Drawing on the theory of inter-cultural rhetoric analysis and considering the important role of newspaper editorials in shaping public opinions, this article examines the schematic structures of Persian and English newspaper editorials of criticism. The aim of this comparative study was to explore the discourse conventions employed in the editorials of The New York Times and Tehran Times. While revealing some interesting genre-specific features of schematic structures of the editorials in the two newspapers, the results of the study also indicated (...) that cultural constraints did not substantially affect the schematic structures of the editorials. However, they had implications for realization of certain rhetorical structures in the editorials. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn a series of articles, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen and Nick Zangwill argue that, since propositional attitude ascription judgements do not behave like normative judgements in being subject to a priori normative supervenience and the Because Constraint, PAs cannot be constitutively normative.1 I argue that, for a specific version of normativism, according to which PAs are normative commitments, these arguments fail. To this end, I argue that commitments and obligations should be distinguished. Then, I show that the intuitions allegedly governing all normative (...) judgements do not even purport to hold for commitment-attributing judgements.RÉSUMÉDans une série d'articles, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen et Nick Zangwill font valoir que, puisque les jugements d'attribution d'attitude propositionnelle ne se comportent pas comme des jugements normatifs en étant soumis à la survenance normative a priori et à la contrainte du Parce que, les AP ne peuvent être constitutivement normatives. Je soutiens que, pour une version spécifique du normativisme, selon laquelle les AP sont des engagements normatifs, ces arguments échouent. À cette fin, je soutiens d'abord que les engagements et les obligations devraient être séparés. Ensuite, je démontre que les intuitions qui régiraient prétendument tous les jugements normatifs ne prétendent même pas s'appliquer aux jugements attributifs d'un engagement. (shrink)

The increasing gap between organ supply and demand has opened the door for illegal organ sale, trafficking of human organs, tissues and cells, as well as transplant tourism. Currently, underprivileged and vulnerable populations in resource-poor countries are a major source of organs for rich patient-tourists who can afford to purchase organs at home or abroad. This paper presents a summary of international initiatives, such as World Health Organization’s Principle Guidelines, The Declaration of Istanbul, Asian Task Force Recommendations, as well as (...) UNESCO’s and the United Nation’s initiatives against trafficking of human organs, tissues, cells, and transplant tourism. Beyond the summary, it calls for more practical measures to be taken to implement the existing guidelines and recommendations, in order to prevent exploitation of the poor as organ providers. The paper suggests that an international legally binding agreement in criminalizing organ trafficking would be a step forward to bring a change in the global picture of organ trafficking and transplant tourism. (shrink)

In this work, we introduce a new non-Shilnikov chaotic system with an infinite number of nonhyperbolic equilibrium points. The proposed system does not have any linear term, and it is worth noting that the new system has one equilibrium point with triple zero eigenvalues at the origin. Also, the novel system has an infinite number of equilibrium points with double zero eigenvalues that are located on the z -axis. Numerical analysis of the system reveals many strong dynamics. The new system (...) exhibits multistability and antimonotonicity. Multistability implies the coexistence of many periodic, limit cycle, and chaotic attractors under different initial values. Also, bifurcation analysis of the system shows interesting phenomena such as periodic window, period-doubling route to chaos, and inverse period-doubling bifurcations. Moreover, the complexity of the system is analyzed by computing spectral entropy. The spectral entropy distribution under different initial values is very scattered and shows that the new system has numerous multiple attractors. Finally, chaos-based encoding/decoding algorithms for secure data transmission are developed by designing a state chain diagram, which indicates the applicability of the new chaotic system. (shrink)

