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Bismillah, I have to write a Philosophy explication/argumentation paper ((1500-2000 words due Friday April 3 at 1PM (13H) GMT -6)), on "What is the nature and extent of our duties to aid the poor?". Possible texts/authors: Singer, Narveson, Smart, Williams, Kant... I must consider at least two of these texts, [and argue in favour of one of them]. I would like to know which (Secular) Philosophical position of this topic question (Charity/Duty) is closest to Islam(ic Philosophy)? I.e. Which author is closest to Islam on the issue of charity? I am also curious to know if there is any appeal to Objectivity that I can make when arguing for the superiority of one author's view over the other(s)? -------------------------------------------------- Here are the Philosophical positions of each author (according to what I've understood), and the main text we studied for each. I need to know how this would translate into charity & poverty. Obviously Singer and Narveson are clearest, but the others surely have an opinion on the subject too. Note that my explanation for Smart and Kant are written more eloquently because I took the explanation of their theories from my previous essays, whereas the others are taken from my class notes: Peter Singer ("Famine, Affluence, and Morality") Singer appeals to beneficence to argue for the distribution of well-being. Here, he defines beneficence as the contribution to general welfare, at some cost to one's own personal welfare. The result is Utilitarianism as welfarism, whereby the overall good is the maximization of overall welfare. Restated, under utilitarianism, beneficence is the redistribution of utility in order to maximize well-being. For Singer, beneficence towards others is a duty, and important ways, charity (normally supererogatory act) and duty are not a useful distinction (charity as morally obligatory under utilitarianism). In the drowning child example, you are walking through a local a park when you notice a child in a pond. The pond is shallow enough that you can easily walk, but deep enough that the child cannot. It appears that the child is in great distress, seemingly unable to swim. Unfortunately, today you’ve put on some of your best clothes, and there is no time for delay; your clothes would be ruined if you tried to help the child. The stakes are a child's life versus $1000 worth of clothes. What should you do? In the starving child example, you are reading an article in the paper when you learn of a child in war-torn country that, as one amongst many others, is starving and, due to a scarcity of resources after years of ongoing warfare, on the brink of death. The same article refers you to a trustworthy charity organization, whose work would relieve much of the suffering in the area. Unfortunately, the charity is presently underfunded. If, however, you gave $1000, at least one life would almost certainly be saved. What should you do? Consider if there is a meaningful moral distinction between the two scenarios? Singer's principle of beneficence considers a strong formulation and a moderate formulation. The notion is that "if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it" (p. 231). The strong formulation obliges us to give until the point of marginal utility (I.e. where the giving agent would be worse off than the beneficiaries), in the interest of procuring equal utility/happiness (making the donor worse off than the beneficiaries in the transaction). *Give until the intercept where "total utility" is max and beginning to decline and "marginal utility" reaches zero. Moderate formulation is giving before said intercept so that Marginal Utility isn't zero, and total utility isn't maximum, so the effect is less profound and a compromise for those unwilling to sacrifice anything morally significant, such as personal projects like a parent who would rather invest/save $1000 for their child's tuition rather than giving $1000 of their disposable income to charity. There are two subsidiary principles that help explain the force of the principle of beneficence (p. 232). The principle of universalizability dictates that beneficence applies to all individuals, with no exceptions -- no exceptions off of physical distance from the person in need -- implication of negative responsibility. The principle of impartiality dictates that for all individuals with equal need, the same duty to help holds (the happiness of individuals must be treated as having equal moral value) -- implication of no special obligations (no loyalty), abandon personal projects (implies negative responsibility)... It compares equal needs (e.g. drowning stranger vs drowning friend) and unequal needs (e.g. your somewhat poor family vs a very poor family). For more on beneficence: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/principle-beneficence/ Jan Narveson ("Feeding the Hungry”) Narveson, a Libertarian thinker, does not believe beneficent action to be a duty. Consider (1) Duties of justice as a legal duty that can be enforced by others, which implies a justification of coercion or restrictions on liberty to compel dutiful action and/or prevent undutiful action, e.g. lying under oath; (2) Duties of charity as a moral duty that cannot be enforced by others, but which motivates action via emotion/conscience, which implies praiseworthiness of dutiful action or blameworthiness of undutiful action, e.g. lying to a friend. Question: “Is it unjust to let others starve to death?” (p. 2). Consider: Negative vs. positive rights of the starving (e.g. a right not to be harmed by starvation vs. a right to be fed). There is a moral difference between harming and allowing harm, thus an individual is only responsible for harm they do or cause; therefore, letting harm is not in violation of a negative right not to be harmed. There is also no positive right to be fed. Consider: Singer’s welfarist