The Football Association has been under pressure to allow girls to play in mixed teams since 1978, following 12-year old Theresa Bennett’s application to play with boys in a local league. In 1991, over a decade after Bennett’s legal challenge, the FA agreed to remove its ban on mixed football and introduced Rule C4 in order to permit males and females to play together in competitive matches under the age of 11. More recently, following a campaign by parents, coaches, local (...) Members of Parliament and the Women’s Sport Foundation, the FA agreed to trial mixed football for the under-12 to under-15 age categories in order to establish, among other things, the risk of injury to players in sex-integrated competitions. A series of exponential changes ensued: between 2010 and 2014, the age at which mixed football was permitted increased from U11 to U16. In 2015, the FA announced the decision to raise the age limit on mixed football from U16 to U18 for the forthcoming 2015–2016 season. We critically examine th... (shrink)

The Dialectical Forge identifies dialectical disputation as a primary formative dynamic in the evolution of pre-modern Islamic legal systems, promoting dialectic from relative obscurity to a more appropriate position at the forefront of Islamic legal studies. The author introduces and develops a dialectics-based analytical method for the study of pre-modern Islamic legal argumentation, examines parallels and divergences between Aristotelian dialectic and early juridical jadal-theory, and proposes a multi-component paradigm—the Dialectical Forge Model—to account for the power of jadal in shaping Islamic (...) law and legal theory.In addition to overviews of current evolutionary narratives for Islamic legal theory and dialectic, and expositions on key texts, this work shines an analytical light upon the considerably sophisticated “proto-system” of juridical dialectical teaching and practice evident in Islam’s second century, several generations before the first “full-system” treatises of legal and dialectical theory were composed. This proto-system is revealed from analyses of dialectical sequences in the 2nd/8th century Kitāb Ikhtilāf al-ʿIrāqiyyīn / ʿIrāqiyyayn through a lens molded from 5th/11th century jadal-theory treatises. Specific features thus uncovered inform the elaboration of a Dialectical Forge Model, whose more general components and functions are explored in closing chapters. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy distinguishes two kinds of rationality: minimal rationality (mnr), Which makes us aware of concepts and their implications, And maximal rationality (mxr), Which introduces normative principles to develop an internally consistent way of life. Contemporary philosophers generally adhere to mnr. I contend that john rawls' use of the social contract mechanism in "a theory of justice" is an attempt to uphold mnr. However, When his theory runs into difficulty, He utilizes mxr. At no point, Does he justify the shift.

This paper predicts the probability of a profound world climate change that will affect the governance of the world's societies. Carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmosphere may be doubled in sixty years, warming the earth's climate and altering drastically the patterns of food production, agriculture, forestry and consequently relations between societies.

Historical studies may become classics for the wrong reasons, as did Henry Thode's Francis of Assisi or Michelet's Joan of Arc, which we now regard as cultural icons in their own right, emblems of specific elements of the cultures of the era in which they were written. We do not, however, read them for the insight they provide into their declared subjects, nor are their conclusions those of current scholarship. Other studies become classics for the right reasons. The year 1999 (...) marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of Johan Huizinga's Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: Studie over levens- en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden, “The Autumn [or Harvest, or Waning, or Decline, or Evening] of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life and Thought in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in France and the Netherlands [or the Low Countries, or the Burgundian Low Countries].”. (shrink)

This article examines some of the reasons why banks and insurance companies have been accused of discrimination, and shows that this is by and large a false accusation. Economic analysis demonstrates that racial discrimination is not a profit‐maximizing strategy. Actually, unwise public policies are actually precluding many consumers from the market.

I propose a broad concept of happiness as an ultimate moral goal that is consistent with what reflective people desire and what people generally approve. Broad happiness includes many and various pleasures, a minimum of pain, a predominately active life and awareness of what can be attained. Besides these characteristics, which are found in Mill, I add that mental and physical faculties must be developed in accord with biological potential, people must be able to choose activities that exercise their developed (...) faculties and must be able to achieve many of the goals toward which their activities aim. This claim can be established by considering scientific data and analyzing what moralists usually approve. According to it, intellectual activities will be found to be the most important aspects of happiness.My concept will differ from Mill’s in that I reject the notion that happiness is synonymous with pleasure and the absence of pain, although both are part of happiness. Because Mill adopted this definition, his theory produced many anomalies. For example, in order to maintain that intellectual activities are morally superior, Mill was led to introduce qualities of pleasure. This maneuver is inconsistent with his empiricism. Moreover, the activities that are most approved from a moral point of view cannot be explained by the pleasure principle. The broad concept of happiness can account for the primacy of intellectual activities and those activities that are most often morally approved. (shrink)

