فهرست مطالب عبدالرسول کشفی

The basic problem of this research is the analysis of the quiddity of the first propositions (τἀ πρῶτον: to Proton) in Aristotle's philosophy and its purpose is to discover the relation of these propositions with the sextuple self-evident propositions. In Posterior Analytics, Aristotle puts forward the first propositions in response to the problem of epistemic regress. These propositions are known by two characteristics: 1- They are association of knowledge and have its conditions such as completeness and necessity. 2- They have no middle term. In this research, it is revealed that the instance of first propositions in Aristotle's philosophy is more specific than the instance of self-evident propositions; this means that self-evident propositions are more general than these propositions; but on the other hand, the first propositions in Aristotle’s philosophy are more general than "primary premises" in the Islamic philosophy. Among the sextuple self-evident propositions, Aristotle includes two groups of them, i.e. primary premises and natural propositions, under the first propositions. Exclusion of sensory premises and unanimous traditions premises from the first propositions is due to the lack of conditions of knowledge, and the exclusion of empirical and intuitive premises is due to their provability and causality. In Aristotelian philosophy, the cause’s chain of empirical propositions cannot continue indefinitely; but he fails to express the unprovable principles of nature and clarify their meaning. Also, the lack of providing a suitable criterion for distinguishing the first propositions from other propositions seriously challenges his logical-philosophical system regarding the structure of "demonstrative knowledge"

The main issue of this research is to investigate the causal explanation of the action and its purpose is to discover the deductive-nomological model and to criticize it in the philosophy of Sadr al-Mutalahin. According to him, an intentional action is the volitional act of a person, of which he has second-order awareness; therefore, the causal explanation of it requires the discovery of the basics of these two elements. The main cause of creating volitional action is the recognition of its benefits by the imaginative faculty. The reign of the imaginative faculty in the creation of volitional action is moderated by the intervention of practical reason as the source of awareness, so that intentional action is volitional action that passes through the channel of practical reason. the cause of the creation of an intentional action is either the acknowledgment of one of the two rational or imaginative faculty to perform that action without the presence of the opposite confirmation, or the confirmation of one of these two faculty to perform an action and the overcoming of the enthusiasm caused by the contrary confirmation of the other faculty. Therefore, "confirming the usefulness of an action" in the case of "absence of confirmation of the opposite" or "overcoming the enthusiasm caused by the confirmation of the opposite" makes the deductive-nomological model regarding the action, in transcendental wisdom. The normativism, lack of causal explanation when passions conflict, and determinism are the three problems of Sadr al-Mutalahin's theory.

For "theism" prayer is a kind of conversation with a deity. Against this, "pantheism" dismisses this definition and defines it as "meditation" due to its negation of personality. Prayer as, meaning "meditation,"  also faces challenges. This meaning of prayer is not only conceptually incompatible with the impersonal divinity but is also contradictory to the conventional understanding of the prayer and field reality of the believers’ behaviors. Hence, meditation not only does not place "pantheism" in superior standing as compared to “theism,” but also subjects it to challenges under the heading of the definition of religion. . If, by definition, religion fails to reveal a worthy standing for prayer, it is said to be incompatible, and this is a shortcoming that seriously threatens “pantheism”. This article reviews the semantics of prayer in two conceptions of “theism” and “pantheism” to investigate the criticism raised, finally demonstrating shortcomings of the meanings of prayer in “pantheism”, as its meaning in “theism” is more defensible.

Doctrine of divine simplicity in the sense of the oneness of the essence and attributes of God is one of the most important teachings of classical theism.Accordingly, since any combination shows the dependence on the components and God is purely needless, then no combination in God. The reliance of doctrine on metaphysical topics such as "object" and "property" has led to some criticisms by some analytical philosophers. In Alvin Plantinga’s critical view, if essence and attribute are identical, as well as the similarity of attributes with each other, leads to firstly God has only one attribute and that attribute is nothing but "himself" and secondly the acceptance of such sameness, It will imply that God is an attribute (or a property). Based on this view, properties have an abstract entity and all abstract entities are causally ineffective. As a result, these principles lead to the incompatibility of the doctrine with other attributes like aseity. Finally, one must either doubt the doctrine or defend other metaphysical foundations to explain the relation between essence and attributes. The present article is an attempt to explain this inconsistency and shows that by accepting the infinite nature of essence in classical theology, the metaphysical explanation of the relation between essence and attributes in God requires a model other than Plantinga's metaphysics. Another result is that despite the essence is identical with some properties such as "unity" and "to be identical", explaining them with the pattern of the exemplifying relation is contrary to intuition and entails infinite regress.