This paper investigates the process through which firms and non-profit organizations reconcile divergent worldviews in the development of firm–NPO partnerships. Drawing on data from two long-lived firm–NPO partnerships, this study suggests that the dynamics of reconciliation in situations of institutional complexity can be better understood by examining how firms and NPOs manage the interplay of both market and social logics in an inter-organizational context. We have found that during the initial stages of collaboration, partners manage differences by engaging in joint (...) pilot projects and by demonstrating management’s commitment to the partnerships. Subsequently, after firms and NPOs sign a formal partnership agreement, they seek to maintain a sustainable mode of interaction by adopting three distinct mechanisms for managing tensions arising from the partnership: negotiating activity scope, monitoring and learning, and modifying organizational practices. Our research findings contribute to the literature on cross-sector partnership and institutional complexity by highlighting the means by which organizations reduce tensions associated with divergent institutional logics and maintain successful partnerships. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In what sense can one claim that intentional explanations are essentially normative, given that people’s actions and thinking are replete with various irrationalities, yet are still pretty well explained by this explanatory framework? This article provides a novel response to this enduring objection. First, following Brandom, it is suggested that, to understand the normativity of intentional states, we should countenance and distinguish between two normative categories of commitment and entitlement, only the former of which is argued to be essential (...) for intentional explanations. Conflating these two normative dimensions is noted to be one of the main sources of the objections leveled against the view. Second, it is shown that the committive dimension is rich and flexible enough to accommodate all the apparently problematic cases. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued that there is a basic problem in the no-guidance argument against content normativism. The problem is that the argument restricts the essential normativity of intentional states to the formation of these states being guided by certain norms. But it is suggested that the essential norm-governedness of intentional states can be equally plausibly construed as the assessability of these states by norms, which does not imply complying with them. Although I concur with the problem diagnosed (...) in the no-guidance argument, I take issue with the alternative conception of normativity which is put forward. In its stead, I argue that considering intentional states as commitments whose discharging requires complying with certain norms is preferable because it both respects the insight provided while remaining unscathed by the problems besetting this conception of normativity. (shrink)

In what sense can one claim that intentional explanations are essentially normative, given that people’s actions and thinking are replete with various irrationalities, yet are still pretty well exp...

Recent developments in the field of education have led to a renewed interest in the mediating role of critical thinking abilities in the relationship between language learning strategies and the intermediate English as a Foreign Language learners’ writing performance. Oxford Placement Test was run to homogenize the participants, and 100 intermediate learners out of 235 were selected. Then, two valid questionnaires of Ricketts’ Critical Thinking Disposition and Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning were administered. Having administered the questionnaires, the researchers (...) asked the participants to sit for a writing test. The data collected from the questionnaires and as well as the scores of their writing performances were analyzed through SPSS. The results showed a significant relationship between learning strategies and learners’ writing performances, the sub-sets of learning strategies and learners’ writing performances, and CTA and learners’ learning strategies. However, CTA did not play a mediating role in the relationship between intermediate EFL learners’ learning strategies and writing performance. Based on the results of the study, one might also conclude that strategies seemed to play a more important role in the performance of learners especially their writing performances. Therefore, this study had useful contributions for students, teachers, and curriculum designers. Findings of this research could assist teachers to be aware of learners’ strategies in learning writing and help their students to be responsive to using learning strategies in their learning process and create a satisfactory learning context for using learning strategies. Therefore, learners were able to become independent and feel responsibility for their own learning. Secondly, curriculum developers could take advantage of the findings to include learning strategies training into the curriculum. As a result, students were able to use strategies in their learning process more easily and finally, the results might pave the way for improving the research findings. (shrink)

Teaching is one of the professions that creates opportunities for individuals to experience flow, a state of complete absorption in an activity. However, very few studies have examined ESL/EFL teachers’ flow states inside or outside the classroom. As such, this study aimed to explore the quality of experience of 75 EFL teachers in flow and also examine the relationships between their emotional intelligence, the Big Five personality traits and the flow state. To this end, the teachers filled out recurrent flow (...) surveys for a week, and also completed emotional intelligence and the Big Five personality questionnaires. It was found that reading was the major flow trigger outside the classroom and teaching and delivering lessons was the most significant flow-inducing activity for the teachers inside the classroom. Furthermore, correlations and independent samples t-tests indicated that all emotional intelligence and personality traits had significant relationships with flow except agreeableness. Finally, multiple regression analysis showed that two personality traits, conscientiousness and openness to experience were the strongest predictors of the flow state. The implications for future flow-related research in the field of applied linguistics are discussed. (shrink)

The present study aimed at investigating the status of cheating on exams in the Iranian EFL context. One hundred thirty two university students were surveyed to this end. They were selected through convenient sampling. The results indicated that cheating is quite common among the Iranian language students. The most important reasons for this behavior were found to be “not being ready for the exam”, “difficulty of the exam”, “lack of time to study” and “careless and lenient instructors”. The study also (...) indicated that the most common methods of cheating are “talking to the adjacent individuals”, “copying from others' test papers”, and “using gestures to get the answers from others”. It was also found that the student’s field of study, academic level, and occupational status had a significant effect on cheating whereas gender and marital status had no effect in this regard. Furthermore, it became clear that field of study and occupational status had a significant effect on students’ attitude toward cheating whereas gender, academic level and marital status had no effect. Finally, the study indicated that age significantly correlated with cheating and attitude toward cheating. (shrink)

