JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Year:2020 | Volume:22 | Issue:2 (84)|Papers Count:6

Muhammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi, the famous physician and philosopher of the Islamic world, has been considered by many researchers in different aspects. His theory of perfection of the soul, however, is not much appreciated in recent scholarship. Without learning philosophy, he believes the soul cannot be perfected and released from the body after death. This proposition begs the question: What will be the fate of the soul after death if it is not sufficiently perfected? Reincarnation, responds al-Razi. His view on reason and reincarnation sets forth a dilemma in his philosophy. The conception of reincarnation implies two propositions: (1) only human beings are rational, and (2) the transmigrated soul eventually returns to the human body, so that it once again tries to achieve perfection. These propositions raise two questions: Why is the soul rational in the human body and irrational in animals? If rationality is an accident for the souls, how does it survive death? This paper aims to provide a flawless solution for this dilemma through a critical analysis method. Before this, previous attempts for achieving such a solution must be investigated. Therese-Anne Druart has suggested that, for al-Razi, animals have reason to some extent. Therefore, the soul is rational, whether it is a human soul or that of animals. Contrarily, Peter Adamson argues that al-Razi has regarded animals as deprived of reason, although they can think. Providing six arguments, Adamson argues that al-Razi does not believe in reincarnation. This way, there will be no reincarnation in al-Razi's philosophy to lead him to the dilemma. We propose that neither of the above solutions can solve the dilemma of reincarnation because al-Razi believes in both reincarnation and depriving animals completely of reason. He does not regard rationality as a condition for the survival of the soul after death. Al-Razi has been influenced by Plato and also mostly by Galen and is opposed to Aristotle's view on the soul. So, his conception of the soul should be conceived in a Platonic sense, not an Aristotelian one. Accordingly, the soul is an eternal self-mover entity and rationality is not the criterion for the survival of the soul. Besides, al-Razi indicates that a human being's reason is due to the particular temperance and structure of his body, especially the brain. Consequently, the soul does not need rationality to survive death. Moreover, the nature of the soul is not necessarily rational. Although the view of reincarnation faces many problems, as many Muslim philosophers have criticized it, this investigation can pave the way for further research on the nature of the soul from al-Razi’ s viewpoint.

This paper seeks to explain and evaluate, by an analytic method, the conflict between determinism and free will from the viewpoint of two physicalist reductionist philosophers, namely, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Dennett is a compatibilist philosopher who tries to show compatibility between determinism and free will, while Sam Harris is a non-compatibilist philosopher who turns to determinism with the thesis that our thoughts and actions have been pre-determined by the neurobiological events associated with them, and thus, considers free will to be an illusion. Therefore according to him, we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions. However, Dennett tries to establish the existence of free will through the use of concepts like control and deliberation and defends ‘ free will worth wanting’ . Therefore, if we take the agency of the agent and the absence of determinism as two criteria for free will, Dennett accepts both and Harris denies them; since there is neurobiological determinism, and all of Dennett's deliberations, etc. are also determined neurobiologically. Between the two conditions of free will, Dennett accepts that the origin of action must be in the agent; however, he refutes the condition of alternate possibilities, establishing his view based on a causal theory. As a Neo-Darwinist, he explains human beings’ physical and mental phenomena based on evolution theory and despite accepting causal determinism, he shows how the agent can still have agency in decisions and actions. As a result, he does not consider determinism to requisite compulsion. In his philosophical system, one can change the future that has not yet taken place. This decision-making regarding the future takes place through the process of deliberation, which has a special place in Dennett’ s view. On the other hand, by adhering to Libet’ s neurological experiments, Harris refutes both conditions of free will and considers the cause of all human being actions to arise from activities of the brain and concludes that one cannot have any conscious control over one’ s actions. As a result, he emerges as a non-compatibilist determinist. In both his works, The Moral Landscape and Free Will, Harris addresses the topic of free will. In Free Will, he criticizes the view of compatibilists like Dennett, who responds to those criticisms in his article, ‘ Reflections on Free Will, Review of Sam Harris’ Free Will’ . Like Harris, Dennett too addresses free will in his two important books, Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves. Following an analysis of the views of Dennett and Harris and explaining the criticisms of the two regarding each other, the present article will show that neither Dennett, considering the rest of the elements of his philosophical views in philosophy of mind and philosophy of action can well justify compatibilism, nor can Harris, considering his neurological approach defend his determinist idea. The conflict that is present in Dennett’ s views causes his explanation of the agent being the origin of his action to also be indefensible. Furthermore, due to the incompatibility of the different elements of his view and the vagueness of his idea regarding the effect of unconscious intentions on action, Harris too is placed in a weak position. In contrast to Harris’ supposition, a human is not “ a puppet [who] is free as long as he loves his strings” ; rather, a human chooses, makes decisions and acts according to his own will. As a result, despite the objections that apply to both philosophers, Dennett’ s view is more acceptable than Harris’ in terms of the effort to justify free will; even though neither have been apparently successful in defending their own ideas.