The universals are one of the controversial topics that have attracted philosophers’ attention since Aristotle’s discussion. E. J. Lowe is an Aristotelian Philosopher who has worked on universals. This article tries to perform a critical analysis of Aristotelian universals from E.J.Lowe's viewpoint. We will explain Lowe’s argument in favor of Realism will be analyzed. Illustrating weaknesses of opposite theories, he rejects all possibilities but Realist’s claim. Lowe believes that his view is able to provide a powerful explanatory framework for natural law. Without universals, Lowe holds, natural events are nothing but permanent regularities that originate from accidental generalization. So universals play a key role in his ontological system and only with the aid of them natural laws are justifiable. Propositions of natural laws deal with nature of entities, namely universals, whereas particulars instances by themselves are not able to establish a firm basis for natural laws owing to the fact that particulars refers to existent state of affairs. Following Aristotle, Lowe argues that Immanent universals are more reasonable. He holds that universals are abstract (by abstract, he means the entities that don’t have spatiotemporal features) because he thinks that concreteness of universals has some contradictory results (concrete entity is not abstract). We will consider strengths and weaknesses existing in his ideas. Authors believe that universal thanks to their different nature could be (and actually are) concrete.

In Aristotle and Fārābī's philosophy, knowledge begins with sense perceptions. This approach to the acquisition of knowledge faces two challenges posed by Sufism, “illusion” and the “the conflicting interpretations of sense perceptions”. Aristotle tries to answer these two questions by dividing sense perceptions into “specific” and “common” ones and proposing the concept of “balanced conditions”, and the duality of “appearance” and “perception”. Fārābī has not taken a position on the second challenge, but he draws a different approach to the first challenge by dividing the certainty into “complete certainty” and “incomplete certainty”. In his view, certainty arising from “sense perceptions” is an incomplete one, and by adhering to the three conditions, one can adhere to the certainties of sense intuition. It seems that neither of the two solutions of these two thinkers is complete in solving the problem; but Aristotle's solution to the problem of “illusion” is more defensible than Fārābī’s.

In Aristotle's philosophy, knowledge begins with the senses, and sensory perceptions bring knowledge to man through the activity of the "nous" faculty. Unlike Plato, Aristotle denies any innate knowledge; but on the other hand, he clearly states that sensory perceptions do not belong to knowledge and one cannot acquire knowledge to the senses. This creates a paradox in Aristotle's philosophy. If sensory perceptions do not belong to knowledge, how does knowledge arise from "what does not belong to knowledge" and because of the lack of which component of "knowledge", these perceptions do not belong to "knowledge"? According to the authors, the solution to this paradox goes back to the definition of "knowledge" and the possible role of sensory perceptions in the emergence of knowledge in Aristotle. Aristotle does not consider knowledge to be merely "justified true belief" but narrows the scope of "knowledge" to other conditions such as necessity and causality. Therefore, although belief in sensations is a true belief, but these perceptions do not belong to "knowledge" due to the lack of the condition of generality and causality.

All popular concepts of deity (Theism, Pantheism, and Panentheism) believe in divinity. In Theism, “God” has attributes such as consciousness, will, goodness, and so forth, which can be seen in humans. On the contrary, pantheists argue that: a) the person is equal to the human being; b) embodiment is a prominent feature of the human being; c) having attributes such as consciousness, will, and so forth, requires a body and equates to anthropomorphism. In other words, these attributes are inevitably associated with embodiment and the resulting limitations. Thereby, the pantheistic deity is impersonal. There is a duality of the “personality” and “impersonality” of the deity. The crucial question of this article is, “what is the relationship between divinity and personality?” The relationship of embodiment to personality and the relationship of perfection to the impersonal deity, constitute the sub-questions of it. We show that there is a significant relationship between personality and divinity. In the first section, the term divinity is examined; firstly, it is assumed that, contrary to pantheism, divinity is definable. Otto’s attempting to trace the origins of the “holy” and the historical studying of pantheistic approaches confirms this assumption. Secondly, “Infinity, ” “influence, ” and “transcendence” are three critical terms in defining divinity. Pantheistic argument showed that all critiques of personality are summed up in the fact that personality is a limiting factor. That is, it is inconceivable that the transcendent, infinite, and influential deity can be a person. Therefore, in the second part, the concept of person is examined, and we conclude that: 1) there is a relation between the practical terms in person’s meaning and the terms of divinity; 2) Although the main critique of the deity’s personality is the embodiment, it is not a crucial term in defining the person. That is why Michael Levin is in contradiction when he believes that divine unity doesn’t need to be a person or conscious, it is sufficient to be perfect. The question arises as to what perfection means without consciousness, power, and will? Isn’t a human being more complete due to the pantheistic divine unity? Accordingly, an analysis of perfection without addressing personal attributes puts pantheists in an apparent contradiction. Besides, impersonality faces a severe dilemma; if they do not take the personal attributes, according to Kant, the deity is reduced to an object. Instead, there could be some responses to anthropomorphism; firstly, the basis of the Pantheistic mistake is to generalize the meaning of finite consciousness or will to an infinite being, whereas temporality is an attribute of the deity’s knowledge or will’s objects, not of the deity’s knowledge and will. Secondly, the study shows where personality is interpreted to anthropomorphism, it focuses on the late idea in Christian thought about Jesus, while the history of attributing the deity to consciousness, will, and so forth, is much older. Finally, it is indicated that the critiques of the personality are not strong enough to challenge it. So, according to the “Principle of Simplicity”, believers in the personality of the deity have a more justified view.

