JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Year:2018 | Volume:20 | Issue:1 (75) |Papers Count:12

Although Aristotle had promised a detailed explanation of "from a hypothesis" syllogisms in Prior Analytics, he did not deliver this promise in any of his surviving works. After Aristotle, his students and followers introduced various types of this argument with respect to his book, Dialectics. In Alexander's explanation of Aristotle's Priori Analytics, he purposefully tries to include stoic indemonstrability in Aristotle's "from a hypothesis" syllogism and thus provide a framework for Aristotelian propositional logic. Alexander's efforts were implicitly accepted by various Peripatetic philosophers in later periods. Although Farabi, who takes inspiration from the Peripatetic school of thought, understood Aristotle's "from a hypothesis" syllogism in the Peripatetic outline, he stayed true to some of Aristotle's teachings regarding this syllogism, particularly the condition of agreement in arguments and applied the term "hypothetical syllogism" to three different meanings without any particular indication. However, Farabi's understanding of conditional syllogisms as being one of the types of "from a hypothesis" syllogisms seems to be more similar to Galen's view than to Alexander' s.

Christian Wolff's view regarding sensory perception– which is formed on a Leibnizian framework – forms the base of his aesthetics. He explains the concept of perfection and pleasure according to the clear but disordered essence of sensory perception that is present in this framework and through this very path guides towards the definition of beauty. Thus, according to him, perfection is the consistency or accordance of diversity or the abundance of things or their parts; pleasure is the result of the intuition of the perfection present in things; and beauty is the perfection of a thing from the aspect of it being suitable in creating pleasure in us. Therefore, in this article we intend to explore the essence of sensory perception according to him and the relation between it, perfection and pleasure with beauty in his aesthetics so that it becomes clear how aesthetics emerges from the heart of epistemological discussions in general and from the depths of sensory perception in particular. Finally, while keeping in mind the important fact that he did not directly claim to have an independent theory in the field of aesthetics, we will critique and give our views in regards to the requisites connected to his aesthetics so that the limits of his extreme rationalist views in dealing with issues such as the extent that beauty covers, the levels of beauty and the difference of views in relation to taste and liking become clear.

The discussion regarding "Unity and Diversity" is one of the most important philosophical issues. An explanation regarding the manner of relation between one and many is one of the issues which is a point of difference in the opinions of the philosophers; from among the philosophers, Sadra, while rejecting all four types of opposition (contradiction, privation and possession, contrast, mutual correlation) and based on his own foundations in transcendental philosophy, addresses the theory of gradational opposition; but since he still speaks of the opposition of unity and diversity in some of his works, an important question arises here which is that if unity and diversity are two opposing concepts, how is this issue true in view of his theory regarding gradational unity? And is this opposition, essential or secondary? In answer to this question, as will be addressed in this article, Sadra in some of his works, in contrast to the views of other philosophers and while considering the opposition between the two to be essential, believes it to be a fifth type of opposition in which the difference between unity and diversity is not in the exclusion of the essential characteristics of one another but rather is in the extent of difference of completeness and deficiency.

Our belief in the reality of things and people that we encounter is the topic of a fundamental discussion in philosophy known as "the existence of the external world." The essential question is whether we have knowledge of the existence of the external world or not. One of the most important answers that have been given to this issue is John Locke's theory of belief in reality which has been discussed in this paper. According to Locke, we have sensory knowledge of the external material world but what he refers to as "sensory knowledge" is apparently inconsistent with the general definition of knowledge in his philosophy. After studying the approaches of contemporary philosophers, we will show that sensory knowledge is consistent with the definition of knowledge in John Locke's philosophy. We will also review the arguments for sensory knowledge of the external world and John Locke's answer to skepticism. Also discussed in this paper is Locke's view that the most certain knowledge of the external world is our knowledge of the existence of God as well as that according to him, we do not have knowledge of other minds or spiritual essences and our certainty in regards to their existence is through faith.

The base of the Salafi school of thought is secured upon its particular explanation of the different aspects of the discussion regarding Unity of God. This paper reviews the exegetic approach of Alusi and Rashid Reza in regards to Unity of God and evaluates and studies the degree of their adherence to the foundations of Salafi thought. A comprehensive study of Alusi's theological and exegetic views regarding Unity of God shows that his explanation of the concepts in this area is significantly different from the understanding of the Salafi concept and is sometimes in contrast to it. Therefore, the popular verdict which regards Alusi to be of the Salafi belief cannot be credited. He has presented himself as an expert and free thinking personality by honoring the Salafi heritage and his lack of emphasis on a particular jurisprudential or theological school of thought alongside his rare scientific expertise. In contrast, one must assert that Rashid Reza's views, at least regarding Unity of God, are relatively concordant with the basic components of the Salafi movement.