Kant addressed the distinction between the two domains of phenomena and the thing-in-itself by considering time and space as two conditions of cognition. The result of such a distinction, which is the basis of his transcendental idealism school, was limiting cognition to the domain of phenomena and the impossibility of cognition of reality and the thing-in-itself. As the greatest philosopher of the modern period, and by adopting such an approach, Kant left unanswered the acute duality which he had inherited from his predecessors and left his successors to encounter this problem; the most important of these successors was Hegel. Hegel, who considered duality to be the source of the need for philosophy and his school to be comprehensive of the previous philosophies, holds the establishment of such a comprehensive philosophy to requisite prevalence over dichotomies where the central point of such shortcomings was that very duality that was present within them. By establishing the school of absolute idealism and through the belief in the essential foundation in which the mind and external reality are unified, he saw both the underlying duality in Aristotelian and Platonic thought to be an obstacle for the actualization of his absolute ideal, as well as Kant’ s thing-in-itself. Therefore, he denied the thing-in-itself by acknowledging its contradictoriness; however, he was then faced with the challenges that arose from omitting it. These challenges include deducing nature from logic as well as the issue of the existing probabilities in nature; in the first instance, we are faced with the problem of how particular nature can be deduced from general absolute thought and in the second with the problem that Hegel does not provide a rational solution for the existing probabilities in nature. These very challenges move us towards a fresh look at the thing-in-itself according to David Bohm as one of the greatest physicists of Quantum Physics. He studies the thing-in-itself by distinguishing between the two views of ontology and epistemology, the result of which was the distinction between the whole (as reality) and things (as phenomena). Through this distinction, in the ontological approach, he considers the essence of the whole (foundational reality) to transcend the mind and matter and thus, unknowable (the transcendental idealism stance) and denies the possibility actualization of Hegel’ s absolute idealism; the result of this is acceptance of Kant’ s thing-in-itself. In the epistemological approach too, despite being aligned with Hegel, he considers holomovement to consist of a dynamic movement. However, he departs from Hegel’ s view (supposing a human being to be a carrier of the geist and the possibility of the actualization of absolute knowledge) and chooses Kant’ s by distinguishing between two types of dynamics (1. The dynamics present in normal incidents and things and 2. The dynamics present in the holomovement). The results of such a study include the following: a) the possibility of addressing some metaphysical issues in the new age and evaluating them through scientific-philosophical criteria; b) strengthening Kant’ s stance regarding the thing-in-itself; 3) the overlap of the relationship between physics and philosophy in the study of existence and reality as a common matter that is discussable in both domains and d) the limitation of human thought in the cognition of the true foundation of the universe.

