Publication date: 16 April 2018 Source: Author: Amjad Hedayat, Fatemeh Nemati Sogolitappeh, Reza Shakeri, Mohamad Abasifard, Mohamad Khaledian One of the concerns of the organization and management experts is to identify effective factors on organization performance and finding solutions to improve organization performance. The present study was done to analyse the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction in visiting lectures of Payam Nour University. Statistical population of this research includes visiting lectures of Ghorveh town who were teaching in (...) the academic year of 2016-2017. Sample size of 60 participants was selected by simple random sampling. To collect data, Meyer and Allen organizational commitment questionnaire and Field and Rothe job satisfaction questionnaire were used. The research method is correlation which is incorporated in the area of applied studies to analyse data, descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics were utilized. The findings show that there is positive and significant relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Regression coefficient shows that organizational commitment predicts 42.2 % of the job satisfaction changes. (shrink)

The meaning of a science rooted in the sacred, its contrast to modern science and its pertinence to us today.

Abortion is forbidden under normal circumstances by nearly all the major world religions. Traditionally, abortion was not deemed permissible by Muslim scholars. Shiite scholars considered it forbidden after implantation of the fertilised ovum. However, Sunni scholars have held various opinions on the matter, but all agreed that after 4 months gestation abortion was not permitted. In addition, classical Islamic scholarship had only considered threats to maternal health as a reason for therapeutic abortion. Recently, scholars have begun to consider the effect (...) of severe fetal deformities on the mother, the families and society. This has led some scholars to reconsider the prohibition on abortion in limited circumstances. This article reviews the Islamic basis for the prohibition of abortion and the reasons for its justification. Contemporary rulings from leading Shiite scholars and from the Sunni school of thought are presented and reviewed. The status of abortion in Muslim countries is reviewed, with special emphasis on the therapeutic abortion law passed by the Iranian Parliament in 2003. This law approved therapeutic abortion before 16 weeks of gestation under limited circumstances, including medical conditions related to fetal and maternal health. Recent measures in Iran provide an opportunity for the Muslim scholars in other countries to review their traditional stance on abortion. (shrink)

a volume 1. Global systems thinking and biological modeling for clinical medicine -- volume 2. Foundational concepts for treatment of common clinical conditions -- volume 3. Advanced concepts for the treatment of complex clinical conditions -- volume 4. Bedside handbook.

The prevalence of teams in contemporary organizations and the trend toward diversity in a workforce composed of members from multiple countries have drawn the attention of researchers on the consequences of diversity in workplaces. While there are potential benefits to diversity, relationship conflicts among team members may also result and affect team functioning. The aim of the present study was to explore how supervisors’ social dominance orientation, a tendency to support the arbitrary dominance of specific social groups over others, may (...) relate to relationship conflicts and reduced team commitment within teams. A two-wave study in a sample of 931 individuals from 108 workgroups was conducted to examine the relationship between supervisors’ social dominance orientation and team functioning. Analyses indicated that supervisor social dominance orientation was associated with increased within-team differentiation of leader-member exchange relationships based on team members’ national origin. Such LMX differentiation was related to more within-team relationship conflict and in turn to reduced collective team commitment. The implications of these findings for research on supervisor social dominance orientation, within-team nationality diversity, and team functioning are discussed. (shrink)

Statements on issues in biomedical ethics, purporting to represent international interests, have been put forth by numerous groups. Most of these groups are composed of thinkers in the tradition of European secularism, and do not take into account the values of other ethical systems. One fifth of the world’s population is accounted for by Islam, which is a universal religion, with more than 1400 years of scholarship. Although many values are held in common by secular ethical systems and Islam, their (...) inferences are different. The question, “Is it possible to derive a truly universal declaration of biomedical ethics?” is discussed here by examining the value and extent of personal autonomy in Western and Islamic biomedical ethical constructs. These constructs are then tested vis-à-vis the issue of abortion. It is concluded that having a universal declaration of biomedical ethics in practice is not possible, although there are many conceptual similarities and agreements between secular and Islamic value systems, unless a radical paradigm shift occurs in segments of the world’s deliberative bodies. The appellation “universal” should not be used on deliberative statements unless the ethical values of all major schools of thought are satisfied. (shrink)

