Hospital administrators play an essential role in the implementation of Antibiotic Stewardship Programs, which is instrumental in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. The foundation and sustenance of such programs has been made possible through leadership; this is through interdisciplinary collaboration that is done with policy formulation and stewardship inclusion into the institutional systems. Indeed, it is immense strength where ID physicians and clinical pharmacists with special training proactively involve themselves in the program. Beyond that, the accreditation standards that incorporate ASPs (...) really enhance compliance and institutional commitment. Obstacles to movement include an absence of resources, unwilling prescriber, and other competing health conditions for priority. To achieve such success, the hospital administrators must ensure adequate staffing, proper utilization of advanced technologies, and instillation of accountability through focused education and participation. Besides the reduction of resistance, ASPs contribute to such improvements in patient outcomes, efficient consumption of resources, and significant reductions in costs. As this narrative review indicates, leadership at the hospital level plays an important role in augmenting antibiotic stewardship. Addressing major barriers, along with strategic implementation, means that administrators may play an important role in further maximizing effectiveness while truly adding to the world-wide effort against antimicrobial resistance. (shrink)

Pragmatist Metaphysics proposes a pragmatist re-articulation of the nature, aims and methods of metaphysics. Rather than regarding metaphysics as a ‘first philosophy’, an inquiry into the world independent of human perspectives, the pragmatist views metaphysics as an inquiry into categorizations of reality laden with human practices. Insofar as our categorizations of reality are practice-laden, they are also, inevitably, value-laden. Sami Pihlström argues that metaphysics does not, then, study the world’s ‘own’ categorial structure, but a structure we, through our conceptual (...) and practical activities, impose on the reality we experience and interact with. Engaging with the classical American pragmatists, in particular William James, and neopragmatists, including Hilary Putnam, the author seeks to correct long-held misconceptions regarding the nature of the relationship between metaphysics and pragmatism. He argues that a coherent metaphysical alternative to the currently fashionable realist metaphysics emerges from pragmatism and that pragmatism itself should be reinterpreted in a metaphysically serious manner. Moreover, the book argues that, from a pragmatist perspective, metaphysics must be inextricably linked with ethics. (shrink)

Sergius of Reshaina’s Syriac exposition of Aristotle’s _Categories_, with its discussion on substance, quantity, quality, relatives and the other categories, but also the teaching on space from the _Physics_, is presented here in a critical edition with an English translation.

This book examines the issue of moral realism from a pragmatist point of view, drawing attention to our human practices of ethical evaluation and deliberation. It defends the essentially ungrounded and humanly fundamental place of ethics in our thought and action. Ethics must remain beyond justification and ubiquitous in our human form(s) of life.

In this article, I compare two varieties of abduction as reconstructive models for analysing discovery. The first is 'Hansonian abduction', which is based on N. R. Hanson's formulations of abduction. The other is 'Harmanian abduction', the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) model, formulated especially by Gilbert Harman. Peter Lipton has analysed processes of discovery on the basis of his developed form of Harmanian abduction. I argue that Hansonian abduction would, however, be a more apt model for this purpose. As (...) an example, I reconstruct, in a Hansonian manner, Ignaz Semmelweis's research on childbed fever and compare it to the IBE reconstruction of Lipton. I argue that Hansonian abduction is in accordance with Lipton's aim of taking into account the distinction between actual and potential explanations on the one hand, and between likely and lovely explanations on the other. I maintain that a developed version of Hansonian abduction combined with loveliness gives an important, new conceptual means for analysing processes of discovery. (shrink)

This article argues that Georg Simmel's ideas on secrecy can shed new light on current debates around the relevance or otherwise of privacy as a protection against surveillance interventions. It suggests an interactional approach to privacy, and considers it as a dynamic process which redefines the boundary between what information should be disclosed and what information should be concealed in every social interaction. Simmel argues that this "natural" process relies on the identification of the interlocutor: her psychological/emotional involvement in the (...) relationship, her social position in society and the representation of her expectations. Recent empirical examples show that this interactional perspective may have the potential to reconcile differing privacy accounts, by linking theoretically different levels that are factually distinct: privacy as a collective fact, as a contextual integrity, and as an individual fact. (shrink)

