One of William Lane Craig's key arguments for the finitude of the past is the Successive Addition Argument (SAA). Malpass (2021) has recently developed a novel challenge to the SAA, utilising a thought experiment from the work of Fred Dretske, which is meant to show that it is possible to count to infinity, to argue that there is a counterexample to the SAA's second premise. In this paper, I contend that the Malpass‐Dretske counterexample should not worry advocates of the SAA. (...) First, I argue that one objection Malpass considers—the Potential Infinite Objection—reveals an interesting fact: the SAA's second premise is unnecessarily strong and can be weakened whilst still yielding the same conclusion. Second, I show how another one of the objections considered by Malpass—the Accumulation Objection—is successful, provided some clarification to the SAA's premises. The upshot of both analyses is that we generate two ‘new’ Successive Addition arguments that not only move the dialectic forward, but shed light on deeper assumptions and motivating intuitions concerning the Kalām. (shrink)

Ijtihad is the mujtahid's putting forward all his efforts on a fiqh issue within the framework of methodological principles. Fatwa, on the other hand, are the explanations made regarding the questions asked in fiqh issues. Therefore, although there are similarities between fatwa and ijtihad in terms of declaring a fiqh knowledge, there are also some differences that distinguish both scientific activities from each other. Because of this difference, not every ijtihad qualifies as a fatwa that a Muslim can apply in (...) his life. A jurist who does not have the qualifications for ijtihad has to pay attention to when giving a fatwa by making use of the classical period ijtihad. The most important thing to consider when benefiting from the ijtihads that have been put forward is to correctly distinguish between the ijtihads that are historical and those that will always be used. In the fiqh books, there are many issues that can be described as historical ijtihad, in the context of their own time and conditions. Since it is not possible to present all such ijtihads within the framework of an article, in this study, the subject is discussed within the framework of ijtihads selected from fiqh books. From international relations to family law, there are many historically qualified ijtihads in the fields of fiqh, especially in the field of transactions. Today, international relations are quite different. It is of great importance to redefine the world and present fiqh rules accordingly. In the changing social structure, a new perspective is needed in the determination of the muruet. In the process of women's social position and participation in social life, great changes have been experienced all over the world and women have started to take part in many areas of life. In terms of the minimum age limit for marriage, it has become natural to marry at an older age than in the past. It has become almost impossible to act with the approach that those who have the same belief will obtain citizenship without other terms and conditions. It has become necessary to consider the views of jurists regarding the rights of non-Muslim citizens from a new perspective in the globalizing world structure. The implementation of views that give authority to private property owners regarding mineral ownership may be harmful to the security of the state and the public interest. There has been a need to look again at the legal provisions regarding the treasures under the ground in terms of public interest. In the article, it is stated why the ijtihads on the aforementioned issues have a historical character and in which framework the issue should be handled today. (shrink)

This work of ours is about the servant's display of behavior such as ruminating while fulfilling his responsibility to Allah. Since the verse related to our subject is in the Surah Hucurat, an evaluation will be made within the framework of this verse. During this evaluation, verses with similar characteristics that we think may be relevant will also be included. In addition, it will not only touch on the historical dimension of the issue, but also draw attention to what kind (...) of attitudes are exhibited today. Indeed, such behavior It continues in the same way in later periods as it did in the period of the Prophet. The person sent to the world for a test is responsible for fulfilling some obligations in this context. This is not a choice but a necessity. This is because man's being rewarded in the hereafter and living a more peaceful life in this world depend on this. Therefore, it is in his favor to fulfill his duty of servitude. For this reason, it is not morally correct to try to make others feel grateful for the behavior he fulfilled in accordance with the divine command. Because Allah is never in need of a servant's worship. There will always be people who will serve Him. It is the human being that is in need. Since everything he owns is at Allah's discretion, he needs Allah's help and support throughout his life, and even more so in the hereafter. The main goal of our study is to reveal opinions about how people should behave while fulfilling their servitude responsibility. In this context, the position of the creator and the issue of where the servant should stand against it will be explained. While the creator is at the highest position, man is only one of the things that he created. Of course, being given responsibility, unlike other beings, has increased the value of man in the sight of Allah. But this value is valid as long as he fulfills his servitude responsibility. Otherwise, he will descend to a lower level than all creatures. No matter how valuable a person is, he has to be aware of how helpless he is in front of his creator and that he is always in need of him. If he is not aware of this, the worship and good behavior he will perform will have no value in the sight of Allah. Because he could not behave in the way He wanted against the being he was responsible for. If he does this on purpose, of course, the price will be higher. The belief part of the issue is of greater importance. As a matter of fact, a person who appreciates Allah properly and knows His power well will need to determine his attitudes accordingly. In this context, knowing what the attributes of Allah mean and what the dimensions of these attributes are reflected in the servants will make the subject more understandable. Because the way to know Allah is to know His attributes. Another relevant issue is to show the necessary respect to the messengers sent by Allah, both in their lives and in the context of the knowledge they left behind. In this context, it will be necessary in our opinion to act with the knowledge that the hadiths that have reached us authentically are interpretations of the Qur'an. Because they are not people acting on their own, but chosen people who fulfill their duties according to Allah's orders. Therefore, disrespect to them will be considered as disrespect to God. It is seen that the Bedouins acted unconsciously on this issue that we are focusing on. These people who are new Muslims or claim to be Muslims. They had an extreme attitude towards the Prophet. This event did not occur once, but several times in similar ways. As we have just mentioned, their behavior will actually be considered disrespectful to Allah. It is known that they act with purely worldly motives. Because, instead of receiving good news, prayer and advice for the hereafter, they have revealed that they are after worldly interests in material terms. Verses on the subject have been revealed to set an example for people who will follow this attitude and show the same behavior in the future. In response to their behavior. It is admirable that the Prophet kept his calm and behaved tolerantly instead of responding to them in kind. Muslims living in later periods will also need to be more careful not to be exposed to the warning in the verse. (shrink)