justification of such a right, I.e. maximization of overall welfare qua utility. Concern: Plurality of views of welfare; difficulty of evaluating and comparing utility. A positive right to be fed presupposes a common metric for welfare and comparisons of utility, but there is no such metric; therefore, we must allow individuals to decide for themselves what would be most beneficial. Consider: Investing in the opera vs. investing in OXFAM (p. 3). Result: (I) No (welfarist) case for a positive right to be fed, hence (ii) no principle of beneficence as a duty of justice. Even if Singer did not intend to argue it as a duty of justice (he emphasizes the duty of individuals not the government), beneficence must have a limited scope due to the issue of impartiality. There is a difficulty of measuring & comparing happiness between individuals, and a threat to the liberty of richer individuals. In consideration of this, legally and morally we must take the rights of the individual as fundamental, making free-market capitalism the only fair solution. All in all, beneficence may be a moral duty, but with significant restrictions, such as the duty only applying in times of crisis, the help is genuinely of modest cost to the provider (p.4), and partiality towards personal interests is legitimate, if not encouraged. The result is charity as a moral virtue. For more on Narveson: https://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/ethics/jan narveson.htm J.J.C. Smart ("Defending Utilitarianism") Smart uses a non-cognitivist approach, whereby moral principles depend on attitudes or feelings, to argue for act-utilitarianism (202). In act-utilitarianism, the rightness of an action is judged by the consequences of the action itself, as opposed to the consequences of following a rule that requires that action, which characterizes rule-utilitarianism (203). Act-utilitarianism appeals to the sentiment of generalized benevolence, which is the ‘ultimate moral principle’ of utilitarianism (205). Since different utilitarian standards do not disagree on what is to be done, but rather disagree on the standards of consequences that should arise (204), Smart grounds his argument for act-utilitarianism in the criterion of rational choice (206) to reject “rule worship” which fails to be optimific in situations requiring deliberation, yet accepts “rules of thumb” for spontaneous decisions, due to the lack of precise methods when comparing total situations involving immediacy or habit (205-6). Consider the comparative advantage of utilitarianism over deontological ethics in relation to the principle of benevolence. Note that deontological ethics are rule-based, thus in some instances they attain similar rules to those of rule-utilitarianism. In the “desert island promise” (207) a man promises to a dying man that he will give his gold to a jockey club, but he instead finds a better use for the gold, by giving it to a hospital in need. By focusing on the effects of individual actions rather than the effects of types/classes of actions, the utilitarian position achieves the most humane result by intrinsically assuming that the remote effects of him violating his promise, I.e. the rule, are negligible and more good would result from violating this promise (207). However, in McCloskey’s “scapegoat” case (208), one innocent person must be killed to prevent a riot from occurring where hundreds will be killed. In this case, due to not following a set of rules in its desire to maximize total happiness—here, the rule that murdering any innocent person is absolutely impermissible—act-utilitarianism justifies intuitively horrible acts (208). For more on Rule and Act Utilitarianism: https://www.iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/ Bernard Williams ("A Critique of Utilitarianism") Williams' principal objection to Utilitarianism turns on the notion of negative responsibility, the notion that an agent is equally responsible for consequences they [foresee yet] fail to prevent as those they actively bring about. In Jim and the Villagers problem, Jim, a foreign scholar, walks into a village, only to find several armed men, mostly in uniform, in front of twenty locals tied to a wall. The captain explains that the villagers are a random group of inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other possible protesters of the advantage of not protesting. However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest’s privilege of killing one of the prisoners himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion the other villagers will be let off. If Jim refuses, there will be no special occasion and all twenty will be killed. Consider Jim’s inaction leading to the deaths of the 20 as equally bad as the captain’s act of killing them. Consequentialism demands negative responsibility as (I) A general responsibility to maximize goodness (ii) Indifference re: doing/allowing (iii) Impartiality re: who benefits and/or is harmed (iv) Impartiality re: who produces benefits/harms. The Utilitarian could reply that although Negative Responsibility holds, (1) Jim should not kill the one in light of the more remote effects this would have; (2) Consider the negative effects on Jim’s psychology as a result of killing the one; (3) Consider the negative effects of the precedent that Jim’s action would set. Williams' response is (1) in general, appeals to remoter effects imply lower certainty versus immediate effects; (2) Such effects either (I) wouldn’t exist (I.e. if Jim was a rational utilitarian), or (ii) would be irrational, and should be disregarded in a utilitarian calculus; (3) The precedent (I) should in some sense be a precedent for right action under utilitarianism, and in any case (ii) would be a precedent not likely to influence others (I.e. given the rare and extreme nature of Jim’s situation). According to Williams, negative responsibility threatens integrity, the notion of the