Magna Carta is one of the most important illustrations of the exceptionalism of English common law. Within a completely feudal framework it gave the clearest possible articulation to the concept of the rule of law and at the same time it also showed that there were certain basic rights which every freeman enjoyed without any specific conferment by the king. From English perspective, continental European law after the process of the reception of Roman law was commonly regarded to be apart (...) and different from the English legal tradition, as well as being perceived to pose a continual threat. The English Parliament constantly turned down royal attempts to emulate the continental reception of Roman law by characterizing it as something entirely foreign to English law. Roman law was supposed to promote an authoritarian and absolutist vision of the relationship between rule and subjection and this was expressed in the famous phrases 'princeps legibus solutus' and 'quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem'. Roman law was also anti-feudal, because one of its main principles that all power originated from one central source was the antithesis of the distribution of power over multiple centers, which was a crucial element of the feudal society. Many English historians have held the view that the English law is democratic, whereas the continental tradition is undemocratic and authoritarian, and this is why the Roman law succeeded on the Continent and failed in England. (shrink)

This paper proposes a re-evaluation of the theism vs. atheism controversy from a Kantian transcendental perspective, connected with Jamesian pragmatism. Insofar as there is a morally vital human need to postulate the reality of God, and insofar as this theistic postulation can be regarded as rational or legitimate from the perspective of “practical reason”, metaphysical and ethical aspects of the theism issue turn out to be deeply entangled with each other. A Kantian-cum-pragmatist philosophy of religion will inevitably approach the question (...) of God’s existence from a standpoint that thoroughly synthesizes ethics and metaphysics – just as Kant’s defense of theism as a postulate of practical reason did. (shrink)