In this paper, Taylor series is used to solve neutrosophic multi-objective programming problem (NMOPP). In the proposed approach, the truth membership, Indeterminacy membership, falsity membership functions associated with each objective of multi-objective programming problems are transformed into a single objective linear programming problem by using a first order Taylor polynomial series. Finally, to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method, a numerical experiment for supplier selection is given as an application of Taylor series method for solving neutrosophic multi-objective programming problem (...) at end of this paper. (shrink)

This book is the culmination of over twenty years of work toward a pedagogical theory that promotes experiential learning of model-laden theory and inquiry in science.

In this paper an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model, for predicting the category of a tumor was developed and tested. Taking patients’ tests, a number of information gained that influence the classification of the tumor. Such information as age, sex, histologic-type, degree-of-diffe, status of bone, bone-marrow, lung, pleura, peritoneum, liver, brain, skin, neck, supraclavicular, axillar, mediastinum, and abdominal. They were used as input variables for the ANN model. A model based on the Multilayer Perceptron Topology was established and trained using (...) data set which its title is “primary tumor” and was obtained from the University Medical Centre, Institute of Oncology, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia Test data evaluation shows that the ANN model is able to correctly predict the tumor category with 76.67 % accuracy. (shrink)

Comment rendre compte de la génération de la forme, lorsque le difforme et l'informe conjuguent avec elle leurs puissances dans le processus de formation des êtres vivants, des œuvres d'art, des génies, des comportements éthiques et politiques, ainsi que des figures de style et d'écriture? A l'écart des " systèmes " et des " abstractions " de la tradition philosophique antérieure, Diderot réévalue l'idée de forme et reconfigure l'idée de nature, selon l'inspiration matérialiste de sa philosophie. Il parvient ainsi à (...) construire l'alliance féconde des savoirs positifs et de l'imagination naturante. Cette réappropriation matérialiste de l'idée de forme permet d'en comprendre l'usage dans la philosophie naturelle, l'art, la littérature, l'éthique et la politique. Est ainsi mise en évidence l'aptitude heureuse de la forme à épouser le mouvement et la singularité, à penser la métamorphose et à dire la génialité de la puissance inventive de la nature où prolifèrent les variétés inédites.. (shrink)

This book explores the theory of love in the writings of the Great Andalusian Sufi Sheikh, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn 'Arabī (558-638/1165-1240). It begins by examining Divine and human love as found in the works of many Sufi masters that preceded Ibn 'Arabī, and then turns to the views of Ibn 'Arabīhimself.

The meta-problem is 'the problem of explaining why we think that there is a problem of consciousness' (Chalmers, 2018, p. 6). This presupposes that we think there is a problem in the first place. We challenge the breadth of this 'we', arguing that there is already sufficient empirical evidence to cast doubt on the claim. We then add to this body of evidence, presenting the results of a new cross-cultural study extending the work of Sytsma and Machery (2010).

