Ortaçağ İslam Dünyasında yöneten ve yönetilenler arasındaki bağı âlimler sağlamaktaydı. Sultan ve emirin halka adaletle muamele etmesini, Kuran-ı Kerim ve Sünnet-i Şerife göre yaşamasını ve toplumsal hayatı düzenlemesine yardımcı olurdu. Zaman içerisinde yöneticilerde görülen kusurların ortaya konulmasına yönelik çözüm önerileri sunan âlimler, eserler kaleme almaya başlamış ve bu eserlere siyasetname ve nasihatname denilmeye başlanmıştır. Bu eserlerden bazıları gayet hacimli olup sultana arz edilmekteydiler. Bazısı ise risale şeklinde ve daha kısa yazılarak toplumun huzurunu bozan veya toplumda çok acil çözülmesi gereken unsurları (...) ihtiva etmekteydi. Selçukluların XI. Yüzyıldan itibaren İslam Dünyasına geniş bir hâkimiyet sahası oluşturmaları üzerine siyasetname telifi artmıştı. XIII. Yüzyıl hadis âlimlerinden Ziyâeddin el-Makdîsî’nin yaşadığı Eyyubiler Dönemine kadar bu eser yazım türü yaygınlık kazanmıştır. El-Makdisî, Dimaşk Eyyubî meliki el-Melikü’l-Eşref Musâ’nın düşkün bir hayat sürmesi üzerine özellikle toplumda bozulmalar meydana gelmesi ve devlet yönetiminde zaafa düşülmesi gibi sebeplerle bir nasihatname yazmış ve halkın üzerindeki olumsuz etkileri azaltmayı gaye edinmiştir. Nasihatname sultanın konumuna uygun, yumuşak bir dille ve nazik bir üslupla kaleme alınmış olup eserde ayet ve sahih hadislere yer verilmiştir. (shrink)