In the era Islam emerged, Arabs were calling Jews and Christians as Ahl al-Kitāb, respecting them and affected by them in many ways. When they failed in their debates against the Prophet, they were referring to the scholars of Ahl al-Kitāb and relying on the information they got from them, they were trying to force and beat the Prophet intellectually by their questions. In the Meccan period, no clashes had happened between the Muslims and Ahl al-Kitāb. Jewish scholars had been (...) admitting that they knew the similarity in the topics of Qurʾān and Tawrāt, the Qurʾān were telling the truth and the Prophet was conveying the message of the truth. In some of the verses, these right attitudes of the scholars of Ahl al-Kitāb are used as a reference against Mus̲h̲riks. In the verses said, those scholars are praised and indicated as a source of information for the Prophet as well. The verses related with the topic were understood in parallel with the context and direct meaning of the Nass by some scholars, yet, they were explained not taking the Nuzul environment and process into consideration by some other scholars. It is mentioned that ʿAbdallāh b. Salām and his friends who became Muslims in Medina period have been told in these verses. In this study, level of validity for these interpretations will be evaluated based on Qurʾān –relationship and the fact that some of the asbab al-nuzul (circumstances of revelation) are known to be jurisprudential; and it will be argued that the true meaning of the naṣṣ is overshadowed.Summary: Tafsir is an effort to understand the divine address, and also to understand the relationship between Muslim, polytheist, and People of the Book (Ahl al-kitāb) in the revelation and experience in this context. Since these issues are not explained in a wide and clear manner in the Qur’ān, the hadīths, prophetic biography, narratives of asbâb al-nuzul and the opinions of the companions and the views of the Companions and Tābi‘īn gain importance in understanding the verses. As the narrations of asbâb al-nuzul contain some problems, it is proposed to evaluate this information based on sigas and hadīth method in classical Qur'ānic sciences studies. Although this approach is effective in solving many problems, it does not solve all problems.The question of whether the narrators of asbâb al-nuzul is the real reason for the verse has been discussed from the very beginning. According to Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392) and al-Dihlawī (d. 1176/1762), the expression that “This verse has been revealed on this particular event” does not mean that the verse is revealed particularly and only for this event but rather that it is revealed for an event which is similar to that event, and that, subject verse also covers this provision. A. Nedim Serinsu and A. Rıza Gül also drew attention to this fact and the narratives were divided into two as the real cause of nuzul and virtual cause of nuzul. When this issue is not known, it may become inexorable to analyze and make observations, and there may be problems regarding the interlocutors, date of births, being Meccan or Medinan.Those who want to learn the first-hand meaning of the verses, their interlocutors and the environment of nuzul are facing difficulties to choose between the contradictory narrations especially in narrative-weighted commentaries. It is necessary to pay attention to some points to evaluate the narrations correctly and make the right choice. These points are prophetic biography, the stages of nuzul, information about being Meccan or Medinan, the stages of development of relations between polytheists and Muslims, and tafsīr explanations about nuzul. One of the issues with contradictory narratives and interpretations is ʿAbdallāh b. Salām. As one of the notables of the Medina Jews, he came to him when the Prophet arrived in Kuba, he asked some questions, and when he got the right answers, he became a Muslim saying that they could only be known by a prophet. It is claimed that he believed in the period of Mecca and the eighth year of the Hijr, but this information was not well accepted.Although it was not very intense in Mecca, there were certain relations between Jews and Christians and Muslims. Since there was no conflict between Muslims and the People of the Book, these verses are often praised by their scholars, and they were also cited as a reference for the Prophet and idolaters Some Meccan verses mention the following: Jews who are righteous; the fulfilment of the requirements of the book, and the prayers of the Muslims that will not be wasted; the fact that the scholars of the Israelites know the truths in the Qur'an should be a proof for the idolaters; The Ahl al-kitāb know that the Qur'ān is a divine book; if he has doubts about the verses revealed to the Prophet, he should ask the Jewish scholars; Jews witnessed and believed the truth of the prophethood of the Prophet; the fact that Ahl al-kitāb were delighted with the Qur'ān. In the exegesis of these verses, it has been commented that the interlocutors are ʿAbdallāh b. Salām and his friends, Prophet Muhammad's companions, Selman al-Fârisî, Ali and the kitāb who believed in the Prophet.Since the commentators did not consider the process experienced with the Ahl al-kitāb sufficiently, the verses that were written before becoming Muslim were associated with ʿAbdallāh b. Salām. However, Masrūk (d. 63/683), Sha'bî (d. 104/722) and Said b. Jubayr (d. 94/713 [?]) refused to relate the Meccan verses to ʿAbdallāh b. Salām because they had considered the process of nuzul. When the revelations are evaluated on the basis of the Qur'ān and prophetic biography relationship and the process of nuzul, it is understood that the interlocutors are the scholars of Ahl al-kitāb who know and acknowledge that the Qur'ān and the prophethood are right, as some commentators have indicated. In this case, it is understood that the commentators make comments that are not appropriate to the context, wording and nuzul process of the verses based on the narratives that are not true and that they use the name of ʿAbdallāh b. Salām as a kind of filling material since the information about the interlocutors is limited. It is not acceptable to praise one of them in the revelations when we evaluate the Ahl al-kitāb by generalizing the truth, their hostility towards Islam and the wars. However, there were no clashes with Jews and Christians in Mecca and there were scholars who expressed the truth. They were praised when necessary, and also cited as a reference source for the Prophet and idolaters. In addition, in the verses that criticize the Ahl al-kitāb in the verses Medinan, those who make the mistakes in question are not criticized as a whole. As in these examples, we need to evaluate the verses in the context of the individual process, not with the influence of our established perceptions and with a wholesale mind. Otherwise, unintentional results can be reached. It can be claimed that the Predecessors fell to an anachronism in their explanations about ʿAbdallāh b. Salām which did not conform to the date and time. However, when we consider the views of Ibn Taymiyya, al-Zarkashī and al-Dihlawī, it is understood that the Predecessors expressed views in terms of exegesis, opinion-based sampling rather than an anachronism. These interpretations of the Predecessors also depict that the information available to the interlocutors of the verses is insufficient. The fact that the historical information errors in Predecessors’ illustrations and explanations show that the information transferred from them should be examined carefully and that one must not surrender him/her without investigation. It is a clear fact that those who accept interpretations based on ijtihâd as an actual asbâb al-nuzul fall into anachronism. In this respect, it is understood that asbâb al-nuzul narrations should be evaluated in accordance with the principles mentioned and it is necessary to distinguish between those who tell the real reason and those who do not and make a preference among them. (shrink)

This essay examines critically a number of characteristics of transcendental philosophy. The question, ?What, if anything, distinguishes transcendental philosophy and transcendental arguments from other types of philosophy and argument??, is given a negative answer: nothing, no essential thing, demarcates transcendental argumentation or philosophy from other kinds of philosophical reflection. In particular, argumentative structure alone is not a defining feature of transcendental philosophy. Illustrative examples of recent debates on the meaning and philosophical relevance of the ?transcendental? are discussed in the essay: (...) e.g., attempts to ?naturalize? the transcendental, Wittgensteinian reflections on the limits of meaningful language, and ?merely methodological? interpretations of Kantian transcendental idealism. Through these case studies, it is shown how transcendental inquiry can be rearticulated in a pragmatist context. (shrink)

