Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Biographic Data
| ID | 134255 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Muhammad Ali Khalidi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Muhammad Ali |
| FAMILY NAME | Khalidi |
| SIGNATURE | KHALIDI M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | York University |
| ORCID | 0009-0002-2652-8463 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 111 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Mental Illness or Political Pathology? A Case Study in the Political Framing of Psychiatric Conditions
A political framing of mental health emphasizes political conditions as contributing causal factors to psychiatric conditions. In this paper, I will argue that highlighting political factors matters for three reasons. First, it can further our understanding of the causal genesis and provenance of psychiatric conditions. Second, it can indicate alternative interventions, including those targeting the political sphere or the broader community rathe…
Memory for Agency: A Proposal for the Function of Episodic Memory
Transparency, Collective Intentionality, and Social Power: Commentary on Burman’s Nonideal Social Ontology
This commentary on Åsa Burman’s Nonideal Social Ontology tackles three major aspects of her work. First, it discusses the distinction between opaque and transparent social kinds, distinguishing it from the distinction between represented and non-represented social kinds, and that between overt and covert social kinds. Then, it exploits these distinctions in characterizing the nature of the social, proposing that social phenomena might be understo…
Al-Farabi on acquiring a philosophical concept
This paper focuses on a discussion in Abu Nasr al-Farabi’s Book of Letters (Kitāb al-Ḥurūf), which has to do with the importation of philosophical (including scientific) discourse from one language or nation (ummah) to another. The question of importing philosophical discourse from one language or nation to another touches on Farabi’s views on a number of important philosophical questions. It reveals something about his views on the nature of phi…
Kinds in the cognitive sciences: Reply to Weiskopf, Sullivan, and Robins
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…
Historical Kinds in the Social World
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 co…
Ontological pluralism and social values
Etiological Kinds
Kinds that share historical properties are dubbed “historical kinds” or “etiological kinds,” and they have some distinctive features. I will try to characterize etiological kinds in general terms and briefly survey some previous philosophical discussions of these kinds. Then I will take a closer look at a few case studies involving different types of etiological kinds. Finally, I will try to understand the rationale for classifying on the basis o…
Neural correlates without reduction: The case of the critical period
Natural kinds as nodes in causal networks
Mind-Dependent Kinds
Many philosophers take mind-independence to be criterial for realism about kinds. This is problematic when it comes to psychological and social kinds, which are unavoidably mind-dependent. But reflection on the case of artificial or synthetic kinds (e.g. synthetic chemicals, genetically modified organisms) shows that the criterion of mind-independence needs to be qualified in certain ways. However, I argue that none of the usual variants on the c…
Natural Categories and Human Kinds: Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences
The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Although explicitly articulated by nineteenth-century philosophers like Mill, Whewell and Venn, it has a much older history dating back to Plato and Aristotle. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance, especially among natur…
Three Kinds of Social Kinds
Could some social kinds be natural kinds? In this paper, I argue that there are three kinds of social kinds: 1) social kinds whose existence does not depend on human beings having any beliefs or other propositional attitudes towards them (e.g. recession , racism ); 2) social kinds whose existence depends in part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them, though attitudes need not be manifested towards their particular instances (e…
The Pitfalls of Microphysical Realism
Microphysical realism is the position that the only real entities and properties are found at the most fundamental level of nature. In this article, I challenge microphysical realism concerning properties and natural kinds. One argument for microphysical realism about entities, the “nothing-but argument,” does not apply to properties and kinds. Another argument, the “causal exclusion argument,” cannot be sustained in light of modern physics. More…
The Most Moral Army in the World: The New "Ethical Code" of the Israeli Military and The War on Gaza
This article examines the content of and justification for a new "ethical code" designed for the Israeli army to take into account the "fight against terror. " It argues that the code contains two innovations: it includes acts aimed exclusively at military targets in its definition of "terrorism," and it contains a principle of distinction that prioritizes the lives of citizen combatants over those of noncitizen noncombatants, contrary to centuri…
Interactive Kinds
This paper examines the phenomenon of ‘interactive kinds’ first identified by Ian Hacking. An interactive kind is one that is created or significantly modified once a concept of it has been formulated and acted upon in certain ways. Interactive kinds may also ‘loop back’ to influence our concepts and classifications. According to Hacking, interactive kinds are found exclusively in the human domain. After providing a general account of interactive…
The Arab Street: Tracking a Political Metaphor
Understanding Arab public opinion is central to the search for sustainable political solutions in the Middle East.The way Westerners think about Arab public opinion may be affected by how it is referred to in their news media.Here, we show that Arab public opinion is rarely referred to as such in the US media.Instead, it is usually referred to as the Arab street, a metaphor that casts Arab public opinion as irrational and volatile.We trace the or…
Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City
Nature and Nurture in Cognition
This paper advocates a dispositional account of innate cognitive capacities, which has an illustrious history from Plato to Chomsky. The ‘triggering model’ of innateness, first made explicit by Stich ([1975]), explicates the notion in terms of the relative informational content of the stimulus (input) and the competence (output). The advantage of this model of innateness is that it does not make a problematic reference to normal conditions and av…
Utopian Zionism or Zionist Proselytism? A Reading of Herzl's Altneuland
After discussing the basic premise and narrative structure of Theodor Herzl's novel about a new Jewish society in Palestine, this article highlights three fundamental paradoxes posed by the work: Herzl's disavowal of the utopian label, the absence of Jewish culture in the new society, and the novel's espousal of ideas known to be at odds with its author's beliefs. The article shows how all these paradoxes are resolved if the novel is seen as inte…
Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System
Book Review| July 01 2001 Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System DYNAMICS IN ACTION: INTENTIONAL BEHAVIOR AS A COMPLEX SYSTEM. By Alicia Juarrero. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999. Pp. x, 288. Muhammad Ali Khalidi Muhammad Ali Khalidi Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2001) 110 (3): 469–472. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-110-3-469 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter P…
Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System
Zionist Socialism
Evolving National Identities
(2000). Evolving National Identities. Journal of Palestine Studies: Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 104-106
Zionist Socialism: The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State . Zeev Sternhell
Three Kinds of Social Kinds
Could some social kinds be natural kinds? In this paper, I argue that there are three kinds of social kinds: 1) social kinds whose existence does not depend on human beings having any beliefs or other propositional attitudes towards them (e.g. recession , racism ); 2) social kinds whose existence depends in part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them, though attitudes need not be manifested towards their particular instances (e…
Mind-Dependent Kinds
Many philosophers take mind-independence to be criterial for realism about kinds. This is problematic when it comes to psychological and social kinds, which are unavoidably mind-dependent. But reflection on the case of artificial or synthetic kinds (e.g. synthetic chemicals, genetically modified organisms) shows that the criterion of mind-independence needs to be qualified in certain ways. However, I argue that none of the usual variants on the c…
Natural kinds as nodes in causal networks
Interactive Kinds
This paper examines the phenomenon of ‘interactive kinds’ first identified by Ian Hacking. An interactive kind is one that is created or significantly modified once a concept of it has been formulated and acted upon in certain ways. Interactive kinds may also ‘loop back’ to influence our concepts and classifications. According to Hacking, interactive kinds are found exclusively in the human domain. After providing a general account of interactive…
The Arab Street: Tracking a Political Metaphor
Understanding Arab public opinion is central to the search for sustainable political solutions in the Middle East.The way Westerners think about Arab public opinion may be affected by how it is referred to in their news media.Here, we show that Arab public opinion is rarely referred to as such in the US media.Instead, it is usually referred to as the Arab street, a metaphor that casts Arab public opinion as irrational and volatile.We trace the or…
Etiological Kinds
Kinds that share historical properties are dubbed “historical kinds” or “etiological kinds,” and they have some distinctive features. I will try to characterize etiological kinds in general terms and briefly survey some previous philosophical discussions of these kinds. Then I will take a closer look at a few case studies involving different types of etiological kinds. Finally, I will try to understand the rationale for classifying on the basis o…
Carving Nature at the Joints
This paper discusses a philosophical issue in taxonomy. At least one philosopher has suggested the taxonomic principle that scientific kinds are disjoint. An opposing position is defended here by marshalling examples of nondisjoint categories which belong to different, coexisting classification schemes. This denial of the disjointness principle can be recast as the claim that scientific classification is “interest-relative”. But why would anyone …
Utopian Zionism or Zionist Proselytism? A Reading of Herzl's Altneuland
After discussing the basic premise and narrative structure of Theodor Herzl's novel about a new Jewish society in Palestine, this article highlights three fundamental paradoxes posed by the work: Herzl's disavowal of the utopian label, the absence of Jewish culture in the new society, and the novel's espousal of ideas known to be at odds with its author's beliefs. The article shows how all these paradoxes are resolved if the novel is seen as inte…
The Most Moral Army in the World: The New "Ethical Code" of the Israeli Military and The War on Gaza
This article examines the content of and justification for a new "ethical code" designed for the Israeli army to take into account the "fight against terror. " It argues that the code contains two innovations: it includes acts aimed exclusively at military targets in its definition of "terrorism," and it contains a principle of distinction that prioritizes the lives of citizen combatants over those of noncitizen noncombatants, contrary to centuri…
Historical Kinds in the Social World
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 co…
