The writings of al-Ghazālī give the distinct impression that he was highly concerned with the threat the Ismailis and their doctrines posed. By his own admission, he wrote six separate treatises to refute and condemn them, most importantly his Faḍāʾiḥ al-bāṭiniyya, which he composed in the year 488h in the months prior to his renunciation of government service and departure from Baghdad. His attack focused on the doctrine known as taʿlīm, with its insistence on the unrivaled absolute authority of a (...) single infallible Imam. He had in mind the Alamut teaching by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ of a doctrine then widely advocated in the Abbasid–Seljuk East. Significantly, there is no sign of this term used in this manner in the western Fatimid domains either earlier or later. However, our knowledge of events in the career of Ḥasan and of his teachings come from much later sources and are in part legendary at best. Although the doctrine of taʿlīm was certainly implicit in Ismaili works long before, in this particular work al-Ghazālī directed his attentions squarely against a new teaching he encountered personally in his own time and place. But we know it otherwise primarily from accounts recorded much later, in particular al-Shahrastānī’s al-Milal wa-l-niḥal. (shrink)

The Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in mathematics, logic, (...) natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didactic fables. Epistles 32 to 36 comprise the first five treatises in the third division of the Rasa'il, on the sciences of the soul and intellect. Combining Islamic revelation with Hellenistic philosophy, the Ikhwan delineate herein their metaphysical system. Epistles 32 and 33 present adaptations of the Pythagorean doctrines, and of Neo-Platonist leitmotifs, whereby a numerical analogy is applied to the unique and transcendent God, or the One, from whom all existence emanates. Epistle 34 takes up the pervasive theme of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, situating the human being as the central link between the celestial and terrestrial realms. In Epistle 35, we find an explanation of the intellectual faculties of the individual human soul, whose ultimate aim is ascension to the timeless reality of pure intellect. Finally, Epistle 36 presents itself as the astrological epistle par excellence of the Rasa'il; from the coming-to-be of worms, to the emergence of religions and empires, nothing in the sub-lunar sphere escapes the determining influence of the celestial cycles. (shrink)

The exact sectarian affiliation of Shahrastānī has long been a matter of serious debate. Was he possibly an adherent of the Ismaili cause? Considerable recent scholarship purports to establish a connection. The evidence consists of some off-handed remarks by his own contemporaries; what he himself has to say about the Ismailis in his Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-niḥal; and finally, a set of doctrines or analytical categories he uses in his later writings that were later adopted by Nizari Ismailis. However, an impartial (...) look at the evidence does not support the claim that Shahrastānī was himself in any significant way an Ismaili. (shrink)

A critically important development in the tradition of philosophy, as understood by Arabic authors, was the inclusion of both rhetoric and poetics within logic. While these writers' conception of the logical Organon gave appropriate place to the theory of demonstration as found and defined in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, they added to it the syllogism not only of dialectic, but of rhetoric and poetry as well. By attaching the latter two arts to logic, the Arabic philosophers created a contextual claim about (...) rhetoric and poetry which tended both to weaken the status of either one as a mode of nonlogical discourse and yet potentially to enhance their importance as tools of cognitive activity by recognizing in them some form of syllogistic reasoning. (shrink)

An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities. Edited and translated by Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith. Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, vol. 87. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. xii + 698, illus. $289, €223.

We agree with Shors & Matzel's general hypothesis that the proposed link between NMDA-dependent LTP and memory is weak. They suggest that NMDA-dependent LTP is important to arousal or attentional processes which influence learning in an anterograde manner. However, current evidence is also consistent with the view that NMDA receptors modulate memory consolidation retroactively, as occurs in several other receptor classes.

Command and Creation: A Shiʿi Cosmological Treatise. A Persian Edition and English Translation of Muḥammad al-Shahrastānī’s Majlis-i maktūb. Edited and translated by Daryoush Mohammad Poor. London: I. B. Tauris, in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2021. Pp. xvi + 135 (Eng.), 84 (Pers.).

