JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES (UNIVERSITY OF ISFAHAN)
Year:2005 | Volume:- | Issue:39|Papers Count:8

Thoughts about nature, society, cosmos and human beings have been encountered with vast changes in the past four centuries. These changes have been examined by philosophers, historians and sociologists of science. Many of these thinkers now view the concept of scientific revolution with skepticism while some do not. Some thinkers consider science as conservative and traditional in nature. They consider processes of changes in the science exceptional and temporary but others believe that science has a dynamic nature and it advanced cognitive revolutionary changes.The aim of this article is to investigate scientific knowledge from the perspective of Barnard Cohen. Cohen has argued that modern science was born in the Scientific Revolution. According to this view, the Scientific Revolution is virtually the central event in the history of science.

The main axis of this article is the  25 letter of Ayn-Al-Qudat Hamadani which in the atmosphere of modern hermeneutics is paid attention very much. We in this article consider and criticize the post-modernity interpretation of the mentioned letter and then compare the view point of Ayn-Al-Qudat with Hisam Al-Din Chalabi's expression about Molavi's words and Ibn Arabi's thesis on the allegorical interpretation of the Quran. We also put forward another interpretation about the hermeneutical thesis of Ayn-Al-Qudat.

Since the Plato's time, there has been a debate over the issue whether good actions are those which conform to God's will, or do they conform to God's will because they are good? In western culture, this problem is known as Euthyphro Dilemma. Some thinkers, most religious ones, defend the first option which is called "Divine command theory of ethics", while some defend the opposite.In the Islamic world, too, this problem has been the subject of debate between Ash "arites in one side and Shi"a and Mu'tazilah on the other. The first group believe in the former and the second group are adherents of the latter. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the "Divine command theory of ethics" and show its unacceptable implications.

Direct reference theory, against Frege's and Russell's view, claims that the semantic content of a proper name does not have any description as its sense and that name without any attributive means, i.e. directly, designates its referent, viz., the semantic content of a proper name is its referent. Empty proper names create some problems in this theory: Does the sentence which contains such names express any proposition? And can it be believed? Does this kind of sentence have truth values? What about the justification of true negative existential sentences? And, finally, if these sentences lack any semantic content how could their obvious difference in meaning be justified? In this article, I will do a critical investigation of the most important answers to those problems, and will show that, though some of these answers are valuable, they are not complete.

Some of the philosophical terms whether in the classical philosophy or in the modern philosophy, are so basic and important that if they will not be considered deeply it will make very difficult or even impossible to resolve philosophical problems. At the heart of these important terms are the concepts of existence and essence. They are so important that some of philosophers hold that without knowing the concept of the existence accurately we can not grasp philosophical knowledge at all. Although, in this article, we can not discuss all of the issues related to the existence and essence, the author considers and discusses some of the key problems of the issue such as the meaning of existence, fundamentality, equivalence, gradation and so on which are discussed by Avicenna. Focusing on the discussion of the relation of existence and essence in Avicenna's philosophy is imperative especially with regard to the point that in his philosophy contrary to the transcendent philosophy of Mulla Sadra, there is no apparent distinction between the issue of the existence and that of the essence.

He purpose of this study is to examine the origin of the doctrine of Gradation of Being (tashkik al-wujud). This problem can be related to the universal doctrine of the great chain of being found in various metaphysical systems both ancient and medieval and particularly Neoplotanian traditions. But these all do not acquire the doctrine of Gradation of Being and a question remains unresponded: "why does this doctrine as a problem rise up to Islamic metaphysics?" In other words "what is the origin of the problem of Gradation of Being?My contention is that this problem has a metaphysical origin which is completely related to Islamic philosophy. This doctrine originated when the concept of God came into the philosophy as an ontological meaning. According to this view, Being divided into two divisions: the necessary (wajid) and the contingent (momkin). This provides a certain challenge to religious doctrine tawhid so philosophers introduce the doctrine of Gradation of Being to solve it. In the light of this, we can examine ontological systems of Aristotle and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and to investigate Molla Sadra's approach in this regard.

Foundationalism is the most ancient theory on epistemic justification.This theory employs the metaphor of a building. The foundation of the building consists of foundational (basic) beliefs and the superstructure of it consists of non-foundational (non-basic) beliefs. Non-foundational beliefs are said to be based on foundational ones. The other theory is coherentism. This theory employs the metaphor of a spider net: each belief supports the other beliefs and is supported by them. This article first considers critically the foundational theory and then shows that this theory is reduced to coherentism.

In the light of recent philosophical elaborations about human being, current ideas about freedom are becoming anachronistic. In this regard, Heidegger"s view on freedom will be discussed here after an overview on theories of freedom.