PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION RESEARCH (NAMAH-I HIKMAT)
Year:2007 | Volume:4 | Issue:8|Papers Count:9

The possibility or impossibility of acquired knowledge has been discussed for a long time by philosophers. Some of them consider it impossible, some others see it possible, and others consider it possible in a certain type of human knowledge and impossible in an another type. In Islamic philosophy, this problem has been discussed under the title of evidentiality or acquaintance of concepts and assents. Al-Razi believed that acquaintance of concepts is impossible and offered two reasons for it. In this paper, the author first outlines the history of the problem and then accounts and analyzes his reasons and critiques of other logicians and philosophers.

Natural kind terms are those linguistic expressions which refer to the specific kinds. Usually it is supposed that it is its meaning that communicates between a natural kind term and its referent. This is the view that is called traditional theory of reference. According to this theory, every general term has a meaning in the mind and by understanding this meaning we can refer to its extension. This theory has been criticized in two directions: the first is the view that meaning is in the mind and the second is that meaning communicates between a term and its referent. In this paper I will explain the traditional theory of reference concentrating on Locke’s views and will explain the other philosopher’s views such as Frege and Putnam. Putnam’s theory of reference criticizes both aspects of traditional theory. At the end of the paper I will refer to the criticisms on Putnam’s theory.

In philosophical literature it has been enumerated different types of explanation such as scientific and ordinary, full and partial, causal and non-causal, functional explanations. By distinguishing these different explanations from each other, this paper provides an introduction to the discussion of theories of scientific explanation. The standard view about the nature of scientific explanation is the covering law model of explanation which is further divided into two sorts: deductive - nomological and inductive - probabilistic or statistical explanation. Difficulties faced by the covering model gave way to alternative models. And various alternative views about explanation have been developed, among them it can be cited Salmon's statistical relevance model which based on causal mechanism and Friedman and Kitcher's explanatory unification. This paper shows how later models avoid difficulties of earlier ones.

Epistemological justification is one of the parts of tripartite definition (analysis) of knowledge. due to this defination "true belief" is knowledge, if it is justified. Justification theories, due to epistemologist's views on relation of belief to free will, are divided into two groups: deontologism and non- deontologism. Deontologism results to evidentialism and internalism and the result of non- deontologism is externalism. Internalism results to foundationalism and coherentism and the subsequent of externalism is reliabilism and naturalism. In this essay we consider the relation of belief to free will, volitionalism and non- volitionalism and then see how the different theories of justification are formed from the two theories mentioned and then, due to theses, classify the justification theories.

Having accepted the monism, Spinoza held that God is the unique substantial truth of the world and other beings are modes of his attributes. In his arguments for the existence of God, he applies both a priori and a posteriori methods; though the former is in his opinion stronger then the later. The arguments are mainly discussed in these works: The Principles of the Philosophy of Rene Descartes, Short Treatise on God, Man, and his Well-Being, and Ethics. His important argument for the existence of God is the ontological argument and his version is like Descartes’ one. There is some dispute on the relation between this argument and others. Some of his commentators thought of the separation and some of the identity of them. In this article Spinoza's arguments in his works as well as some commentaries on them will be discussed.

One of the version of cosmological argument is known as conceptualistic. Based on theory of truth in semantics of modal logic, this argument attempts to prove the existence of God. Given that a proposition is product of mind, and without mind there is no proposition, the advocates of this argument believe that the existence of true propositions in all possible worlds proves the existence of God, since there is no human mind in all possible worlds, it must be a divine mind  to which true proposition belongs. In addition to reciting different versions of this argument, the author has criticized them and with respect to Muslim philosophers' view about the unity of the world, has shown invalidity of this argument.

Friedrich Schleiermacher gave a fresh and long lasting impulse to protestant theology by identifying the essence of religion as lying not in knowledge, whether of a scientific or metaphysical kind, nor in the moral sense, or can not be found as the conclusion of an argument, but in a specifically religious emotion, the feeling of absolute dependence. He argued; Arid philosophy of religion which issued in Deism and ِDogma of the Church is not truly religion but true religion is "the immediate consciousness of the universal existence of all finite things in and through the infinite, and of all temporal things in and through the eternal". True religion is sense and taste for the infinite.

"The Refutation of Idealism" (1903) is considered by some historians of philosophy as starting- point of analytic philosophy. In this paper, Moore argued that there is a crucial premise that is essential to all possible arguments for the idealistic conclusion that "All reality is mental (spiritual)". This premise is: "To be is to be perceived" (in the broad sense of 'perceive'). Moore argued that, under every possible interpretation of it, that pemise is either a tautology or false; hence no significant conclusion can ever be inferred from it. As a result of Moore argument, idealism was replaced with realism in contemporary western philosophy.