فصلنامه پژوهش های فلسفی - کلامی
سال بیست و پنجم شماره 2 (پیاپی 96، تابستان 1402)

The problem of epistemic luck arises when a person has a true belief that is only true by luck. Before Gettier, it was believed that the element of justification would be sufficient for knowledge; but he showed that it is possible to have a justified true belief that is not an example of knowledge because of the intrusion of luck. Duncan Pritchard has examined epistemic luck in an extensive and detailed manner. He offers a modal account of luck based on two elements: a possible-worlds analysis of counterfactual conditions and a significance condition for the factors that make the truth of the belief lucky. Pritchard argues for the superiority of this account to those that focus on whether the truth of the belief is “accidental” and on whether the believer has sufficient control over the belief. Epistemic luck may be “reflective” or “veritic”. Both undermine knowledge claims, although Pritchard gives the central role to veritic luck in his anti-luck epistemology, which is based on two elements: a safety principle and a condition to ensure that the cognitive faculties of the agent are not impaired. In this article, we will describe, analyze, and subsequently, evaluate the viewpoint of Pritchard. In addition to the critiques offered by others, ambiguities in his counterfactual account of luck and other components of his theory detract from his theory.

In a new formulation of the logical problem of evil, J. L. Schellenberg attempts to develop a new version of the logical form of the problem of evil through the logical inconsistency of the conjunction of three theistic claims with the existence of evil. Schellenberg, by appealing to three commitments of theism: Unsurpassable Greatness (UG), Ontological Independence (OI), and Prior Purity (PP), adopts two approaches the Modeling and the Motivation to demonstrate the inconsistency of the conjunction of these theistic claims with the existence of evil. To pursue this aim, Schellenberg develops his argument by adding supplementary propositions to the four claims. Therefore, what is shown from the conjunction of the three theistic claims and additional propositions is that there is no evil in the world, whereas this is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil in the world. This paper through an analytical-critical approach aims to show Schellenberg’s argument is not sound. To show its falsity, this paper has focused on premise (8) as the central premise of Schellenberg’s argument. By showing its falsity, it would also be vulnerable to the free will defense. In addition to Gellman’s critique over premise (8), this paper also poses a dilemma over (8) to show Schellenberg’s argument is not sound and it cannot avoid Plantinga’s rebuttal.

The relationship between reason and faith is one of the most important topics in the philosophy of religion. This issue has been investigated from several aspects. One of these aspects is the relationship between action and religious belief. John Cottingham, a contemporary analytical philosopher, emphasizes the primacy of religious practice over belief, as well as the involuntary nature of belief. In his opinion, the factor that causes people to become religious is not intellectual discussions about God but the internal aspects of religion itself and the transforming power of religious practices in human life and experiences. In the present work, a critique has been made of his point of view with an explanatory-critical method. Criticisms that his point of view includes: First, the belief resulting from the course of action is only psychological certainty and such certainty is beyond the logic of verification. Secondly, knowledge of God and the practical system is a condition for entering it and precedes it. The third criticism is the problem of the plurality of religions and practical systems which causes people to mistrust reasons of the heart. The fourth criticism is that entering into a practical system is a confirmation of its benefits and anyone who does not believe this would have no reason to enter such a system.

Wainwright considers the relationship between ethics and mysticism in two possible ways: 1. The destruction of ethics in the context of mysticism; 2. Strengthening ethics through mysticism. He mentioned and analyzed the reasons in each type, and then ended each section by expressing his point of view, and finally, he reached the point of view that morality and mysticism are separate from each other; In such a way that they neither strengthen each other nor destroy each other. This article, by criticizing the arguments of Professor Wainwright and enumerating and explaining the five models of the relationship between ethics and mysticism based on the perspective of Islamic mysticism, comes to the conclusion that contrary to his view, the relationship between ethics and mysticism, Those are not summarized in the two mentioned types and reducing these connections to those two types neglects many capacities involved in the discussion. With these debates, it is shown that the main arguments to prove the ineffectiveness of mysticism in forming a kind of ethics are not justified, but the arguments of the mystics in the direction that mysticism, both in the meta-ethical and in the normative stage, causes the realization of ethics, it seems sufficient. In the end, according to what has been said, we must adhere to the view that a mystical attitude is necessary for a completely ethical life (in the final stages of ethics).

In this paper, we attempt to explain the concept and types of “Implicit Bias” by outlining its various meanings. These biases can be indirectly identified in anyone through experimental tests. These biases have different epistemological consequences, namely skepticism. Jennifer Saul has argued that we have very compelling reasons to believe that our judgments, decisions, and evaluations of propositions and arguments are influenced by the social groups that the person making that argument or statement is a member of. Thus, she points out that we make mistakes in the majority of the judgments we make on a daily basis. In light of this, we may be skeptical about the need to take practical action. We argue that Saul’s view is ambiguous in several ways: 1) Her discussion of skepticism depends on adopting a certain type of meaning for implicit bias and does not necessarily include other meanings. 2) In Saul’s view, the mind does not participate in the creation of belief and acts as a neutral machine. 3) Saul’s argument is self-defeating. 4) She has not given precise and general criteria for implicit bias effectiveness. 5) Her evaluation of traditional skepticism’s ineffectiveness in society is incorrect. Finally, 6) the degree of effectiveness varies from person to person, and the extent of its strength or weakness differs from person to person.

Moral expressivism suggests that 1) moral sentences lack truth conditions and 2) our purpose in asserting moral sentences is to express non-cognitive attitudes such as desires, approval, or disapproval. Moral expressivism meets a fundamental challenge, known as the Frege-Geach problem. Sentences that express moral judgments can form part of semantically complex sentences. “P” (a moral sentence) contradicts “~P”, and “Q” follows logically, by modus ponens, from (1) “P” and (2) “if P, then Q”. Geach argued that noncognitivists are committed to denying that moral predicates mean the same thing in embedded contexts as they do in unembedded sentences (atomic sentences). If “P” does not mean the same as the antecedent of (2), the argument would be invalid. The problem is that the above-mentioned argument is obviously valid. Blackburn has argued that the complex sentence expresses a ‘higher-order’ attitude toward the attitudes expressed by the smaller sentences which make it up. If we accept the premises of a valid argument but deny its conclusion our attitudes clash in the same way that they do if we both believe that P and ~P. Blackburn's meta-attitudes approach faces several problems. Someone who endorses the premises but denies the conclusion of the valid argument commits himself to a moral inconsistency, not a logical one. In addition, uttering both ‘P’ and ‘~P’ seem to be inconsistent but expressivism cannot explain the inconsistency between these two obviously inconsistent sentences. Blackburn's strategy of inventing a new attitude, such as tolerance, is also unable to solve this problem.