Proofs of Prophecy and the Refutation of the Ismāʿīliyya: The Kitāb Ithbāt nubuwwat al-nabī by the Zaydī al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh al-Hārūnī. By Eva-Maria Lika. Worlds of Islam, vol. 9. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Pp. vii + 177, 152. $149.99, €129.95, £106.99.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:I Am Not Sure?Paul E. LevinIt was a beautiful Friday morning, a few weeks into the summer. My schedule appeared lighter than usual and I even envisioned leaving work a bit early. Maybe a challenging bike ride before dinner. I was sitting in the chairman’s office having our weekly meeting. One of our junior faculty members called... he needed help. He was on call and a 32–year–old pregnant (...) woman with a displaced femoral neck fracture had just been transferred to our emergency department (ED). Ms. B tripped in her kitchen last evening. She was unable to stand and was brought to the local ED by ambulance.My colleague was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to successfully reduce the fracture. The long–term prognosis of the hip joint depended on a successful reduction of the femoral neck fracture. In addition, there was an ongoing debate in the orthopaedic literature related to the urgency of operative care to prevent osteonecrosis of the femoral head. I reviewed the x–rays, didn’t anticipate a problem and let him know that I would come to the operating room (OR) to assist. “No”, he responded, “I am not comfortable caring for this patient”. I immediately left the office, went to the hospital and assumed care of the patient. Clearly, my plans for a bike ride were gone, but I had the opportunity to help a woman in need of expert orthopaedic care.Ms. B had been admitted to the obstetrical service. She was a 32–year–old woman of Haitian descent who had recently immigrated to the United States. She had very limited English comprehension and her primary spoken languages were French and Creole. She was alone, in a hospital in a foreign country. She was 24 weeks pregnant with her first child and had no other co–morbidities. Her pregnancy had ben progressing uneventfully.When I first met Ms. B she was lying on a stretcher in an observation unit on the obstetrical floor. She appeared frightened. Two orthopaedic residents were present and obtaining consent for surgical repair of the hip. In their minds there was nothing to discuss, the patient had a displaced femoral neck fracture and needed to have surgery immediately. In their minds, no other options were available and obtaining consent would be straightforward. I introduced myself, sat down on a lab stool by the bed and began a conversation. I needed to meet the patient, understand who she was and discuss treatment. I am not sure that obtaining an informed consent is ever “straightforward” when [End Page 14] a doctor is explaining to a patient that they require emergency surgery. This discussion surely would not be easy or straightforward.We utilized a telephone interpretation service. Every question and response required the transfer of the handset between the patient and physician. Ms. B was in pain and frightened. She immediately expressed concern about her pregnancy and her baby. I arranged for her to meet all of the physicians who would possibly be involved in her care and the care of her baby. Each consultant could explain their area of expertise and potential involvement in the care of Ms. B and her child. She met and had an opportunity to talk with the obstetrician on call, a maternal fetal medicine (MFM) fellow and a neonatologist. I supplied the orthopaedic information. I explained the severity of the injury, the risks of osteonecrosis either with or without surgery as well as concerns over non–union and traumatic arthritis of the hip. Undoubtedly, in a healthy 32–year–old woman who wasn’t pregnant, early surgical intervention would be the most appropriate management in hopes of preserving a normal hip joint. We also discussed the possibility of treating her without surgery. She would be administered pain medication, which were known to be safe during pregnancy, and allowed to begin to ambulate with a walker or crutches. I explained potential problems without surgery and what options would be available to treat any problems that developed with her hip after the child was born. Of course, hip fractures in pregnant woman are very rare, and as a result treating a... (shrink)

