Originally published in 1958. Occasionalism is generally associated in the history of philosophy with the name of Malébranche. But long before this time, the Muslim Theologians of the ninth and tenth centuries had developed an occasionalist metaphysics of atoms and accidents. Arguing that a number of distinctively Islamic concepts such as fatalism and the surrender of personal endeavour cannot be fully understood except in the perspective of the occasionalist world view of Islam, the volume also discusses the attacks on Occasionalism (...) made by Averroes and St. Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

Luciano Floridi’s informational structural realism takes a constructionist attitude towards the problems of epistemology and metaphysics, but the question of the nature of the semantical component of his view remains vexing. In this paper, I propose to dispense with the semantical component of ISR completely. I outline a Syntactical version of ISR. The unified entropy-based framework of information has been adopted as the groundwork of SISR. To establish its realist component, SISR should be able to dissolve the latching problem. We (...) have to be able to account for the informational structures–reality relationship in the absence of the standard semantical resources. The paper offers a pragmatic solution to the latching problem. I also take pains to account for the naturalistic plausibility of this solution by grounding it in the recent computational neuroscience of the predictive coding and the free energy principle. (shrink)

Understanding a normative concept like oppression requires attention to not only its harms but also the causes of those harms. In other words, a complete understanding of such a concept requires a proper causal explanation. This causal explanation can also inform and constrain our moral response to such harms. Therefore, the conceptual explanatory framework that we use to inform our moral diagnosis and our moral response become significant. The first goal of this dissertation is to propose complexity theory as the (...) proper framework for not only explaining a social phenomenon like oppression but also understanding the proper sites for social change. The second goal of this dissertation is to answer three interrelated questions about how we should respond, morally, to a chronic and complex social problem like racial or gender inequality: (1) Why do the current interventions to address these problems fail? (2) Do social movements play any unique role in addressing these problems? (3) What is our individual responsibility to participate in social movements? In response, I argue that the explanatory frameworks that we choose to understand the cause(s) of social problems can be the source of the inadequacy of our intervention. I argue that a proper social and moral intervention needs to capture the complex and dynamic nature of the social world. I also show that changing the explanatory framework allows us to see the unique role social movements play in making effective and sustainable social change possible. Finally, I conclude supporting such movements is a moral imperative. (shrink)

Models of choice over menus aim at capturing the effect of some behavioral or non-standard element of decision-making on the behavior of a single decision-maker. These models are usually compared with the standard model of choice over menus, in which the decision-maker chooses a menu whose best item is better than that of all other available ones. However, in many empirical settings such as experimental studies, choice data come from a population of decision-makers with possibly heterogeneous attitudes and tastes. This (...) heterogeneity can make the observed choices over menus stochastic. This fact calls for a stochastic characterization of models of choice over menus to be able to better compare and contrast different models empirically. In this paper, I do this task for the standard model, which would be an extension of the random utility model to the realm of choice over menus. In particular, I provide the necessary and sufficient conditions, i.e., axioms on choice data over menus for it to be consistent with a population of decision-makers each of whom behaves according to the standard model. The axioms that characterize the model are the axiom of revealed stochastic preferences over singletons and three rationality axioms. (shrink)

This book presents a unified account of the self, based on a network of knowledge sourced from several scientific accounts of selfhood. Beni constructs his ontological account of the self from the common structure that underpins the theoretical diversity that is manifested in rival and sometimes incompatible scientific accounts of the self and its aspects. The enterprise is inspired by recent structural realist theories in the philosophy of science, specifying the basic structure of the self, and explaining how representational, phenomenal, (...) and social aspects of the self are embodied within this structure. (shrink)

This book consists of a systematic analysis of the basic concepts of Islamic ethics and is based on a vast amount of material in Arabic which is not easily accessible to Western scholars, especially those who have no knowledge of the Arabic language.

The second installment in a three‐part series on the Qurʾān and science, this article provides a systematic discussion of the scientific interpretation of the Qurʾān both inside and outside the Muslim world. This discussion reveals how Muslims’ interactions with Euro‐Americans have kept discourse on the Qurʾān and science alive. It also demonstrates how Muslims promoted this exegetical genre transregionally from the Middle East to Southeast Asia.

This fascinating introduction explores the major philosophical, theological and mystical concepts that have developed into Islamic philosophy.

An anthology of critical essays on Islam; collection of articles.