agent’s capacity to pursue projects with which they identify, and which arguably have a role in constituting their identity. In George the chemist problem, George needs a job badly. His options are limited, but his friend offers him work at a lab doing R&D for biochemical warfare. George says he would prefer not to, but is reminded by his friend that (a) the lab remains no matter what George decides, and (b) If George refuses, the job goes to an overzealous supporter of the war effort, whereas (c) If George accepts, he could help to slow down the work. Utilitarianism threatens integrity because of (I) Impartiality: no special status for the agent's own projects; (ii) Negative Responsibility: A moral agent’s projects will be determined “to an indeterminately great extent” by the projects of others (p. 260). The result is that the moral agent is minimally (I) constantly kept from pursuing their most centra projects with which they identify, and perhaps even (ii) has no projects of their own at all, if it can be shown that doing so would lead to better results overall. For more on Williams: http://faculty.fiu.edu/~hauptli/BernardWilliamsAgainstUtilitarianism.htm, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-bernard/#DayCannTooFarOffhWillAgaiUtil Immanuel Kant ("Groundwork of Morals") For Kant, although we are all rational beings, the filtering of personal inclinations through the faculty of reason may often be inconsistently applied, indicating a gap between our subjective ‘maxim’ reasons for acting, and objective ‘law’ reasons for acting. Subsequently, we need an unconditional standard for moral action, which Kant articulates as a ‘moral law’, as per his deontology (G 4:402). Kant’s First Formulation of this Categorical Imperative (CI) is called the Formula of the Universal Law (of Nature). It poses the question of ‘could I rationally will that everyone act in the way that I propose?’ (G 4:421). If the answer is no, then we are forbidden to perform this action. This formulation is significant to Kant’s moral philosophy because it aims to correctly guide our inclinations into proper reasons for acting, to ensure that individuals will correctly adhere to their moral duty, as per Kant’s virtue ethics (MM 6:405). A “perfect duty” designates those inclinations that must be enshrined in reason, whereas an “imperfect duty” designates those inclinations that are treated as the willing of means to achieve an end, and Kant accepts both as moral (G 4:423). The First Formulation of Moral Law is convened through the universalizability test, whereby an agent’s maxims are imagined to be universal, and then “contradictions in conception” and “contradictions in willing” are considered. Firstly, if your maxim (I.e. personal reason for action) fails to be universally conceivable (I.e. always acted on by all) in an imagined world governed by this maxim, then we infer a contradiction in conception, whereby you have a “perfect duty” to always refrain from acting on that maxim in the real world (G 4:421). However, if there is no contradiction in conception, then we infer an opposed perfect duty to always act upon that maxim in the real world. Secondly, if you yourself cannot rationally will to always act on your maxim in an imagined world governed by this maxim, then we infer a contradiction in willing, whereby you have an “imperfect duty” to sometimes refrain from acting on that maxim in the real world (G 4:421). However, if there is no contradiction in willing, then we infer an opposed imperfect duty to sometimes act upon that maxim in the real world, considering that we implicitly must will the means to our ends, insofar as we need the help of others to achieve our ends. For more on Kant's Moral Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/ If you have any questions at all, feel free to ask me. Note that there are other Philosophers not mentioned here that I could take from, like Mill, Rawls, etc. -------------------------------------------------- General structure of an argumentation paper: 1. Introduction I. Begin by clearly stating the paper’s specific topic and thesis ii. Give a plan that quickly summarizes how the paper will develop its central claim 2. Explication I. Introduce and explain any theories and central concepts used, focusing on their relevance to the paper’s topic 3. Argumentation I. Present the paper’s own position on the topic in the context already established by initial treatment of texts/theories ii. Consider a strong objection to the paper’s position, and respond 4. Elaboration I. Consider a potential implication of the paper’s position (e.g. a further theoretical problem or practical application) 5. Conclusion I. Summarize the paper’s position, including its central argument and most interesting result(s) -------------------------------------------------- The closest thing in Islam that I could find is this: https://www.al-Islam.org/inner-voice-Sayyid-saeed-akhtar-Rizvi/true-charity If you could direct me to Islam's (Shia Jafari) Philosophical account of Charity and how I could possibly include it in my essay, I would be very grateful. I really don't know which one of these secular authors I should argue in favour for... I don't have a strong opinion in favour of any of them, nor do I know which one I can argue best for. -------------------------------------------------- This is @ everyone But, also @Hameedeh @Qa'im @Reza @Haji 2003 @Abu Nur @Ibn Al-Ja'abi @starlight @notme @Sirius_Bright @Abu Hadi @ShiaChat Mod @Akbar673 @Don'tMakeAس @habib e najjaar @Rohani @Gaius I. Caesar -------------------------------------------------- JazakAllahu Khairan Thanks a million Wasalam

