The classic Arabic bibliographies ascribe to al-Farabi a treatise entitled Fi mahiyyat al-nafs (“On the Essence of the Soul”), of which no Arabic manuscript is known to exist. There is however a Hebrew text, translated from the Arabic by Zera[hudot]iah ben She'altiel [Hudot]en of Rome in 1284, which is ascribed to al-Farabi in all the manuscripts and which carries the title Ma'amar be-mahut ha-nefesh (“Treatise on the Essence of the Soul”). Since Steinschneider, this text is taken to be the translation (...) of al-Farabi's treatise lost in the original. In this paper I argue that the Ma'amar be-mahut ha-nefesh is not by al-Farabi: it is in vain that one looks in it for ideas characteristic to the Second Master, while the ideas expressed therein are incompatible with those of al-Farabi. I offer a study of Ma'amar be-mahut ha-nefesh, followed by an annotated translation into French. This is a “popular” Neoplatonic text, whose ideas are mostly very ordinary, but in part uncommon. It notably explains the emergence of forms in matter by positing the existence of a pneuma that by circulating around the body “brings forth” the vegetative and animal souls. The author also draws on an unusual notion called hemshel in Hebrew (a term probably translating the Arabic mithal, rendered as exemplum in Latin): the exemplum is said to become visible as a result of the pneuma's circular motion. The paper is followed by a short Note by Rémi Brague looking into the sources of the treatise. Brague concludes that the text cannot be assigned to any specific tradition. (shrink)
The paper highlights the importance of a strategic alliance between the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community and the Al-Jazeera International Channel. Secondly, we discuss the global outlook as to how Qatar can position itself on the world map as knowledge-based nation and a land of innovative ideas. Thirdly, we analyse the new role of Islamic finance in social responsibility and why investment in social capital is vitally important in a challenging world. We select four Muslim countries that Qatar (...) should consider for human capital investment purposes—Egypt (the brain and heart of the Arab world), Syria, Turkey, and Malaysia—and justify this selection. Fourthly, we discuss a new role for the Aljazeera International Channel as a promoter of successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the Muslim World, to show what real Islamic finance is. Finally, the challenges ahead are discussed and policy recommendations suggested. (shrink)
Hackl et al. (2012) argue that processing evidence specifically supports a theory of Antecedent Contained Deletion (ACD) that involves the threat of type-mismatch and infinite regress, with Quantifier Raising (QR) coming to the rescue. This squib argues that the processing evidence does not specifically support that theory. Very similar predictions can be made by the variable-free, or combinatory, theory that Hackl et al. dismiss, if we add the assumption that ACD is resolved by binding, not by simple anaphora.
The Sulwan al-Muta' is an 800 year-old handbook for statesmen written by a Sicilian Arab who addressed this advice for a "just prince" based on Islamic morality, European realism and a broad-ranging knowledge of different cultures. The work is explicated using straight philosophical discourse as well as the narrative whirl of fables-within-fables so beloved of ancient and mediaeval Oriental literature. This is a work of practical political philosophy that combines penetrating contemporary analysis, the entertainment value of The Thousand and One (...) Nights , and the deep insight of Sun Tzu. (shrink)
In 2004 Emanuel et al. published an influential account of exploitation in international research, which has become known as the 'fair benefits account'. In this paper I argue that the thin definition of fairness presented by Emanuel et al, and subsequently endorsed by Gbadegesin and Wendler, does not provide a notion of fairness that is adequately robust to support a fair benefits account of exploitation. The authors present a procedural notion of fairness – the fair distribution of the benefits of (...) research is to be determined on a case-by-case basis by the parties involved in each study. The fairness of the distribution of benefits is not assessed against an independent normative standard. Emanuel et al.'s account of fairness provides a framework for objecting only to transactions that occur without the fully informed consent of the weaker party. As a result, a debate about exploitation collapses into a debate about consent. This is problematic because, as the proponents of the fair benefits framework acknowledge, neither the trial participants' consent nor the host community's consent preclude exploitation. Attempts to stipulate normative standards of fairness to protect research subjects in developing countries have been controversial and divisive, and it is therefore understandable that bioethicists would be tempted to develop accounts of exploitation that are independent of such prescriptive principles. I conclude, however, that the utility of the fair benefits model of exploitation as a policy tool will ultimately depend on whether a substantive principle of fairness can be developed to underpin it. (shrink)
Tomasello et al.'s two prerequisites, we argue, are not sufficient to explain the emergence of Joint Collaboration. An adequate account must include the human-specific capacity to communicate relevant information (that may have initially evolved to ensure efficient cultural learning). This, together with understanding intentional actions, does provide sufficient preconditions for Joint Collaboration without the need to postulate a primary human motive to share others' psychological states.