In this book, the author develops a new form of structural realism and deals with the problem of representation. The work combines two distinguished developments of the Semantic View of Theories, namely Structural Realism, a flourishing theory from contemporary philosophy of science, and Ronald Giere and colleagues’ Cognitive Models of Science approach. Readers will see how replacing the model-theoretic structures that are at issue in SR with connectionist networks and activations patterns helps us to deal with the problem of representation. (...) The author suggests that cognitive structures are not only the precise formal tools for regimenting the structure of scientific theories but also the tools that the biological brain uses to capture the essential features of its environment. Therefore, replacing model-theoretic structures with cognitive structures allows us to account for the theories-reality relationship on the basis of the most reliable theories of neurology. This is how a new form of SR, called Cognitive Structural Realism is introduced through this book, which articulates and defends CSR, and shows how two diverging branches of SVT can be reconciled. This ground-breaking work will particularly appeal to people who work in the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The communicative affordances of the participatory web have opened up new and multifarious channels for the proliferation of hate. In particular, women navigating the cybersphere seem to be the target of a disproportionate amount of hostility. This paper explores the contexts, approaches and conceptual synergies around research on online misogyny within the new communicative paradigm of social media communication. The paper builds on the core principle that online misogyny is demonstrably and inherently a discourse; therefore, the field is envisaged at (...) the intersection of digital media scholarship, discourse theorization and critical feminist explications. As an ever-burgeoning phenomenon, online hate has been approached from a range of disciplinary perspectives but has only been partially mapped at the interface of meaning making contents/processes and new mediation technologies. The paper aims to advance the state of the art by investigating online hate in general, and misogyny in particular, from the vantage point of Social Media Critical Discourse Studies ; an emerging model of theorization and operationalization of research combining tenets from Critical Discourse Studies with scholarship in digital media and technology research. Our SM-CDS approach to online misogyny demarcates itself from insinuation whereby the phenomenon is reduced to digital communicative affordances per se and argues in favor of a double critical contextualization of research findings at both digital participatory as well as social and cultural levels. (shrink)

What I call "strategic injustice" involves a set of formal and informal regulatory rules and conventions that often lead to grossly unfair outcomes for a class of individuals despite their resistance. My goal in this paper is to provide the necessary conditions for such injustices and for eliminating their instances from our social practices. To do so, I follow Peter Vanderschraaf's analysis of circumstances of justice and expand his account by embedding "asymmetric conflictual coordination games" that summarize fair division problems (...) in a dynamic social network. I use the network effect on such coordination games to explain the emergence of stable exploitative behavior and conventions by a class of individuals even in the presence of restraining efforts by others. I conclude that such unfair conventions are resilient to uncoordinated individual actions and interventions. In fact, maintaining a rough equality itself turns into another coordination problem. Finally, I show that something similar to a social movement that restructures the network of social relations is necessary to solve such coordination problems. (shrink)

In this paper, inspired by the late twentieth century developments in philosophy of science, I propose an ontological scheme to accommodate the scientifically-informed anti-substantivalist views of the self. I call the position structural realist theory of the self. More specifically, I argue that SRS provides a middle ground for bringing a metaphysical reconciliation between the two recurring, and apparently competing forms of such anti-substantivalist views, i.e., eliminativism and pluralism. The notion of the structural self, as the underpinning pattern that is (...) the subject of the ontological commitments in SRS, is not as cumbersome as the orthodox substantivalist notion, and yet accounts for the relation of the different aspects and elements of the self by integrating them structurally into a central unifying pattern of selfhood. I use the experimental studies of Northoff et al. about the processing of the self-related stimuli in the cortical midline structure of the brain, to argue that the underlying pattern of the selfhood could be sought at the level of information processing. I also add a programmatic suggestion about how the different situated, experiential and extended aspects of the selfhood could be structurally incorporated into this underlying pattern. (shrink)

Benacerraf has presented two problems for the philosophy of mathematics. These are the problem of identification and the problem of representation. This paper aims to reconstruct the latter problem and to unpack its undermining bearing on the version of Ontic Structural Realism that frames scientific representations in terms of abstract structures. I argue that the dichotomy between mathematical structures and physical ones cannot be used to address the Benacerraf problem but strengthens it. I conclude by arguing that versions of OSR (...) that do not rely on mathematical frameworks for representational purposes need not be vulnerable to Benacerraf’s second problem. (shrink)

The last article of this three-part series on the Qurʾān and science discusses the creation and development of the scientific miraculousness of the Qurʾān, which claims that the Qurʾān contains scientific findings and has particular scientific features, such as harmonious numerical analogies and formulae, that confirm the divine origin of the text. It became a political-theological tool used by Muslim preachers and activists across the globe. Unlike scientific interpreters of the Qurʾān, advocates of scientific miraculousness were concerned with not only (...) uniting Muslims and proving God's authority over the universe but also promoting the Qurʾān as a mine of modern science, archaeology, and history, the authenticity of which is unchallengeable. (shrink)

