فصلنامه نقد و نظر
سال بیست و سوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 89، بهار 1397)

In scholarly discussions, a semantic deviation occurs when a scholar deviates from the conventional meaning of the subject matter he or she discusses and theorizes about to a different unconventional meaning. The main question of this paper is whether some moral theories are subject to semantic deviations, and if so, how such a deviation has occurred. The paper aims to examine teleological moral theories to see whether and how they suffer from semantic deviations. We have done with the method of conceptual analysis, that is, we analyze the concept of “value” by distinguishing different meanings of the word and determining what is meant by it in the literature on moral philosophy.
We will then consider whether teleological theories can live up to this meaning of “value.” We conclude that teleological theories in moral philosophy, and in particular, Miṣbāḥ Yazdī’s view, are vulnerable to such a problem of semantic deviation. Ignoring the meaning of moral value, he defends the reality of the instrumental value of morality for achieving desired goals, instead of defending the reality of the moral value of actions.

The resolution of moral conflicts is the goal of any moral theory that puts an emphasis on the existence of absolute elements in moral judgments. Since deontological theories in ethics insist on the existence of absolute judgments and agent-independent obligations, they are concerned with the resolution of such conflicts more than any other theory. Various philosophical traditions, both continental and analytical, seek to solve the problem with their own methods. Maurice Mandelbaum, an American analytic philosopher, has devised and elaborated an independent ethical system from the viewpoint of moral phenomenological experience, taking the practical aim of his philosophy to be the resolution of moral conflicts. He takes the origins of such conflicts to be cognitive factors affecting the way a moral judgment is formed. Although such factors cannot always be overcome, we can consider certain principles that are phenomenologically helpful in many cases, although they are not absolute. In this point of view, principles that are helpful for the resolution of moral conflicts and disputes consist in the “principle of the priority of facts,” the “principle of universality,” and the “principle of teleology.” Given these principles, we seek to provide a criterion for the resolution for moral disagreements beyond any specific normative theory, justifying these principles given the beliefs and facts from which moral judgments inevitably arise. In this paper, we will briefly explain common solutions, especially in the deontological tradition, and then evaluate Mandelbaum’s solutions.

Relying on the two conditions of the “necessity of open alternatives to moral agents” and “genuine choice of the person from among the alternatives” as well as the agent being a true origin of his or her actions, incompatibilists believe that causal determination is incompatible with free will and moral responsibility. One such philosopher is van Inwagen who brings a direct argument—without drawing on notions such as “the ability to do otherwise” or “inevitability”—to show that any causal determinism is incompatible with the responsibility of moral agents, because, in his view, such an inevitable necessity amounts to the absence of the agent’s free will and moral responsibility. In this paper, we show that the first premise of this argument, and the picture van Inwagen provides for the relationship between causal necessity and free will in human actions, are unacceptable and objectionable.

What it means to say that “agents have the ability to do otherwise”? There has been much debate in recent moral philosophy about the meaning of this notion. G. E. Moore argued that one could do otherwise, only if one had chosen to do otherwise. For the first time, Austin rejected the conditional analysis, and provided a decisive refutation of it. He argued that some "if-then" sentences, such as "I could have done otherwise if I had wanted to”, are not genuinely conditional propositions. Later, Chisholm and Lehrer attempted to refute any analysis of ‘S can do X’ in terms of a conditional. They have argued that "If C, then S Xs" cannot mean "s can X." Bruce Aune objected to Lehrer’s argument. He argued that the above equivalence is true, and their argument is question-begging. In this paper, I present an overview of the debate and try to show that Aune’s objections are unsatisfactory.

The nature of the human being is an important issue in kalam or Islamic theology, on which many other significant issues such as “obligation,” “the quality of resurrection,” “reward and punishment,” and “promise and threat,” hinge. Muslim theologians have offered a variety of views regarding the nature of the human being. The dominant view among Mu’tazili theologians is a materialist conception of the human being. They take the reality of the human being to consist in the visible body. On the contrary, some Imāmī theologians, such as Hishām b. Ḥakam, al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq and al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, have appealed to some Quranic verses and hadiths to support dualism according to which the human being consisted of a body and an immaterial soul. Al-Shaykh al-Mufīd agrees with al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq in taking the human being to consist of a body and a soul, but he objects to some of al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq’s concepts of the soul. In this paper, we seek to show how cogent the arguments of both parties of the debate are and how compatible they are with rational and transmitted evidence. To do so, we review al-Ṣadūq’s view, and examine al-Mufīd’s objections to him given rational and transmitted evidence, showing that in most cases, al-Shaykh al- Ṣadūq’s views are supported with stronger evidence.

Henry Corbin is an Orientalist who is particularly concerned with Shiite thoughts, interpreting the doctrine of wilāya by drawing on a meta-historical approach or sacred history. Relying on the doctrines of prophethood and imamate, he takes wilāya to be the interior of Shiism. On the contrary, the rival theory—that of “historicity”—appeals to social facts of the Arab community at the time of the revelation of the Qur’an, and takes wilāya to be a social phenomenon of the period, without having a particular status. In this paper, we seek to show that the historicity approach faces the problem of incompatibility with religious doctrines and ignorance of the philosophical foundations of theology. Thus, we believe that Corbin’s meta-historical approach is more cogent, and his interpretation of wilāya is more rational.

In its present formulation, externalism is an important new approach in contemporary philosophies of language and mind. Gertler, a contemporary analytic philosopher, has proposed a new problem concerning the criterion for the distinction between internalism and externalism about the mental content, in an attempt to show that the technical terms, “internalism,” and “externalism,” are seriously vague. The idea behind Gertler’s argument is that any criterion for such a distinction has to appeal to the notion of “subjective,” while this concept is, for her, descriptively and normatively vague and problematic. In this paper, I will first introduce the internalism-externalism debate in the philosophy of mind, and then elaborate Gertler’s problem. After explicating Gertler’s proposed criteria, I will finally seek to uncover and elaborate her wrong presuppositions and methodological errors.