The Hippocratic Aphorisms is a well-known treatise which was very popular throughout the ages. This paper studies the Arabic translation of [Hdotu]unayn ibn Ishaq, the renowned Arab translator, of the first book of the Aphorisms as well as the commentary of Ibn al-Nafis, the thirteenth-century Arab doctor, on the same book. This study highlights the difficulties that occasionally confronted the Arab commentator while commenting. The obscurity of a few Hippocratic sentences as well as [Hdotu]unayn's interpretation and alteration in meaning were (...) probable sources for those difficulties. Ibn al-Nafis, however, was unaware of the role played by [Hdotu]unayn in shaping the Arabic text. Ibn al-Nafis reflected a deep trust in the Arabic text to the degree of commenting on every single word. He used both his intellect and his knowledge of other commentaries to solve those problematic phrases. He did not exhibit an interest in philological matters to help explain the text. His commentaries reflect his respect and appreciation for both Hippocrates and Galen, the latter of whom exercised some influence on [Hdotu]unayn and Ibn al-Nafis in their understanding of the work. Nonetheless both [Hdotu]unayn and Ibn al-Nafis showed traces of independence from Galen's influence. (shrink)
CHAPTER ONE Al-Kindl and Kind! Studies: A Resume THE NAME OF Abu Yusuf Yacqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, "the philosopher of the Arabs", is well known to students ...
The modern physiological optics introduces the notions related to the conditions of fusion of binocular images by the concept of correspondence, due to Christiaan Huygens (1704), and by an experiment attributed to Christoph Scheiner (1619). The conceptualization of this experiment dates, in fact, back to Ptolemy (90-168) and Ibn al-Haytham (d. after 1040). The present paper surveys Ibn al-Haytham's knowledge about the mechanisms of binocular vision. The article subsequently explains why Ibn al-Haytham, a mathematician, but here an experimenter, did not (...) give the circular figure of the theoretical horopter, construction due to Gerhard Vieth (1818) and Johannes Müller (1826). But, on the other hand, it is clear that Ibn al-Haytham's experimental study puts in place the notion of corresponding points, the cases of homonymous and cross diplopia, and even prepares the discovery of Panum area. (shrink)
Carlos Pereda califica mi concepción de la moral de realismo particularista y objeta a mi defensa tanto del realismo como del particularismo. En mi respuesta trato de mostrar cómo nuestras discrepancias en torno al papel de los principios en la deliberación moral es, excepto en un punto crucial, cuestión de énfasis. No ocurre lo mismo, sin embargo, con mi reivindicación del realismo moral, pues parte de lo que intento mostrar en el libro es que los programas constructivistas de los que (...) habla Pereda no pueden pensarse coherentemente. \\\ Carlos Pereda presents my view about morality as a sort of particularist realism and objects both to my defence of realism and that of particularism. In my reply, I argue that our discrepancies about the role of principies in moral deliberation is, except in a crucial respect, a matter of emphasis. Something quite different happens, however, with my vindication of moral realism. For part of what I try to show in my book is that constructivist programs like the one suggested by Pereda cannot be coherently thought. (shrink)
The development of geometrical analysis in the 10th century was partly inspired by the reception of the works of Apollonius, which Arab mathematicians translated as early as the preceding century. Al-Quhi contributed to this development by writing several collections of problems dealing with Apollonian themes and solved by the method of analysis; however, it seems that they do not all occupy the same place in his work. The author gives here the edition, translation, and mathematical commentary of a short work, (...) entitled The determination of two straight lines from a point along a known angle, which presents the particularity of providing problems as geometrical lemmas to other studies. Indeed, al-Quhi uses two of these lemmas in more complex constructions which belong to his Treatise on the art of the astrolabe. In this same treatise on the astrolabe, as well as in his Treatise on the perfect compass, this scholar also uses as lemmas several problems solved in another of his works, entitled The generation of points on straight lines according to ratios of which the terms are surfaces. This work is unfortunately lost, and all that remains of it are the traces which subsist in other treatises in which it has been used. This study seems to be necessary if one wishes to understand the organization of the work of al-Quhi, a mathematician of the first rank who was representative of his time. (shrink)
The aim of this article is to present a new witness of Averroes' reception in the Muslim world, in the years that immediately followed his death. Indeed Aba al-Mikl (d. 1237) is an Aarite theologian, who was born in Fez. He is the author of a Quintessence of the Intellects in Response to Philosophers on the Science of Principles in which he aims at refuting the Peripatetic philosophers in their own field, using their own weapons. This article will first attempt (...) to draw the portrait of this atypical theologian. It will then focus on showing that al-Mikl is a reader of Averroes and in particular, of his Tahfut, of which he makes various and unexpected uses. A close look at these uses will enable us to better define the nature of al-Mikl's work. More importantly, this article will try to prove that al-Mikl provides us with a key passage of Averroes' lost treatise On the Prime Mover. At the heart of the Rushdian criticism of Avicenna's proof, this passage should throw new light on Averroes' precise understanding of this proof. (shrink)
It has long been considered that Arabic algebra scarcely left any traces in mathematical literature of Hebrew expression. Thanks to the unpublished sources we have discovered, and to an attentive examination of already-known texts, one can no longer subscribe to such a judgement. The evidence we examine in this first article sheds light on the circulation, in erudite Jewish circles, of Arabic algebraic knowledge in Spain, Italy, Provence, and Sicily, between the 12th and the 14th centuries. The Epistle on number (...) by the Castillian astronomer Isaac ben Salomon al-A[hudot]dab was written in Sicily at the end of the 14th century, and based on the Talkhi[sudot] a'mal al-[hudot]isab of Ibn al-Banna' (1256-1321). That part of the Epistle that is devoted to algebra follows the tradition of al-Karaji. It offers, for the first time in Hebrew, a rational presentation of arithmetical operations extended to algebraic expressions. (shrink)
... Abu Hamid al-Ghazall enumerates twenty questions upon which he contends the philosophers have formulated heretical theories against which the Muslim ...
