In this paper we consider the possibility of a Quantum Molinism : such a view applies an analogue of the Molinistic account of free will‘s compatibility with God’s foreknowledge to God’s knowledge of (supposedly) indeterministic events at a quantum level. W e ask how (and why) a providential God could care for and know about a world with this kind of indeterminacy. We consider various formulations of such a Quantum Molinism, and after rejecting a number of options arrive at one (...) seemingly coherent formulation. (shrink)

I propose a novel metaphysical cosmology grounded in the concept of "May"—an infinite, indefinite, unobservable field of potential mass-energy. The observable universe, under this conjecture, is not the result of a single Big Bang, but of a multiplicity of localized “small bangs”, exhibiting as supermassive 'black holes' at the centre of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. The fundamental laws of physics and matter emerge as evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) within this ongoing process of realization. The entire framework is presented (...) as an alternative narrative to current scientific orthodoxy, infused with ethical, epistemological, and existential implications. (shrink)

Ramon Harvey revisits the Muslim theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) from Samarqand and puts his system, and that of the Māturīdī school, into lively dialogue with modern thought. -/- Combining rigorous study of Arabic Māturīdī texts with insights from Husserl’s phenomenology and analytic theology, Harvey explores themes from epistemology and metaphysics to the nature of God and specific divine attributes (omniscience and wisdom, creative action, divine speech and the Qur’an). His systematic treatment of these topics shows that a contemporary (...) Islamic philosophical theology, or kalām jadīd, can be true to the past, yet dynamic in the present, and can provide original and constructive answers to perennial theological questions. (shrink)

This article intervenes in the debate over the noetic structure of empirical beliefs required for epistemic justification, focusing on the choice between internalist foundationalism and coherentism. Analysing the link between noetic structure and the introspective accessibility of essential justifiers, I argue that coherentism has greater doxastic plausibility than foundationalism. To deepen my account, I constructively develop ideas from the late-period Edmund Husserl to propose a first-order epistemological theory that I term ‘Lifeworld Coherentism’. I argue that, especially through the idea of (...) the epistemic agent’s ‘doxic horizon’, this theory can overcome some of the worries surrounding the introspective awareness of belief coherence. Finally, in order to extend the second-order dimension of the debate, I introduce ‘Tradition-Based Perspectivalism’, a meta-epistemological theory that Erik Baldwin uses to address concerns about the social grounding of epistemic theorising. Though supportive of Baldwin’s reading of Alasdair MacIntyre on this point, I argue that Tradition-Based Perspectivalism is a better fit to Lifeworld Coherentism as a first-order theory than to his own preferred Proper Functionalism. (shrink)

Repeated calls for interdisciplinary research and communication, both within social science and between social, natural and physical scientists, as well as with the rest of the world, frequently meet a fundamental problem: there is no commonly accepted framework or common language within and through which to integrate the largely separate social understandings generated by our social sciences. This paper is an attempt to outline a possible framework, in the hope that it might stimulate debate about why this conception is wrong (...) or how it is incomplete, and so to develop a more generally acceptable common story. The premises of this speculation are social systems exist—there are understandable processes by which we live, capable of both theoretical and empirical exploration through which to develop better rules and tools for living; these social systems evolve by adaptation, invention and replication to better fit their contexts and circumstances, through the characters and cultures of people, interacting through social transactions. As a consequence, we would expect to observe, following the natural world, identifiable phyla of social transactions and interactions—a taxonomy of social systems. This taxonomy should be capable of retrodiction—plausible explanation of how and why these transactions came to be, and how they correspond to contemporary analysis. This conjecture identifies a plausible taxonomy and an outline evolutionary story of the emergence of the major transactional phyla. (shrink)

On the differing practices and assumptions in the academic specialisms of environmental studies and STS.

