PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
Year:2013 | Volume:9 | Issue:23|Papers Count:6

There is no doubt that Plotinus believes in the intuitive unification, but for some reasons such as totality and limitless of One, interpretation of causality to emission, non acceptance reincarnation and unity, non independence of Persons, knowing the manifolds as image and ray, of one can infer personal unity from his expressions and its reflection in his theory about the knowledge f One. He, on the basis of various kinds of souls, emphasizes on the diverse stages of Knowledge. According to Plotinus the One is utterly unknowable both intuitively and intuitionally, and the only way to receive him is to transcend Intuition which represents the duality of witness and witnessed. As a result in the stage which correspondence to mystical inexistence there is only one reality percept.

Dimension of the knowledge is considered as the most important human dimension and, therefore, the investigation about the other dimensions which are related to human’s understanding is as important. Nowadays, one of these dimensions considered by Psychologists and epistemologists is emotions dimension. Throughout the history of thought, two general approaches can be observed about emotions. Some thinkers have always remarked of emotion’s negative role and have shown its negative functions and have tried to remove it. Others believe emotions are helpful to reason and knowledge.In this article, after introducing these two theories, we try to reread Mullasadra’s ideas about the relationship of emotion to knowledge. On negative effects of emotions and feelings in Mullasadra’s ideas, the effects of emotion in the acceptance of imitative opinions, familiarity with materials and its influence on knowledge, passions effect on soul imparity from divine knowledge, emotions role in defecting from favorable end, and feelings affection on wisdom are discussed. In positive role of feelings the virtual and true loves have been dealt with.

Tabataba’i has defined knowledge as the presence of one abstract in another abstract. The first abstract which is the known has its existence in knowledge by presence and its essence in knowledge by aquintance. The second one is the very knower’s mind. Tabataba’i and his successors have deduced some argument in order to demonstrate abstractedness of the two mentioned case. It seems that such argumentation would be the first step in ontology of knowledge. Other steps and themes are the realms of being, overlapping of these realms, unification of knower and known and that of knowing [world], and reduction of knowledge by acquaintance to knowledge by presence.

For explaining why "progress" in human sciences is not sensible like progress in natural sciences, there are two different approaches. In the first approach methodology of natural sciences is the same as the methodology of human sciences. But quality of one of them, i.e. human sciences is lower than another. Proponents of this approach believe that human sciences are not "science" in the same way that natural sciences are. In the second approach, human sciences are "science" in the same way that natural sciences are. But their quality is different and so their methodology is different. Neo-Kantians like Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrisch Rickert and Max Weber are proponents of second approach. In this essay, firstly, I briefly examine the difference between methods of two sciences and dichotomy between "explanation" and "understanding". Secondly I describe Neo-Kantian approaches and by introducing new dichotomy proposed by Rickert and Weber, I examine Max Weber's ideas in methodology in details. Finally I come to conclusion that Weber's approach for social science is comparable with some scientists approach in natural science.

Naturalism is an approach to the world phenomena from perspective of natural sciences. This approach avoids any kind of a priori philosophy and, in general, any alleged knowledge of what is supernatural. In ontology, epistemology and methodology, naturalism by no means relies on metaphysics or any kind of knowledge beyond the framework of empirical sciences neither on any method and criterion except scientific methodology and criteria. Naturalism, in one of its readings, considers philosophy as a branch of empirical science or a field of enquiry within the framework of such a science. Penelope Maddy’s works on naturalism, especially in philosophy of mathematics which this thesis intends to expound, are the continuation of Quine’s works. Quine, as a prominent naturalist philosopher, is the propounder of effective and thorough theories regarding naturalism, realism and other relevant areas. Unlike the past philosophers and epistemologists, he does not seek any basis, for empirical sciences, stronger than science, so that he always relies on findings of empirical sciences. Penelope Maddy starts from Quine’s naturalism and, in response to the questions posed by other naturalists in philosophy of mathematics, looks for a fundamental method, emphasizing on the set theory as a crucial basis in her arguments. Maddy believes that if a conflict arises between philosophical explanation and successful mathematical practices, it is philosophy that should retreat from its position. Neither philosophy nor science can annul or change methodological principles of mathematics, both science and philosophy being meta-mathematical trials for mathematics. Maddy’s important achievement in naturalistic philosophy of mathematics is heterogeneous naturalism to which he referred as the Second Philosophy. She recommends only mathematical methods and issues, and believes that other disciplines are not in the position to be able to criticize mathematics.

The subject of this article is about Classical Interpretation of Probability and its Problems. For centuries, Classical Probability was the only prevalent approach in Probability theory. Because of some Problems and paradoxes in this theory, new interpretations were introduced by Philosophers and thinkers in the beginning of 20th century. In this article, we introduce the classical interpretation of probability from Philosophical–Historical approach and review its problems. We also review the frequency interpretation, logical interpretation and subjective interpretation as alternatives for classical interpretation.