Mulla Sadra (ca. 1572-1640) is one of the most prominent figures of post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy and among the most important philosophers of Safavid Persia. He was a prolific writer whose work advanced the fields of intellectual and religious science in Islamic philosophy, but arguably his most important contribution to Islamic philosophy is in the study of existence (wujud) and its application to such areas as cosmology, epistemology, psychology, and eschatology. Sadra represents a paradigm shift from the Aristotelian metaphysics of fixed (...) substances, which had dominated Islamic philosophy, to an analysis of existence as the ultimate ground and dynamic source of things. He posits that all beings derive their reality and truth from their wujud and that a proper philosophical analysis must therefore start and eventually end with it. The present work's focus on Sadra's gradational ontology provides a strong foundation for the reader to understand Sadra's other works and later texts by other philosophers working in the same field. This edition contains parallel English-Arabic texts and a new translation by preeminent scholar of Islamic philosophy Seyyed Hossein Nasr. (shrink)

The demonstration of the absolute simplicity and real oneness of the Necessary Being, on the one hand, and the presentation of an explanation for the possible beings that are consistent with this oneness are among the most important challenges that Islamic philosophy has to deal with. By restricting the reality of being to the Essence of the Necessary, gnostics have solved this problem successfully; however, philosophers' confirmations of an independent and original existence for possible beings based on the principles of (...) causality is inconsistent with the absolute simplicity of the Necessary. All the efforts of Muslim philosophers for solving this problem were unsuccessful until Mulla Sadra's time. By posing the philosophical principle of 'the Truth in its simplicity contains all things', he solved this riddle and demonstrated the individual oneness of being in the light of a new explanation of the principle of causality. In this way, he paved the way for philosophy to have access to the individual oneness of being. This paper aims to explain Mulla Sadra's significant efforts in this regard. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers of mind disagree with substance dualism, saying that despite the failure of physical theories of mind, substance dualism cannot be advocated, because it faces more serious problems than physical theories, lacking compatibility with philosophical arguments and scientific evidence. Regardless of the validity of the arguments in support of substance dualism, it is demonstrated in this article that this theory is coherent, with no philosophical or scientific problems. The main arguments of opponents of substance dualism are explained and (...) criticized in this respect. Based on this, it becomes clear that the interaction of soul and body has a reasonable philosophical explanation, the problem of the pairing of soul and body, although it may not have a scientific explanation, it has a philosophical and theological solution, the principle of the physical causal closure lacks conclusive reasons and cannot reject the existence of the soul, the existence of the soul does not contradict the theory of evolution, the dependence of the soul on the brain is compatible with its independence, and finally, the principle of simplicity does not make any problem for accepting the substance dualism. (shrink)

The possibility of acting for normative reasons calls for explanation, considering that such reasons are facts. Facing this issue, some argue that to act for a normative reason, the normative reason and the reason we act for (i.e. the motivating reason) need to be identical. Others reject the idea that normative reasons are facts in the first place. A conciliatory proposal is that by appealing to dispositions we can simultaneously accept that normative reasons are facts and that we can act (...) for them, without accepting the identity of the normative reasons and the motivating reason. After sketching an example of such a view, I mention an obstacle on its way. This view relies heavily on the correspondence relation, to make the action connected to the normative reason via a descriptive belief. It is argued that this is challenging since the correspondence relation might not be suitable to play the metaphysical role needed. (shrink)

Reasons are not the same. Normative reasons need to be distinguished from non-normative reasons. Then, due to some considerations, we have to draw a distinction between explanatory reasons and motivating reasons. In this paper, I focus on a rather implicit assumption in drawing the explanatory-motivating distinction. Motivating reasons are mostly characterized as those reasons that the agent takes to be normative. This may imply that the agent always knows the reasons their motivating reasons. This I call the infallibility or transparency (...) assumption. This suggests that there is some sort of report condition on motivating reasons. In contrast, one may ask whether it is possible for the agent to be mistaken about what their motivating reasons are. I argue that we can distinguish motivating reasons and satisfy the motivations for the explanatory-motivating distinction without committing to this infallibility assumption. I briefly sketch a character-based approach to motivating reasons as an alternative. Next, I argue that, in addition to being important on its own, this account has implications for other debates. I illustrate this by mentioning cases such as recalcitrant actions as well as critically discussing one kind of counter-example presented against the guise of the good thesis. (shrink)

