Journal Of Religious Thought
Year:2011 | Volume:- | Issue:39|Papers Count:8

The philosophical language of Sohrawardi is one of illuminated symbols and metaphors. The term light in this language has particular characteristics like existence, reality, and truth. The term darkness also has particular characteristics like nonexistence, possibility, essence, and accidents. Two questions arise; the first is if existence is a creation of the mind and so only a conceptual representation. The second is knowledge light or not (along with referring to knower and known). This paper will answer the first question by proving that for Sohrawardi light is self-disclosure or appearance of reality and therefore it is not an just a concept. Secondly, we find that Sohrawardi speaks of light in two ways– epistemologically and ontologically – therefore, this paper claims that knowledge is also included in light.

Some consider religious education to be a comprehensive and complete such that a person through it can transcend to the perfect. Mulla Sadra and Erik Fromm are two philosophers that concentrate on religion. Mulla Sadra believes that every being has an innate instinct towards perfection. While Fromm believes that religion is a socio-psychological consciousness and exposes religion. This paper is a comparative study of their fundamental concepts of religion, education, and the interaction of the two. This paper will explicate the distinctions and resemblances in the theories of the two aforementioned scholars, and finally will argue for the prominence of Mulla Sadra’s theory.

Epistemological judgments on theologic statements, in general, and statements regarding God and his qualifications, in particular, leads us to the struggle between realism and non-realism in religious language. This struggle started with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy where he reviews analytical philosophy.In this paper, first, we will explore his thoughts. Then we will assess the viewpoints of two religious philosophers who are influenced by Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Namely, D. Z. Phillip' s opinion, as an example of the most remarkable representation of the group of philosophers know as non-realists compared with R.Trigg’s opinion, as the most outstanding representation of the group of philosophers known as realists. In this way, this paper tries to investigate the true meaning of religious statements through their usage of common theists in an a posteriori way (and not in an apriori or meta-language meaning).

In response to Gettier’s counter examples, Alvin Goldman proposes the "causal theory of knowledge", on the basis of which a person knows some proposition, p, if there is a causal connection between the state of affairs and facts that makes p true and the person's belief in p. The purpose of this article is a comparative study between the classification of propositions into "factual and external" and the "causal theory of knowledge". The article shows that the "causal theory of knowledge" is not consistent with factual and external propositions and it also shows this theory is inconsistent with essentials of both ancient and modern logic.Finally, the logic of causal theory of knowledge is introduced and its efficiency will be analyzed and criticized.

Dialetheism is the claim that some contradictions are true (or justified). Dialetheist tries to deduce these contradictions from valid arguments. The critics, on the other hand, try to prove, firstly, that such arguments are unsound, and secondly, they present some general arguments against dialetheism. This paper examines disletheism, while focusing on Graham Priest’s views.

Mental causation is the virtue that describes what mechanism in the mental state causes the physical state. The problem of mental causation is based upon the property of dualism. Type identity theory as reduction physicalism and token identity as non-reduction physicalism results in epiphenomenalism. Functionalism in comparison to causation is the concept of realization, but it ultimately confuses epistemology with ontology. Philosophers have failed to present a type of physicalism that does not result in epiphenomenalism. Physicalism is confronted with the dilemma that one side is epiphenomenalism and the other side is the resolution of metaphysical problem with the epistemological trick. To resolve this dilemma we need to go beyond physicalism, both reduction and non-reduction. We need to not think of physicalism as the most complete approach to answer the mindbody problem, which this paper attempts.

Almost all Muslim scientists, such as Muslim philosophers, theologians, and commentators, have an integrated view of eternity and infinite duration. Where they differ is on the question of if eternity in hell requires eternal torment, or eternity in hell will finish with the finishing of requisite punishment. Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra believe that there is no coupling between eternity in hell and continuous torment. Continuous torment, in their opinion, is just a necessity of the maxim of the prevention-prohibitionprinciple. Further, they explicate, that by accounting for the overall mercy of God, we can argue that those who are in eternal torment have a finite duration at the end of which they will enjoy heaven, although a heaven different from those who are assigned to heaven. This opinion is not continuous with the Qur’an, which states that the inhabitants of hell will experience eternal divine torment. This article reviews the reasons the Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra give for their argument. Next it discusses the signs in the Qur’an and tradition on eternal torment. Finally, it criticizes the views of Ibn Arabi and Mula Sadra and explores the aspect of Mulla Sadra’s views that are in accordance with the Qur’an and tradition.

One of the most fundamental of Kant’s philosophy is the concept of intuition. We can say that intuition in Kant’s theory is prior to understanding. Based on this, this article finds support for the idea that we can defend experimental sciences against the skepticism of Hume.