This article analyzes three approaches to resolving the classical Meno paradox, or its variant, the learning paradox, emphasizing Charles S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. Abduction provides a way of dissecting those processes where something new, or conceptually more complex than before, is discovered or learned. In its basic form, abduction is a “weak” form of inference, i.e., it gives only tentative suggestions for further investigation. But it is not too weak if various sources of clues and restrictions on the abductive (...) search are taken into account. We present three, complementary versions of abduction: (1) as a sort of guessing instinct or expert-like intuition, where unconscious clues are important; (2) as a form of inference, where a strategic point of view is essential; and (3) as a part of distributed cognition and mediated activity, where the interaction with the material, social, and cultural environment is emphasized. Our starting point is Peirce’s own notion of abduction, but we broaden the perspective, especially to the direction of distributed cognition. (shrink)

Pragmatism, the single originally American philosophical tradition, has in recent decades once again become widely discussed in many fields of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and moral philosophy. This study seeks to show, both historically and systematically, that the issue of «human nature, » the main problem of philosophical anthropology, is (or at least should be) at the center of pragmatistic philosophizing. The author formulates a contemporary version of pragmatism largely based on William James's (1842-1910) (...) work, arguing that such a neo-Jamesian framework also can meet postmodernistic and irrationalistic threats. (shrink)

Transcendental Guilt challenges traditional ways of understanding moral philosophy by proposing, instead of mainstream ethical theorizing, a serious moral reflection on our ethical finitude, focusing on the concept of guilt. It argues that guilt plays a "transcendental" role in our ethical lives by being constitutive of the seriousness characteristic of the moral point of view.

Overlaps in form and meaning between morphologically related words have led to ambiguities in interpreting priming effects in studies of lexical organization. In Semitic languages like Arabic, however, linguistic analysis proposes that one of the three component morphemes of a surface word is the CV-Skeleton, an abstract prosodic unit coding the phonological shape of the surface word and its primary syntactic function, which has no surface phonetic content (McCarthy, J. J. (1981). A prosodic theory of non-concatenative morphology, Linguistic Inquiry, 12 (...) 373-418). The other two morphemes are proposed to be the vocalic melody, which conveys additional syntactic information, and the root, which defines meaning. In three experiments using masked, cross-modal, and auditory-auditory priming we examined the role of the vocalic melody and the CV-Skeleton as potential morphemic units in the processing and representation of Arabic words. Prime/target pairs sharing the vocalic melody but not the CV-Skeleton consistently failed to prime. In contrast, word pairs sharing only the CV-Skeleton primed reliably throughout, with the amount of priming being as large as that observed between word pattern pairs sharing both vocalic melody and CV-Skeleton. Priming between morphologically related words can be observed when there is no overlap either in meaning or in surface phonetic form. (shrink)

This survey article discusses the pragmatist tradition in twentieth century philosophy of science. Pragmatism, originating with Charles Peirce's writings on the pragmatic maxim in the 1870s, is a background both for scientific realism and, via the views of William James and John Dewey, for the relativist and/or constructivist forms of neopragmatism that have often been seen as challenging the very ideas of scientific rationality and objectivity. The paper shows how the issue of realism arises in pragmatist philosophy of science and (...) how some pragmatists, classical and modern, have attempted to deal with it. Various dimensions of the realism dispute are thus discussed, especially realism as contrasted to instrumentalism and realism as contrasted to relativism/constructivism. It is argued that the pragmatist tradition cannot avoid these tensions but is largely constituted by them. (shrink)

This communique presents the Q-S synchronization of two nonidentical complex nonlinear hyperchaotic systems with unknown parameters. An adaptive controller based on adaptive integral sliding mode control and parameter update laws are designed to realize the synchronization and parameter identification to a given map vector. The aforementioned strategy’s employment demands the transformation of a system into a specific structure containing a nominal part and some unknown terms. An integral sliding mode controller is used to stabilize the error system by designing nominal (...) control accompanied by compensator control. For chattering suppression, a continuous compensator of smooth nature is used instead of conventional control. The stability of the proposed algorithm is established in an impressive way, using Lyapunov criteria. A numerical simulation is performed to illustrate the validity of the proposed synchronization scheme. (shrink)

