THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL RESEARCH (AFAGHE HEKMAT)
Year:2015 | Volume:3 | Issue:8|Papers Count:6

In this paper, absolute knowledge is treated as a propositional knowledge from a realistic view. The most important difficulty in this regard is the contradiction between absolute knowledge and freedom. Such contradiction is posed both regarding the freedom of God and the freedom of man. However, freedom is applied in two different meanings. One is freedom as “power on action and abandon”, and the other as “power on decision”. Although the freedom of God should be taken as the second meaning, the freedom regarding man should be taken as the first. Hence, one of the solutions for the contradiction of foreknowledge and freedom which focuses on inclusion of determinism and freedom is discussed in detail and indicated that although this solution is successful for solving the contradiction of foreknowledge and divine freedom, it has no efficiency regarding the contradiction of foreknowledge and freedom of man. Therefore, we must go for other solutions which are not treated in this paper.

one of the important issues of epistemology is the issue of truth in statements and propositions. Thus, philosophers and epistemologists from long in the past have presented various views on “nature of truth” and also “criterion of truth”. In the present paper, we are dealing with the theory of correspondence, but our approach in this study is mostly directed to the nature of truth not to the criterion of truth. The theory of correspondence has an important presupposition and that is realism; i.e., we shall be primarily required that there is a reality independent from our mind and beliefs. Second, we shall consider the human mind to have the ability in discovering the reality, believing that man is capable to achieve and access the real. Third, we shall believe that our language is able to express that reality. Since the theory of correspondence is very close to the common understanding about truth, it has rather more history and currency compared to its alternative theories so that many philosophers have regarded it as the basic epistemology of their philosophical system. However, the theory of correspondence failed to tackle with different problems including non-cognation, non-comprehensiveness and the lack of an affirmative criterion, and finally got appearance with the criticism of philosophers of knowledge or in a modified form, or gave its place to the theories like the theory of coherence, the theory of efficiency and the theory of redundancy and…. Such theories, unlike the theory of correspondence on the nature of truth, relate the truth not to something beyond belief, but to the belief itself. That is to say, without any effort to go beyond the belief, there should be discovered a situation inside the beliefs on which basis we could tell whether a belief is true or not.

In the tradition of metaphysical thought, thinking and knowledge is the pure result of mental and logical activities of man, and the correctness of conclusion is obtained by the correct application of mental faculties and correct exerting of appropriate principles, rules and methods of understanding such as the rules and principles of logic or empirical methods. In our time, questions like “What is theory?” or “What is thinking?” remind us of specialized disciplines like the philosophy of science or epistemology. In our time the various philosophical currents, they are in particular the philosophies of science and epistemological studies in the very tradition of metaphysical thought that treat and contemplate on thought, theory and knowledge. However, this paper tends, through putting the significance of the encompassing in contemplating on the nature of thought and theory, to present a non-humanistic and so a non-metaphysical concept of knowledge. It attempts to put forward a non-observable and non-concrete thing, a thing that could be identified neither with subject nor with object, but the encompassing of both is the foundation of thought, the transcendent condition of knowledge, and the indicator of correctness or non-correctness of human knowledge, and at the same time, it is neither separated from the subject of thought nor the object of knowledge. We live in a time that, due to the dominance of metaphysical thought, the presence of the encompassing, especially in understanding the nature of thought and theory, has already departed from our thinking mind.

The present paper intends to give a new analytical about the views of Shi’a scholars on the issue of rational good and badness. Adliah (including Shi’a and Mu’tazila) unlike the Ash’arites of Sunni Orthodoxy, believe in essential good and badness. The dispute has an epistemological origin. The root of the dispute lies in accepting the judgment by reason in the scope of ethical tasks on the side of Adliah, and removal of reason from such aspect by Ash’arites. After accepting the view of Adliah, some disagreements are observed in explaining its details which display themselves in the way of answering to the difficulties raised by Ash’arites. Some Shi’a scholars are maintaining essential good and badness for acts like truth and false. Some other group have related good and badness of such actions to their being useful or harmful. The third view is that the good and badness of actions are, after comparing them with justice and injustice, considerable, and indeed, the good of justice and the badness of injustice, is the root of good and badness of various actions. In this paper, after stating these three views and their evidences, the third view is adopted as the free-willed opinion.

Nasr Hamed Abuzeyd as one of contemporary Arabian scholars and of major figures of neo-Mu’tazilites, has presented special opinions about understanding and interpretation of religious scriptures, particularly Quran some of which have already opened many controversies. By using linguistic analyses, Abuzeyd offers a new concept of interpretation and through a kind of looking into the layers of meanings in the texts, he regards every conception from the verses as permeated into interpretation and attempts to criticize the way the formal religious scholars’ look at the texts, and consider the difference in the type of interpretation of texts as something similar to the difference in Ijtihad. By suggesting the issue of interpretation and changing, he criticizes the ideology-centered interpretation of religious texts believing that the changing is the same as biased reading and interfering the ideology into the texts. In another sense, he does not hold epistemological authenticity and value for the interpretation committed to ideology, and believes that interpretation should be made without any submission and he gives credits to the interpretation in which no biased and ideological view is entered. He admires the position of Mu’tazilites in understanding the Quran believing that they were the first group who rightly started interpreting the text of Quran, for they employed the reason independently in understanding the text and held no obligation and dependence to scared law for the reason, so today we should follow the interpretation of religious texts with the very free reason. According to Abuzeyd, when facing with religious text, the aim for epistemological activities in general and the act of regarding in particular is to discover some truths of existence which lies in a level beyond the horizon of the essence of the knowing subject or the reader, and it is the very same correct interpretation. In this essay, his views on the notion of interpretation and its epistemological value are discussed and treated.

The issue of predication is one of the significant issue of Islamic philosophy that due to its relation with assertive knowledge of man to the outer world is of importance by which we could explain the relation between object and subject, subject and predicate, and knowledge and the known. Unless the predication, which indicates the identity and identification, is not made, it is impossible to set any identification and even any comparison to achieve knowledge. In the present essay the attempt is to treat primary essential predication and common technical predication as viewed by Sadr al-Muta’allehin and Allame Tabatabayee with respect to the reality of predication and its place, and with regard to the distinction between the two, their application is stated and in case of any differences, they are explained.