In Applied Ethics, methodology refers to the method of justification and solution of moral issues. There are three main methods in this area that have risen in contrast to one another: the first method is syllogism which emphasizes the importance of moral theories and their application in justifying moral issues and employs an ascending view; the second method is inductivism which has a particularistic and anti-theory approach and supports a descending view; the third method is principalism, which tries to strike a balance between the two views while maintaining a moderate view towards the application of the major moral theories in practice, and in this way find a cohesive solution. The topic of discussion in this paper is the second method i.e. inductivism. This method focuses on practical decisions regarding particular cases where the verdict cannot simply be put under general norms. The advocates of this method have formally recognized various forms of induction, the most important and comprehensive of which are as follows: case study or a study of particular circumstances and states, narrative ethics and some expositions of virtue ethics. This article is dedicated to the discussion and study of dedicated case study and tries to show the pros and cons of this approach clearly.

A study of religion from any aspect undoubtedly has an extensive relation with "man's existence" and proves its importance from two aspects of essencology of man's need for the presence and domination of God and man's epistemology from religious understanding; but since addressing the topic of religion - regardless of effective human factors– is an issue that one cannot rely on to clearly achieve an explanation of regarding the relation between religion and tendency to violence, therefore, the main question of this paper is how the relation of religion with tendency to violence can be explained through human essencology and epistemology. In answer to this question, our hypothesis encounters two fundamental human elements of religion i.e. rationality and intrinsic nature. The findings of this research – which have been attained through the method of contextual qualitative analysis and an explanative-analytic approach and collects its data through written sources – show that religion is specifically an inseparable part of man's existence and rationality and sound human nature form its two main pillars. As a result, it has a deterring relation from every aspect with tendency to violence, compulsion and befooling others, and can only be realized through pure rational and natural human tendency and in order to be realized, it is needless of all types of violence, intimidation, compulsion and terrorism in all levels.

The two theories of immutable essences and imprinted forms which have been presented in order to explain pre-creational knowledge and which have a special role in the area of compulsion and choice, and predestination and fate, have been analyzed and studied by many intellectuals; some have accepted these theories and others have criticized them; Sadra has defended the theory of immutable essences and criticized the theory of imprinted forms. This paper seeks to critique Sadra's objections to imprinted forms by explaining the essence and manner of occurrence of immutable essences and explaining Divine knowledge through them, and also by studying the circumstance of Divine knowledge through Avicenna's imprinted forms by finding the common aspects between the two theories; it also seeks to show that Sadra's objections are valid if imprinted forms are quiddities and cause forms to occur in God's essence; whereas the study clearly shows that imprinted forms, like immutable essences, are prerequisites of His essence and are existential entities that God's essence is attributed with and the same way that God's detailed knowledge can be explained through immutable essences it can also be analyzed through imprinted forms so much so that the God's detailed knowledge is more deservedly applied to that than to immutable entities.

The present paper discusses and studies Plantinga's intended context and meaning regarding the Evolution Theory - which we have named as "God-based Evolution" - based on the foundations and premises of reformed epistemology which is one of the examples of his religious scientific theories; in the next part of the paper Dennett's criticisms as a New Darwinian atheist on Plantinga's "God-based Evolution" have been modified and finally, the writer evaluates and judges the views of these two philosophers in order to reach a final conclusion. In order to briefly explain these two views, it must be said that according to Plantinga Evolutionism and Creationism are cultural concepts that act as ideological indicators; in contrast, Dennett accepts an exclusively secular or godless view in order to understand evolution. According to him, Darwin's idea regarding the Evolution Theory is dangerous and is like a cosmological acid that absorbs the concepts of God, religion and later the "Theory of Creationism" into itself. But Plantinga, in defense of his view, believes in the existence of Divine action from evolutionary biology which is important in contemporary discussions about the relation between biology, philosophy and theology.

The purpose of this article is to study the level of consideration afforded to indexing standards of reliable international databases by Persian philosophical journals. In this research, forty-one websites of Persian philosophical journals which are published under the supervision of the Committee of Scientific Journals have been reviewed based on the main indexing standards of journals in reliable international databases. The results of this study showed that twenty-six percent of journals have a DOI code, twelve percent possess a Creative Commons permit and only the Journal of Philosophy and Theology published by Ferdowsi University of Mashhad is part of the International Committee on Publication Ethics. Despite the importance of the ethical and legal aspects of the journals, this area was very weak; generalization and presentation of incomplete information are the most important defects of websites of philosophical journals. The topic-wise indexing of philosophical journals in reliable general and specialized international databases was very weak and the limited numbers that are present in international indexing have not been properly presented to the viewers in the journals' websites. Altogether, the Journal of Philosophical-Theological Research of Qum University– with the exception of the foreign articles section and international members in the Editorial Board – has the required readiness in other areas for being indexed in reliable international databases as compared to other Persian philosophical journals.