Mini Review Article - (2021) Volume 12, Issue 6
Received: 12-Jul-2021
Published:
02-Aug-2021
, DOI: 10.37421/2151-6200.2021.12.483
Citation: Choudhury, Masudul Alam. "The Tawhidi (Monotheistic) Methodology of Wellbeing Objective Criterion: A Brief Commentary.â? Arts Social Sci J 12 (2021): 483.
Copyright: © 2021 Choudhury MA. This is an open-access article distributed
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The Islamic ontology of monotheism as law in the Qur’an termed as Tawhid is formalized on the basis of the qur’anic verse (Qur’an 36:36) as a socio-scientific methodological worldview for deriving the model of moral inclusiveness in the study of science and society. Certain formal implications of the qur’anic ontological derivation are presented. The focus on the conceptual and applied objective of wellbeing is emphasized. Certain analytical derivations are made for the further study of the theme of the Tawhidi methodological worldview and its socio-scientific applications.
Islamic monotheism • Tawhid • Ontology • Epistemology • Methodology
The age of rigorous methodological re-visitation in the sciences has dawned [1]. This intellectual awakening has invoked inquiry into the old disciplines, methodology, methods and the new areas of ontology, epistemology and phenomenology and sustainability questions in the language of the new vista of philosophy of science [2]. Within this intellectual vastness there has arisen the socio-scientific study and application of religion and the generalization of details of various problems and issues of the world-system. The study of the primal Islamic ontology premised on its cardinal axiom of monotheism, Tawhid, and its conceptualization and application to diversity of world-system issues and problems constitutes a hitherto unfathomed intellectual comprehension. It acquires a fresh methodological worldview at the advent of the new and continuing age of the past, present and the future.
In this brief commentary of an earlier published paper by the author, the Islamic methodological worldview of Tawhid, interpreted in reference to the Qur’an (36:36), especially by Muhammad Asad and Muhammad Iqbal [3, 4] , meaning unity of knowledge in the primal ontological sense, is derived as a conceptual and formal model. The formal model of unity of knowledge and specifics of issues of the world-system is shown to become the divinely inscrutable objective criterion of wellbeing (qur’anic maslaha). The structuralize details of the Tawhidi methodology defining the analytical methods in studying the wellbeing criterion leads to the pervasively endogenous field of inter-variable circular causality as the cause, effect and continuity of the monotheistic ontology of monotheistic oneness, Tawhid. In total, Tawhid fully over-encompasses the formal structure of primal ontology. This in turn establishes the Tawhidi study of evolutionary epistemology, formalism, and sustainability as continuity of forms res cogitans and res extensa. The totality of all these socio-scientific attributes defines the overarching systemic phenomenology of unity of knowledge.
The formally derived model of tawhidi methodological worldview
The qur’anic verse (Qur’an 36:36) and several of its kind point out the universality of unity of knowledge between diverse complementarities without exhaustion and existing pervasively in the order and representation of unity of knowledge by being and becoming of cognitive and physicist entities [5]. According to this monotheistic ontology of unity of knowledge there exist pervasive complementarities as the monotheistic law (Tawhid) of organic pairing between ‘everything’ in the heavens and the earth (Qur’an, 7:54).
The core elements comprise Figure 1 in relation to the formal derivation of the model of moral inclusion of diverse issues and problems of science and society as follows:
Figure 1. Tawhidi methodological worldview in unity of knowledge as primal ontology.
(1) The primal ontological law of monotheistic unity of knowledge is denoted by Ω. Ω Is mapped by S on to {θ*} as epistemology. From this triple, {Ω, S, θ*}, is derived by learned discourse the evolutionary learning in unity of knowledge as ‘functional’ ontology {θ}.
(2) The formalism of (1) by choice of appropriate variables of the good things of life, while avoiding the bad ones and correcting the faulty ones to goodness;
(3) Formulation of the wellbeing (maslaha) objective criterion by the foundational concept and application of (1) and (2) to the generality and specifics of issues and problems under investigation;
(4) The evaluation of (3) in respect of the endogenous inter-variable circular causation relations conveying thus the unity of knowledge between the choice-variables that individually represent the complementary (paired) entities of the objective wellbeing function.
(5) From the quantitative analysis of the qualitatively derived wellbeing function in respect of the inter-variable relations of the choice vector are derived the empirical results, policy analysis, and recommendations as continuous outcomes of the evaluation processes of the entire string of relations denoted by (1)-(5).
(6) The conceptual-quantitative formal model of wellbeing is one of moral inclusiveness. The wellbeing objective criterion is subjected to its continuous evaluation by the circular causation relations of the choicevector of complementary variables within and across processes as shown in (Figure 1). The evaluative continuity of such processes in terms of the wellbeing function conveys the meaning of sustainability. The continuous evaluation of the knowledge-induced wellbeing function in the light of the ontological premise of unity of knowledge continues across intertemporal processes of evolutionary learning intra- and inter- systems of the given or multiple problems under study.
Such an evaluative continuity of the wellbeing functions intra- and intersystems across knowledge {θ}, space {X (θ)}, and time {t (θ)}, in reference to the principle of unity of knowledge, marks the intertemporal evolutionary learning processes of evaluation of the wellbeing function. The evolutionary learning event is denoted by,
E {(θ, X (θ), t (θ)} = E {Z (θ)}process along the trajectory, HH (E (θ)) of intertemporal evolutionary learning processes as the order of sustainability with the property, (d/dθ) [W (E {(Z (θ)]>0. The bold variable denotes choice vector induced by evaluated and reformed degrees of complementarities as depiction of unity of knowledge induced in the representative variables that are firstly ontologies by (1).