Relying on the interpretation and defense of David Lund’s viewpoint, this study examines the strong dualism or the dualism of particulars to prove afterlife. The biggest obstacle in this regard is the concept of causality and the specification of the way the two particular and universal substances interact. Therefore, using philosophical and phenomenological argumentations, we demonstrate that the basis of this interaction is the priority of the subjective matter and the essential, causal, unreducable features of the two substances that have causal access to each other through embodiment. “Self” as a non-physical substance has no essential dependence and reliance on the physical substance of the body; therefore, it can survive after it cuts its causal relationship with it at the time of death. This study focuses merely on showing the logicality, meaningfulness, and occurrence of the foregoing dualism. The findings of the study indicate that no matter if we reduce causality to the natural system or deem it as the causal interaction of uneducable forces and potentials of the two substances, there would be no doubt in its logicality and meaningfulness. Therefore, due to the abstractness of “self” and its causal-causative features, the best explanation for our inevitable and direct insight of our volitional acts is to say that what is seen in this insight is real and the dual causality occurs in practice. If our argumentations are correct, they might be used to prove afterlife.

It seems somehow difficult to defend the Cartesian view about mind-body causation, considering nowadays neurologists’ findings about the human brain and philosophical critiques to it. However, Jonathan Lowe, based on some revisions on some of Descartes’ presumptions and also sketching a new plan of mind-body causation, tries to present a new view, being also in the framework of Substance Dualism. In this article, we are trying to show Lowe’s model superior to the Cartesian one. So, at first, we will show some important problems with which substance dualism confronts, such as the causal nexus problem, the pairing problem and the causal closure problem. After that, we will explain that Lowe has the ability of figuring out the causal nexus problem and the pairing problem by reconsidering some of Descartes’ presumptions. Also, considering the mind position and its role Lowe assumes in the physical world, he cannot only explain the voluntary actions of human, but also reconcile his view with causal closure principle, although it seems that his view needs more clearness in some aspects.

In this paper, first, the conflict between Scientific worldview and Divine action from the historical point of view is explained, and then, different approaches to solving this problem are introduced. In the next step, Physical Closure, as an important metaphysical basis of modern Science is illustrated and would show that the most severe obstacle in front of divine action in the world is that. After the explanation, Plantinga's approach to solving this conflict is explained. Then the proposal of new Theologians and Scientists, who intend to accommodate divine action and indeterministic laws of nature would be discussed and evaluated. By this evaluation, it would be shown that none of these approaches would be successful enough in criticizing the Physical closure. However, each of these approaches has salient points, and especially Plantinga's approach is well in his basic view. Finally, the Conscious and Free Will of human is introduced for showing the actual possibility of violating the closure of natural laws and physical world.

“Parent analogy” is one of the important arguments that was suggested by Stephen Wykstra, one of the prominent philosopher of Skeptical Theism. By formulating this argument, Wykstra shows that like infant who doesn’t understand reasons of her parent who permit suffering for her, Human being also cannot understand reasons of God who permits suffering. According to this we cannot infer from not seeing the reasons of God to there is no reason for God. Therefore, evidential argument from evil fails. Bruce Russell, William Rowe and Trent Dougherty challenge “parent analogy”. They offer “loving parent analogy” instead. “Loving parent” never leave their child alone in suffering or at least they make clear that there is reason. In their view, if theism is true, it`s expecting that this world be a transparent one and we can understand God`s reasons. In this article we show that parent analogy confront limitations which shows that it can be used neither for Skeptical Theism nor against it. But we show that there are other ways to justify cognitive limitations of human being. For example Alston instead of appeal to parent analogy, offer other analogies and enumerate at least six limitations for human beings. Accordingly, we can say that the claim of cognitive limitation form the view of Skeptical Theism is justified

