جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « inference through the best explanation » در نشریات گروه « فلسفه و کلام »

Fitrah (human nature) is a vital principle in the Islamic worldview. Its numerous impacts in various philosophical discussions, including the philosophy of religion, ethics, history, epistemology and the problem of knowledge, educational philosophy, legal philosophy, and political philosophy, indicate its significance and importance. Mortaza Motahari referred to fitrah as the "mother principle" in Islamic culture and teachings, and in his various works, he examined the effects and implications of fitrah in humans, considering it a continuation of the general essential movement of existence. However, beyond citing verses and hadiths, he rarely focused on the rational proof of the principle of fitrah, more so providing a general methodology (which, according to the author, can be based on the model of inference to the best explanation). This research, using a descriptive-analytical method and by gathering and analyzing information, first examines the essence of fitrah and human innate qualities, then aims to establish the existence of fitrah in humans. Different justifications for the existence of human tendencies in humans are analyzed to identify the correct explanation. Subsequently, some of the effects and outcomes of fitrah are explored, including the argument of fitrah in theism, the impact of fitrah on epistemology and the problem of knowledge, ethics, the philosophy of history, educational philosophy, and sociology.

The primary focus of this research is the critical analysis of Avicenna's argument for demonstrating the existence of the soul in living beings. The objective is to reconstruct this argument and expose its inadequacy in proving the presence of a soul in plants. Avicenna's argument, as presented in the opening sections of the 'Book of Soul' in his al-Shifa, revolves around establishing the existence of souls in all living entities, equating it with proving the form of the species in all bodies. Avicenna asserts that the five essential characteristics—sense, voluntary movement, nutrition, growth, and reproduction—do not originate from the physical form of objects. Therefore, he posits the existence of a source, referred to as the soul, in certain bodies. This soul is considered the form of their species or similar to it, serving as the origin of these five characteristics. However, Avicenna's argument, grounded in inference through the best explanation, remains incomplete due to a lack of comprehensive exploration of all possible avenues and neglecting potential objections. The authors initially reconstruct Avicenna's argument by drawing on interpretations by Nasir al-Din al-Tūsi and Sadr al-Mutallahin. Subsequently, after highlighting the limitations of these two interpretations, they offer their independent reconstruction, considering all possible divisions. Nevertheless, this argument falls short in proving the existence of a soul in plants, primarily due to objections regarding certain invalidated physical foundations that reject temperament as the source of movement.

Miracles have often been used as evidence for the existence of God. In this article, we attempt to answer the question of how miracles can be epistemologically justified as a proof of God's existence. In other words, can a miracle alone prove God's existence to an impartial audience, without taking into account the issues related to historical evidence and by either assuming the reliability of historical evidence or assuming direct perception? Before addressing the main question, we discuss the concept of miracle and critique David Hume's famous definition (Violation of natural law) and then present our preferred definition. Next, we provide an overview of the types of reason and argument. First, we examine the types of arguments in which the miracle may be considered as a proof of God. Second, we demonstrate the inability of the miracle to prove the existence of God as a deductive argument. Third, we propose the inference to the best explanation as the most suitable argumentative form for miracles to prove God and review its challenges. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical, which involves the study, review and analysis of concepts, propositions and arguments.

According to Ockham’s razor, assumptions must not be unnecessarily multiplied. While this principle is widely accepted, its justification is controversial. More precisely, we don’t know whether Ockham’s razor is truth-conducive. The present paper aims to address this problem within Betz’s theory of dialectical structures (2012). First of all, I give a brief explanation of this theory. Here, the essential elements of Betz’s theory, which pertains to my discussion, are highlighted. Secondly, I explain why Betz’s theory is favored over the Bayesian framework. In the next step, it will be argued that, at least in the minimal complex positions, potential rivals for Ockham’s razor don’t discharge their functions unless Ockham’s razor is considered as a criterion. The fourth step amounts to the evaluation of Ockham’s razor and its rivals in the minimal complex positions. It is shown that each rival only represents an increase in the degree of justification of the likelihood of evidence given the hypothesis whereas Ockham’s razor increases the degree of justification of the likelihood of evidence given the hypothesis as well as the posterior degree of justification of the respective hypothesis. This justifies to some extent Ockham’s. Moreover, while the ratio between prima facie plausibility of two competitive hypotheses in the case of Ockham’s razor is greater than those of the potential rivals, the hypothesis with lower prima facie plausibility receives higher posterior degree of justification.