The socio-scientific implications of tawhidi process model of unity of knowledge
Figure 1 is central to the description of evolutionary learning trajectory in all forms of the ensemble of history of moral inclusiveness in economics [6], science [7] and society [8]. The following two are examples of the differentiated ways of formulating:
• The economic expansion path
• Dynamic preferences of organizational decision-making.
Economic expansion path
Under the continuous evolutionary learning path of unity of knowledge, Figure 1 implies that steady-state equilibrium points do not exist along HH (E (Z (θ)). Consequently, there cannot exist the mainstream objective of maximization of any of the economic goals, e.g. utility, profits, welfare, output etc. Thereby, no smooth convex to the origin production possibility curve and concave to the origin indifference curve and production isoquant can exist. The underlying price relatives and all the neo-classical optimal allocation of resources conditions between factors and goods (services) can exist on sound analytical grounds. The Walrasian form of general equilibrium in goods (services) and factors of production is eschewed [9]. In conclusion, all of the rationality postulates of economic theory and principally its most critical axiom of scarcity of resources become untenable. In this way, all of economic theory with its neo-classical nicety in both microeconomics and macroeconomics loses every bit of scientific value by critical realism [10, 11].
Dynamic preferences in organizational decision-making
Dynamic preference theory in organizational decision-making is more substantive in the new epistemic economics than the theory of bounded rationality and satisficing behavior of the firm by Simon [12, 13]. The concept and application of neo-classical economic theory holds for the interior of ‘optimal’ production surface and below production isoquants. The differentiated nature of rational choice axiom appears when an interior point is driven by some means onto the surface of the production possibility surface and on its production isoquants. The resource and production trajectories can become fuzzy when so driven from an interior sub-optimal point to its optimal possibility surface. But if bounded rationality continues to hold along all expanding sub-optimal surfaces, then the sub-optimal allocation of resources will continue to hold though at the second-best and the nth-best conditions as of welfare economics [14].
Dynamic preference theory according to the evolutionary learning theory of unity of knowledge causes event-wide perturbations everywhere on the production surfaces, optimal production frontiers, production isoquants, utility function, welfare function and their indifference curves. In respect of the discursive learning environment of the firm, the dynamic preference can be formalized as follows:
Let ρi(θ) denote the knowledge-induced (discursive) preference mapping for the ith individual, for i=1,2,..,n. Of these, one set of preferences will denote those of management. In the context of complementarities between the preferences induced by unity of knowledge, we obtain a set of evolutionary consensual preferences attained by institutional interaction leading to integration in processes of events {E (ρi (θ))} within and across the probabilistic field of preferences intra- and inter- systems of problems under study. The continuous induction of the probabilistic field of {ρi (θ)} is cause and effect of the recursive knowledge derivation from the ontology of the Tawhidi origin, and thereby continued by interaction, integration and evolutionary learning.
Thus, plimθ[(intersection → integration){ρi(θ)=ρ(θ); W(Z(θ),ρ(θ))}] (1)
With, (d/dθ) [{E (ρ(θ)}] > 0 (2)
And, (d/dθ) [W (Z (θ), ρ(θ))] > 0 (3)
Nature of empirical formalism
The principal model to empirically estimate and simulate the wellbeing function is shown in Figure 1. Two sorts of information and the diversity of wellbeing functions that appear across intertemporal processes are encapsulated to address the emergent parametric and non-parametric data. Firstly, we note that across intertemporal processes of wellbeing evaluation some of these can be based on parametric data, such as development regime in terms of economic data. Secondly, there can also be the case of evaluation of wellbeing functions that are based on non-parametric data, such as those collated by survey responses pertaining to noncommensurate problems. An example of this case is the role of spirituality in socio-economic development. Such a case study is particular to Islamic socio-economic development [15-17].
In both of the cases mentioned above, the methodical approach to evaluation of wellbeing remains the same. The evaluated wellbeing functions of the parametric kind (say, WP (ZP (θP))) and the non-parametric kind (say, WNP (ZNP (θNP))) need to be compounded by their empirically approximated wellbeing indexes, ‘P’ and ‘θNP’, respectively for as many as these kinds of wellbeing functions appear over the intertemporal evolutionary learning processes. We write such a compounded case as the wellbeing function.
In terms of their respective data-specific variables, θP (ZP (θP), θNP (ZNP (θNP)).
The post-modernist age has ushered new epistemological challenges in the intellectual world to address strangely new plethora of problems res cogitans and res extensa. Included in these domains is the search for a moral inclusive model for Covid-19. The Islamic methodological worldview derived from and standing uniquely on the monotheistic ontological law of Tawhid presents a richly wide vista of intellectual depth. This paper has briefly formalized this viewpoint in its subtle analytical form. Yet this original presentation is of the nature of any theory. Like all theories it is subject to critical investigation. This author also claims this idea to be the unique and universal episteme of the ever-new scientific world-system in the list of an unending volume of investigative studies across issues, problems and disciplines. Yet much remain to be advanced and accomplished in the global intellectual scene.
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