This paper discusses William James’s pragmatism in relation to nominalism. James’s views are often contrasted with Peirce’s realism. There are differences between Jamesian and Peircean pragmatisms, but several scholars argue that it is misleading to simply classify James as a nominalist. Moreover, the nominalism vs. realism issue in these early pragmatists is not purely metaphysical but also ethical, illustrating the pragmatists’ tendency to view metaphysics and ethics as deeply entangled. This challenging theme should be further developed today in attempts to (...) rethink the nature and mutual relations of philosophical disciplines. (shrink)

Richard Bernstein has, for several decades, been one of the most prominent thinkers in the tradition of American pragmatism, but he has never narrowly confined his work to pragmatism or American philosophy. His intellectual profile manifests a remarkable pluralism—which, of course, is something that is inherent in the pragmatist tradition itself. The collection of essays honoring Bernstein's legacy edited by Megan Craig and Marcia Morgan is aptly subtitled: "Thinking the Plural". In their various ways, the contributors to this anthology—all of (...) whom have at some point been Bernstein's students in a number of "generations"—not only examine but also exemplify their mentor's deep commitment to... (shrink)

Perspective taking is a critical yet tangled construct that is used to describe a range of psychological processes and that is applied interchangeably with related constructs. The resulting ambiguity is particularly vexing in science education, where although perspective taking is recognized as critical to informed citizens’ ability to negotiate scientifically related societal issues, or socioscientific issues via socioscientific reasoning, the precise nature of perspective taking remains elusive. To operationalize perspective taking, a theoretical conceptual analysis was employed and used to position (...) perspective taking within the context of SSR. The resulting, more precise construct identified as socioscientific perspective taking requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift in one’s viewpoint, and a moral context guided by conscience. (shrink)

In this paper we maintain that abductive inferential processes should be embedded to a more general outlook on human cognition. Abduction has clear a.nities to the so-called interrogative model of inquiry in which inquiry and reasoning are conceptualized as a dialogue. We think, in addition, that dialogicality must be broadened to a “trialogical” framework which means a threefold relationship with mediating artefacts where the inquirer, other inquirers , and the object of knowledge are inextricably bound up with each other in (...) long term processes of inquiry. Seen from this perspective Peirce's semeiotic pragmatism has close connections to modern ideas about distributed cognition; also to Pera's dialectical model of science, and Davidson's theory of triangulation concerning human mind, cognition, and knowledge. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical review of contemporary controversies related to the notion of emergence by discussing, among other recent views, Achim Stephan's defense of the ontological tradition of emergentist thought along the lines of C. D. Broad Stephan's distinctions between various notions of emergence, different in strength, are useful as they clarify the state of discussion. There are, however, several unsettled problems concerning emergence. Some of these (e. g., downward causation) have been dealt with by Stephan, Kim, and others, (...) though not entirely satisfactorily, while others (e. g., the nature of properties, the issue of realism) would require further investigation in this context. It is argued in particular that downward causation would not trouble emergentists, were they willing to adopt a more Kantian and/or Wittgenstenian approach. Some examples of such an option are given. Thus, the article sketches a philosophical perspective from which a radical reassessment of the emergence debate could be pursued. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 12-21, February 2022.

This essay contributes to the debate over whether there is, or can be, any place for metaphysics in pragmatism, in William James's pragmatism, in particular. The paper defends the possibility of pragmatist metaphysics, seeking to show how interesting forms of such metaphysics with a grounding in key Jamesian texts can, pragmatically, be put to work. This task is interesting from the perspective of both James scholarship and the ongoing re-evaluation and critical transformation of the pragmatist tradition. Furthermore, we need metaphilosophical (...) discussion of the possibility and prospects of metaphysics in a situation in which many philosophers believe metaphysics to be dead and buried, partly thanks to the classical pragmatists and their followers. Thus, the present paper examines critically the widespread idea that pragmatism is an inherently non- or even antimetaphysical philosophy (a view held not only by radical neopragmatists like Richard Rorty but also by scholars of classical pragmatism such as Charlene Haddock Seigfried). (shrink)