One of the most important issues in the philosophy of science in recent decades is to assess the permissibility of the involvement of background and non-scientific factors in science and to place them next to evidence or to involve them in the process of weighing evidence. Proponents of the value-free science ideal have considered any intervention of this kind as a blow to the objectivity of science and slipping in the process of science. One of the important arguments in criticizing this ideal is that of inductive risk, according to which any scientific statement or hypothesis and theory based on the common scientific method, is subject to possible shortcomings that are sometimes so detrimental that it is essential to prevent them and repair the process of hypothesis or scientific theorizing. Therefore, due to the possibility of errors in non-perceptual consequences, non-perceptual factors, including moral, social, and political values, should be involved in the process of science and these factors determine what assumptions or theories are accepted to avoid those consequences. For the first, Hempel presents the argument as below: Based on certain evidence as well as the scientific rules governing the research question, the probable results are: (1) The hypothesis is accepted according to scientific rules and is, in fact, true. (2) The hypothesis is rejected on the basis of scientific rules and is, in fact, false. (3) The hypothesis is accepted according to scientific rules, but it should, in fact, be false. (4) The hypothesis is rejected onthe basis of scientific rules, but it should, in fact, be true. The first two hypotheses are the results of scientific processes, but the last two hypotheses are probabilities that induction will occur. So both epistemologically and practically, we may have unpleasant consequences that must be remedied by reconstructing the rules of accepting or rejecting scientific assumptions. Hempel's solution is to involve values in the process of science, so that, although values lack a logical connection with hypotheses (one in the epistemic dimension and the other in the non-epistemic dimension), their role in the rules of accepting hypotheses to avoid scientific errors and scientific consequences is justified. The argument is expressed today in a new form as follows: (1) It is a common method in induction science. (2) There is a possibility of error in induction. (3) Scientific error leads to unfortunate individual and social consequences in the practical (moral, biological, economic) field. (4) The possible consequences of this can be overcome with unscientific values. (5) The hypothesis must be organized in such a way that it results in the least error. (6) After the alternative assumptions, a case should be selected that has the least adverse consequences. (7) So values can affect the process of science in a permissible and reasonable way. Some of the most important drawbacks of this argument are: (1) Interference of two scientific and practical fields: In this argument, the position of practice has been used for the field of science and the criterion of applying theory and hypothesis has been included in its epistemic justification level. (2) Lack of guarantee of objectivity of theories: If the criterion of objectivity is determined outside the position of opinion, there will be no guarantee that the theories will reveal reality. Basically, the meaning of objectivity is that it should not rely on any personal desires or uses.

According to Mulla Sadra and his Transcendental Wisdom which considers reality being equal to existence to be a self-evident matter, ontology means recognizing reality. However, Muhammad Baqir Sadr tries to show reality to be general and inclusive of existence by denying the self-evidence of this equality. Even though this claim has other advocates like the Muʿ tazilites in Islamic thought; however, Sadr is distinguished from them in the purpose of declaring such a claim, its content, and in the arguments presented for it and has formed a well-established view in this regard. To recognize reality, Sadr designates an identifier and strives to discover instances of it based on that. The identifier of reality is that it is independent of the agent’ s understanding and validation, and the mind is not active in perceiving it; rather, it is passive concerning the external world. Therefore, any true proposition that denotes the external for us and does not arise from the mind or validation shows us a part of reality. He concludes the actualization of another type of external reality by citing the truth of external theorems where either the subject or the predicate or both do not exist externally and suggests essential reality alongside reality actualized through existence. Although the matter of which theorems are true and essentially what is the criterion of the truth of theorems is an epistemological issue to which Islamic philosophers have responded with the “ logical thing-in-itself” argument. However, Sadr pursues the discussion of philosophical thing-in-itself with an ontological approach. Based on the aforementioned identifier, the real world, according to Sadr, is formed of different and heterogeneous matters which are not necessarily present externally. The category of substance, quality, and quantity are realities externally existent; while the