This article discusses experiences in the integrated teaching of Environmental Studies and Science Studies in a generalist curriculum at a university campus in Scotland. At the University of Glasgow Crichton Campus, a mixed curriculum has been developed to combine coherently Environmental and Science Studies, perhaps the first such curriculum in the UK and equally uncommon in America. The Crichton curricum is intentionally multi-disciplinary, drawing closely on the successful nineteenth-century Scottish model exported to America. This generalist approach, emphasising broad philosophical principles, (...) informs the courses and their inter-relationships. (shrink)

The paper is written in response to those who fail to recognize the relation between a patient's mental competency and her state of pain. Some clinicians claim that a proper diagnosis can only be made in the absent of analgesia. Rather, the patient's state of pain directly affects her mental competency and thus her ability to give valid consent. Clinicians should rethink their approach to diagnosis when the patient is in pain.

Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 944), from Samarqand in Transoxiana, is the eponym of one of the main Sunnī theological traditions. As a practitioner of kalām (dialectical theology), al-Māturīdī’s approach was often at odds with those engaged in falsafa, the main Arabic philosophical discourse in the Islamic world. However, a close examination of al-Māturīdī’s surviving theological text, Kitāb al-tawḥīd, not only reveals influence in some issues from al-Kindī (d. 873), one of the earliest of the falāsifa, but also interesting philosophical positions (...) and arguments. In this chapter, I show that al-Māturīdī articulates a version of nominalism in which a given concrete particular (ʿayn) can be considered a bundle of its possessed qualities (ṣifāt), or as they would be termed today, tropes. He derives this understanding from experience of the world and applies it analogically to God to affirm substantive divine attributes. He also uses his theory of properties to argue against the concept nominalism of a Muʿtazilī opponent, likely Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī (d. 931). Al-Māturīdī’s philosophical side, albeit with its openly theological agenda, should be made more accessible to historians of philosophy. This chapter is one of the first attempts to treat al-Māturīdī seriously as a philosopher and to present his thought in a way that is relevant to contemporary debates in ontology and for comparison with other medieval traditions. (shrink)

Since the writings of Shiblī Nuʿmānī and A. J. Wensinck in the early twentieth century, scholarship has often questioned the ascription of the creed al-Fiqh al-akbar II to the well-known theologian and jurist Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767). But there has hitherto been little attempt to determine how and when this text entered the Hanafi theological tradition and who its true author was. In this article I show that until the early eighth/fourteenth century, theological and biographical works referring to al-Fiqh al-akbar (...) consistently mean the text written by Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī (d. 199/814), which was later renamed al-Fiqh al-absaṭ. I then trace the entry of al-Fiqh al-akbar II into the mainstream tradition, showing that the key figure in its popularization was the legal theorist ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Bukhārī (d. 730/1329), who extensively quotes from the creed and attributes it to Abū Ḥanīfa. Finally, I propose that clues in the reception history and content of al-Fiqh al-akbar II corroborate the claim recorded in some texts that it was instead likely written by an obscure late fourth/tenth-century Hanafi scholar named Abū Ḥanīfa Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Bukhārī. (shrink)

The Qur’an has been transmitted as both a written text and an oral recital. This has led to the development of a reading tradition that permits numerous different vocalisations to be made upon the basic skeletal text of the established ʿUthmānī codex. Ibn al-Jazarī chose ten early readers whom he felt were most representative of this tradition and whose readings are treated as canonical up until this day. One of these, the Kufan linguist al-Kisāʾī has been characterised in the literature (...) as more focused on the grammar of the Qur’an than his reader peers. This article explores al-Kisāʾī’s process of ikhtiyār when deciding between various possible readings. The sample for analysis consists of Kisāʾī’s tafarrudāt, the approximately fifty cases in which his reading differs from the other nine readers. By comparing his reading with the comments of early scholars of Qur’anic linguistics, especially his near-contemporary al-Farrāʾ, it is possible to construct a typology of the suspected principal reasons for al-Kisāʾī’s tafarrudāt. Not only are many of these based on grammatical preferences, but they demonstrate a significant degree of consistency. Furthermore, analysis of a cluster of readings with implications for the interpretation of the sharīʿa provides evidence for a subtle exegetical dimension to al-Kisāʾī’s work as a reader-grammarian. (shrink)

This article develops a logic with two fundamental components: objects and labels. We compare the properties of the two universes that can be constructed from these building blocks and show how they naturally resolve a class of linguistic paradoxes. We conclude with a application to modal logics involving context fields.