According to widespread opinion, the meaning of body part terms is determined by salient discontinuities in the visual image; such that hands, feet, arms, and legs, are natural parts. If so, one would expect these parts to have distinct names which correspond in meaning across languages. To test this proposal, we compared three unrelated languages—Dutch, Japanese, and Indonesian—and found both naming systems and boundaries of even basic body part terms display variation across languages. Bottom-up cues alone cannot explain natural language (...) semantic systems; there simply is not a one-to-one mapping of the body semantic system to the body structural description. Although body parts are flexibly construed across languages, body parts semantics are, nevertheless, constrained by non-linguistic representations in the body structural description, suggesting these are necessary, although not sufficient, in accounting for aspects of the body lexicon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Tenth-Century Arabic Interpretation of Plato's Cosmology MAJID FAKIIRY OF PLATO'STHIRTY-SIXDIALOG~Y~Sonly the Timaeus is devoted entirely to cosmological questions. The influence of this dialogue on the development of cosmological ideas in antiquity and the Middle Ages was very great. At a time when the knowledge of Greek philosophy and science in Western Europe had almost vanished, the Timaeus was the only Greek cosmological work to circulate freely in (...) learned circles. The translation and commentary of Chalcidius (c. 350) made the Timaeus available to Latin scholars, at least up to c. 53. But interest in the Timae~s was sustained for a long time before that. The lost commentary of Posidonius of Apamea (d. 51 B.C.), the De animae procreatione in Timeo of Plutarch (d. A.D. 125), the commentary of Proclus (d. 485), extant up to 44d,1 are the most important links in this continuous chain of Platonic cosmological exegesis in antiquity. In the Arabic tradition, the Timaeus had a decisive impact on the development of cosmological ideas also. Plutarch and Proclus were familiar names in the history of Platonic and post-Platonic thought, but I am not aware that the Stoic Posidonius, whom Zeller has described as ".the most universal mind that Greece had seen since the time of Aristotle," 2 was known to the Arabs, or that any mention of his commentary on the Timaeus is to be found in the Arabic sources. General interest in Platonism was an early feature of the philosophical wave which swept the Islamic learned world in the 8th century, and Zeller may be right in saying that it was the Platonic School of Athens which gave Muslim Neoplatonism its peculiar stamp. 3 One of the earliest translators of philosophical texts into Arabic, Yah.ia (b. al-Bit.riq) who flourished in the 2rid half of the 8th century, is credited with the translation of the Timaeus, later retranslated or revised by Hunain (b. Ish~q; d. 873) and Yahia (b. 'Adi and not, as Sarton has it, b. 'Ali; d. 974).~ In addition, the following Platonic dialogues appear to have been translated into Arabic: The Sophistes, the Parmenides, the Cratylus, the Euthydemus, the Republic, the Statesman, the Laws and the Crito. The determination of the actual translator of each work poses serious difficulties. In an autobiographical tract, Hunain simply reports that either he or his disciple Is~ (b. Yahia) translated these works for his patron Muhammad (b. Cf. A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plata's Timaeu~ (Oxford, 1928),pp. 34f., and George Sarton, History o] Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1959),I, 428f. Cf. E. Zeller,OutEnesof the History oSGreek Philosophy (N.Y., 1955),p. 268. sIbid., p. 329. ' Cf. al-Fihrist (Cairo, N~D.),p. 358. [15] 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Musa), the astrologer.~ Other writers corroborate or supplement this account. Thus Ibn al-Nadim (d. 997), ascribes to Hunain the interpretation (tarsi'r) of the Republic, to him and to Ibn 'Adi the translation of the Laws, and to his son Ish.iq the translation of the Sophistes, together with the commentary of Olympiodorus2 The Crito appears to have been translated also by Yahia (b. Adi), and extensive excerpts from it and the Phaedo are often quoted in the Arabic sources in connection with the trial and execution of Socrates. Another difficulty is raised by the fact that none of the Arabic versions of these dialogues which have come down to us, either as separate works or parts of general commentaries such as the Laws, the Timaeus and the Republic, are complete, so that the inference is inescapable that, as borne out by Hunain's own testimony, it was Galen's paraphrases or compendia of these works, or at any rate those which were translated into Arabic within the School of Hunain, that are actually referred to in our sources.7 It is not, however, with the general diffusion of Platonism in the Muslim world that I am primarily concerned here, but rather with the impact of Platonic cosmological theory as illustrated in the writings of Abu Bakr Muhammad (b. Zakariya al-Razi; d., c. 932), the Rhases of Latin authors, the greatest... (shrink)