Can atheistic explanations scientifically explain the world and humans? Can theistic deductive arguments provide a rational explanation of the world? Many philosophers of contemporary religion believe that deductive arguments for the existence of God are invalid because they are either deductively invalid or based on one or more false or uncertain premises. Hence, they turned to non-analogical arguments about the existence of God. The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate one of these interesting new arguments, the Swinburne inductive argument. This research paper is a library-based theoretical analysis that is done through the concepts, propositions, and arguments. Swinburne claims that humanistic and materialistic explanations cannot explain the world and humans. In contrast, he has three arguments for the existence of the universe, the existence of scientific laws, and the laws of the process of evolution; He uses the existence of God as three affirmative inductive arguments and concludes the accumulation of theism as the best explanation. The result of such arguments is that theism can be the ultimate explanation of the world. It will also be shown that such arguments are less challenging and can greatly increase the likelihood of God's existence.

According to materialist neo-Darwinists, life and all things related to it are merely the results of the operation of material laws, and no immaterial or transcendental factor has been involved. Therefore, in order to provide a comprehensive and ultimate explanation of living things, it is enough to know the material laws and reduce everything to these laws. Thomas Nagel, a prominent philosopher of the mind and one of the opponents of materialism, argued that the existence of life from inanimate matter was improbable, that physical laws are not self-sufficiency, that consciousness existed and that it could not be reduced to physical matters, and then natural selection theory can not explain reason. But he also critiques materialist neo-Darwinism. But it also criticizes the theistic view, arguing that it firstly creates a dilemma and explanatory gap between the mental and the physical, and secondly that it does not, as the materialists’ view, bring the explanation to an end. In contrast, he proposes the theory of panpsychism for the constitutive aspect of his view and natural teleology for its historical aspect. The purpose of this analytical-critical article is, firstly, to critique materialist neo-Darwinism using Nagel's critical views, and secondly, to argue that, based on the principle of inference of the best explanation, theism in A comparison with Nagel's materialism and the panpsychistic hypothesis is a more plausible explanation.

The main challenge between science and religion often is based on challenge between scientific explanation and religious or metaphysical explanation. Most of scientists hold that when we find the explanation of an event in science then all other explanation will be useless. Generally, there are two views about explanation. The deductive-nomological model (or D-N model) characterizes scientific explanations primarily as deductive arguments with at least one natural law statement among its premises. The second view is inference to the best explanation (IBE). IBE uses various measures of explanatory power to compare competing hypotheses and then make an inference to the best explanation. For instance, the foundation of evolutionary argument against intelligent design is that the scientific explanation makes other explanation invalid. In this article I will show the weakness of this reasoning. Our aim in this article is to examine the logic of evolutionary reasoning against the intelligent design arguments, which is based on the implications of scientific explanation.

Having offered the “argument from bad lot”, Bas van Fraassen has raised an important criticism on the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and challenged scientific realism. Regardless of scientific realism, and given the reliance of today's scientific methods on IBE, this criticism poses a deeper threat to the validity of scientific enquiry. In this article, we will try to provide a way to deal with this threat, according to the structure of the scientific community. Some structural features of the contemporary scientific community have caused the scientific enquiry to be limited to the science derived from the Western tradition and deprived it of the theoretical opportunities of various traditions. The main claim of this article is that paying attention to different traditions together to produce science is a good way to expand scientific enquiry and deal with the mentioned threat. In the first section, we will depict how the argument from bad lot threatens the validity of scientific enquiry. In the second section, we discuss the close relationship between science and tradition, and then examine the status of this relationship in the contemporary scientific society. The final section is devoted to proposing the idea of pluralism regarding the use of the theoretical opportunities of different traditions in scientific enquiry, as a proposed solution to counter this threat.