reality of connectives, philosophical intelligibles, the category of genitives, the requisites of quiddities, perceptible of the practical intellections and non-beings, are all realities that do not exist externally and are essential. In contrast, according to Mulla Sadra, reality is explained through the foundation of the principality of existence. Principal reality is the individual of existence and all else, like the ten categories of quiddity, philosophical intelligibles, and even … possess reality through existence. The present study strives to first explain reality’ s relationship with the following three concepts: 1) existence; 2) quiddity and 3) secondary philosophical intelligibles and examine the way it is affirmed and its important instances. It then compares Sadr’ s real world with Mulla Sadra’ s ontology and after responding to some of the issues raised against Sadr’ s view, concludes that despite the foundational differences in the self-evidence of some of the propositions, they have both utilized similar methods in recognizing reality and have paid attention to the difference between “ lack of existence” and “ the existence of non-being” in the conflict between argument and self-evidence and have advocated for argument by revising their view regarding an issue that manifests as self-evident. Mulla Sadra considers “ the necessity of attribution of the existence of both sides in the context of attribution” to be an argument through which he shunts the self-evidence of the proposition that “ non-being attributes do not exist externally” and does not see the inexistence of these attributes externally to be a proof that they do not exist. In contrast, Sadr rejects that “ reality equals existence” by citing that “ the truth of theorems which do not have a matching existence externally” and the lack of existence of a correspondent of such theorems externally Mulla Sadra, does not mean that they are not real.

The present article studies Bernard Williams's view on moral responsibility using an analytical-critical approach. The discussion of moral responsibility includes the definition, conditions, and problem of moral responsibility. In Western philosophical texts, moral responsibility refers to the praise and blame of the agent by himself or others for an act he has committed. This is while, according to our moral appetites and the theories based on them such as Kant's, moral responsibility is conditioned on free action and every healthy human being has the capacity for moral understanding, the ability to act accordingly and to deserve moral praise and blame for one's actions as they all equally benefit from reason and free-will. Thus, the foundation of moral responsibility is empirical and safe from factors beyond control, that is, luck. In addition, the problem of moral responsibility is the conflict of free-will or freedom and determinism, and different philosophers have theorized regarding the three approaches of compatibility, incompatibility, and impossibility. Bernard Williams, a great philosopher on ethics with an Aristotelian influence-though he does not seem to define moral responsibility as opposed to what has been mentioned-offers a completely different view of the conditions and problem of moral responsibility and challenges our moral intuitions and theories such as Kant's and distinguishes between morality and ethics. He considers voluntary action to be the result of deliberation and intention but by innovating the term moral luck and relying on it, he even considers human voluntary action to be influenced by constitutive luck (i. e. the capacities, talents, and inner abilities of each person) and resultant luck (i. e. various psychological, social, cultural, political, economical, etc. factors which affect the outcome of actions). Therefore, by violating a completely voluntary act, he breaks the relation between freedom and moral responsibility and considers moral responsibility to be superficial or dependent on the concept of luck and gives it an empirical basis. Faced with the problem of moral responsibility, he criticizes compatibilists and incompatibilists in three ways. According to Williams, there is a misunderstanding in the concept of blame used by compatibilists and incompatibilists. In addition, compatibilists must compromise between determinism, psychological concepts, and moral responsibility. Also, the compatibilists do not pay attention to the difference between what free-will is and the will we have. On the other hand, incompatibilists have used determinism in the sense of fatalism. Finally, the incompatibilist view fails to establish a relationship between choice, intention, and action. By claiming a compatibilist view that is safe from these problems, Williams argues that there is a compromise between the above-mentioned items if we separate ourselves from our moral intuitions and the present ethics. This article explains Williams' moral responsibility, with an introduction to Williams and moral responsibility. It then describes Williams' compatibilism while also expresses his critique of compatibilism and incompatibilism. Finally, by assessing Williams's view, it concludes it to be a truly deterministic view that violates freedom and moral responsibility and the basis of its evidence and arguments as weak. For this reason, it is difficult and indefensible to accept it.