Most commentators supported the thesis of the target article, though there were also those who were less fully persuaded. I will begin with a response to the most critical commentaries. First, I will justify an evolutionary perspective that includes group organization and nongenetic inheritance. Next, I will discuss the concept of emergence. Following that, I will transition to an exploration of ideas and concerns brought up by some of the more supportive commentators. This will include a discussion of different types (...) of groups; the psychology of group-level traits; the uses and limitations of an institutional perspective; the link between transmission, adaptation, and selection; current and future methodologies; and the variety of fields that may benefit from a group-level traits perspective. (shrink)

In behavioral ecology some authors regard the innateness concept as irretrievably confused whilst others take it to refer to adaptations. In cognitive psychology, however, whether traits are 'innate' is regarded as a significant question and is often the subject of heated debate. Several philosophers have tried to define innateness with the intention of making sense of its use in cognitive psychology. In contrast, I argue that the concept is irretrievably confused. The vernacular innateness concept represents a key aspect of 'folkbiology', (...) namely, the explanatory strategy that psychologists and cognitive anthropologists have labeled 'folk essentialism'. Folk essentialism is inimical to Darwinism, and both Darwin and the founders of the modern synthesis struggled to overcome this way of thinking about living systems. Because the vernacular concept of innateness is part of folkbiology, attempts to define it more adequately are unlikely to succeed, making it preferable to introduce new, neutral terms for the various, related notions that are needed to understand cognitive development. (shrink)

Paul E. Griffiths argues that most research on the emotions has been as misguided as Aristotelian efforts to study "superlunary objects" - objects...

It is unreasonable to assume that our pre-scientific emotion vocabulary embodies all and only those distinctions required for a scientific psychology of emotion. The psychoevolutionary approach to emotion yields an alternative classification of certain emotion phenomena. The new categories are based on a set of evolved adaptive responses, or affect-programs, which are found in all cultures. The triggering of these responses involves a modular system of stimulus appraisal, whose evoluations may conflict with those of higher-level cognitive processes. Whilst the structure (...) of the adaptive responses is innate, the contents of the system which triggers them are largely learnt. The circuits subserving the adaptive responses are probably located in the limbic system. This theory of emotion is directly applicable only to a small sub-domain of the traditional realm of emotion. It can be used, however, to explain the grouping of various other phenomena under the heading of emotion, and to explain various characteristic failings of the pre-scientific conception of emotion. (shrink)

Because physical theories typically predict numerical values, an improvement in experimental precision reduces the tolerance range and hence increases corroborability. In most psychological research, improved power of a statistical design leads to a prior probability approaching 1/2 of finding a significant difference in the theoretically predicted direction. Hence the corroboration yielded by "success" is very weak, and becomes weaker with increased precision. "Statistical significance" plays a logical role in psychology precisely the reverse of its role in physics. This problem is (...) worsened by certain unhealthy tendencies prevalent among psychologists, such as a premium placed on experimental "cuteness" and a free reliance upon ad hoc explanations to avoid refutation. (shrink)

The current state of knowledge in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and behavioral ecology allows a fairly robust characterization of at least some, so-called ?basic emotions? - short-lived emotional responses with homologues in other vertebrates. Philosophers, however are understandably more focused on the complex emotion episodes that figure in folk-psychological narratives about mental life, episodes such as the evolving jealousy and anger of a person in an unraveling sexual relationship. One of the most pressing issues for the philosophy of emotion is the (...) relationship between basic emotions and these complex emotion episodes. In this paper, I add to the list of existing, not necessarily incompatible, proposals concerning the relationship between basic emotions and complex emotions. I analyze the writings of ?transactional? psychologists of emotion, particularly those who see their work as a contribution to behavioral ecology, and offer a view of the basic emotion that focuses as much on their interpersonal functions as on their intrapersonal functions. Locating basic emotions and their evolutionary development in a context of processes of social interaction, I suggest, provides a way to integrate our knowledge of basic emotions into an understanding of the larger emotional episodes that have more obvious implications for philosophical disciplines such as moral psychology. (shrink)

