JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Year:2018 | Volume:20 | Issue:3 (77)|Papers Count:11

Liberal incompatibilism considers the causal determinism governing all events of the world (including free actions) as a serious obstacle to human freedom. Thus, they seek a way of protecting human freedom with one of these three different approaches: 1. Non-causal account or simple indeterminism, 2. Event causal account or indeterministic causation of events. 3. Agent causation account. In this research, we study the views of the main theorists of these three ideas and criticize them. Then, according to the definition of free will, based on two principles: possible alternatives at the moment of choice and active control of the agent in relation to the act, we will show that it only the agent causation account that succeeds in providing a sensible picture of man’ s freedom in action; because the other two views have neglected the role of the agent in controlling and directing action, and have reduced voluntary action merely to an accidental and random event. Agent causation refutes the monopoly of the role of causality for phenomena and claims that the agent is not only passive and affected by events occurring around him but essentially and with his causal powers is at least the creational cause for one of the mental events that initiates the process of realizing the external act. Therefore, despite causal determination, he is truly free, and the direction and control of his actions is in his hands.

Various criteria for the natural/non-natural distinction have been suggested in metaethics. Shafer-Landau first claimed that natural properties are properties that are used in scientific disciplines. But firstly, this definition is not comprehensive, and secondly it is ambiguous; according to the second criterion, two lists must be prepared; the first list includes terms that most people consider to be natural. The terms that are not included in the first list, are transferred to the list of non-natural terms. I argue, however, that this criterion also does not help in distinguishing natural properties from non-natural ones. If we wish to maintain Shafer-Landau's view, we can find a criterion for natural properties using normative ethics. For example, by accepting Kant’ s principle of humanity as a non-natural reality, those descriptive properties that follow from this principle can be the foundational properties for moral properties. But by presenting a serious criticism on Shafer-Landau's metaethics and accepting views that are invulnerable to this critique, a criterion for the distinction of natural/non-natural in meta-ethics can be found. One of these views is Fitzpatrick’ s view, according to which many of the aspects of the world that are empirically investigable are also inherently value-laden. Therefore, the world of human experience is a dual-aspect world. One of these aspects is natural and the other is non-natural.

The way God intervenes in the natural world is considered a major and long-standing issue in the realm of theology and philosophy of religion where efforts to resolve it has led to proposing various and, at times, opposing views, spanning from determinism to delegation. By employing a novel criterion to distinguish between various divine actions in the world, the current paper attempts to present and assess Allamah Tabatabaei’ s approach as an Islamic determinist philosopher in regard to the topic and seeks to lay the groundwork for offering solutions in both deterministic and indeterministic models by revisiting the causal homogeneity principle in order to find a way out of dominant intellectual impediments. To that end, the paper serves to show that by extending the concept of causal homogeneity within a deterministic framework, one can attest to the direct interference of immaterial entities in the material world, whereas by resting upon the ‘ principle of causal necessity’ and a particular attitude towards the principle of homogeneity within an indeterministic framework, one can defend the interference of immaterial causes in order to realize one of the possible probabilities.

The way God intervenes in the natural world is considered a major and long-standing issue in the realm of theology and philosophy of religion where efforts to resolve it has led to proposing various and, at times, opposing views, spanning from determinism to delegation. By employing a novel criterion to distinguish between various divine actions in the world, the current paper attempts to present and assess Allamah Tabatabaei’ s approach as an Islamic determinist philosopher in regard to the topic and seeks to lay the groundwork for offering solutions in both deterministic and indeterministic models by revisiting the causal homogeneity principle in order to find a way out of dominant intellectual impediments. To that end, the paper serves to show that by extending the concept of causal homogeneity within a deterministic framework, one can attest to the direct interference of immaterial entities in the material world, whereas by resting upon the ‘ principle of causal necessity’ and a particular attitude towards the principle of homogeneity within an indeterministic framework, one can defend the interference of immaterial causes in order to realize one of the possible probabilities.

Schopenhauer encourages us towards sympathy and empathy for others by holding that compassion is the foundation and essence of ethics; but when we turn to his philosophical system, we encounter conflicts that negate his ethics and in practice, compassion has no opportunity to manifest itself. Some of the conflicts are as follows: the negation of free will in his metaphysics, the evilness of will, the essentiality and immutability of personality (character) and the evilness of man’ s essence. In his metaphysics he believes that everything in the world as determined by will, comes under the principle of sufficient reason, and time and space and necessarily becomes objective. As the foundation of ethics, the human will must also naturally come under the principle of sufficient reason and necessarily become objective; in this case, Schopenhauer’ s ethics is fundamentally negated, because ethics requires freedom and to remain outside the realm of the principle of sufficient reason. Similarly, in believing in the evilness of will, the essentiality and immutability of personality and in the evilness of man’ s essence, Schopenhauer’ s ethics is negated – at least from the normative type, and one cannot visualize a positive place for it in his philosophical system.

The present article strives to analyze, study and critique the intellectual roots of the impressionability of the Zaidi rationalist thought from the Muʻ tazila by using authentic scientific sources and to provide an answer for the question as to whether Zaidi rationalism is influenced by Muʻ tazila intellectual thought and why many believe that the Zaidis are under the influence of their intellectual ideas and believe in their five principles; and also while disproving the presented arguments, to show that contrary to the present and dominant view, the Zaidis rationalist perspective is not influenced by the Muʻ tazila’ s theoretical thought. Even though the Zaidis, like the Muʻ tazila, adhere to the intellect in theology, but like the twelve Shiʻ a whose rationalism takes root from the practical behavior of the infallible Imams (a. s. ) alongside argumentation through intellectual proofs, the Zaidis also rely on and present narrative proofs. This does not mean refuting the fact the Zaidis are one of the sects that give particular attention to the intellect and rationalism and it is in this vein that the circumstances of utilizing and benefitting from the intellect by the Zaidis is explained.