Since the emergence of non-classical logics in the twentieth century, the assumption that logical knowledge is a priori has been challenged. Currently, logicians speak of preferring one logical theory over another and presenting a model of rational choice. “Inference to the best explanation” is a proposed model for the rational selection among scientific theories, and in this paper, we show that logical theories have the necessary features to apply such a methodology in the field of logic. Particularly, we show that such preferential treatment is not merely a liberal choice of a logical language, as Carnap supposed, but the inconsistency with some accepted evidence leads logicians to choose a logic theory that is compatible with that evidence. The Meaning variances of the logical constants are one of the issues that challenge the commensurability of logic theories. Having explained different solutions to this problem, we try to defend the best one in a way that avoids criticism.

“Inference to the best explanation” is one way for argumentation in science. On this way, regarding the date available of an event and the collection of possible suppositions, the scientist tries to choose “the best explanation”. Swinburne, the contemporary philosopher, tried to use this way to prove the existence of God. In encounter to different events such as “the universe existence”, the order of the world”, “the prophets’ miracles”, “religious experiences” and the like, he sees “the existence of God” as the best explanation for them, and tries to prove it. Because, from the viewpoint of this philosopher, this way is one of the most important ways to explain the reasonability of belief in the proposition of “God exists”. in this research we attempt to firstly explain this argument in a descriptive-analytic way and then give a proper evaluation of this argument way on the bases of Islamic philosophy.

The inference of the best explanation is a type of non-deductive inference that was coined by Charles Sanders Peirce in his work on the logic of science. He introduced it as a new type of inference along with the already familiar inductive type and syllogism. Thus, the present inquiry aims to compare between this type of non-deductive inference with experience based on Avicenna's view. During this comparison, we seek to reveal all similarities and differences between experience and the inference of the best explanation. Also, we highlight some weak points of them. Their similarities are the presence of implicit premises and the scale of accounts of causality. Their differences are namely the best account's scales including simplicity, attraction and competitive in inferring the best explanation, which aren't considered in experience. However, the practicality of the scales is a matter of doubt. The other difference is the conditions and regulations added by Ibn Sina. Because In absentia and the absence of essential and accidental fallacies were not discussed in the inference of the best explanation.

According to a favored version of inference to the best explanation (IBE), the hypothesis that provides the best explanation for a group of observed phenomena is probably true. One of the key objections against this line of thought is Voltaire’s objection. According to this objection, we have no reason to believe that the explanatory virtues, as the criteria for selecting the best explanation, provide the likeliest explanation. In this paper, we address probabilistic criteria which are subject to Voltaire’s objection in IBE. To be exact, we scrutinize this question: considering proposed probabilistic criteria for assessing the explanatory hypotheses as the criteria for selecting the best explanation, is it justified to think of the best explanation as the likeliest one? Dealing with this question, the probabilistic criteria will be analyzed in three group: criteria based on Bayes’ theorem, criteria based on confirmation theory and criteria based on explanatory virtues. We argue that none of these criteria can determine the best explanation which provides the likeliest one.

Since the publication of Scientific Image¡ van Fraassen has criticized scientific realism and¡ instead¡ introduced constructive empiricism as an appropriate alternative. Adhering to the tenet of empiricism that ‘experience is our only source of information about the world’¡ he considered acquiring any knowledge of the unobservable level of the world as impossible. According to van Fraassen¡ the realistic belief in the (approximate) truth of scientific theories has no epistemic basis; and¡ in this case¡ he only allowed belief in the empirical adequacy of these theories. The present assay explains and examines the key elements of constructive empiricism and contrasts it with scientific realism. We will indicate that van Fraassen’s argumentation in rejecting realism and defending his position is not able to provide the necessary and sufficient justifications for the replacement of scientific realism with constructive empiricism

Explanation is one of the main purposes of scientific research thatphilosophers of science have paid attention on it. Inference to the BestExplanation (I.B.E) is one the explanation models for this aim. Here,firstly, a detailed account of I.B.E model is presented, accompanying witha few critical explications on it; secondly, we take a realistic approachtowards the topic in question; finally, we propose an epistemologicalsummary and solution to the problem