Bibliographic record
Abstract
At the basis of Ghazali's criticisms of Ash'arite kalām is the thesis that its primary function is the defence of traditional Islamic belief, the 'aqida , against the distortions of heretical innovations ( al-bida' ). Kalām is not an end in itself and it is error to think that the mere engagement in it constitutes the experientially religious. In the I[hdotu]yā' he maintains in effect that when it is pursued as an end in itself, its dogmas can constitute a veil preventive of the attainment of gnosis ( ma'rifa ). On the other hand, Ash'arite kalām when not pursued as an end in itself can be an aid in the quest after gnosis. This is implicit in his reference (in Kitāb al-Arba'īn ) to his own major work of Ash'arite kalām , the Iqti[sdotu]ād fī al-i'tiqād , where he states that “it goes deeper in ascertaining [the truth] and is closer to knocking at the doors of gnosis than the official discourse encountered in the books of the mutakallimīn .” The I[hdotu]yā' abounds with homilies, guides for the pious, particularly for those seeking mystical knowledge. Ash'arism pervades such homilies. Thus in Kitāb al-Tawba , Ghazali formulates, analyzes and defends the concept of human choice in Ash'arite terms. He thus argues that each of the ingredients of this concept - knowledge, power, the decisive will, as well as the ensuing choice - is individually the direct creation of God. Not that the argument for this concept yields experiential knowledge of its meaning within the cosmic scheme of things. For Ghazali such knowledge is only attained through mystical vision. But the Ash'arite argument, when not pursued as an end in itself, can be an aid to the seekers of gnosis. It can bring them closer to knocking at its doors.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.019 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".