Journal of Philosophical Investigations in Scopus
Year:2019 | Volume:13 | Issue:28|Papers Count:20

When the threat posed by the digitalization of our lives is debated in our media, the focus is usually on the new phase of capitalism called “ surveillance capitalism” : a total digital control over our lives exerted by state agencies and private corporations. However, important as this “ surveillance capitalism” is, it is not yet the true game changer; there is a much greater potential for new forms of domination in the prospect of direct brain-machine interface (“ wired brain” ). First, when our brain is connected to digital machines, we can cause things to happen in reality just by thinking about them; then, my brain is directly connercted to another brain, so that another individual can directly share my experience). Extrapolated to its extreme, wired brain opens up the prospect of what Ray Kurzweil called Singularity, the divine-like global space of shared awareness … Whatever the (dubious, for the time being) scientific status of this idea, it is clear that its realization will affect the basic features of humans as thinking/speaking beings: the eventual rise of Singularity will be apocalyptic in the complex meaning of the term: it will imply the encounter with a truth hidden in our ordinary human existence, i. e., the entrance into a new posthuman dimension, which cannot but be experienced as catastrophic, as the end of our world. But will we still be here to experience our immersion into Singularity in any human sense of the term?

Reflections on the contrast between the titles of Popper’ s Objective Knowledge and Polanyi’ s Personal Knowledge led Haack to explore how Polanyi’ s ideas might be used to correct some of the distortions caused by Popper’ s refusal to allow any role in epistemology to the knowing subject, and thus to throw light on such questions as the relations between the knower and the known, between epistemology and psychology and sociology of knowledge, and between subjectivity and objectivity.

(1) The “ thing itself” of Heidegger’ s thinking was Ereignis. (2) But Ereignis is a reinscription of what Being and Time had called thrownness or facticity. (3) But facticity/Ereignis is ex-sistence’ s ever-operative appropriation to its proper structure as the ontological “ space” or “ clearing” that makes possible practical and theoretical discursivity. (4) Such facticity is the ultimate and inevitable presupposition of all activities of ex-sistence and thus of any understanding of being. (5) Therefore, for ex-sistence – and a fortiori for Heidegger as a thinker of Ereignis – there can be no going beyond facticity.

This article attempts to illustrate our confrontation with tragedy in contemporary situation, That is why we are discussing this here in seven issues (Feeding the Ancients with Our Own Blood/ Philosophy’ s Tragedy and the Dangerous Perhaps/Knowing and Not Knowing: How Oedipus Brings Down Fate/ Rage, Grief, and War/ Gorgias: Tragedy Is a Deception That Leaves the Deceived Wiser/Than the Nondeceived/Justice as Conflict (for Polytheism)/Tragedy as a Dialectical Mode of Experience). Finally, this article seeks to show that tragedy is a way of experience in our life today.

On the supposition that one’ s ethics and politics are fundamentally dignitarian in a broadly Kantian sense— as specifically opposed to identitarian and capitalist versions of Statism, e. g., neoliberal nation-States, whether democratic or nondemocratic— hence fundamentally non-coercive and non-violent, then is selfdefense or the defense of innocent others, using force, ever rationally justifiable and morally permissible or obligatory? We think that the answer to this hard question is yes; correspondingly, in this essay we develop and defend a theory about the permissible use of force in a broadly Kantian dignitarian moral and political setting, including its extension to non-violent civil disobedience in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr; and perhaps surprisingly, we also import several key insights from Samurai and Martial Arts ethics into our theory.

Human “ free will” has been made problematic by several recent arguments against mental causation, the unity of the I or “ self, ” and the possibility that conscious decision-making could be temporally prior to action. This paper suggests a pathway through this thicket for free will or self-determination. Doing so requires an account of mind as an emergent process in the context of animal psychology and mental causation. Consciousness, a palpable but theoretically more obscure property of some minds, is likely to derive from complex animals’ real-time monitoring of internal state in relation to environment. Following Antonio Damasio, human mind appears to add to nonhuman “ core consciousness” an additional narrative “ self-consciousness. ” The neurological argument against free will, most famously from Benjamin Libet, can be avoided as long as “ free will” means, not an impossible event devoid of prior causation, but an occasional causal role played by narrative selfconsciousness in behavioral determination. There is no necessary incompatibility between the scientific and evolutionary exploration of mind and consciousness and the uniquely self-determining capabilities of human mentality which are based on the former.