The ontological analysis of concrete particulars deals with the relationship between concrete object and their attributes. Both Peter Simons' Nuclear Theory and Aristotelian Substance Theory may present an acceptable explanation for the following three problems:  Identity of Indiscernible, Excessive Necessitism and Change. In spite of the superiority of these two theories over the other theories, each has problems need to be addressed. Aristotelian theory does not seem to be very successful in showing that the spices (kinds) are unchangeable or at least does not explain it. Simmons's theory also returns to Aristotelian theory. While outlining the challenges to any theory, the final suggestion of the paper is that with inspiration of Simmons' theory and introducing a relation between the generalities (universal Whatness), create a modification in Aristotelian theory to overcome the challenge of the irreductive challenge of Species (kinds) Simons' theory, in some sense, collapses back to Aristotelian Theory.

William Hasker is one of the most important figures of open theism. The main characteristic of open theism is the denial of the divine foreknowledge to free actions in the future. Hasker has a specific analysis of the libertarian free will and, in defense of this concept, modifies the concept of divine omniscience, thereby transforming the theological fatalism argument into an argument in favor of the incompatibility of free will and foreknowledge. By presenting his own analysis of the distinction between hard/soft facts, the defense of power entailment principles and the rejection of the generalized power, he explains that divine foreknowledge implies that humans cannot refrain from the actions of which God has foreknowledge. That is, one of the main requirements for libertarian free will, the principle of alternative possibilities (PAPs), will not be realized, and this contradicts free will. However, we will show that Harry Frankfurt's counterexample falsifies Hasker's version of PAP, and for this reason, his open approach is problematic.

The way God intervenes in the natural world is considered a major and long-standing issue in the realm of theology and philosophy of religion where efforts to resolve it has led to proposing various and, at times, opposing views, spanning from determinism to delegation. By employing a novel criterion to distinguish between various divine actions in the world, the current paper attempts to present and assess Allamah Tabatabaei’s approach as an Islamic determinist philosopher in regard to the topic and seeks to lay the groundwork for offering solutions in both deterministic and indeterministic models by revisiting the causal homogeneity principle in order to find a way out of dominant intellectual impediments. To that end, the paper serves to show that by extending the concept of causal homogeneity within a deterministic framework, one can attest to the direct interference of immaterial entities in the material world, whereas by resting upon the ‘principle of causal necessity’ and a particular attitude towards the principle of homogeneity within an indeterministic framework, one can defend the interference of immaterial causes in order to realize one of the possible probabilities.

Contemporary scientific developments have gradually replaced the simplistic mechanical view of our world based on unchanging Newtonian laws with something more sophisticated, namely a belief in presence of a sort of irreducible indeterminism. If the belief in a deterministic world had once rendered the explanation necessary as to denial of God’s restriction in interacting with the creatures, then the issue would have been arisen on the other hand as the effort by religious philosophers and theologians has to be focused on expressing God’s agency and purposeful action in a world where causal necessity and relevance is apparently challenged by empirical sciences.
Given the premise that scientific belief validates intrinsic indeterminism, the present paper aims at introducing and evaluating David Bartholomew’s approach as an indeterminist philosopher towards the topic, trying to defend the purposefulness of creation and rule of divine will over the creatures by denying the possibility of intrinsic chaos and showing the effect of nonmaterial causes.

Religious commitment and its relation to rationality has been always one of the important questions in philosophy of religion. Trigg is one of the contemporary philosophers who has considered this issue. In this article, we consider his view regarding the nature of commitment and its relation to belief, meaning, justification and rationality. He thinks that commitment has two elements: propositional belief and personal commitment to it. Since Trigg thinks that the first element is fundamental, this article concentrates on it. Concerning the first element, Trigg thinks that negation of “non-relativism” and “realism” are two true implications of religious commitment. So, he criticizes “non-realism” and “relativism”. He thinks that the effect of the thought of late Wittgenstein in reaction to logical positivism is prominent and it leads to separation of religion from science. Trigg criticizes this line of thought and tries to show its consequences. Emphasizing on language as showing the truth and making the relation possible and emphasizing on the common nature of human being, Trigg opposes conceptual relativism and seeks to open the way to rationality. In this article, we argue that although Trigg is successful in his criticisms, the affirmative aspect of his discussion lacks sufficient strength and precision.