Some ‘naturalist’ accounts of disease employ a biostatistical account of dysfunction, whilst others use a ‘selected effect’ account. Several recent authors have argued that the biostatistical account offers the best hope for a naturalist account of disease. We show that the selected effect account survives the criticisms levelled by these authors relatively unscathed, and has significant advantages over the BST. Moreover, unlike the BST, it has a strong theoretical rationale and can provide substantive reasons to decide difficult cases. This is (...) illustrated by showing how life-history theory clarifies the status of so-called diseases of old age. The selected effect account of function deserves a more prominent place in the philosophy of medicine than it currently occupies. _1_ Introduction _2_ Biostatistical and Selected Effect Accounts of Function _3_ Objections to the Selected Effect Account _3.1_ Boorse _3.2_ Kingma _3.3_ Hausman _3.4_ Murphy and Woolfolk _4_ Problems for the Biostatistical Account _4.1_ Schwartz _5_ Analysis versus Explication _6_ Explicating Dysfunction: Life History Theory and Senescence _7_ Conclusion. (shrink)

The type of cognitive theory of emotion traditionally espoused by philosophers of mind makes two central claims. First, that the occurrence of propositional attitudes is essential to the occurrence of emotions. Second, that the identity of a particular emotional state depends upon the propositional attitudes that it involves. In this paper I try to show that there is little hope of developing a theory of emotion which makes these claims true. I examine the underlying defects of the programme, and show (...) that several recent variants fail to repair these defects. Furthermore, even if such a theory could be developed, it would not achieve many of the things that we look to a theory of emotion for. I argue that philosophers should turn their attention to new and more promising approaches. These have been developed by various of the special sciences, while philosophy has remained enthralled by traditional, propositional attitude psychology. (shrink)

Several authors have argued that causes differ in the degree to which they are ‘specific’ to their effects. Woodward has used this idea to enrich his influential interventionist theory of causal explanation. Here we propose a way to measure causal specificity using tools from information theory. We show that the specificity of a causal variable is not well-defined without a probability distribution over the states of that variable. We demonstrate the tractability and interest of our proposed measure by measuring the (...) specificity of coding DNA and other factors in a simple model of the production of mRNA. (shrink)

It has been suggested that moods are higher order-dispositions. This proposal is considered, and various shortcomings uncovered. The notion of a higher-order disposition is replaced by the more general notion of a higher-order functional state. An account is given in which moods are higher-order functional states, and the overall system of moods is a higher-order functional description of the mind. This proposal is defended in two ways. First, it is shown to capture some central features of our pre-scientific conception of (...) moods. Secondly, it is argued that the account is more likely to be psychologically realistic (in a sense to be defined) than accounts which are behaviourally equivalent, but which do not employ a hierarchy of functional descriptions. It is suggested that the hierarchical structure of the model mirrors a feature of the physical states that realise moods and emotions. (shrink)

The etiological approach to ‘proper functions’ in biology can be strengthened by relating it to Robert Cummins' general treatment of function ascription. The proper functions of a biological trait are the functions it is assigned in a Cummins-style functional explanation of the fitness of ancestors. These functions figure in selective explanations of the trait. It is also argued that some recent etiological theories include inaccurate accounts of selective explanation in biology. Finally, a generalization of the notion of selective explanation allows (...) an analysis of the proper functions of human artifacts. (shrink)

Donation after cardiac death (DCD) is associated with many problems, including ischemic injury, high rates of delayed allograft function, and frequent organ discard. Furthermore, many potential DCD donors fail to progress to asystole in a manner that would enable safe organ transplantation and no organs are recovered. DCD protocols are based upon the principle that the donor must be declared dead prior to organ recovery. A new protocol is proposed whereby after a donor family agrees to withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments, (...) premortem nephrectomy is performed in advance of end-of-life management. Since nephrectomy should not cause the donor's death, this approach satisfies the dead donor rule. The donor family's wishes are best met by organ donation, successful outcomes for the recipients, and a dignified death for the deceased. This proposal improves the likelihood of achieving these objectives. (shrink)