UMSL philosophers win nearly $1 million grant from John Templeton Foundation JAN/22/2019 | POSTED BY STEVE WALENTIK Philosophy Professors Jon McGinnis and Billy Dunaway won a nearly $1 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to examine the writings of medieval Islamic thinkers for answers to questions of contemporary philosophy of religion. (Photos by August Jennewein) What started as a conversation over beers at a local tavern has led, more than a year later, to $1.1 million in research funding for two members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Professor Jon McGinnis and Assistant Professor Billy Dunaway concocted their idea to bring together medieval Islamic philosophy and apply it to contemporary questions about the epistemology of religion, and they secured a grant of $933,000 from the John Templeton Foundation plus additional funding from UMSL to support the project, entitled “The Christian West and Islamic East: Theology, Science, and Knowledge.” “We’re going to start looking at figures who never were translated or even known in the Latin tradition, and yet who are still dealing with the same sorts of problems and questions,” McGinnis said. “What can we know? What is the relationship between science and the claims of religion? If there is a God, what is God’s relation to creation?” These are questions that contemporary philosophers of religion continue to explore, but existing discussions don’t draw on the writings of medieval Islamic thinkers. “Their answers to those questions haven’t been explored,” McGinnis said. “They’re the ones that Templeton is interested in. The Arabs were interested in them, and their arguments are highly sophisticated and really good.” McGinnis and Dunaway hope the grant will help them bring more attention to this area of study and help inspire more study from younger scholars in the early stages of their careers. “We want to involve older scholars, but a lot of times older scholars have their research program set and that’s what they do,” Dunaway said. “The whole point of this is it’s something slightly different than what’s being done already.” They plan to invite academics from different regions of the world, including the Middle East, to conferences or workshops each of the next three summers. They will be opportunities for individuals to present their work but also to become more familiar with texts to which they otherwise might never be exposed. The plan is to hold the first two workshops at UMSL, but the 2021 event will take place at the University of Oxford in England. “Given the current political climate, bringing folks from the Middle East over here may be more difficult,” McGinnis said. “It’s just a fact. So Templeton said, ‘We’ve got these contacts in Oxford …’ And we’re like, ‘Oxford? We’d love to be in Oxford.’” With the grant, McGinnis and Dunaway also plan to award research stipends to promising young scholars. They hope to fund at least one master’s student in the Department of Philosophy to serve as a research assistant. They also plan to bring a visiting scholar in Islamic philosophy to the UMSL campus in 2020. They hope that individual will deliver a public lecture, just one of the events they intend to hold to involve the public. McGinnis and Dunaway want the project to help generate scholarly articles, presentations, an edited volume and a special journal issue that examines the contributions the Islamic tradition can make to contemporary debates. McGinnis, who chairs the Department of Philosophy, has spent much of his career researching medieval Islamic thinkers, an area of study that also includes some Christian and Jewish philosophers writing at the time in Arabic. His interest developed during his time studying classical philosophy as a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania. He noticed much work being done on the writings of Greek and Latin philosophers. But a gap existed in between them. “What was happening is as classicists were working, they were coming up against this wall that was the Arabic language,” McGinnis said. He received a fellowship to learn Arabic and spent time studying in Egypt. It has paid dividends throughout his career since, helping him gain access to ideas from prominent thinkers such as Avicenna, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, who remain largely overlooked in the English-speaking world. Dunaway’s work has been centered more on ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of language. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan and went on to work as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford under John Hawthorne, a noted epistemologist who also works in the philosophy of religion. McGinnis has served as one of Dunaway’s mentors since Dunaway came to UMSL four years ago, and they meet regularly – occasionally off campus at Three Kings Public House in the Delmar Loop. “In good philosophical fashion, we were sitting over a beer discussing his paper, which was drawing on the Medieval Latin philosopher Duns Scotus,” McGinnis said. “I said, ‘Oh, these Muslim guys I read are kind of interested in a similar problem and have similar but slightly different answers.’” The more they talked, they realized the potential of bringing these two disciplines together, and Dunaway knew from his time with Hawthorne that there was a chance the Templeton Foundation might fund just such a project. They’re both elated that instinct was correct, that their formal proposal was accepted and they’re beginning the work. “It’s a lot of fostering more intellectual engagement by getting people with the different norms and expectations of different intellectual communities together,” Dunaway said. “The hope is that after the project is done people continue with the connections they’ve made and there’s more engagement and diversity in the intellectual environment.” https://blogs.umsl.edu/news/2019/01/22/mcginnis-dunaway-templeton/

(Bismillah) (Salam) I'll post one interview from the series (Closer to Truth) and hope we can discuss about it. The first video is with the "Philosopher" Quentin Smith. I found this interview hilarious. So, why does there have to be something at all?