Causal finitism, the view that the causal history of any event must be finite, has garnered much philosophical interest recently—especially because of its applicability to the Kalām cosmological argument. The most prominent argument for causal finitism is the Grim Reaper argument, which attempts to show that, if infinite causal histories are possible, then other paradoxical states of affairs must also be possible. However, this style of argument has been criticized on the grounds of (i) relying on controversial modal principles, and (...) (ii) providing a false diagnosis of the paradoxes involved. In this paper, I develop a new kind of Grim Reaper argument immune to these criticisms. I show that, by using insights from the literature on time travel, causal finitists should instead argue that infinite causal histories are problematically inexplicable, as they entail the possibility of unexplained foiling mechanisms. The fruits of this paper are that (i) a novel supporting argument for the Kalām is developed, and (ii) along the way of building this argument, it is shown that the literatures on time travel and causal finitism are deeply and intimately connected. (shrink)

The Successive Addition Argument (SAA) is one of the key arguments espoused by William Lane Craig for the thesis that the universe began to exist. Recently, Malpass, Mind, 131(523), 786–804 (2021) has developed a challenge to the SAA by way of constructing a counterexample that originates in the work of Fred Dretske. In this paper, I show that the Malpass-Dretske counterexample is in fact no counterexample to the argument. Utilizing a distinction between properties of members and properties of collections, I (...) argue that Malpass’ counterexample has no bearing on the soundness of the SAA. I also develop a novel parity argument against Malpass’ argument that I demonstrate can only be resolved by way of the aforementioned analysis. (shrink)

O artigo explora as fontes históricas da lenda O riso de Demócrito e o pranto de Heráclito, com destaque para a antiguidade greco-romana e para a modernidade renascentista. É realizado um estudo genealógico da referida lenda, seguido da análise de três obras: as Cartas do Pseudo-Hipócrates (c. século I d.C.) e os discursos oratórios de Antônio Vieira (Le lacrime d'Eraclito) e de Girolamo Cattaneo (Il riso di Democrito) (1674). Diante da tirania da felicidade que se impõe nas sociedades contemporâneas, o (...) resgate desse construto cultural milenar serve como locus de reflexão sobre prudencialidade ética e condição humana. (shrink)

We examine the role of religiosity on the financing activities in both Islamic and conventional banks in Indonesian provinces by using five different measures of religiosity: number of Islamic schools, hajj application, number of Islamic seminary schools, number of Mosques, and number of certified halal products. Based on regression analysis, the results show that both Islamic and conventional banks provide more financing in religious provinces. Religiosity also helps in reducing the volume of non-performing financing. Our the results are still qualitatively (...) valid after taking into account endogeneity issue that emanates from omitted variables (i.e., unobservable beliefs, ideas, and attitudes), and possible reverse causality between religiosity and the total amount of financing at the province level. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 1, Page 13-15, January 2012.

The well-known perception of war-hungry Muslims who had the Qur’an on the one hand and sword on the other offering a choice of either accepting Islam or losing one’s head has easily been created in the literature by the Orientalist scholars. Today the stress on the Jihad controversy by mass media in Europe and America is important and needs to be corrected. That jihad has usually been translated by the Western media as “holy war” is a greatly misunderstood principle in (...) Islam. There is no term in Arabic which means, “holy war”. War is not “holy” in Islam. I would like to divide this study into two parts: In the first part, the issue of conquest and its religious, ideological and theoretical references will be dealt with in reference to basic Islamic sources and the previous Islamic state’s practices. In particular, what are the limits of warfare and the position of civilians in the wars and wartimes according to the Islamic law will be looked for. In the second part, as a typical Islamic state, to what extend Ottoman conquests in the Balkans followed and practiced the legal way that opened up by Islamic law will be analyzed according to the available chronicles. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An ethical analysis of Jordan's Clinical Research Law, which became effective in 2001, was performed. Accordingly, this paper discusses the major components, key strengths and weaknesses of this law. As an initial effort, the Law addresses important aspects of research ethics and, hence, should serve as an example for other Arab Countries in the Middle East. Unique aspects of the Law include the requirement that those conducting any study have insurance that can compensate for research injuries and a system (...) of fines and punishments for noncompliance with the Law. There are, however, some key items missing in the Jordanian Law. For example, the Law does not mention the requirement of a favourable assessment of risks and benefits, the fair selection of subjects, or articles regarding the protection of the rights and welfare of children and other vulnerable subjects participating in research. The paper concludes with the suggestion that new amendments should be considered for future revisions of the Clinical Research Law in Jordan. (shrink)