n this paper I discuss some significant aspects of Husserl’ s phenomenology which could not be adequately known without studying the manuscripts, unpublished during his lifetime and then published gradually since 1950 by Husserl Archives in Leuven founded by Father van Breda in 1939. The aspects I discuss here are listed under 6 subjects: Husserl’ s phenomenological analyses of the constituting corporeal subjectivity, Husserl’ s phenomenological analysis of the conditions of possibility of representifications, concept of I-consciousness, conception of transcendental subjectivity as intersubjectivity, the development of Husserl’ s conception of phenomenological philosophy, and Husserl’ s metaphysics. This paper is drawn from, and an extension of, a lecture given at the Catholic University of Louvain in the occasion of 80th anniversary of the foundation of the Husserl Archives.

This speculative essay develops a unique understanding of Socrates by reading Heidegger in relation to contemporary Platonic scholarship arising from the Continental tradition, which embraces Plato’ s Socrates as a non-doctrinal philosopher. The portrait of Heidegger’ s Socrates that emerges is related to contemporary education and its drive toward emphasizing an academic focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) at the exclusion of the Liberal Arts, with the goal of showing that other forms of “ knowledge, ” such as the philosophical “ truth” emerging from the relationship between the human and the unfolding of Being, while stifled or neglected in STEM curricula, are also crucial to our continued development as human beings. Ultimately, the essay seeks to draw out an authentic vision of paideia by turning to the valuable, albeit limited, writings of Heidegger focused specifically on the historical philosopher Socrates, as opposed to Plato.

This article lays the groundwork for a defense of rational intuitions by first arguing against a prevalent view according to which intuition is a distinctive psychological state, an “ intellectual seeming” that p, that then constitutes evidence that p. An alternative account is then offered, according to which an intuition that p constitutes non-inferential a priori knowledge that p in virtue of the concepts exercised in judging that p. This account of rational intuition as the exercise of conceptual capacities in a priori judgment is then distinguished from the dogmatic, entitlement and reliabilist accounts of intuition’ s justificatory force. The article concludes by considering three implications of the proposed view for the Experimental Philosophy movement.

This paper focuses on the Anatman experience as described by Guatma (6th century BCE). Many Buddhist philosophers consider the absence of self as a foundational experience of Buddhism. This paper elaborates the Buddhist Absence of Self from the View of Existential Phenomenology. The paper articulates the phenomenological difference between the Ontic-Ontological absence of Self in early Buddhism and the Ontic-Ontological presence of Self in Contemporary Existential Phenomenology. Throughout the paper there is an Existential Phenomenological focus on the intertwining of our Sense of Self and our Sense of Being. The sense of self in early Buddhism is being-less, baseless and empty. Empty of What? Empty of Being! There is no presence of Being and no Being of presence. There is no experience of Being. There is no source of Being. There is no source of Being for our mind. The mind is absent of Being. There is no source of Being for us as person. In early Buddhism the absence of self is the absence of Being-ness.

It is apt and usual to cogitate and ratiocinate man and human rights; it is less so about or with (other) animal rights; and much more less and lesser so with/about “ plant rights” and those of cloned/the artificially intelligent agents’ . This condition is unfair and not ideal because man, other animals, plants, and other human manipulations (AI) from nature constitute varying levels of being; therefore, they possess varying levels of rights. Hence there is a need to espouse the nature/levels of being, on the one hand, and to adumbrate the nature/types of rights and as related to being as such— which is the imperative of this article. Dwelling on the cornucopia of literature/hard common biological and other in nature as a basis for analysis, this article, first, seeks to establish that man, other animals, plants, and other human manipulations of nature constitute varying levels of being; and second, argues that each level of being as such possesses some rights associated with it. It argues further that either all beings have rights, or they don’ t. The work concludes that if one accepts that all the levels of being possess rights (accordingly, including plant, cloned and AI agents), then one has an obligation to all levels of being; but accepting the latter poses the most existential and ontological threat to humanity and all of nature (climate.