The post-classical genre of the “protocols for dialectical inquiry and disputation” has its more proximate origins in the famed Risāla of Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī. The greater part of his conceptions and methodology, however, consists in a streamlining and universalizing of the more strictly juristic dialectic of his teacher Burhān al-Dīn al-Nasafī ; and this in turn draws on the highly logicized dialectic of Rukn al-Dīn al-ʿAmīdī and his teacher Raḍī al-Dīn al-Nīsābūrī. At the heart of methods in this lineage, and (...) carried forward by al-Samarqandī into the universal ādāb al-baḥth, are three truth-preserving logical relationships critical to the truth-seeking enterprise of dialectic: entailment, mutual negation or exclusion, and causal concomitance. The practical elaboration of these relations reveals a logic in action—a premodern dialogical logic for living disputation praxis. In fact, so critical were these to the dialectical enterprise that al-Samarqandī devoted a specialized treatise entirely to summarizing their defining features and rules, aptly naming it the ʿAyn al-Naẓar, or “Wellspring of Rational Investigation.” In this article, and drawing upon a recently published digital critical edition, I will present an analytical outline of these core logical relations as presented in the ʿAyn al-Naẓar. Then I will address a number of points of interest in this text, grouped under six themes: the potential for cross-disciplinary advancement; notions in discursive development; significant or uniquely contributive formulations; peculiarities of content; signs of an evolving, universalist agenda; and evidence that the ʿAyn al-Naẓar was designed as an aide-mémoire for the active disputant. (shrink)

The post-classical (or post-Avicennan, post-Rāzian) genre of the “protocols for dialectical inquiry and disputation” (ādāb al-baḥth wa-l-munāẓara) has its more proximate origins in the famed Risāla of Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 722/1322). The greater part of his conceptions and methodology, however, consists in a streamlining and universalizing of the more strictly juristic dialectic (jadal / khilāf) of his teacher Burhān al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. 687/1288); and this in turn draws on the highly logicized dialectic of Rukn al-Dīn al-ʿAmīdī (d. 615/1218) and (...) his teacher Raḍī al-Dīn al-Nīsābūrī (d. 617/1220). At the heart of methods in this lineage, and carried forward by al-Samarqandī into the universal ādāb al-baḥth, are three truth-preserving logical relationships critical to the truth-seeking enterprise of dialectic: entailment (talāzum / mulāzama), mutual negation or exclusion (tanāfin / munāfā), and causal concomitance (dawarān). The practical elaboration of these relations reveals a logic in action—a premodern dialogical logic for living disputation praxis. In fact, so critical were these to the dialectical enterprise that al-Samarqandī devoted a specialized treatise entirely to summarizing their defining features and rules, aptly naming it the ʿAyn al-Naẓar, or “Wellspring of Rational Investigation.” In this article, and drawing upon a recently published digital critical edition, I will present an analytical outline of these core logical relations as presented in the ʿAyn al-Naẓar. Then I will address a number of points of interest in this text, grouped under six themes: the potential for cross-disciplinary advancement; notions in discursive development; significant or uniquely contributive formulations; peculiarities of content; signs of an evolving, universalist agenda; and evidence that the ʿAyn al-Naẓar was designed as an aide-mémoire for the active disputant. (shrink)

The domain of Islamic thought and intellectual history boasts an important body of studies relevant to the Arabic philosophy of language, as well as a growing interest in Islamicate argumentation theory and practice. There remains, however, a dearth of volumes which pool research from both areas and examine them together. Filling this gap is more critical than ever. In our time, significant work is being conducted in argumentation theory, but little of it draws from, or relates to, the rich i...

ABSTRACTIn a debate between two outstanding Guyanese thinkers, Walter Rodney and Wilson Harris, Rodney asked Harris the pointed question: ‘…so what happens when we stop dreaming? Does the tree we u...

Qiyās, or “correlational inference” (often glossed as “analogy”), comprises a primary set of methodological tools recognized by a majority of premodern Sunnī jurists. Its elements, valid modes, and proper applications were the focus of continual argument and refinement. A particular area of debate was the methodology of determining or justifying the ʿilla: the legal cause (or occasioning factor, or ratio legis) giving rise to a ruling in God’s Law. This was most often discussed (and disputed) under the rubric of “the (...) modes of causal justification” (masālik al-taʿlīl). Among these modes was the much debated test of dawarān (concomitance of presumed cause and effect). In brief, proponents of dawarān employed it to justify claims that a property (waṣf) occasioned the ruling (ḥukm) in an authoritative source-case (aṣl). In concert with other considerations, the demonstrated co-presence (ṭard) and co-absence (ʿaks) of property and ruling—that is, their concomitance “in existence” (wujūdan) and “in nonexistence” (ʿadaman)— was taken as an indication that the property was the ruling’s ʿilla. Delving further into dawarān and causation (ʿilliyya), the current study interprets “in existence” and “in nonexistence” not as a kind of metaphor for true and false (within the framework of a classical truth-functional formal semantics), but as an accurate terminology vis-à-vis the meaning of causality statements, fully compatible with dominant Islamicate views on causal agency. In brief, a deeper logical and linguistic analysis of the different existential modes of dawarān strongly suggests that we should distinguish property (or phenomenon) and ruling (or effect) as types (concepts or propositions linguistically expressed by a sentence) as opposed to tokens (instantiations of the type; the real, ontological events that verify the proposition). Our reading of dawarān as shaped by a finer-grained structure not only allows us to identify the efficient occasioning process as a function which takes some particular token of the ʿilla (arguably, the property or properties which provide the ruling’s material cause) and renders a token of the general ruling type, but it allows us to elucidate the role of taʿlīl (causal justification) in shaping an epistemological theory of argument to the best explanation: a sophisticated, premodern manifestation of abductive reasoning. (shrink)