PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
Year:2010 | Volume:6 | Issue:17|Papers Count:13

The meaning of life is one of the most important subjects in philosophy that John Cottingham in “on the meaning of life” discusses this. The question of the meaning of life is important in his view because just human being asks “what is the meaning of life” because of his certain existential situation. In Cottingham’s view, the characteristics of the meaning of life are profundity or seriousness, achievement, selfawareness and autonomy, moral life i.e. moral objective values, success and theism or religious life. Cottingham holds that moral life can satisfy human needs and flourish his talents. But our human nature is purely result of genetic mutation in simply human view. Therefore moral judgments do not have objective value because they depend on this nature. Moreover, human being would not be successful in his projects and activities because of his vulnerable and fragile nature. We can reach conclusive reason for objective moral judgments and values and being hopeful for successful and meaningful life only if we rely on religious and spiritual worldview which that benevolent god desires us to be moral. In Cottingham’s view, Understanding and accepting religious and spiritual worldview depends on exercising religious practices. in my humble opinion, Cottingham cannot explain how theism support successful life because he does not use the concept of life after death.

In history of ideas, although traditional rationalists used reason and reasoning to justify any claim (hypothesis, theory, and…), Popper and his pupils, as critical rationalists, emphasis on falsifying any. Critical rationalists believe that human knowledge is fallible; and this knowledge not only can’t fulfill any justification, but also need to no one. For human knowledge is fallible and confined, critical rationalists relay on rationality to the extent that it help us to detect our errors and failures. According to critical rationalists, critical method is merely to criticize all of ideas, beliefs, and etc. unstoppably in order to reveal the probable, tacit faults. Scientific theories, in their view, are daring conjectures which come from encountering with problems; these conjectures are not justifiable and must be falsifiable (and therefore refutable) through severe test. The refutation to old theory is the paramount process of scientific discovery. If any new theory survive more of such refutations, it would have a higher verisimilitude and therefore, critical rationalists suggest that it is closer to truth. So critical rationalists have exposed some innovations in philosophy of science, but there are a few critiques which they are (or should be) going to deal with.

With the discovery of second law of thermodynamics and the attempt to supervene it on the classical dynamics, the paradox of irreversibility showed up for the first time, as the laws of classical dynamics, in contrast to the second law of thermodynamics, were reversible and symmetric with respect to time. In this paper, after reviewing the problem of irreversibility, we pin down two rival approaches to the problem. The first approach whose pioneer is Ilya Prigogine claims that irreversibility arises out of dynamical instabilities defined as “disorder” at microscopic level. However, according to the rival theory, which is advocated by Price and Bricmont, irreversibility at macroscopic level arises out of specific initial conditions of the world. This is not contrasted with the notion of irreversibility at microscopic level. Although the two rival theories are completely different with respect to their theoretical foundations, I will show that one can trace a consensus in a view that reversibility is “practically in principle” impossible. This is the term I have coined for the commonality between the two opposed theories.

This paper analyzes critically how the philosophy of engineering affects to collect the history of engineering so that it is answered in detail to this problem that “Does the history of engineering entail the philosophy of engineering”. At first, it is identified the relation of between engineering and technique, in order to be explored the relation of between engineering and technology. Therefore, it is defined technology as an actual epistemic system and engineering as a knowledge and potential creative practice into the technological framework. Thus, it is understood the philosophy of engineering as a developed field of the philosophy of technology so that it is distinguished as an independent philosophical field with having, at least, a unique original question “what is engineering”. Therefore, some of issue and problem in the philosophy of technology transfer into the philosophy of engineering and influence it, some of problem such as: the demarcation problem between engineered artifact and natural object, the demarcation problem between engineering and science, the existential and historical priority problem between engineering and science, and the autonomy problem of engineering knowledge to social context. Finally, according to the applicable and open problems, it is showed how the philosophy of engineering and its problems affects to collect the history of engineering. Consequently, it seems that researchers of the history of engineering should concern the problems for their studies and think about them critically and strategically.

The infallibility of Prophets has been considered as a significant matter for Muslim theologians from the ancient periods. Fakhr Razi (died in 606 A.P.) is regarded as the most prominent Sunni theologians who followed Ashari School. He ascribes prophets as infallible persons. Hence, he believes that the infallibility is necessary rather for passing the prophet hood, but not before the incidence. He believes that an individual has the capacity to reach eminence of infallibility merely at the time he bears certain traits within the body or spirit in order to prevent him from committing sins in this respect. He should obviously be aware of the obscenity of sin and grace of obedience to hear the divine inspiration of God Almighty’s sublime Excellency. If this individual committees any miscue in the lapse, he must be blamed for it to be aware of the obscenity of committed sin. Fakhr Razi considered the realm of belief, prophet hood, sentence, Judgment, deed and inclination as the subject of controversy among theologians in the issue of infallibility of prophets.

Aristotle and Spinoza are two streams making Philosophers in the history of philosophy, and both have chosen the matter of substance as their philosophical subject. The root of many disputes on a huge part of west philosophy can be obtained through comparing the characteristics of the sub from their point of view. This is notable that this philosopher has some similarities in defining the substance, but they get far from each other in defining the characteristics and instances of substance. The article's first step to examining Aristotle's viewpoint in two books of Arganon and Metaphysics, and analayzing Spinoza,s theory in book of Ethics. However, looking toward the meaning of substance in the Avecina's custom context and expression, and his innovation can also help for better understanding of substance through Mashaism's views. The researchers scale for analyzing has been the amount of consistency of substance definition with the other parts of philosophical system. With examining the following the conclusion would be that Spinoza's definition bears more logical stability and provides a more solid system.

Duhem’s viewpoint about physics is a systematic and mathematical one that surely somehow has effected to his philosophical explanation of scientific theories. For Duhem, the aim of science is classifying the phenomena in a good mathematical frame in which it could identify the real relationships among the theoretical identities without manifesting them. Theories are not only full boxes of phenomena classified tools that are proper for today and improper for tomorrow. The most important characteristic of a scientific theory is to predict phenomena and experimental laws that is not discovered, but what is effective in this novels predict is the relationship between identities. In the view of ontology, scientific theories make no commitment for theoretical identities. In spite that Duhem is a scientific historian, and by searching in his works and ideas we can’t clearly say Duhem is the realist or the instrumenalist about scientific theories. Even some believe that he is tried to find a way between realism and instumentalism. In this paper, at first Duhem ideas about the aim and structure of physical theory will be surveyed. Then by some pro and opponent ideas with Duhem's realism we will demonstrate his idea about scientific theories has more tendencies to structure realism.