The question of judgment has become one of the central problems in recent social, political and ethical thought. This paper explores Hannah Arendt's decisive contribution to this debate by attempting to reconstruct analytically two distinctive perspectives on judgment from the corpus of her writings. By exploring her relation to Aristotelian and Kantian sources, and by uncovering debts and parallels to key thinkers such as Benjamin and Heidegger, it is argued that Arendt's work pinpoints the key antinomy within political judgment itself, (...) that between the viewpoints of the political actor and the political spectator. The paper concludes by highlighting some lacunae and difficulties in the development of Arendt's account, difficulties that set challenges for those theorists (such as Seyla Benhabib and Alessandro Ferrara) who wish to appropriate and extend Arendt's contribution into the field of contemporary critical theory. Key Words: action • aesthetics • community • freedom • history • judgment • reflection. (shrink)

Free Energy Principle underlies a unifying framework that integrates theories of origins of life, cognition, and action. Recently, FEP has been developed into a Markovian monist perspective. The paper expresses scepticism about the validity of arguments for Markovian monism. The critique is based on the assumption that Markovian models are scientific models, and while we may defend ontological theories about the nature of scientific models, we could not read off metaphysical theses about the nature of target systems from our theories (...) of nature of scientific models. The paper draws attention to different ways of understanding Markovian models, as material entities, fictional entities, and mathematical structures. I argue that none of these interpretations contributes to the defence of a metaphysical stance. This is because scientific representation is a sophisticated process, and properties of Markovian models—such as the property of being neither physical nor mental—could not be projected onto their targets to determine the ontological properties of targets easily. (shrink)

The linguistic and cognitive sciences have severely underestimated the degree of linguistic diversity in the world. Part of the reason for this is that we have projected assumptions based on English and familiar languages onto the rest. We focus on some distortions this has introduced, especially in the study of semantics.

Emotion scientists often take an ambivalent stance concerning the role of language in a science of emotion. However, it is important for emotion researchers to contemplate some of the consequences of current practices for their theory building. There is a danger of an overreliance on the English language as a transparent window into emotion categories. More consideration has to be given to cross-linguistic comparison in the future so that models of language acquisition and of the language–cognition interface fit better the (...) extant variation found in today’s peoples. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 94 Heft: 1 Seiten: 299-304.

The application of geometry to physics has provided us with new insightful information about many physical theories such as classical mechanics, general relativity, and quantum geometry. The geometry also plays an important role in foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information. In this work we discuss a geometric framework for mixed quantum states represented by density matrices, where the quantum phase space of density matrices is equipped with a symplectic structure, an almost complex structure, and a compatible Riemannian metric. This (...) compatible triple allow us to investigate arbitrary quantum systems. We will also discuss some applications of the geometric framework. (shrink)

Ethics and basic moral principles according to Islam; collection of articles previously published in Tekad tabloid.

This article aims at highlighting the specificities of Gaston Bachelard’s «La poétique de la rêverie», seen as the pivot of Motesquieu’s imaginary creation in Persian Letters. The Same and the Other are two essential terms when trying to find the place imagology plays in an intercultural approach where France and Persia are associated with an enchanted exoticism. Criteria such as space, taste, the marvellous and verisimilitude will be examined in order to analyse the images vehiculated by the perceived society and (...) by the perceiving one and to evaluate Montesquieu’s genius for social irony. (shrink)

Lectures on a spiritual, civil society in Indonesia based on Islamic ethics in the framework of regional autonomy.

This paper attempts to sketch a critical model of political community by drawing upon recent contributions to the theory of ‘recognition’, particularly in the work of Axel Honneth. The paper proceeds by, first, delineating key features shared by a range of positions associated with ‘communitarianism’, along with the limitations and problems incurred by these commitments. The second part of the paper attempts to mobilise Honneth’s theoretical work to develop a conception of community that shares a number of the basic premisesvis-á-vis (...) political life associated with communitarianism, but which nevertheless accommodates the reservations expressed by communitarianism’s liberal and radical critics. (shrink)

When researchers think about the interaction between language and emotion, they typically focus on descriptive emotion words. This review demonstrates that emotion can interact with language at many levels of structure, from the sound patterns of a language to its lexicon and grammar, and beyond to how it appears in conversation and discourse. Findings are considered from diverse subfields across the language sciences, including cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and conversation analysis. Taken together, it is clear that emotional expression is (...) finely tuned to language-specific structures. Future emotion research can better exploit cross-linguistic variation to unravel possible universal principles operating between language and emotion. (shrink)