: Iran has had a program of compensated kidney donation from living unrelated (LUR) donors since 1997. The aim of the program was to address the increasing demand for kidney transplantation in a morally sound manner. The program was successful in terms of increasing the number of kidneys available for transplantation. This paper presents a critical review of the program and its ethical status. Denying organ donors legitimate compensation because of the understandable fear of an organ trade is not morally (...) justifiable, and the Iranian model of compensated LUR kidney donation offers substantial benefits that overcome these concerns. Despite its benefits, the program lacks secure measures to prevent the risk of a direct monetary relationship between donors and recipients, and it must be revised in order to be morally justifiable. (shrink)

The present study was an attempt to shed light on the status of plagiarism in the Iranian academic context. It tried to survey the EFL learners’ perceptions of and reasons for different types of plagiarism. To this end, 132 EFL learners from different Iranian universities took part in the study. The data were collected through using a questionnaire specifically designed to gather information on plagiarism. The results indicated that plagiarism is quite common in the Iranian EFL context as different types (...) of plagiarism are employed by the students. Many students were found not to have a negative attitude toward plagiarism. The results also indicated that gender, marital status and occupational status did not have a significant effect on plagiarism, whereas academic level, field of study, and age played a significant role in this regard. (shrink)

Artifacts are ubiquitous and influential in our world, but their nature and existence are controversial. Several theories have been proposed to explain the ontology of artifacts. Drawing on Popper's theory of three worlds, this paper suggests a metaphysics for artifacts along the line of a critical rationalist (CR) approach. This theory distinguishes between three realms of reality: the physical world (World 1), the mental world (World 2), and the world of objective knowledge (World 3). The paper argues that artifacts have (...) different ontological components that correspond to these three realms, and that each component is real and causal. The paper shows how this perspective can account for the intentional and functional aspects of artifacts, as well as their dependence on plans that influence different realms of reality. The paper explains how this pluralistic ontology, compared to the rival theories, enables one to explain the relevant ontological problems of artifacts. The paper also explores how this proposal can lead to a research program encompassing a broader range of technologies, such as social artifacts. In sum, the paper suggests that Popper's three worlds theory provides a rich and comprehensive framework for understanding the metaphysics of artifacts. (shrink)

There has been a lively debate in the philosophy of science over _predictivism_: the thesis that successfully predicting a given body of data provides stronger evidence for a theory than merely accommodating the same body of data. I argue for a very strong version of the thesis using statistical results on the so-called “model selection” problem. This is the problem of finding the optimal model (family of hypotheses) given a body of data. The key idea that I will borrow from (...) the statistical literature is that the level of support a hypothesis, _H,_ receives from a body of data, _D,_ is inversely related to the number of adjustable parameters of the model from which _H_ was constructed. I will argue that when _D_ is not essential to the design of _H_ (i.e., when it is predicted), the model to which _H_ belongs has fewer adjustable parameters than when _D_ is essential to the design of _H_ (when it is accommodated)_._ This, I argue, provides us with an argument for a very strong version of predictivism. (shrink)

We argue that, under the usual assumptions for sufficiently strong arithmetical theories that are subject to Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem, one cannot, without impropriety, talk about *the* Gödel sentence of the theory. The reason is that, without violating the requirements of Gödel’s theorem, there could be a true sentence and a false one each of which is provably equivalent to its own unprovability in the theory if the theory is unsound.