This research aims to investigate how Heidegger's thoughts are received in Iran and how the Iranian interpretation of Heidegger has influenced contemporary Iranian thinking. The significance of Heidegger’ s philosophy for Iranian thinkers can be due to the fact that Heidegger is the most radical critique of the Western civilization, modernity, and modern rationality. On the one hand, Heidegger’ s thought can provide Iranians with the theoretical foundations based on which the Eastern traditions can be reinterpreted and reconstructed. On the other hand, Heideggerian view of the history of philosophy can be used by Iranians as a mirror to see themselves and the whole tradition of Eastern thinking. I also try to provide a sketch of the thought of Ahmad Fardid as the first interpreter of Heidegger in Iran and his influence on some other Iranian thinkers. My main claim is that the religious-spiritual interpretation of Heidegger by Fardid is by no means a distortion of Heidegger’ s thoughts but a necessary step towards the academically and scientifically true understanding of Heidegger as the greatest critique of the Western thinking. There are various historical, philological, and interpretive clues in Heidegger’ s life and works that make the spiritual (but certainly not theological) interpretation of Heidegger possible. In my opinion, contrary to some claims by Iranian scholars and intellectuals, a secular Heidegger is by no means the true Heidegger, because the secular interpretation is in opposition to the main insight of Heideggerian thought that is overcoming nihilism and forgetfulness of being.

In this article, I try to defend the thesis that imagination against reason, moral progress through imagination not the reason, solidarity vs. objectivity, the emergence of literary culture after philosophical culture from Hegel onwards, contingency of language, the usefulness of literature (poetry, novels and stories, etc. ) in enhancinmg empathy with one another and ultimately reducing philosophy to poetry in Richard Rorty's writings point to one thing: the priority of literature to philosophy. The literary or post-physical culture that Rorty defends is opposed to the Enlightenment and the philosophical and religious culture. Rorty prefers literary culture between the religious culture and philosophical culture. The literary culture Rorty envisages is a radically historicist and nominalist one. Rorty’ s romanticised version of pragmatism aims precisely at dealing with this literary or post-physical culture or, in generally, the literature.

One of the most challenging issues in medical ethics is a permission or prohibition of euthanasia. Is a patient with an incurable disease who has lots of pain permitted to kill oneself or ask others to do that? The main reason advanced by the opponents is the absolute prohibition of murder. Accordingly, the meaning of murder plays a key role in determining the moral judgment of euthanasia. The aim of this paper is to confirm the role of intention in moral judgment of euthanasia and eliminate the name of unjust murder from voluntary euthanasia. The Intention of an agent determines the name of the act and whether it is right or wrong. An important point that dose not taken into account in the definitions of murder, killing as well as their ethical judgment is considering the attributes of being unjust and forcible. Killing a human being is neither intrinsically good nor bad, but its ethical judgment depends on the way that happens, i. e. just or unjust. Every killing is neither bad nor unethical except unjust one which is both bad and unethical. The attribute of “ unjust” has been mentioned in the definition of murder in Islamic jurisprudence, law, traditions, and Quran. Owing to this argument, on one hand, it is true to state that voluntary euthanasia is not unjust and forcible murder (the test of correct negation), and on the other hand, it is not true to say that voluntary euthanasia is unjust and forcible murder (the test of incorrect predication). It can be concluded that voluntary euthanasia is an independent title other than unjust murder and does not have its judgment.

Existential anxiety is an outstanding issue both in psychology and philosophy. It implies the mental rummage following the notion of existence, inexistence and related concepts. Martin Heidegger is a philosopher incorporating the meaning of existential anxiety and time perception in a unique comprehensive view, suggesting that there is a relation between being, time and anxiety. To the best of our knowledge, no empirical study has assessed any association between time perception and existential anxiety. The current study aims at investigating the mentioned association. Eighty four students in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences voluntarily participated in this study and gave their written informed consent. Time perception was assessed by verbal and production tests. The score of existential anxiety was obtained by the Good & Good Existential Anxiety Questionnaire. Association of time perception and existential anxiety was analyzed statistically. Mean score of existential anxiety of subjects was 7. 57± 4. 75 out of 32. Accuracy of time perception was significantly related to existential anxiety score (P = 0. 034); in the manner that inaccurate time perceivers had higher existential anxiety scores. The results of this study are preliminary in line with the existential concepts presented by Heidegger; indicating that existential anxiety and time perception may have common roots. This understanding about existential anxiety suggests further explorations and deeper existential reasonings, as well as more efficient psychological and psychiatric clinical practice.

In each one of the well-known Abrahamic religions, notably Islam, Christianity and Judaism, there are two important doctrines which seem to be inconsistent, but nonetheless some religious philosophers like Plantinga try to show that there is no conflict between them. The first doctrine is that God is Omniscient and He has foreknowledge of all that will happen in the future and thus all human actions are determined in His knowledge. The second doctrine is that human beings have free will and they are responsible for all of their voluntary actions. The problem is that if all future actions of a person are determined in divine knowledge, it is impossible for him to change his future and so he is not free. This article will assess some of the solutions given to the problem and it will focus on Plantinga's solution to the problem and then it will unravel some defects of his solution. At the end of this article, a new solution to the problem will be given, in which the free will of human being is confirmed while the nature of divine knowledge is regarded ambiguous to the extent that its changeability or unchangeability is left unknown.