INTRODUCTION The main purpose of this work is to provide an English translation of and commentary on a recently published Arabic text dealing with conditional propositions and syllogisms. The text is that of Avicenna (Abu 'All ibn Sina, ...
Biography of Ibn Rushd ... Averroes, old heathen, If only you had been right, if Intellect Itself were absolute law, sufficient grace. Our lives could be a myth of captivity. Which we might enter: an unpeopled region.
This is a review of a book that tries to re-establish mind-body dualism by using (a) empirical research on near-death experiences, placebo effects, creativity, claiming even that parapsychology should become a respected part of science, and (b) Frederic W. H. Myers' (1843-1901) metaphor of the brain as a kind of receiving device that records what the irreducible mind sends as messages. Among other things, we criticize the lack of philosophical clarity about mind-body relation, and question the book's tendency to refer (...) to past and current parapsychological literature as reliable. (shrink)
Al-Ghazali is arguably one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Islam, and his writings have received greater scholarly attention in the West than those of any other Muslim scholar. This study explores an important dimension of his thought that has not yet been fully examined, namely, his polemical engagement with the Ismailis of the Fatimid and early Alamut periods. Published in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies.
A significant part of everyday learning occurs incidentally — a process typically described as implicit learning. A central issue in this and germane domains such as language acquisition is the extent to which performance depends on the acquisition and deployment of abstract rules. In an attempt to address this question, we show that the apparent use of such rules in a simple categorisation task of artificial grammar strings, as reported by Shanks, Johnstone, and Staggs (1997), can be simulated by means (...) of a simple recurrent network, and may thus turn out not be incompatible with the acquisition of statistical regularities rooted in the processing of exemplars of the presented material. (shrink)
Avicenna, the most influential of Islamic philosophers, produced The Healing as his magnum opus on his religious and political philosophy. Now translated by Michael Marmura, The Metaphysics is the climactic conclusion to this towering work. Through Marmura’s skill as a translator and his extensive annotations, Avicenna’s touchstone of Islamic philosophy is more accessible than ever before. In The Metaphysics , Avicenna examines the idea of existence, and his investigation into the cause of all things leads him to a meditation on (...) the nature of God. From this discussion, Avicenna develops a theory of divine causation that synthesizes Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, and Islamic ideas. Within this emanative scheme, Avicenna establishes some of the basic ideas of his religious and political philosophy, as he discusses the divine attributes, divine providence, the hereafter, and the ideal “virtuous” city with its philosopher-prophet as the human link between the terrestrial and heavenly realms. With this edition, The Metaphysics can now be better seen as one of the most masterful works of classical Islamic philosophy. (shrink)
This work contains thirteen essays that constitute Hartshorne's final contributions to "technical philosophy." Although they deal with a wide range of topics, they hang together in terms of the common themes of creativity and freedom. I will discuss these essays in terms of three groups.First, it should be noted that five of the essays have never before been published; hence they are welcome additions to philosophical literature in process thought. One example is "My Eclectic Approach to Phenomenology." Here Hartshorne relies (...) on both his experiences studying under Husserl and Heidegger in Germany in the 1920s (he wrote the first review in English of Heidegger's Being and Time) and his thorough knowledge of .. (shrink)
This response discusses the experiment reported in Krahmer et al.’s Letter to the Editor of Cognitive Science. We observe that their results do not tell us whether the Incremental Algorithm is better or worse than its competitors, and we speculate about implications for reference in complex domains, and for learning from ‘‘normal” (i.e., non-semantically-balanced) corpora.
Dispositionalism says that the colours are dispositions to produce certain sorts of experiences in perceivers—that colours are secondary qualities, on one use of that term. Recently dispositionalism has been under attack on the ground that “colours do not look like dispositions” (Dancy 1986, Boghossian and Velleman 1989, McGinn 1996; see also McGinn 1983, 132-6, and Johnston 19921). In response, Langsam has argued that, on the contrary, “colours d o look like dispositions” (2000, 74).2 This note makes three claims. First, neither (...) side has made its case. Secondly, it’s true—on one interpretation—that colours do not look like dispositions. Thirdly, this does not show that dispositionalism is false. (shrink)
An inventory of his entire oeuvre provides detailed information on the extant manuscripts. The volume furthermore includes editions of nine of his writings.
