The peculiarity of the dialectical ideas of the Second Teacher,a prominent representative of the Muslim Renaissance

This paper investigates the development of dialectical concepts about the universe, being, metaphysics, scientific methods, and the knowledge of philosophers. The methods it uses are mainly theoretical and empirical methods, such as analysis and synthesis. Within the boundaries of the designated topic, it offers a systematic analysis of the historical periodization of Arab Muslim philosophy from the eighth century to the twentieth. The paper examines the activities of the prominent philosopher and mathematician Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Farabi, showing the circumstances of his borrowing certain forms, concepts, and structures from ancient Greek philosophers. The paper's main conclusion is that al-Farabi is a Second Teacher in modern philosophy, meaning the continuation in his works of the search for a scientific approach to the study of various forms of being.     

A General Structure for Legal Arguments About Evidence Using Bayesian Networks

A Bayesian network (BN) is a graphical model of uncertainty that is especially well suited to legal arguments. It enables us to visualize and model dependencies between different hypotheses and pieces of evidence and to calculate the revised probability beliefs about all uncertain factors when any piece of new evidence is presented. Although BNs have been widely discussed and recently used in the context of legal arguments, there is no systematic, repeatable method for modeling legal arguments as BNs. Hence, where BNs have been used in the legal context, they are presented as completed pieces of work, with no insights into the reasoning and working that must have gone into their construction. This means the process of building BNs for legal arguments is ad hoc, with little possibility for learning and process improvement. This article directly addresses this problem by describing a method for building useful legal arguments in a consistent and repeatable way. The method complements and extends recent work by Hepler, Dawid, and Leucari (2007) on object‐oriented BNs for complex legal arguments and is based on the recognition that such arguments can be built up from a small number of basic causal structures (referred to as idioms). We present a number of examples that demonstrate the practicality and usefulness of the method.     

Is Natural Law a Border Concept Between Judaism and Christianity?

With the passing of disputations between Jewish and Christian thinkers as to whose tradition has a more universal ethics, the task of Jewish and Christian ethicists is to constitute a universal horizon for their respective bodies of ethics, both of which are essentially particularistic being rooted in special revelation. This parallel project must avoid relativism that is essentially anti‐ethical, and triumphalism that proposes an imperialist ethos. A retrieval of the idea of natural law in each respective tradition enables the constitution of some intelligent common ground for ethical cooperation in both theory and practice between the traditions. This essay also suggests how the constitution of this common ground could include Muslims as well. The constitution of this common ground enables religious ethicists to present more cogent ethical arguments in secular space, but only of course, when those who now control secular space are open to arguments from members of any religious tradition.     

The relationship between mental rotation and arithmetic: do number line estimation,working memory,or place-value concept matter?

Mental rotation is positively related to arithmetic ability; however, the mechanism underlying this relationship remains unclear. The possible roles of working memory, place-value concept, and number line estimation in the correlation between mental rotation and whole-number computation were investigated. One hundred and fifty-five first-grade students were tested to determine their mental rotation ability, arithmetic ability, and non-verbal intelligence. One year later, their working memory, place-value concept, number line estimation, and overall arithmetic ability were assessed. After controlling for age, gender, and prior arithmetic ability, we found that mental rotation uniquely predicted arithmetic ability after one year. Further mediation analyses demonstrated that number line estimation significantly mediated the relationship between mental rotation and arithmetic ability. In contrast, neither working memory nor place-value concept significantly mediated the relationship between mental rotation and arithmetic ability. This study highlights that mental number line estimation is the most important element explaining the influence of a dynamic spatial skill, that is, mental rotation, on arithmetic ability among young Chinese children.     

Preschoolers’ Thoughts on the Concept of Time

Abstract

This study aimed to examine preschool children’s epistemological views in the context of the concept of time via their drawings of the time machine. The study was conducted with 30 five-year-old children (17 girls and 13 boys) attending state and private preschools in the academic year 2018/2019. The data collection tools used in the study were the Test for Creative Thinking - Drawing Production TCT-DP, Children’s Thoughts on Time Questionnaire (CTTQ) and Children’s Epistemological Views Questionnaire (CEVQ). Of the mixed methods typologies, the fully mixed sequential dominant status-qualitative design was employed. The results obtained from the study indicated that the time machine drawings of almost half the participating children included creative elements and logical thinking products. In addition, 40% of the children’s responses reflected sophisticated epistemological views such as scientific, imaginative/science fiction-based, divergent and eccentric approaches and non-authority figures regarding the concept of time. In conclusion: contrary to Piegatian interpretation, our results show that five-year old children can demonstrate abstract scientific understanding regarding the concept of time and preschoolers’ epistemic approach has a critical role in determining their development of abstract cognitive concepts.     

Conceptual engineering as concept preservation

In the burgeoning philosophical literature on conceptual engineering improving our concepts is typically portrayed as the hallmark activity of the field. However, Herman Cappelen has challenged the idea that we can know how and why conceptual changes occur well enough to actively intervene in revising our concepts; the mechanisms of conceptual change are typically inscrutable to us. If the ‘inscrutability challenge’ is correct, the practical aspect of conceptual engineering may seem to be undermined, but I argue that endorsing such pessimism would be a mistake. Even if the inscrutability challenge is correct, conceptual engineers often have good reasons to try to preserve existing concepts. I examine several cases where concept preservation is important and draw lessons about this activity for conceptual engineers.