Classification in statistics is usually used to solve the problems of identifying to which set of categories, such as subpopulations, new observation belongs, based on a training set of data containing information whose category membership is known. The article aims to use the Gaussian Mixture Model to model the daily closing price index over the period of 1/1/2013 to 16/8/2020 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The daily closing price index over the period declined, which might be the effect of (...) corona virus, and the mean of the study period is about 7866.965. The closing price is the last regular deal that took place during the continuous trading period. If there are no transactions on the stock during the day, the closing price is the previous day’s closing price. The closing auction period comes after the continuous trading period, during which investors can enter by buying and selling the stocks at this period. The experimental results show that the best mixture model is E with three components according to the BIC criterion. The expectation-maximization algorithm converged in 2 repetitions. The data source is from Tadawul KSA. (shrink)

"בספרו זה מביא סמי שמואלי את חזונו בדבר "הדרך האמצעית" שהיא הדרך שבה ראוי לנהל את עולמנו. לאחר סקירה מקיפה של מקורות "הדרך האמצעית" בחמש תרבויות - הסינית, ההודית-בודהיסטית, היוונית-נוצרית והאיסלמית, הוא מגיע אל מקורות "הדרך האמצעית" ביהדות, כפי שהיא באה לידי ביטוי בכתבי הקודש ובפירושים הרבים, כולל בהגותו של הרמב"ם"--מן המעטפת האחורית.

Little attention has been given by researchers in organizational behavior to the study of public managers' values and how these values affect their managerial behavior. Therefore, the major objective of this study was to identify the personal value systems and value profiles of public managers, and to systematically examine and discuss the relationship between personal values and related organizational behavior including decision making. The significance of the findings for public policy is briefly discussed, and the need for future research is (...) indicated. (shrink)

This paper argues for a rearticulation of the theory of truthmaking within pragmatism. The concept of truthmaking hasusually been employed by metaphysical realists , but it can be reinterpreted in a pragmatistmanner, following both classical and more recent pragmatists’ ideas on the“making of truth” as a process within human experience and world-categorization. Thus, a pragmatist criticism of metaphysical realism can be extended to the core areas of realist metaphysics, including the truthmaking theory.

Ilkka Niiniluoto, a distinguished philosopher of science, has been a tirelesspokesman for scientific realism and reason more generally. Trained in the tradition of the Finnish school of inductive logic he has refined the notion of truthlikeness (verisimilitude) to make the realist idea scientific progress mathematically exact. Niiniluotos main technical works are included in his books Is Science Progressive? (1984) and Truthlikeness (1987), but his most recent general defense of scientific realism culminated in his Critical Scientific Realism (1999). Niiniluoto is, since (...) 1981, Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, and since 2003 the Rector of the University. He has for a long time been one of the most prominent public intellectuals in Finland. This Festschrift brings about a selection of philosophical essays on Niiniluotos philosophy by prominent member of the international community. The contributions are grouped around three themes. The first ones deal with philosophy of logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mathematics, and the second group consists of papers on induction, truthlikeness, and scientific progress. The third part collects essays on the history of logical empiricism, the ontology of social groups, and the dispute between theism and atheism. This book is a tribute to Ilkka Niiniluoto on his 60th birthday, and it also contains Niiniluoto's replies to comments, queries and criticisms. (shrink)

Withholding and withdrawing artificial nutrition and hydration from terminally ill patients poses many ethical challenges. The literature provides little information about the Islamic beliefs, attitudes, and laws related to these challenges. Artificial nutrition and hydration may be futile and reduce quality of life. They can also harm the terminally ill patient because of complications such as aspiration pneumonia, dyspnea, nausea, diarrhea, and hypervolemia. From the perspective of Islam, rules governing the care of terminally ill patients are derived from the principle (...) that injury and harm should be prevented or avoided. The hastening of death by the withdrawal of food and drink is forbidden, but Islamic law permits the withdrawal of futile, death-delaying treatment, including life support. Nutritional support is considered basic care and not medical treatment, and there is an obligation to provide nutrition and hydration for the dying person unless it shortens life, causes more harm than benefit, or is contrary to an advance directive that is consistent with Islamic law. The decision about withholding or withdrawing artificial nutrition and hydration from the terminally ill Muslim patient is made with informed consent, considering the clinical context of minimizing harm to the patient, with input from the patient, family members, health care providers, and religious scholars. (shrink)