for myriad (...) people involved in this process to survive and compete ethically in today’s turbulent construction market. This study establishes a framework for moral judgment of behavior and actions conducted in the construction process. The moral framework provides the basis of judging actions as “moral” or “immoral” based on three levels of moral accountability: personal, professional, and social. The social aspect of the proposed framework is developed primarily from the essential attributes of normative business decision-making models identified in the literature review and subsequently incorporates additional attributes related to professional and personal moral values. The normative decision-making models reviewed are based primarily on social attributes as related to moral theories. The professional and moral attributes are established by identifying a set of common moral values recognized by professionals in the construction industry and required to prevent common construction breaches. The moral framework presented here is the complementary part of the ethical framework developed in Part I of this article and is based primarily on the personal behavior or the moral aspect of professional responsibility. The framework can be implemented as a form of preventive personal ethics, which would help avoid ethical dilemmas and moral implications in the first place. Furthermore, the moral framework can be considered as a decision-making model to guide actions and improve the moral reasoning process, which would help individuals think through possible implications and the consequences of ethical and moral issues in the construction industry. (shrink)