This paper analyzes the inconsistency of Mill’ s utilitarianism in moral philosophy and his liberalism in political philosophy, the efforts of Ten and Dworkin for their consistency and the distinction that Leob and Driver use for reconciling them. The distinction is between decision-procedure and criterion of evaluation or the metaphysics and epistemology of right. In the next step, it shows a new inconsistency between Mill’ s moral and political philosophy. It seems that Mill cannot accept the non-consequentialist ‘ doing/allowing harm’ distinction in moral philosophy because he himself is a consequentialist. The very rejection of this distinction makes it inconsistent with his harm principle and his main distinction in political philosophy: the distinction between ‘ self-regarding’ and ‘ other-regarding’ actions. These criticisms show the difficulty of reconciling Mill’ s utilitarianism with his liberalism and his moral philosophy with his political philosophy in the framework of the classic triple (virtue, deontological and consequentialist ethics) in normative ethics. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, I combined the classic triple with the modern triple (minimalist, moderate, and extremist morality) in normative ethics. In this way, we can regard Mill as a consistent utilitarian who regards liberty as the essential condition for personal development and maximization of the good, and tries to raise a moderate and sophisticated version of utilitarianism by decreasing its pervasiveness.

Spiritual way-farers according to the distinction between the closeness through obligatory acts and recommended acts are either recommendation way-farers or obligation way-farers or are inclusive of both or have attained the station of gradation and intense purification. Regarding the difference between closeness through obligation and recommendation, it is enough to say that in closeness through recommended acts, God has attributively descended and has become the hearing and sight of the servant; but in closeness through obligatory acts, the servant becomes the attribute of God and he becomes the hearing, sight and hands of God. It is this very mediation that arises from the Divine representative’ s closeness through obligation which is the secret of the non-annihilation of the possible world. The distinction between obligation and recommendation in the words of Islamic mystics has progressed to the extent that performance of obligatory acts is considered the manifestation of servitude and in performance of recommended acts the servant gains closeness to God. Some mystics in searching for the source of superiority of closeness through obligation over recommended acts, have indicated the determining and keywords of free-will and compulsion; in closeness through recommended acts, the servant has chosen Divine servitude instead of servitude to his own inclinations; but in obligation, the servant has no right of choice and inescapably and compellingly acts on obligation. In this article, we will delve in detail into the views of the Islamic mystics regarding the distinction between these two ways of closeness and their effects through a research-analytic approach.

Avicenna as a leader of Peripatetics in the Islamic world, has developed Peripatetic thought and has also introduced important views and theories. Although he is known for being a Peripatetic philosopher, but this attribution doesn’ t seem to be very accurate; in his thinking he has progressed toward transcendence. It is he who first used the term “ transcendental philosophy” . Based on “ transcendence in Avicennan thought” , his thoughts are not only not peripatetic, but many traces of the foundations and principles of transcendental philosophy can be found within it. Now the question is whether Avicenna has remained peripatetic regarding the discussion of movement in substance or he has also progressed to transcendence in this matter and although he has not clearly clarified motion in that category, but one can find signs of the existence of substantial motion in his thoughts. Considering transcendence in Avicenna thought, the author believes that Avicenna’ s refute regarding motion in substance is not his final view; rather his final view is the existence of motion in substance. This matter can be extracted from the expressions and views of Avicenna in other discussions particularly in discussions about the soul. In this article, we will present proofs to strengthen Avicenna’ s acceptance regarding substantial motion.

The syllogism in which the major premise is a conjunctive conditional proposition is called correlative syllogism. This sort of syllogism is valid in the two forms of: “ affirming the antecedent” and “ denying the consequent” and is invalid in all others forms. Correlative syllogisms have several states in the Holy Qurʼ an. In some cases, the general and specific conditions of the syllogism are fully observed, but due to clarity, some of the premises or their results have not been mentioned, and the syllogism is known as implicit and shortened. But in some other cases apparently the conditions for the correlative syllogism have not been observed and “ denying the antecedent” and “ affirming the consequent” are used for the conclusion. In this research, some of the most important correlative syllogisms in Holy Qurʼ an have been studied and in cases where it seems that the particular conditions of the syllogism are not observed, the reasons for that will be reviewed, and using the content of Holy Qurʼ an and the general rules of reasoning such as the “ correlation of hypotheticals” , these syllogism are converted to valid syllogisms and it is proven that the Qurʼ an, which is man’ s book of guidance and has invited him to think, has been revealed in human language and the general rules of thinking and intellection have been observed in it.

Girard considers imitation to be the main factor of violence by attributing violence to man’ s nature. According to him, praising the role-model motivates imitation of the inclinations of the role-model in the praiser. This matter results in rivalry and violence between the imitator and role-model since imitation has the characteristic of transmission and is a contagion that fills all of society with violence. Imitation, apart from being a factor of violence, can also be a factor of its destruction; this destruction is sometimes temporary and is realized through the victim’ s accusation and punishment (of the perpetrator) and is sometimes final and everlasting and is actualized through imitation of the Divine role-model (messiah). Based on the finding of this study, Girard’ s Imitation Theory has considerable distinctions like studying the roots of violence in man’ s nature and presenting a philosophical analysis of that, logical cohesion of the main points and the ability to explain the particular types of violence which other theories do not focus on. There are also flaws in this view, some of which are: the inability to provide a comprehensive explanation of violence and reducing to it to only one methodological factor and disorder.