The present study has investigated the sources and domains that give meaning to old people’s life, from their point of view, presence of and search for meaning and the differences between women and men in these components. Old people aged over 60 in Tehran formed the statistical population of this research. From this population 287 old individuals, aged over 60 years (M: 67.43, Std: 4.75, 54% females), were selected using available sampling method and they completed two instruments of the Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation and Meaning in Life Questionnaire. Chi square and analysis of variance tests were applied to analyze the data. The results showed that “family” (92.3%) and “partnership” (54.7%) are the areas that have been reported most frequently as sources of meaning by old people. Moreover, two new categories of sources of meaning in life have been identified in this study, using content analysis “morality” and “the need for social approval”. Old female and male participants differed in the frequency of mentioning some of the sources of meaning and the dimension of search for meaning. These findings have been discussed in the context of developmental and meaning in life theories.

Craig believes that theological fatalistic argument, which aims at mocking human freedom, faces two major problems. On the one hand, in the argument, there is a confusion of necessitas consequentis and necessitas consequentiae in the concept of “within one’s power”. On the other hand, the argument neglects the difference between “changing the past” and “counterfactual effect. Besides critically assessing theological fatalism, Craig suggests a proof for human freedom which can be categorized as a Molinistic argument in virtue of appealing to the notion of middle knowledge. According to Craig, we do not need to make philosophical argument for the middle knowledge. Nevertheless, there are many theological argument in support of the idea. For instance, divine providence and foreknowledge are two theological concepts which can be best explained by appealing to the notion of middle knowledge. It seems, however, that Craig’s appeal to the notion of middle knowledge for proving human freedom faces some problems. Alongside the critiques provided by Thomists regarding the middle knowledge (e.g. the lack of object for this kind of knowledge and passivity of divine knowledge), it seems that Craig’s notion of human freedom is not compatible with middle knowledge.

Despite the numerous studies that have been conducted on meaning in life, there is still an ambiguity that what are the sources of meaning in an adolescent’s life and how adolescent girls and boys differ regarding these sources and dimensions of presence and search for meaning. The present study has investigated the sources and domains that gives meaning to adolescents’ lives from their point of view, presence of and search for meaning and differences between girls and boys in these components. In this regard 416, 12 to 18 years old adolescents (M: 15.94, Std: 1.32, 54.3 % females) have completed the Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation and Meaning in Life questionnaires. Chi-square and independent t tests were used to analyze the data. The results show that among the sources of meaning regarding to The Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation respectively the “family” (91.3%), “social relations” (53.4%) and “occupation and education” (53%) are the areas that most frequently have been reported as a source of meaning by adolescents. Moreover, seven new categories of sources of meaning in life have been identified in this study of which “information technology” (15%) and “future” (12.3%) had the highest frequencies. Female and male participants differed in the frequency of mentioning some of these sources and also their satisfaction from these areas as well as the dimension of presence of meaning. These findings have been discussed in the context of developmental and meaning in life theories.

Among the different kinds of prayers, petitionary prayer faces most philosophical challenges. One of them is about the efficacy of this sort of prayer in a world having inclusive laws. The problem has two presumptions. First, the divine answer to petitionary prayer is granted, and secondly, there is no violation in natural laws. To consider this problem, we have examined two philosophers’ views, Mortaza Mutahhari and Eleonore Stump. Although Mutahhari does not address the problem explicitly, we can find the bases for coping with it in his works. Stump, however, considers the problem explicitly. First, she proves the possibility of prayer in such a world. Secondly, by appealing to some notions in modern physics, she offers an explanation of how this possibility can be actualized. On the other hand, Mutahhari's answers are focused on the compatibility of prayers with the other laws of nature. So, he believes that the petitionary prayer is a law among the other laws in the cosmos.

God appears as a completely different being in Ibn Sina's writings; in his philosophical discussions he presents a picture from the 'necessary being' as God which is not only mere-transcendental in its being and distinct from other beings, the range of this transcendence reaches to human's mind and knowledge as well. On the other hand his discussions about prayer, in his different writings, might show the incompatibility of his pictures of God or at least their multiplicity at first glance, but since Ibn Sina is aware of the problems of praying to a non-person-like God, he clearly states that speaking – in its common sense - with the almighty 'necessary being' is impossible; he thus creates a different meaning for prayer, instead of changing the picture of God, and presents a philosophical definition for it. The reality of prayer, in his view, is not a mere dialogue; rather it is a kind of existential change which is rooted in knowledge and love. He explains this matter by distinguishing between the formal aspect – which he explains with a Divine legislation approach - and the real aspect – which is connected with his philosophical view – and by changing the concept of prayer to love. Ibn Sina's picture of the Divine love is completely compatible with his picture of non-person-like God and also his definition of prayer.