The dervish lodge cuisine in the Ottoman lodge structuring has a central importance. The lodge cuisine helped Anatolia turn into a homeland. Travelers took shelter in the lodges in Anatolia. So, these buildings were a safe haven for those who travel. Lodge’s kitchens were always open. These kitchens offered a delightful “Sheikh Baba’s Soup” anytime and these kitchens gave peace and serenity to Anatolia. This article analyzes the Ottoman lodge food culture in the context of a manuscript which belongs to (...) an imaret. This manuscript called Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid was written in between 1240-1250 (1825-1835) in Istanbul. This work belongs to the period of Sultan Mahmud II and the Hudāyī Lodge Foundation. Institution Employees and accounting records were disclosed in this manuscript in which the names of kitchenware are mentioned and recipes are found. This work gives detailed information about foods that are cooked in the Hudāyī Lodge Foundation’s imaret kitchen. -/- SUMMARY Eating is thought always to be important and it is considered worthwhile to eat with guests and travelers in Turkish culture. In the process of Islamization, the dining table was accepted “Halil İbrahim’s Table” and this approach has strengthened further the hospitality. Eating with people, preparing the table for the guests, travelers and the needy were regarded as a factor increasing the fertility of the table. In addition, these movements were considered an act of social cooperation and deepen the collective consciousness. Especially the sufis played a dominant role in the process of Islamization in Anatolia and depending on this, they undertook various social and cultural functions that including catering. In this regard, the lodge was seen as a complex and this structure encompasses different units such as imaret or soup kitchen, mosque, tomb, library, dervish cells, public fountains, bakery and bathhouse. Travelers stay in the imaret and supply their needs, they also nurture themselves spiritually as well. Lodges were a safe haven for these travelers and lodge’s kitchens were open every hour of the day with serving the delicious “Father’s Soup.” Therefore, lodges became a representative of peace. These kitchens take reference the advices of the prophet about eating and serving meals. In addition, the effects of the old Turkish culture and of the Yesevī tradition on these kitchens are witnessed. While many documents related to the food culture in Anatolia could remain to us, regarding the life of lodges especially, information about the kitchens is still limited. Ali Eşref Dede’s cookbook, Yemek Risalesi, is one of the works written about the dishes of Ottoman period. This work is very important in relation to the Mevleviyye as well. This manuscript was written in the 19th century by Sheikh Ali Eşref Dede at Edirne. Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid, one of the other important sources that should be included in the Ottoman lodge food literature. This manuscript is registered in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Atatürk Library Muallim Cevdet Yazmaları (number, 224). Two works were written in the same century. In Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid there are some financial and agricultural information concerning to “Hüdâyî Lodge’s Foundation”. This manuscript includes valuable information about accounting records and officers employed in imaret and other institutions. On the other hand, there are various recipes in this manuscript about the imaret meals, also lists of kitchenware and food materials. This record is thirty pages and was written during Mahmud II. period. Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid is related to Aziz Mahmud Hudāyī Lodge that is placed in a high and strategic location in Uskudar that connects Istanbul to Anatolia. This was a complex structure and established in a place of ten thousand square meters. It consisted of imaret, sheikh’s house (haremlik), mosque, tomb, library, dervish cells, bakery and bath. As mentioned above, Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid contains important information about Aziz Mahmud Hudāyī Lodge’s kitchen and recipes. In fact, the manuscript also provides several alternatives to some of the recipes. This record exhibits the structure of the order and the nutritional forms of the Sufis. Thus, to some extent, it is possible to analyze the theoretical and philosophical direction of the order. Because eating in the lodges is not an action just to satisfy a person's stomach. Rather there is a dining ritual in the lodge. In this frame, the importance of the dining table was emphasized in the lodge tradition in the dimension of human education and socialization. In the sense of Sufism, the information about food reveals symbolic and allegorical meanings, sometimes directly or indirectly. Rituals related to food are closely related to the educational process of the dervishes. In this respect, on the sacred journey of dervish it is necessary to eat food permissible in the religion. In this regard, the books about the customs of the order contain considerable information. Giving valuable information about meals Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid contains main course and dessert recipes. It revealed the food habits of the dervishes and the people who were living at that time. The recipes also contain some interesting features applicable in the Turkish kitchen today. In addition, the names of meals and desserts contribute to the richness of the Turkic language. There are soups and salads, meat grills and stew varieties, fish dishes, pastry varieties, dessert varieties, cookies and halvahs. Meals are cooked with butter mainly. Lamb and sheep are preferred in the meals. The use of spices is high. For example, cinnamon is used even when cooking meat and fish. The manuscript seems to have thirty recipes but there are also different cooking methods in the manuscript. Different cooking methods were used together in some meals as frying, boiling and baking. For this reason, the number of recipes in the manuscript increases even more. This article entitled “The Ottoman Dervish Lodge Cuisine and Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid” has been latinized by simplifying the manuscript based on with a single copy. In this article the place and importance of the lodge cuisine in a mystical life has been analyzed in addition to presenting valuable information about the literature that is related to the Anatolian Lodge Cuisine, the Ottoman Cuisine, and recepies cooked in the Ottoman. Furthermore, the work briefly presents some about the lodge because it is related to Aziz Mahmud Hudāyī lodge. Moreover, a dictionary section has been added for understanding the relatively abandoned words in the manuscript. Similarly, measurements and weigh units are briefly given in Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid. (shrink)

After motivating a framework for evaluating top-down, middle-out, middle-in, and bottom-up ontology development strategies, we apply our framework to investigate whether infectious disease ontologies - specifically, the Virus Infectious Disease Ontology (VIDO) and the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO) - effectively promote semantic interoperability.

In the processing of subject-verb agreement, non-subject plural nouns following a singular subject sometimes “attract” the agreement with the verb, despite not being grammatically licensed to do so. This phenomenon generates agreement errors in production and an increased tendency to fail to notice such errors in comprehension, thereby providing a window into the representation of grammatical number in working memory during sentence processing. Research in this topic, however, is primarily done in related languages with similar agreement systems. In order to (...) increase the cross-linguistic coverage of the processing of agreement, we conducted a self-paced reading study in Modern Standard Arabic. We report robust agreement attraction errors in relative clauses, a configuration not particularly conducive to the generation of such errors for all possible lexicalizations. In particular, we examined the speed with which readers retrieve a subject controller for both grammatical and ungrammatical agreeing verbs in sentences where verbs are preceded by two NPs, one of which is a local non-subject NP that can act as a distractor for the successful resolution of subject-verb agreement. Our results suggest that the frequency of errors is modulated by the kind of plural formation strategy used on the attractor noun: nouns which form plurals by suffixation condition high rates of attraction, whereas nouns which form their plurals by internal vowel change (ablaut) generate lower rates of errors and reading-time attraction effects of smaller magnitudes. Furthermore, we show some evidence that these agreement attraction effects are mostly contained in the right tail of reaction time distributions. We also present modeling data in the ACT-R framework which supports a view of these ablauting patterns wherein they are differentially specified for number and evaluate the consequences of possible representations for theories of grammar and parsing. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers have largely neglected Richard Taylor’s design argument. Given that the initial responses to the argument were largely negative, one might be tempted to conclude that the argument is simply philosophically inadequate. This paper rejects that conclusion by showing how Taylor’s argument has been misunderstood by his critics. In defending Taylor, it is shown that the two types of objections levied against him fail to even blemish his design argument, let alone refute it. Consideration is also given to the (...) argument’s historical lineage, along with a proposal for future considerations of the connection between epistemological realism and design. (shrink)

Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different guise when one (...) adopts a naturalist stance in philosophy, that is when one looks closely at scientific practice and takes it as a guide for identifying natural kinds and investigating their general features. This Element surveys existing philosophical accounts of natural kinds, defends a naturalist alternative, and applies it to case studies in a diverse set of sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognize that climate change and biodiversity loss are one indivisible crisis and must be tackle...

Bu çalışmanın amacı İbn Kesîr’in (öl. 774/1373) el-Bidâye ve’n-nihâye isimli tarih çalışmasının siyer bölümünde Sahîhayn hadislerini muhteva açısından tenkidinin araştırılması ve tahlilidir. Çalışmamızın konusu ise İbn Kesîr’in mezkûr eserinde yirmi Sahihayn hadisini Kur’ân-ı Kerîm (3 hadis), akıl (1 hadis), icmâ (1 hadis), sahih hadisler (7 hadis) ve sağlam târihî bilgilere (8 hadis) uygunluk/aykırılık kıstaslarını kullanarak tenkidi ve on dört hadiste izah getiremediği yanlışların birer hata olduğunu kaydetmesidir. İbn Kesîr’in incelenen hadislerin muhteva tenkidine müsait bir hâle gelmesine yol açan râvi tasarruflarına (...) dair verdiği bilgiler ayrıca kıymetlidir. Bu çalışmanın kapsamını oluşturan hadislerden yedi tanesi hem Sahîh-i Buhârî hem Sahîh-i Müslim, altı tanesi sadece Sahîh-i Buhârî, yedi tanesi de sadece Sahîh-i Müslim’de yer almaktadır. Hem Sahîh-i Buhârî hem Sahîh-i Müslim’de yer alan hadisler Hayber’de müt‘a nikahının yasaklanışı, Rasulullah’ın (s.a.v.) umre ve hacca niyeti, Hz. Peygamber’in gümüş yüzüğü atması, kıblenin değişimi haberinin Kubâ’ya ertesi sabah ulaşması, namazda konuşma yasağının zamanı, ye’cûc ve me’cûc’un seddinin delinmesi ve Hz. Peygamber’in (s.a.v.) miras bırakmaması konulu hadislerdir. Sadece Sahîh-i Buhârî’de geçen hadisler isranın vahiy gelmesinden önce vukuu, Hamrâülesed seferine katılanların sayısı, Sa‘d b. Ebî Vakkas’ın İslam’a girişi, Hz. Ali’nin Hz. Ebû Bekir’e biatı, Recî‘ vak‘asıyla ilgili bazı bilgiler ve mirac hadisinde Beyt-i Makdis’e yolculuğun zikredilmemesi konulu hadislerdir. Son olarak, sadece Sahîh-i Müslim’de yer alan hadisler ise Huneyn savaşında müslümanların sayısı ve Taif kuşatmasının müddeti, yeryüzünün yedi günde yaratılışı, Amr b. Abese’nin İslam’a girişi, Bedir için Sa‘d b. Ubâde ile istişâre, sahâbînin sıcak kumlardan şikâyeti, Ümmü Habîbe ile evlilik ve kurban bayramında öğle namazının yeri konulu hadislerdir. Araştırmamızın yöntemi kaynak taraması ve sonuçların diğer şarihlerinkiyle mukayeseli tahlilidir. Araştırmamızın sonucunda eleştirilen hadislerin büyük bir kısmında İbn Kesîr’in değerlendirmelerinin İbn Hacer ve Nevevî gibi muhaddislerinkinden farklı olduğu görülmüştür. Çalışmamızın önemi İbn Kesîr’in tenkitlerinin muhaddislerin senedin sıhhatinin metnin sıhhatini temin etmeyeceğine dair tespitlerinin uygulamadaki somut delillerini oluşturmasıdır. Kısaca İbn Kesîr’in, eserine güçlü tenkit zihniyetini, özgün görüşlerini ve geniş ilmî birikimini başarıyla yansıttığı görülmektedir. (shrink)