Heidegger’s most significant critique of metaphysics is that the history of metaphysics is the history of the forgetting of being. However, he also criticizes metaphysics for forgetting the nothing. Metaphysics fails to adequately address both being and nothingness, neglecting the nothing and treating it as a conceptual abstraction without objective reference. Metaphysics reduces discussions of the nothing to mere figurative expressions. However, by drawing on the approach of a contemporary Muslim philosopher who examines the the problem of the nothing in (...) particular and the fact-itself and reality in general, and the division of being into general, real, and specific, we can respond to Heidegger’s critique within the framework of metaphysics. According to this perspective, the nothing, like being, is an integral part of reality in a general and real sense. The nothing, with its nothingness, manifests itself in the external world without being reduced to the being. Thus, Heidegger’s statement that “nothing nihilates (or noths) itself” finds metaphysical justification. (shrink)

Molecular methods have revolutionised virtually every area of biology, and metazoan phylogenetics is no exception: molecular phylogenies, molecular clocks, comparative phylogenomics, and developmental genetics have generated a plethora of molecular data spanning numerous taxa and collectively transformed our understanding of the evolutionary history of animals, often corroborating but at times opposing results of more traditional approaches. Moreover, the diversity of methods and models within molecular phylogenetics has resulted in significant disagreement among molecular phylogenies as well as between these and earlier (...) phylogenies. How should this broad and multifaceted problem be tackled? I argue that the answer lies in integrating evidence to infer the best evolutionary scenario. I begin with an overview of recent development in early metazoan phylogenetics, followed by a discussion of key conceptual issues in phylogenetics revolving around phylogenetic evidence, theory, methodology, and interrelations thereof. I then argue that the integration of different kinds of evidence is necessary for arriving at the best evolutionary scenario rather than merely the best-fitting cladogram. Finally, I discuss the prospects of this view in stimulating interdisciplinary cross-talk in early metazoan research and beyond, and challenges that need to be overcome. (shrink)

This paper discusses two conservative ways of treating evidence. (I) Closing inquiry involves discounting evidence bearing on one's belief unless it is particularly strong evidence; (II) biased assimilation involves dedicating more investigative resources to scrutinizing disconfirming evidence (than confirming evidence), thereby increasing the chances of finding reasons to dismiss it. It is natural to worry that these practices lead to irrational biases in favor of one's existing beliefs, and that they make one's epistemic condition significantly path-sensitive by giving a bigger (...) role to batches of evidence obtained earlier in the course of inquiry compared with those subsequently acquired. However, I argue that both practices are demanded by considerations of practical rationality. I also argue that, contrary to initial appearances, there is little reason to worry about the effects of these practices on the dynamics of one's beliefs. (shrink)

This collective article discusses the philosophy of modern higher education in Iran, which in this case, optimistically, its history dates back to the founding of Dār al-fonūn —if we consider Dār al-fonūn as a university. Otherwise, its origin can be traced back to the University of Tehran. Central to this article is the emphasis on the lack of philosophy of higher education in Iran. Therefore, most of the criticisms in front of us are related to the internal inconsistency in the (...) Iranian higher education system due to the lack of a national-indigenized-official philosophy of higher education in Iran. Furthermore, The Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought about fundamental changes in higher education. Accordingly, several controversial issues including the rapid growth of higher education, the Islamization of universities, cultural narratives in higher education, the increase in students, especially women and the low-income class of the country were also explored. Therefore, in this collection, the political, economic, social, cultural, moral, technological and historical dimensions of Iranian higher education were examined. (shrink)

In organ transplantation, the demand for human organs has grown far faster than the supply of organs. This has opened the door for illegal organ trade and trafficking including from children. Organized crime groups and individual organ brokers exploit the situation and, as a result, black markets are becoming more numerous and organized organ trafficking is expanding worldwide. While underprivileged and vulnerable men and women in developing countries are a major source of trafficked organs, and may themselves be trafficked for (...) the purpose of illegal organ removal and trade, children are at especial risk of exploitation. With the confirmed cases of children being trafficked for their organs, child organ trafficking, which once called a “modern urban legend”, is a sad reality in today’s world. By presenting a global picture of child organ trafficking, this paper emphasizes that child organ trafficking is no longer a myth but a reality which has to be addressed. It argues that the international efforts against organ trafficking and trafficking in human beings for organ removal have failed to address child organ trafficking adequately. This chapter suggests that more orchestrated international collaboration as well as development of preventive measure and legally binding documents are needed to fight child organ trafficking and to support its victims. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although there are myriad sources on utopia and utopian studies, in none of them is there reference to the Iranian utopia The Virtuous City, written by Abu Nasr Farabi, Iranian philosopher, logician, and musician and founder of Islamic philosophy. His ideas are homogeneous with those of Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle, but a comparison of the dominant ideology of the book with Islamic, especially Shiite, teachings shows that Farabi presents a Shiite utopia. The Virtuous City consists of six (...) sections and nineteen chapters on subjects such as cosmology, man and his physical and spiritual nature, and the structure of human society. However, the greater part of the book is dedicated to “an ‘academic’ description of the structure of human society as it ought to be.” Like many utopias that reflect the unsatisfactory conditions of the status quo, The Virtuous City is viewed as a protest against the Abbasid caliphate. Farabi questions the legitimacy of the Abbasid caliphs who in the name of Islam had made an un-Islamic society. Considering the historical background of The Virtuous City, subversion mostly appears when Farabi presents twelve qualifications for an imam that contrast with the caliphs of the Muslim society. (shrink)