It is a common intuition in scientific practice that positive instances confirm. This confirmation, at least based purely on syntactic considerations, is what Nelson Goodman’s ‘Grue Problem’, and more generally the ‘New Riddle’ of Induction, attempt to defeat. One treatment of the Grue Problem has been made along Bayesian lines, wherein the riddle reduces to a question of probability assignments. In this paper, I consider this so-called Bayesian Grue Problem and evaluate how one might proffer a solution to this problem (...) utilizing what I call a phenomenological approach. I argue that this approach to the problem can be successful on the Bayesian framework. (shrink)

this article makes the case that the rationale of open science and responsible innovation will help to build public planetary goods: the necessity of this rationale is illustrated on the COViD-19 case.

This paper is an evaluation and expansion of William Hasker’s transcendental argument against determinism. Hasker’s argument attempts to show that determinism is logically incompatible with rationality and justified belief. Hasker claims this argument to be conclusive given two independent qualifications: first that the argument only applies to a specific form of determinism, and second that the argument rests on a specific conception of rationality. My aim in this paper will be to modify and expand Hasker’s argument such that it (1) (...) applies to the more general deterministic thesis (as defined below), and (2), rests on a modified epistemic conception of rationally unaffirmable beliefs. I will attempt to do (2) by modeling Hasker’s argument after one of Alvin Plantinga’s epistemological arguments against naturalism, and hope to show that such an argumentative model is superior for the conclusion Hasker wishes to bring out. I will begin by explicating Hasker’s argument, and then I will move to the modification and expansion of the argument. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there is a relationship between a person's degree of religiousness and corporate social responsibility orientation. A total of 411 managers and 506 students from seven universities were surveyed. The statistical analysis showed that religiousness does influence students' orientation toward the economic, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of business. It does not, however, have a significant impact upon the managers' attitudes. When the "low religiousness" students and managers were compared, differences were found with (...) respect to the economic, ethical, and philanthropic components of corporate social responsibility. Similar results were obtained when the "high religiousness" students and managers were compared. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, a nonlinear dynamical system is proposed and qualitatively analyzed to study the dynamics and effects of HIV-malaria co-infection in the workplace. Basic reproduction numbers of sub-models are derived and are shown to have LAS disease-free equilibria when their respective basic reproduction numbers are less than unity. Conditions for existence of endemic equilibria of sub-models are also derived. Unlike the HIV-only model, the malaria-only model is shown to exhibit a backward bifurcation under certain conditions. Conditions for optimal control (...) of the co-infection are derived using the Pontryagin’s maximum principle. Numerical experimentation on the resulting optimality system is performed. Using the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, it is observed that combining preventative measures for both diseases is the best strategy for optimal control of HIV-malaria co-infection at the workplace. (shrink)

Contact Logics provide a natural framework for representing and reasoning about regions in several areas of computer science. In this paper, we focus our attention on reasoning methods for Contact Logics and address the satisfiability problem and the unifiability problem. Firstly, we give sound and complete tableaux-based decision procedures in Contact Logics and we obtain new results about the decidability/complexity of the satisfiability problem in these logics. Secondly, we address the computability of the unifiability problem in Contact Logics and we (...) obtain new results about the unification type of the unifiability problem in these logics. (shrink)

The menace of conflicts and natural disasters in different states of the world had spiralled into a global phenomenon of Internally Displaced Persons. These are groups of humans who had helplessly drifted away from their natural and ancestral home due to conflicts and disasters but had not crossed international boundaries into another country. They merely take solace by the protection offered by the spirit and letters of relevant international laws which have domesticated by member states. This paper seeks to answer (...) the question regarding the extent to which the IDPs have become a menace in Nigeria. The paper reveals that many governments’ actions are the primary and the root cause of the IDPs while others are recipient of the domino effect. The paper relies on a panel data elicited from thirteen out of the thirty six states in Nigeria. The paper reveals the need for urgent measures by government to douse the upsurge in the number of IDPs. The political settlement analysis was used to proffer a better way of culminating the crises. Recommendations are directed to the individuals, civil societies and the government at all levels. (shrink)

