In this study, we propose a new approach based on fuzzy TODIM (Portuguese acronym for interactive and multicriteria decision-making) for decision-making problems in uncertain environments. Our method incorporates group utility and individual regret, which are often ignored in traditional multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. To enhance the analysis and application of fuzzy sets in decision-making processes, we introduce novel entropy and distance measures for q-rung picture fuzzy sets. These measures include an entropy measure based on the sine function and a distance (...) measure derived from the Jensen-Shannon divergence. In our methodology, incorporating the sine function into the entropy measure stands out as a distinctive decision, grounded in a profound understanding of the inherent characteristics of fuzzy sets. Utilizing the sine function proves especially advantageous when handling fuzzy sets that exhibit cyclical variations or fluctuations in their membership degrees. We effectively weight the criteria for an improved evaluation by using this new entropy measure. The introduced distance measure finds application in the TODIM approach, allowing the execution of TODIM method steps within a fuzzy environment until the determination of one alternative’s dominance over another—an advancement beyond traditional approaches. We apply our enhanced fuzzy TODIM method to a real-life construction project management problem from the literature and compare the results with those in the literature and obtained from other MCDM methods. Our proposed measures are robust, as demonstrated by the sensitivity analysis that varied the weights of group utility and individual regret, with the results visualized in a 3D sensitivity plot. The findings demonstrate the superiority of our method in providing a more comprehensive evaluation of alternatives, making it a useful tool for decision-makers facing complex and uncertain decision-making problems. (shrink)

The Enneads are our main source for understanding Plotinus' philosophical architecture. In this work, the philosopher attempted to fully explain his own philosophical doctrine. However, there is a treatise in this work that gives the impression of being outside the philosophical architecture. This treatise, entitled Against the Gnostics, serves two different purposes for researchers. First, we have the opportunity to confirm the philosopher's own teaching through this treatise. Second, through Plotinos' objections to the Gnostics, we witness the heated debates of (...) the time. Also, during this discussion we will have the opportunity to get to know the Gnostics from a philosopher's point of view. In this treatise, Plotinus develops a detailed counter-position to the Gnostics and directly refutes them. These are the main lines: The universe is the product of an evil creator and therefore completely evil; renunciation of earthly life with hatred and contempt for it; the doctrine that salvation from the material world can be granted only to a select group by grace. Plotinos developed both a radical rejection of these questions and solutions on how to understand them. In this paper, I would like to review this rejection on a textual basis for the first time. (shrink)

Sufism and Society: Arrangements of the Mystical in the Muslim World, 1200–1800. Edited by John J. Curry and Erik S. Ohlander. Routledge Sufi Series, vol. 12. London: Routledge, 2012. Pp. xiv + 281. $125.

This comparative study juxtaposes two celebrated medieval examples of negative speech, apophasis, and theorizes the languages of unsaying in the great medieval thinkers, Maimonides (d.1204) and Ibn ‘Arabī (d.1240). The paper coins a distinction between ‘asymmetrical’ versus ‘symmetrical’ approaches to language as a heuristic to analyze the two philosophical apophatic accounts comparatively. While apophatic thinkers in Neoplatonic traditions generally oscillate between these two poles in their various apophatic moments, the paper argues that Maimonides and Ibn ‘Arabī represented the climax of (...) these two non-linear poles in a visible tension and conversant with each other. I frame philosophical apophasis in the medieval Islamic lands in terms of the problem of God’s transcendence versus imminence. Maimonides celebrates apophasis and claims that negative speech, asymptotically approaching silence, is the only genuine praise to God. As an uncompromising exponent of absolute transcendence, and a severe critic of those who ascribe attributes to God, he privileges apophasis to kataphasis; he presents negative speech as a medium of purification and spiritual progress. Ibn ‘Arabī, on the other hand, is critical of this widespread asymmetry, and defends the gathering together of transcendence and imminence for human perfection. His intricate theory of transcendence and imminence appeals to a dialectical logic, explaining why kataphasis and apophasis are symmetrical in front of the Absolute. The productive tension between two apophatic minds challenges Hegelian habits of reading the history of thought, as well as various scholarly prejudices about medieval intellectual landscapes. (shrink)