We explain here how the natural selection theory of people's mutualistic sense of fairness and the biofunctional theory of human understanding are made for each other. We welcome the stage that the target article has already set for this convergence, and invite the authors to consider moving the two independently developed approaches a step closer to the natural selection level of biofunctional understanding.

We take an argument of Gödel's from his ground‐breaking 1931 paper, generalize it, and examine its validity. The argument in question is this: "the sentence G says about itself that it is not provable, and G is indeed not provable; therefore, G is true".

The structure of everyday language implies that knowledge is an object. Like an object, it can be acquired, lost, stored, retrieved, and used. Anything that might be done to an external object could also be done to knowledge. Using concepts from the emerging field of biofunctional cognition, this paper discusses an alternative to the everyday-language framework of knowledge. The central idea is that the biological subsystems that comprise the physical nervous system have the capacity to create in us a live, (...) as opposed to pre-recorded, experience that might be described as intuitive self-awareness. In its various manifestations, this ongoing intuitive self-awareness is what we recognize as the knowledge inside us. There is no storage of knowledge of any kind. Intuitive self-awareness is in a perpetual state of re-creation and change. It serves as a private language with which the individual interacts directly with the subsystems of his/her own nervous system. This is the primary function of intuitive self-awareness &emdash; serving as the vehicle for the private communication between the individual and the individual's nervous system. Intuitive self-awareness has also come to serve, through evolutionary symbolic adaptation, as the foundation for the public language that the individual uses to communicate with other individuals. This is the secondary function of the intuitive self-awareness &emdash; to serve as the vehicle for public communication within social groups in which the individual lives. In this function, intuitive self-awareness externalizes to manifest itself in the form of an indirect code system for public communication. The nonsymbolic and symbolic forms of knowledge enable the organism to extend its internal world to encompass the external world in both its totality and detail. (shrink)

Political decay in Islamic societies has for the most part been the subject of structural analyses while philosophical studies have been rare, often speculative and deterministic. Thoughtlessness and Religious Decadence in Iran: A Sojourn in Comparative Political Theory explores from a theoretical perspective the problem of democracy deficit--or, political decadence--, in contemporary Iran and, by implication, in present-day Middle Eastern societies. This decadence, the book argues, is in part a religion-based decadence, and deliverance from it requires collective thoughtfulness about religion. (...) Alireza Shomali conceptualizes the Iranian Reality in terms of a lack of not only good life but also thinking of good living. This thoughtlessness means dissolution of critical consciousness and, as such, it heralds escalating decadence. At this moment of rapid decay, the book argues, thought must become relevant to society: the communicative practice of thinking must emerge to examine the pathologies of a religiously administrated life. Opening a dialogue between Adorno, Strauss, Farabi and Razi, among others, Shomali underlines the critical points of similarity and difference between these thinkers and envisions a "local" emancipatory project that, noting the specifics of the Iranian case, takes lessons from the western experience without blind imitation. (shrink)

Objective: To cope with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic health authorities released social restrictions. Such social restrictions impacted on the people's possibilities to move deliberately in a public space and to gather with other people. In the present study, we investigated the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on physical activity patterns before and during the confinement among team sports participants. Such PA patterns were further related to current mood states, and possible sex differences were also explored.Methods: A total of 476 adults (...) exercising team sport completed a series of self-rating questionnaires covering sociodemographic information, former and current PA patterns, and current mood states.Results: Compared with the period before the confinement, PA intensity decreased, but PA frequency increased during the confinement. Past, current, and changes in physical activity patterns were unrelated to participants' mood states. Sex differences in mood were spurious. Sex differences in physical activity patterns were modest, with male participants reporting a higher physical activity intensity during the confinement.Conclusions: The present pattern of results suggests that the COVID-19-related confinement did not impact in a uniform fashion on PA patterns of adults attending team sports. Furthermore, mood states were unrelated to current physical activity patterns. Given the complex psychosocial situation of COVID-19-related confinement, it appeared very unlikely that sole physical activity patterns could counterbalance possible impaired states of mood and behavior. (shrink)