Often, semantic accounts of ethical statements wherein those statements have their truth-conditions linked in some capacity to the mental state of an agent face the difficulty of explaining how it is that moral agents and communities genuinely disagree. However, there are––I shall argue––such semantic theories of ethical statements we can construct that avoid this explanatory deficit, insofar as they are both absolute and dispositional theories. In this paper, I will (i) explore and analyze one such semantic theory, Roderick Firth (1952)’s (...) ‘ideal observer theory’, and its relation to the problem of genuine moral disagreement, and (ii) argue that the theory successfully accounts for genuine moral disagreement in virtue of its being absolute and dispositional. (shrink)

Zihnî temsillerin onto-epistemolojik statüsü İbn Sînâ sonrası felsefenin en tartışmalı problemleri arasında görülebilir. Problemin kökenleri bir yandan İbn Sînâ’nın farklı varlık düzlemleri arasında yüklemsel birlik elde etme teşebbüsünde, diğer yandan Fahreddin er-Râzî’nin zihnî varlık ve zihnî misallerin tümelliği eleştirisinde bulunur. Fahreddin er-Râzî’nin eleştirileri İbn Sînâ’nın önde gelen takipçilerini, İbn Sînâ’nın mahiyetlerin farklı varlık seviyelerinde korunumu ilkesini ve onun bilgiyi doğanın gayrimaddi temsili olarak tanımlamasını yeniden düşünmeye sevk etmiştir. Fahreddin er-Râzî’nin eleştirilerine karşı Nasîrüddin et-Tûsî mahiyetlerin ontolojik kapsamını daraltmış ve tümel yüklemlemeyi (...) yeniden tanımlamıştır. Kutbüddin er-Râzî’nin tartışmaya dâhil olması daraltma çabalarını daha ileri bir seviyeye taşımıştır. Tûsî’nin mahiyetlere sadece epistemolojik bir rol vererek onların ontolojik kapsamında yaptığı daraltmaya ilaveten Kutbüddin er- Râzî mahiyetlerin epistemolojik kapsamında da daraltmaya gitmiş ve İbn Sînâ’nın aklî suretlerini, hiçbir şekilde tümel olması mümkün olmayan, tikel bir zihindeki tikel suretler olarak değerlendirmiştir. Ayrıca Tûsî’yle birlikte, kendinde mahiyetlerin hariçteki fertler arasında müşterek varlığını reddeden Kutbüddin er-Râzî, bu iki adımdan yola çıkarak mutabakat ve tümellik tasavvurlarını yeniden tanımlamış, İbn Sînâ’nın hilomorfik cevher teorisi için mereolojik olmayan bir yorum geliştirmiştir. Bu makale İbn Sînâcı felsefede on üçüncü yüzyıldan itibaren ortaya çıkan bu adımları, İbn Sînâ’ya özgü gerçekçiliğin dönüşümü olarak okumakta ve bu dönüşüme giderek artan zihinselci bir eğilimin eşlik ettiğini öne sürmektedir. (shrink)

A leading scholar of humanitarian intervention, Brown (2002) refers to British internal politics to satisfy the influential church and other non-conformist libertarian community leaders, and above all ?undermining Britain's competitors, such as Spain and Portugal, who were still reliant on slave labour to power their economies, as the principal motivation for calls to end the slave trade than any genuine humanitarian concerns of racial equality or global justice?. Drawing on an empirical exploration, this article seeks to draw a parallel between (...) this politics of humanitarian intervention which characterised the abolition movement, albeit rarely recognised in the academic literature, and the British intervention to end the almost 11 year civil war in Sierra Leone. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of this politics of humanitarian intervention in the reconstruction of post-conflict Sierra Leone. (shrink)

This article, using methods from corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, reports the findings of a research project that aimed to explore the representations of Syrian asylum seekers in the Turkish press from March 2011, when the first Syrians arrived in Turkey, to December 2015, when the project ended. Using a corpus of 2321 texts collected from five Turkish daily newspapers, concordances of the words Syrian, refugee and asylum seeker were examined and grouped along patterns through which discourses on and (...) around Syrian asylum seekers were uncovered. We found differing discourses that framed asylum seekers as ‘our brothers’, ‘victims’, ‘needy people’ and/or ‘threat’, ‘criminals’ and so on. Newspapers maintained one or a combination of these discourses to construct their own reality about the refugee crisis in Turkey. The analysis also reveals that Turkish newspapers use pertinent terms interchangeably, leading to an ambiguity which reflects the political as well as daily usage of the terms. (shrink)