Wright’s judgement-dependent account of intention is an attempt to show that truths about a subject’s intentions can be viewed as constituted by the subject’s own best judgements about those intentions. The judgements are considered to be best if they are formed under certain cognitively optimal conditions, which mainly include the subject’s conceptual competence, attentiveness to the questions about what the intentions are, and lack of any material self-deception. Offering a substantive, non-trivial specification of the no-self-deception condition is one of the (...) main problems for Wright. His solution is to view it as a positive presumption, which is violated only if there is strong evidence to the effect that the subject is self-deceived. In this paper, I will argue that the concern about self-deception in Wright’s account is misplaced and generally unmotivated. (shrink)

Religion is a significant social force on organizational practice yet has been relatively underexamined in organization theory. In this article, I assert that the institutional logics perspective is especially conducive to examine the macrolevel role of religion for organizations. The notion of the religious logic offers conceptual means to explain the significance of religion, its interrelationship with other institutional orders, and embeddedness into and impact across interinstitutional systems. I argue for intrainstitutional logic plurality and show that specifically the intrareligious logic (...) plurality has been rather disregarded with a relative focus on Christianity and a geographical focus on “the West.” Next, I propose the concept of interinstitutional logic prevalence and show that the religious logic in particular may act as a metalogic due to its potential for uniqueness, ultimacy, and ubiquity. Through illustrations from Islamic Finance and Entrepreneurship, I exemplify implications of logic plurality and prevalence for organizations and societies. (shrink)

jild-i 1. Az zamān-i bāstān tā māʼah-i hafdahum, muz̲ayyal bi-tarjamah-ʼi guftār-i Dikārt faylasūf-i nāmī-i Farānsavī -- jild-i 3. Az āghāz-i sadah-i nūzdahum tā zamān-i ḥāz̤ir).

Religious life in Islam in the light of sayings and life of Prophet Muhammad, -632.

According to Wright’s Judgement-Dependent account of intention, facts about a subject’s intentions can be taken to be constituted by facts about the subject’s best opinions about them formed under certain optimal conditions. This paper aims to defend this account against three main objections which have been made to it by Boghossian, Miller and implicitly by Wright himself. It will be argued that Miller’s objection is implausible because it fails to take into account the partial-determination claim in this account. Boghossian’s objection (...) also fails because it is based on an unjustified reductionist reading of Wright’s account. However, Wright’s own attempt to resist Boghossian’s objection seems to display a shift from his Judgement-Dependent account to an Interpretationist account of self-knowledge, in which case Wright’s new account would face the same problem which he himself has previously put forward in the case of Davidson’s Interpretationist account of self-knowledge. Nonetheless, I will argue that Wright does not need to make such a move because Boghossian’s objection is not applicable to his account. (shrink)

There seems to be an emerging consensus among many philosophers of science that non-epistemic values ought to play a role in the process of scientific reasoning itself. Recently, a number of philosophers have focused on the role of values in scientific classification or taxonomy. Their claim is that a choice of ontology or taxonomic scheme can only be made, or should only be made, by appealing to non-epistemic or social values. In this paper, I take on this “argument from ontological (...) choice,” claiming that it equivocates on the notion of choice. An ontological choice can be understood either in terms of determining which taxonomic scheme is valid, or in terms of deciding which taxonomic scheme to deploy in a given context. I try to show that while the latter can be determined in part by social values, the former ought not to be so determined. (shrink)

Basṭāmī, ʻAlī ibn Ṭayfūr, active 16th century-17th century. Akhlāq-i ḥusnaʹ ; Islamic ethics- Early works to 1800.

The amount of biomedical research being conducted around the world has greatly expanded over the past 15 years, with particularly large growth occurring in low- and middle-income countries. This increased focus on understanding and responding to disease burdens around the world has brought forth a desire to help LMIC institutions enhance their own capacity to conduct scientifically and ethically sound research. In support of these goals the Johns Hopkins-Fogarty African Bioethics Training Program has, for the past six years, partnered with (...) three research institutions in Africa to support research ethics capacity. Each partnership began with a baseline evaluation of institutional research ethics environments in order to properly tailor capacity strengthening activities and help direct limited institutional resources. Through the course of these partnerships we have learned several lessons regarding the evaluation process and the framework used to complete the assessments. We believe that these lessons are generalizable and will be useful for groups conducting such assessments in the future. (shrink)

Interventional clinical studies of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19 were predominantly funded and led by public sector actors, including blood services operators. We aimed to analyze the processes of clinical studies of convalescent plasma to understand alternatives to pharmaceutical industry biopharmaceutical research and development, particularly where public sector actors play a dominant role. We conducted a qualitative, critical case study of purposively sampled prominent and impactful clinical studies of convalescent plasma during 2020-2021.

