جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « David Hume » در نشریات گروه « فلسفه و کلام »

In the field of philosophy of religion, the issue of the existence of world after death and the doctrine of rewards and punishments in the hereafter is one of the important and confusing issues as persuades theologians and philosophers of religion to present various and contradictory views about it. Meanwhile, despite David Hume's considerable reputation as one of the most important philosophical critics of religion, the secular irreligious significance of this philosopher's views, especially on the issue of induction and probable reasoning, has not attracted the attention and energy of Hume's researchers in recent decades. The main objectives of this paper, on the basis of methodical research, are to identify the relevance of induction and probable reasoning to the problem of belief in a future state and to the doctrine of rewards and punishments of human acts in philosophy of religion, and to show that the goal of Hume's critical analysis of the credibility and practical significance of religious inductive arguments, by providing an account of the foundation of probable reasoning, is to reject the principal aims of defenders of Christian orthodoxy. It was orthodoxy defender’s aim to show, on the basis of our experience of this world, that there is a future state of rewards and punishments, and that prudence requires that we guide our conduct in this life with a view to our expectations of happiness or misery in the next. We will show that Hume provides a naturalistic account of the psychological mechanisms for the foundations of probable reasoning that generate our beliefs concerning the future, and this account serves to explain why religious arguments concerning the doctrine of a future state inevitably fail to persuade us or influence our conduct, so the doctrine of state of rewards and punishments is of little or no practical consequence for human.

In the ethical view of modern philosophy, there can be seen two aspects of morality; religion-free morality and religion-sensitive morality. Despite the disagreement between his naturalist ambitions and his extreme skeptical principles, Hume’s aspiration to stabilize moral science tends to show that morality is not only independent of religion, but also is destructed by it. The main objective of this paper is to unmask the relationship between religion and morality based on the works of Hume, his critics, and his supporters. The findings of this paper, based on Hume's moderate view of commonsense morality and his undercover belief in God, indicate that morality for Hume is not ultimately independent of religion and God. In other words, Hume reduces the whole religion to a combination of morality and philosophy, defends the morality and rational aspects of religion, and deems other aspects and dimensions as unnecessary. Finally, according to the evidences used in this article, it is better to put Hume in a specific rank of the religion-sensitive moral philosophers.

One of the reasons that has long been used to prove the claims of prophets or even in some cases to prove the existence of God is miracle. But what miracles have with such a power to prove their claims, and basically what can miracles prove at all, is something that is not hidden from the skeptical and, of course, empiricist view of David Hume, and concerning to defend Christianity and natural theology Richard Swinburne is in the direction of finding best responds to these critics. Given the fact that from the seventeenth century, after Hume, the expression of the violations of the laws of nature was introduced in the definition of miracles, and Swinburne accepts Hume's definition, and at all this is the key to the definition of miracles, reviewing these two philosophers about miracle can usefull in understating it well. In this article, we want to examine the views of the two sides after considering which one is more acceptable in Islamic viewpoint.

Close examination of the works of David Hume shows that his aim to explain the problem of evil is to attack natural theology and introduce it as a situation that is non-epistemological and unsystematic. So, contrary to what the majority of interpretations which typically express that he makes an argument against the existence of God, Hume wants to show that the statements of natural theology are rationally unprovable, and he does not want to totally decline them. As a matter of fact, they ontologically exist, and are epistemologically out of human cognition. This article shows that the popular interpretation is false, and this would be done in two ways: the first is Hume's statements about the cause of the world (at the end of both Natural History and Dialogues), and the second is Hume’s solutions for the problem of evil, that have mystical streaks. Based on these fact, it will be shown that Hume is not an atheist, but he is a mystical fideist.

D. Z. Phillips is one of the most important philosophers who believe in non-realism about religious language. He was highly influenced by Hume and believed Hume has criticized the arguments for the existence of God in three levels. Although he considers these criticisms as successful ones, by appealing to the hermeneutics of contemplation, he maintains that we should go beyond Hume and contemplate religious concepts. He separates his way from the proponents of hermeneutics of recollection and suspicion. According to him, we should understand religion through contemplating religious concepts and taking heed of the life of believers. In contrast to his claims, his interpretations about religious propositions such as the existence of God, prayer and immortality are not consistent with the believers’ ideas. Furthermore, he has neglected different versions of design argument. That’s why his investigations are incomplete. It can also be said that even though he attempted to go beyond the criteria of logical positivism, he could not do it.

One of the debates concerning Hume’s Philosophy is whether he believes in God. Through investigating his own works and extraction of his assertions concerning God, we try in this paper to examine the internal consistency of his system. In order to do this, we shall analytically examine whether the current tags attached to him are consistent with implications of his works. This research shows that it is problematic to call him an “atheist” or an “agnostic”. Furthermore, the findings of this paper shows that his minimal belief in God can be found in all of his works. Finally, according to the results, it is suggested to call him a weak or non-dogmatic agnostic.

Causality, in metaphysics as well as natural sciences, has been discussed for long by western philosophy and Islamic philosophy.Metaphysical explanation of causality, however, has been of a great importance in Islamic philosophy. Empirical philosophy together with Hume’s criticism and finally philosophy of Kant who denied any metaphysical knowledge have made it impossible for causality to be metaphysically explained in western modern tradition.It was, then, hardly possible to prove divine existence by reference to the principle of causality. However, Islamic philosophy, particularly Mulla Sadra's metaphilosophy, has taken the principle intact. Comparing, at first, David Hume and MortezaMotahari on a concept of causality, this article outlines the differences in between in the end. Based on the very fundamental priority of existence and regarding western thinker’s literature, Motahari made a new look at Sadra’smetaphilosophy and attempted to a rational explication of necessity principle, and cause-effect cognation arriving at a point to regard it a real and external principle. Hume, however,aimed to an empirical explanation of principle of causality. And in doing so, he destabilized necessity and cognation principle coming to a subjective causality. Yet, it is, to some extent, difficult to appropriately answer some challenges made by Hume against natural causality. His criticisms are still in need of some refashioned answers.

The classical problem of induction is one of the very known forms of Skepticism، which many philosophers have tried to solve or resolve it. Some epistemologists believe that Externalism could be used as a good approach to resolve the problem. They claim that ‘Process reliabilism’، the most important externalist theory، is less vulnerable to Skepticism than other theories، because of its epistemological fallibilism، and also taking modest and weak criteria to acquire knowledge. In this paper we will argue that externalist theories، including Process reliabilism، presuppose induction، so such theories don’t have considerable capabilities to solve or resolve the problem.