Ontological pluralism and social values
A Tale of Two Tribes
A Tale of Two Tribes: From Beirut to Jerusalem. . Thomas L. Friedman
All that remains: The Palestinian villages occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948
Carving Nature at the Joints
This paper discusses a philosophical issue in taxonomy. At least one philosopher has suggested the taxonomic principle that scientific kinds are disjoint. An opposing position is defended here by marshalling examples of nondisjoint categories which belong to different, coexisting classification schemes. This denial of the disjointness principle can be recast as the claim that scientific classification is “interest-relative”. But why would anyone …
Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon
A First Visit to Palestine
Go West, Young Man
Go West, Young Man: Sandcastles: The Arabs in Search of the Modern World. . Milton Viorst
Window on Zion: Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on a Hard Road to a New Israel. . Glenn Frankel
Window on Zion
Zionist Socialism
Evolving National Identities
(2000). Evolving National Identities. Journal of Palestine Studies: Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 104-106
Zionist Socialism: The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State . Zeev Sternhell
Evolving National Identities: Israeli and Palestinian Identities in History and Literature . Kamal Abdel-Malek, David C. Jacobson
Utopian Zionism or Zionist Proselytism? A Reading of Herzl's Altneuland
After discussing the basic premise and narrative structure of Theodor Herzl's novel about a new Jewish society in Palestine, this article highlights three fundamental paradoxes posed by the work: Herzl's disavowal of the utopian label, the absence of Jewish culture in the new society, and the novel's espousal of ideas known to be at odds with its author's beliefs. The article shows how all these paradoxes are resolved if the novel is seen as inte…
Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System
Book Review| July 01 2001 Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System DYNAMICS IN ACTION: INTENTIONAL BEHAVIOR AS A COMPLEX SYSTEM. By Alicia Juarrero. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999. Pp. x, 288. Muhammad Ali Khalidi Muhammad Ali Khalidi Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2001) 110 (3): 469–472. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-110-3-469 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter P…
Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System
Nature and Nurture in Cognition
This paper advocates a dispositional account of innate cognitive capacities, which has an illustrious history from Plato to Chomsky. The ‘triggering model’ of innateness, first made explicit by Stich ([1975]), explicates the notion in terms of the relative informational content of the stimulus (input) and the competence (output). The advantage of this model of innateness is that it does not make a problematic reference to normal conditions and av…
Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City
The Arab Street: Tracking a Political Metaphor
Understanding Arab public opinion is central to the search for sustainable political solutions in the Middle East.The way Westerners think about Arab public opinion may be affected by how it is referred to in their news media.Here, we show that Arab public opinion is rarely referred to as such in the US media.Instead, it is usually referred to as the Arab street, a metaphor that casts Arab public opinion as irrational and volatile.We trace the or…
The Most Moral Army in the World: The New "Ethical Code" of the Israeli Military and The War on Gaza
This article examines the content of and justification for a new "ethical code" designed for the Israeli army to take into account the "fight against terror. " It argues that the code contains two innovations: it includes acts aimed exclusively at military targets in its definition of "terrorism," and it contains a principle of distinction that prioritizes the lives of citizen combatants over those of noncitizen noncombatants, contrary to centuri…
Interactive Kinds
This paper examines the phenomenon of ‘interactive kinds’ first identified by Ian Hacking. An interactive kind is one that is created or significantly modified once a concept of it has been formulated and acted upon in certain ways. Interactive kinds may also ‘loop back’ to influence our concepts and classifications. According to Hacking, interactive kinds are found exclusively in the human domain. After providing a general account of interactive…
The Pitfalls of Microphysical Realism
Microphysical realism is the position that the only real entities and properties are found at the most fundamental level of nature. In this article, I challenge microphysical realism concerning properties and natural kinds. One argument for microphysical realism about entities, the “nothing-but argument,” does not apply to properties and kinds. Another argument, the “causal exclusion argument,” cannot be sustained in light of modern physics. More…
Natural Categories and Human Kinds: Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences
The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Although explicitly articulated by nineteenth-century philosophers like Mill, Whewell and Venn, it has a much older history dating back to Plato and Aristotle. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance, especially among natur…
Three Kinds of Social Kinds
Could some social kinds be natural kinds? In this paper, I argue that there are three kinds of social kinds: 1) social kinds whose existence does not depend on human beings having any beliefs or other propositional attitudes towards them (e.g. recession , racism ); 2) social kinds whose existence depends in part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them, though attitudes need not be manifested towards their particular instances (e…
Philosophy (21 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · History (18 works) · Ancient history (13 works) · History (13 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (10 works) · Political science (10 works)