İslâmî ilimlerin muhtelif dallarında birçok kıymetli eser vermiş olan İbn Kesir’in (ö. 774/1373) el-Bidâye ve’n-nihâye isimli eserinin siyer bölümü Hz. Peygamber’in (sav) hayatı, şemâili ve mucizelerini geniş bir şekilde ele almaktadır. İbn Kesir bu eserinde hadis ve siyer rivayetlerini titiz bir tenkid sürecinden geçirmiş ve muhtevayla ilgili dikkatini çeken sorunları dile getirmiştir. Bu kapsamda onun Kur’ân-ı Kerîm’e, sahih hadislere ve sünnete, icmâa, akla, dinin temel öğretilerine ve sağlam târihî bilgilere muhalefet, nübüvvet/sahâbe kelamına benzememe, kalabalık bir grubun şahit olduğu bir olayın (...) bir kişi tarafından aktarılması, naklini gerektiren birçok sebep bulunan bir olayın bir kişi tarafından aktarılması, metin içi tutarsızlık, lafız rekâketi, mana nekâreti, sezgisel tenkit ve israiliyât içerme gibi birçok muhteva tenkidi kıstasına başvurduğu görülmektedir. Ayrıca, İbn Kesir’in “garib”, “garib cidden”, “garâbet” gibi tabirleri zaman zaman teferrüde işaret etmek amacından ziyade açıkça muhteva tenkidi bağlamında kullandığı belirlenmiştir. Makalede İbn Kesir’in söz konusu eserinin Siyer kısmında başvurduğu muhteva tenkidi kıstaslarının sistematik ve kapsamlı bir tahlili ve garâbet tabirini muhteva tenkidi bağlamında kullanımının incelenmesi hedeflenmiştir. (shrink)

This paper makes a distinction between ahistorical causal-functional kinds and historical kinds, which include both type- and token-historical kinds, some of which are “copied kinds.” After showing how these distinctions play out in various social sciences, a number of reasons are put forward for the historical individuation of some social kinds. As in the natural sciences, historical individuation in the social sciences can enable us to infer common causes, explain synchronic causal properties, and discover exceptions to causal regularities, among other (...) epistemic aims. (shrink)

This study sheds light on strategies for retaining skilled pharmacists in Pakistan's pharmaceutical sector, offering valuable insights for both academia and industry stakeholders by investigating the impact of human resource management practices, including training and development, compensation and rewards, job performance, and job satisfaction, on employee retention. It also examines the moderating role of career growth in this context. Theoretical foundations are grounded in international migration theories and social exchange theory, providing a comprehensive framework for the study. A cross-sectional survey (...) design was used to collect data from 254 pharmacists in southern Punjab, Pakistan. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed for data analysis. Findings reveal that training and development, compensation and rewards, job performance, and job satisfaction all have significant direct effects on employee retention. Additionally, career growth acts as a crucial moderator, strengthening the relationship between training and development and job performance, as well as compensation and rewards and job satisfaction in relation to employee retention. Theoretical implications emphasize the importance of tailored training programs, fair compensation practices, and career growth opportunities. Practical recommendations include creating a positive work environment, rewarding high-performing employees, and fostering career development. Future research directions encompass longitudinal studies, the influence of organizational culture and technology, regional variations, and additional factors affecting retention. (shrink)

Philosophy in the Islamic world emerged in the ninth century and continued to flourish into the fourteenth century. It was strongly influenced by Greek thought, but Islamic philosophers also developed an original philosophical culture of their own, which had a considerable impact on the subsequent course of Western philosophy. This volume offers new translations of philosophical writings by Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, and Ibn Rushd. All of the texts presented here were very influential and invite comparison with later (...) works in the Western tradition. They focus on metaphysics and epistemology but also contribute to broader debates concerning the conception of God, the nature of religion, the place of humanity in the universe, and the limits of human reason. A historical and philosophical introduction sets the writings in context and traces their preoccupations and their achievement. (shrink)