Background: Euthanasia is a controversial issue in many countries. However, there is little evidence about attitudes of nurses and nursing students toward euthanasia. Research aims: The present study aimed to compare nurses and nursing students' attitudes toward euthanasia. Research design: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. Participants and research context: Using census sampling, 390 nurses and 125 nursing students were enrolled in this study. Methods: Data were collected using a socio-demographic questionnaire and Euthanasia Attitude Scale that included 20 items that (...) sought to record participants’ level of agreement with euthanasia based on a Likert-type scale. Ethical considerations: Objectives of the study were stated for all samples, and emphasized the confidentiality of their specifics and responses, and informed written consent was obtained from all participants. Findings: The mean score of nurses and nursing students’ attitudes about euthanasia was 3.14 ± 0.26 and 3.22 ± 0.24 out of 5, respectively. The majority of nurses and nursing students had a positive attitude toward euthanasia. There was a significant statistical difference between the attitudes of nurses and nursing students to euthanasia. Discussion: The results indicated that the majority of students and nurses had a positive attitude regarding euthanasia. Conclusion: It was recommended to conduct more studies on euthanasia in Iran. (shrink)

: The 1997 Japanese organ transplantation law is the fruit of a long debate on "brain death" and organ transplantation, which involved the general public and experts in the relevant fields. The aim of this paper is to trace the history of the implementation of the law and to critique the law in terms of its consistency and fairness. The paper argues that the legislation adopts a double standard regarding the role of the family. On the one hand, the legislation (...) overemphasizes the family's authority by granting the family a veto on the matter of organ transplantation, while, on the other hand, not allowing the family to make surrogate decisions. In addition, the role of the law in cases involving minor or incompetent patients is shown to be similarly misguided. The paper argues that accepting a decisive role for the family in current law is compatible with Japanese culture. (shrink)

A review of advertisement studies shows that there has been little attempt to examine infomercials in terms of rhetorical appeals and persuasive strategies. Therefore, this study sought to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the persuasive elements of Apple infomercials through Aristotle’s modes of persuasion to reveal the most frequent persuasive language features and structures and to study how such elements were utilized to promote the products and services of the company. A top-down approach based on Aristotle’s modes of (...) persuasion was adopted to identify the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos and pathos as well as the promotional tokens and patterns in the text. The descriptive findings provided evidence to demonstrate that although all the rhetorical proofs were employed in the corpus, emotional appeal was the most dominant. The findings of this research open new horizons for further studies on infomercials in general and persuasive rhetoric in specific. (shrink)

Much of the discussion on the normativity of belief rests on the presupposition that there is a single fundamental truth norm governing belief that explains all of its normative features. Building on the committive conception of belief proposed by some normativists, this article takes issue with this presupposition. In particular, it is argued that belief, construed as cognitive commitment, is governed by three fundamental-cum-irreducible norms, which I call the “entitlement norm,” the “fulfillment norm” and the “escapability norm,” and it is (...) shown that each of them concerns a particular normative feature of belief. Taken together, these norms can explain all the normative features of belief without leading to implausible consequences. The discussion also shows that the relationship between the truth norm and the evidence norm is more complicated than is usually conceded by normativists. (shrink)

What can we learn about the existence of non-physical entities from close inquiry into special kinds of experiences? Contemporary analytic philosophy has sometimes studied mystic experiences as evidence for the existence of such entities. The article is organized as follows: first, I discuss several distinctions that seem to me to play substantive roles in philosophizing about such experiences. I will then offer and criticize two arguments that support the significance of the experiences. The arguments do not show whether a non-physical (...) entity does or does not exist; they highlight a philosophical framework that can be beneficial to a variety of different approaches. Based on a heuristic strategy, the arguments will focus on the possibility/impossibility of objective representation of non-physical entities. They invite the reader to reflect on deeper philosophical grounds necessary for evaluating any positive or negative claims about the significance/insignificance of such experiences. The first argument rests on contemporary theories and assumptions. The second argument will use notions that drive from Classic Arabic-Persian Philosophy. (shrink)

