مجله نامه مفید
پیاپی 65 (اردیبهشت 1387)

This article aims at a reappraisal of the conceptual and historical relations between Aristotelian physics and disciplines traditionally called mathematical sciences. According to the orthodox Aristotelian view, the mathematical sciences could provide only "how" explanations and, as a consequence, they did not satisfy the conditions of real scientific explanations; the "mathematical" reasoning, in the sense explained in this article, was considered to be inferior to the "physical" reasoning. Through an analysis of some key texts of Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes and Alhazen, we hope to show that, despite the relatively modest view held in the orthodox Aristotelian scheme of sciences of the scientific value of the results obtained through the use of mathematical methods, the historical relations between the physical and the mathematical sciences can not be reduced to one of the simple subordination of the latter to the former. In fact, in a line of thought which began in classical Antiquity and reached its climax in the works of some Muslim mathematicians, certain typically physical problems were successfully addressed by mathematical methods. This created a paradoxical situation in which physicists freely used the results obtained by mathematical methods, without granting them the full status of scientific explanations, while mathematicians themselves considered their arguments to be really scientific, and so they did not feel compelled to complement their "how" explanations with any kind of "why" explanations. This situation anticipates a somewhat similar situation during the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, thus inviting us to reexamine the real historical significance of some aspects of this Revolution.

In this paper, I will try to give a brief account of what Hume noticed about causation. The upshot of Hume's theory is that cause and effect are "constantly conjoined." Regular sequences of events of one type all followed by events of the other type. The Humean then analyzes causation as derivative on such regular sequences. What are fundamental to causation are the general regularities. A particular sequence is causal by virtue of being an instance of a general pattern: c causes e on this occasion because on lots and lots of other occasions (in fact on all), when events like c occur, they are followed by events like e. I will show that this approach rests on two fundamental dogmas which I dub ontological Supervenience and Epistemological Reduction respectively. At the end, I will summarize the main objections to these dogmas.

The main theme of this paper is the notion of historical causation (causal relationships between historical events). Among three causal theories that will be considered briefly, the counterfactual analysis has the best position to be applied in the field of history. Using this analysis needs to have a clear understanding of modal claims in history. After some remarks on the nature and importance of virtual history, two proposed criteria of writing "what if …" history will be discussed. Although the first one, the necessity of connecting historical counterfactual claims to well-established laws, is acceptable, the domain of applicable well-established laws in history is much narrower than the domain of historical counterfactuals. Regarding the second criterion, minimal-rewrite rule, it will be argued that this rule in its current form is incomplete and needs some holistic components to be added. The next issue is whether virtual history is compatible with historical determinism or not. My argument is that at least one kind of determinism (structural determinism) is compatible with virtual history. Finally, the role of ideology in running historical counterfactual scenarios will be discussed. To avoid subjectivity, we need to avoid ideological judgments in modal claims as much as possible.

In this paper, we will first consider the contents of predicative propositions from the common viewpoint of Muslim logicians and then, with distinguishing between essential and existential aspects of proposition's subject, we propose a more precise view in this regard. After introducing modal propositions and categorizing them in a unified framework based on the origins of the related mode, we will propose a novel analysis of the contents of modal propositions based on the theory of primacy of existence (Asālat al-Wujūd). At the end, Suhrawardi's certain view of modal propositions are presented and then criticized on the basis of our proposed analysis of the contents of modal propositions.

In his introduction to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein acknowledges his debt to Frege. For eight decades commentators have interpreted this book from a metaphysical point of view contrary to its author's aim. In this way they have drawn a caricature of the book. Recently a few commentators have tried reading the book in the light of Frege's ideas. Focusing on Frege's ideas they have developed an anti-ontological account of the book and they have tried to explain the content and also the structure of the book according to its author's aim. In this paper I shall try to make a contribution towards the progress of this unorthodox new project of interpretation. Thus I shall show the importance of the first principle of three guiding principles mentioned by Frege in the introduction to The Foundation of Arithmetic, i.e. The Context Principle, reading the Tractatus anti-metaphysically.

How common nouns, and only a special type of them, i.e. “Natural kind terms”, rigidly designate is an issue in the philosophical study of language since the publication of Saul Kripke’s famous book, Naming and Necessity.In this book, Kripke argues against Frege and Russell’s theory of reference and proposes his own Causal theory of reference. Proper names, Kripke claims, are rigid designators, i.e. they refer to unique entities in every possible world. He also extends his theory of reference to cover natural kind terms, terms that dont refer to individual objects, but refer to group (or set) of objects. However, Kripke doesnt give an account of what it is for general terms to be rigid.In this article after surveying the causal theory of reference and Rigidity as its central concept, the application of this concept to natural kind terms is examined. It is shown that Natural kind terms are not rigid designator in the sense that Kripke originally defined it.

The present paper deals with the methodological aspects of Descarte's philosophy, in brief. By scrutinizing Descarte's thought and works and by using the most recent scholarly works on his philosophy in English language, the author tries to show the centrality of method in Descarte's system, in general and in his metaphysics, in particular.

In Being and Time, Logos is the Third existential constituent of There –being's structure. The three intertwined components of there - being's structure are: disposition, comprehension and logos.So, language has an ontological dimension. Since There being's being is open and disclosed to the world, it makes manifest what is being talked about. On the basis of this conviction, Heidegger decides to go beyond ordinary ideas about language. He believes, it is misleading to reduce this existential component to a simple instrument for expression of our feelings and thoughts. We, our selves are language itself. Our being is the special being with language. Heidegger connects Language with interpretation and hermeneutic. Entities are interpreted by language and words take on a hermeneutical task. Heidegger understands language as disclosure of things and entities, so, it is connected to truth (aletheia), although everyday language which is far away from its source, more hides the entities more than unfolding them.