When it comes to making decisions in vague problems, rough is one of the best tools to help analyzers. So based on rough and hoop concepts, two kinds of approximations (Lower and Upper) for filters in hoops are defined, and then some properties of them are investigated by us. We prove that these approximations- lower and upper- are interior and closure operators, respectively. Also after defining a hyper operation in hoops, we show that by using this hyper operation, set of (...) all rough filters is monoid. For more study, we define the implicative operation on the set of all rough filters and prove that this set with implication and intersection is made a hoop. (shrink)

This article offers an exploratory quantitative analysis of the conceptual career of climate in US English over the period 1800–2010. Our aim is to qualify two, closely related arguments circulating in Environmental Humanities scholarship regarding the concept’s history, namely that we only started to think of climate as a global entity aft er the introduction of general circulation models during the final quarter of the twentieth century, and, second, that climatic change only became an issue of environmental concern once scientists (...) began to approach climate as a global model. While we do not dispute that the computer revolution resulted in a significantly new understanding of climate, our analysis points to a longer process of singularization and growing abstraction starting in the early nineteenth century that might help to nuance and deepen insights developed in environmental history. (shrink)

The Ismaili Imam and Imamat -- Ethical foundations -- Tradition and modernity -- The ethos of modernism -- Pluralism and cosmopolitan ethics -- Cohesion within the Umma -- Islam and the West -- Cultivating and enabling environment -- Living the ethics of Islam -- Global convergence.

The purpose of this study is to propose the structural outline and conceptual framework of a Ricœurian translation theory. Following a discussion on the ambiguities around situating Ricœur in translation theory, three major interlinked components of the theory are explored. First, the metaphysics of meaning and translation is established based on Ricœur’s hermeneutics of infinitude. Then, the language-processing component is constructed through an incorporation of Ricœur’s narrative theory. Finally, the ethics and politics of translation, particularly in globalization, are founded based (...) on Ricœur’s “age of hermeneutics theory.”. (shrink)

In this work, we reconstruct the cosmological unified dark fluid model proposed previously by Elkhateeb (Astrophys Space Sci 363(1):7, 2018) in the framework of _f_(_R_) gravity. Utilizing the equivalence between the scalar-tensor theory and the _f_(_R_) gravity theory, the scalar field for the dark fluid is obtained, whence the _f_(_R_) function is extracted and its viability is discussed. The _f_(_R_) functions and the scalar field potentials have then been extracted in the early and late times of asymptotically de Sitter spacetime. (...) The ability of our function to describe early time inflation is also tested. The early time scalar field potential is used to derive the slow roll inflation parameters. Our results of the tensor-to-scalar ratio _r_ and the scalar spectral index \(n_s\) are in good agreement with results from Planck-2018 TT+TE+EE+lowE data for the model parameter \(n > 2\). (shrink)

In this response to three critiques of my book, Cognitive ontology, I expand on some of its main themes. First, I demarcate the domain of cognition to support my claim that it is properly investigated from Marr's computational level. Then, I defend the claim that cognitive kinds ought to be individuated externalistically, by contrast with neural kinds, which are often individuated internalistically. This implies that the relationship between the cognitive sciences is one of delivering mutual constraints, which is a more (...) productive research strategy than the search for “neural correlates” of cognitive constructs. (shrink)

This is a clear and original investigation of God's nature and existence. First of all, it considers (among other things) two of God's traditional properties: being all-knowing and being all-powerful. It argues he cannot possess these properties. But, it argues this is in accord with him being worthy of worship. Secondly, it introduces the notion of evil being "overridden". It argues he has to bring about other free living things and it is plausible they have to be liable to experience (...) evil due to their conditions. But, it argues the evil in this world is "overridden". Thirdly, it considers the principal arguments for the claim he does not exist. (They refer to the evil in the world.) It argues they do not establish sufficient grounds for this claim. Finally, it considers some well-known arguments for the claim he exists. It argues they face difficulties. It sets out other arguments: eg, some arguments to increase any degree of belief one has that God can exist. It includes a number of Appendices: God's sovereignty; Are there sufficient grounds for the claim that, very probably, God does not exist?; Theodicy and some theodicies; Some further remarks on God and time; Some further remarks on a living thing which possesses the power to do this or that freely;... It covers as a whole the principal parts of the Philosophy of Religion. It unifies these parts to a significant degree. It proceeds regularly by way of formal and clear arguments. (shrink)