A persistent tradition in metaphysics of mind insists that there is a substantial difference between mind and body. Avicenna’s numerous arguments, for a millennium, have encouraged the view that minds are essentially immaterial substances. In the first part, I redesign and offer five versions of such arguments and then I criticize them. First argument (indivisibility) would be vulnerable in terms of two counterexamples. Second argument (universals) confuses existence with location. Third argument (bodily tools) is less problematic than the first two, (...) though I will say a few words about why it may also not be convincing. Fourth argument (infinity) may not support substance dualism, because, I think, abundance is very different from infinity. Fifth argument (senescence) depends on empirically incorrect premises. Hence, it seems that no Avicennian argument can reasonably save substance dualism. (shrink)

I argue for a commitment-discharging condition of reasoning, according to which to engage in reasoning is to discharge the theoretical and practical commitments one has undertaken. I highlight the ways in which this condition is distinct from other proposals, particularly the Taking Condition, and argue that it can explain certain intuitions about reasoning that otherwise remain elusive. In particular, I argue that the commitment-discharging condition can provide a unified account of attitude-formation and premise-discharging reasoning as well as practical and theoretical (...) reasoning. It also provides a novel way to evade the regress that bedevils many accounts of inference. (shrink)

Much of the discussion on the normativity of belief rests on the presupposition that there is a single fundamental truth norm governing belief that explains all of its normative features. Building on the committive conception of belief proposed by some normativists, this article takes issue with this presupposition. In particular, it is argued that belief, construed as cognitive commitment, is governed by three fundamental-cum-irreducible norms, which I call the “entitlement norm,” the “fulfillment norm” and the “escapability norm,” and it is (...) shown that each of them concerns a particular normative feature of belief. Taken together, these norms can explain all the normative features of belief without leading to implausible consequences. The discussion also shows that the relationship between the truth norm and the evidence norm is more complicated than is usually conceded by normativists. (shrink)

The “No Miracle Argument” for scientific realism contends that the only plausible explanation for the predictive success of scientific theories is their truthlikeness, but doesn’t specify what ‘truthlikeness’ means. I argue that if we understand ‘truthlikeness’ in terms of Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, the resulting realist thesis (RKL) is a plausible explanation for science’s success. Still, RKL probably falls short of the realist’s ideal. I argue, however, that the strongest version of realism that the argument can plausibly establish is RKL. The (...) realist needs another argument for establishing a stronger realist thesis. (shrink)

That it can explain the phenomenon of transparency, namely the fact that if you resolve whether p, you have thereby resolved whether to believe that p, was originally put forward as a great virtue of normativist conceptions of belief. However, non-normativists have convincingly shown that the permissive version of the truth norm of belief, which is one of the most plausible and promising versions of it, cannot in fact accommodate this phenomenon. Alarmed by this situation, in this paper I re-assess (...) the transparency phenomenon and its relation to different versions of the truth norm of belief. I argue that, contrary to how it appears, it is not even clear that the most tenable injunctive versions of the truth norm explain this phenomenon. I then argue that the transparency phenomenon consists of two distinct aspects which should be, but have not been, distinguished. What I call the ‘question-shifting’ aspect is explained by the truth norm, irrespective of how it is formulated, while what I call the ‘answer-shifting’ aspect is explanatorily empty and does not require any explanation, be it normative or otherwise. Therefore, understood properly, explaining transparency does remain a strength of normativist accounts of belief, and has no implications for which particular formulation of the truth norm we may adopt. (shrink)

The aim of the present study is to propose an approach to legal translation quality so as to address the idiosyncrasies in legal studies and to confront the challenges and flaws of previous paradigms and models of translation quality assessment. The present approach is associated with the micro-macro textual, contextual, and legal components/variables in the pursuit of an adequate strategy through elaborating the decision making process for translation. The elements of the decision making process remain constant between translation relevancy/brief, and (...) the translation product in the source text analysis, reformulation and revision stages. Translation competence, translation product, and the translation decision making process are all the evaluative standards for both quality controllers and translators. Also, this study scrutinizes the impact of translation quality assessment involving professional and training contexts besides managerial quality. In the upshot, this approach has the potential to reduce subjectivity in the quality of legal translation based on particular methodologies. The proposed framework assists the need for the evaluation of the quality of legal translation to boost the quality benchmarks in the professional environment. (shrink)