A standard reaction to the problem of evil is to look for a greater good that can explain why God (with the traditional attributes) might have created this world instead of a seemingly better one which has no (or less) evil. This paper proposes an approach we call the Moral Progress Approach: Given the value of progress, a non-perfect world containing evil may be preferable to a perfect world without evil. This makes room for the possibility that this world, with (...) all its evil, may be preferable to a world with less evil. We argue that our proposal is different from apparently similar views such as soul-making theodicy. (shrink)

The issue of Islam and modern science, along with its progeny, modern technology, continues today as one of the most crucial faced by the Islamic community. It has been, and continues to be, addressed by numerous scholars and thinkers, covering nearly the whole gamut of the spectrum of Islamic intellectual activity since the last century. This article analyses modern science and subjects it to an in-depth criticism from the Islamic point of view, drawing from the Islamic intellectual tradition. It holds (...) that any science that could legitimately be called Islamic science, and not be disruptive of the whole Islamic order, must be one that remains aware of the ‘vertical cause’ of all things, along with the horizontal, a science that issues from and returns to the Real, who is the cause of all things. (shrink)

One of the premises of the argument from design is the need for the order of a designer. This premise has been explained in various ways, one of which is the calculus of probabilities. It posits that the likelihood of an ordered thing coming into existence by chance is so low that human beings consider it nearly impossible; therefore, this order requires an intelligent designer. However, some contemporary Muslim philosophers, such as Ayatollah Jawādī Āmulī, along with certain Western philosophers, have (...) contested the validity of the calculus of probabilities. They argue that the calculus of probabilities does not reveal reality but is merely practically useful. They assert that undesigned states have the same probability as designed states. In this article, I address these objections, refute them, and ultimately demonstrate the soundness of the argument from design based on the calculus of probabilities. (shrink)

Various theories concerning how to speak positively about God have been proposed. One such theory, the theory of complete univocity, states that although the mode of existence between God and human beings is different, there are, in principle, ontological commonalities between God and humans in existence and His attributes. These ontological commonalities make it possible to attribute a single meaning to both God and human beings univocally. In this article, it is attempted to both explain and defend the theory of (...) complete univocity, while also critiquing the theory of partial univocity, a theory which believes solely in semantic univocity and ontologically assumes that God is absolutely different and separate from humans. Further, as the commonality of meaning between God and humans requires the existence of an ontological commonality between them, the theory of analogy is also not acceptable. Because, firstly, the denial of shared attributes between God and humans has many unsatisfactory theological implications. Secondly, there is no middle term between univocity and equivocality. Therefore, the only theologically defensible theory is that of complete univocity. (shrink)

La crise de l'environnement naturel est un rappel externe de la crise spirituelle des hommes et des femmes qui, ayant délaissé les cieux au nom de la terre, risquent maintenant de détruire celle-ci. La résolution de cette crise sans précédent ne requiert pas seulement des réponses théoriques, mais une réelle conversion du regard de l'homme moderne sur son environnement et un changement de sa conception du monde. Constatant que chaque tradition spirituelle possède d'importantes connaissances sur l'ordre de la nature, et (...) s'appuyant sur elles, en les faisant dialoguer, l'auteur appelle à la redécouverte de cette science sacrée de l'ordre naturel. Cherchant à faire apparaître les dimensions religieuses et spirituelles de la crise environnementale et estimant que la conception de l'ordre religieux de la nature doit être réaffirmé, il invite le lecteur à préserver le caractère sacré de la vie. (shrink)

The author gives a clear explanation of the philosophy of Sard al-Din Shirazi.

According to a rule of traditional logic concerning the relation between general (or universal) concepts, if a given concept is more general than a second one, then the opposition (or contradictory) of the first concept is more specific than the opposition (or contradictory) of the second one. Kātibī, one of the Muslim logicians in the 13th century, has raised a question against this rule and, by giving some counterexamples, claims that it results in contradiction. Some Muslim logicians have replied to (...) Kātibī, and in this paper I have examined their replies. Also, by using rules of modern logic, we may easily show that either Kātibī's argumentation is fallacious or it does not result in contradiction; however, it seems that if modern logic rules had been represented to Muslim logicians, some of those rules would have been rejected by them. (shrink)