The Philosophy of Descartes marked the starting point of modern philosophy. One of the main characteristics of this French rationalistic philosophy, which was followed by English empiricism and German Idealism, is a special attention to the "subject" instead of the cosmos, being or God. But the question is what caused such a turn to "subject"? With a historical linguistic approach it can be shown that the replacement of old languages of philosophy, namely Greek, Arabic and Latin by modern European languages, namely French, English and German can be one of the causes of this turn to "subject". In this research, we will concentrate on the word order and the possibility of the omission of the subject in the sentences of languages pertaining to different philosophical traditions from different historical contexts. In modern European languages of philosophy (French, English, German) there is an insistence on the subject to appear at the beginning of the sentence. These three languages are among the very limited number of Non Null Subject languages which do not permit the subject to be omitted from the beginning of the sentence. These languages were null subject in the course of their history, but at the same time with the appearance of modern philosophy (first half of the 17 th century) they became non null subject languages.

According to most Muslim philosophers, Divine foreknowledge, on one hand, is so inclusive that encompasses each and every minor and timed action of moral agents and because of the perfection of God in essence and attributes, any defects in His essence and attributes including any errors in His foreknowledge are impossible. On the other hand, these philosophers, like other defenders of free will, claim that significance of any kind of free will and responsibility of a moral agent depends on their access to alternate possibilities (PAP) and, consequently, their ability to refrain from or do an action simultaneously. This paper aims to deal with this highly debated and fundamental question that whether these two views are essentially in conflict with each other. To answer this pivotal question, based on a modified version of Frankfurt cases and Muslim philosophers’ definition of free will, we attempt to defend their initial approach to eliminating the conflict between Divine foreknowledge and free will or moral responsibility and show that, firstly, this infallible knowledge is contingent on the agent’ s voluntary action, and secondly, despite the principle of alternate possibilities, the agent’ s moral responsibility does not depend on the person’ s avoidance of the forthcoming action.

Aprè s la deuxiè me guerre mondiale, le concept de ‘ ’ l’ Autrui’ ’ a é té devenu la question essentielle dans le domaine philosophique. Ce concept joue un rô le important dans les relations interhumaines et dans la socié té . Dans cet article, on traitera ce concept à partir des pensé es d’ Emmanuel Lé vinas et celles de Maurice Blanchot afin de distinguer des points divergents et d’ obtenir é ventuellement des points communs. Nous allons voir comment Blanchot se sé pare du domaine mé taphysique au sens lé vinasien, tandis que la dé finition de l’ autrui dans le vocabulaire de Lé vinas se forme dans le champ de la transcendance. La voie de cette transcendance se ré alise à partir du visage de l’ autrui, mais selon Blanchot, c’ est la langue qui pourrait m’ aider à é tablir un pont entre l’ autrui et moi. Cette recherche souhaite, d’ une part, pré senter la conception philosophique de Lé vinas dont la philosophie de la transcendance est pré senté e comme la responsabilité é thique envers l’ autrui, et d’ autre part, montrer comment Blanchot, influencé par ses expé riences de la deuxiè me guerre mondiale, prend une position quasi pessimiste envers l’ autrui, en fait, il voit l’ autrui comme un é tranger absolu, mais il accepte le rô le de la responsabilité face à l’ autrui, jusqu’ à ce que la pré sence de moi ne le menace pas physiquement et mentalement.

The present paper seeks to view language through the prism of gender as social practice as delineated by Judith Butler. Following up on the notion of gender as an entity distinguished from biological sex, she tends to base the notion of a set of normalizing practices that determine gender identity. In so doing, she believes that gender is discursively made or constructed performatively. In her view, the social discourse aligns economic power with a manly power structure where women are dismissed altogether. On the other hand, social and linguistic structures are closely inter-related and serve to perpetuate the dominance and imposed gender identity the latter one of which is actualized through imitated performativity. The article also explores dimensions of gendered practice regarding subjectivity and repression. Butler’ s views, though quite intriguing for post-structuralists and postmodern scholars, have been criticized on the grounds that it fails to empower women, follow a political agenda, promise any moral basis.