Shāhnāmeh, Book of Kings, is one of the greatest epics in the world, beautifully put into verse by Abolqāsem Ferdowsi. It is the great Persian epic which makes the Persian language proud. One of th...

Shāhnāmeh, Book of Kings, is one of the greatest epics in the world, beautifully put into verse by Abolqāsem Ferdowsi. It is the great Persian epic which makes the Persian language proud. One of th...

The basing relation is a relation that obtains between a belief and the evidence or reason for which it is held. It is a highly controversial question in epistemology how such a relation should be characterized. Almost all epistemologists believe that causation must play a role in articulating the notion of the basing relation. The causal account however faces the serious problem of the deviant causal chains. In this paper, I will be particularly looking at the philosophers’ appeal to the (...) notion of disposition as a way of excluding deviant chains. Having argued against such accounts, it will be suggested that, since the obtaining of the basing relation is what distinguishes propositional from doxastic justification, we may have a better grasp of this notion if we could clearly see how those two species of justification are related to one another. Drawing on earlier work, a dispositional account of propositional and doxastic justification is subsequently defended. It will be argued that such a view has the resources to resolve the problem of causal deviance, thus, providing an acceptable account of the notion of the basing relation. (shrink)

The late Professor Hossein Ziai's interests focused on the Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) tradition. Dedicated to his memory, this volume deals with the post-Avicennan philosophical tradition in Iran, and in particular the Illuminationist school and later philosophers, such as those associated with the School of Isfahan, who were fundamentally influenced by it. The focus of various chapters is on translations, editions, and close expositions of rationalist works in areas such as epistemology, logic and metaphysics rather than mysticism more generally, and also (...) on specific texts rather than themes or studies of individual philosophers. The purpose of the volume is to introduce new texts into the modern canon of Islamic and Iranian philosophy. Various texts in this volume have not been previously translated nor have they been the subject of significant Western scholarship. (shrink)

We argue that sport in general, and association football in particular, are activities that invite spectators and players alike to talk about them. Using a Wittgensteinian approach, we argued more...

Maintenance and promotion of patient dignity is an ethical responsibility of healthcare workers. The aim of this study was to investigate patient dignity and related factors in patients with heart failure. In this qualitative study, 22 patients with heart failure were chosen by purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews were conducted until data saturation. Factors related to patient dignity were divided into two main categories: patient/care index and resources. Intrapersonal features (inherent characteristics and individual beliefs) and interpersonal interactions (communication, respect, enough (...) information, privacy, and authority) were classified as components of the patient/care index category. Human resources (management and staff) and environmental resources (facilities and physical space) were classified as components of the resources category. The results will increase healthcare staff's understanding of patient dignity and its related factors, and provide information regarding the development of systems and processes that support patients in ways that are consistent with these values. (shrink)

In one of the earlier influential papers in the field of experimental philosophy titled Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions published in 2001, Jonathan M. Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich reported that respondents answered Gettier type questions differently depending on their ethnic background as well as socioeconomic status. There is currently a debate going on, on the significance of the results of Weinberg et al. (2001) and its implications for philosophical methodology in general and epistemology in specific. Despite the debates, however, (...) to our knowledge, there has not been a replication attempt of the experiments of the original paper. We collected data from four different sources (two on-line and two in-person) to replicate the experiments. Despite several different data sets and in various cases larger sample sizes and hence greater power to detect differences, we failed to detect significant differences between the above-mentioned ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Our results suggest that epistemic intuitions are more robust across ethnic and socioeconomic groups than Weinberg et al. (2001) indicates. Given our data, we believe that the notion of differences in epistemic intuitions among different ethnic and socioeconomic groups that follows from Weinberg et al. (2001) needs to be corrected. (shrink)

In this paper, the attributes of Jesus as the second person of Trinity in Christianity and Muhammadan Reality in Islamic Theosophy were compared. The term ''Muhammadan Reality'' in Islamic Theosophy refers to transcendental and divine being of Muhammad rather than his human and historic existence. According to this research, both Jesus and Muhammadan Realities have divine attributes. They are lights of God, the Word or the Pen of God, the creators of the word, omniscience, omnipotent, omnibenevolent as well as the (...) intermediaries between God and humans. In this study, it is demonstrated that what happened to Jesus in Christianity, it has also happened to Muhammad in Islamic theosophy with some differences. The influence of Greek philosophy, especially Platonic, in ascribing these attributes to Jesus in Christianity and Muhammad in Islamic theosophy is undeniable. There is a strong temptation among the scholars of both religions, Islam and Christianity, to extend Jesus and Muhammad to the level of divinity and godhead. (shrink)

Transcendental arguments have been described as disclosing the necessary conditions of the possibility of phenomena as diverse as experience, self-knowledge and language. Although many theorists saw them as powerful means to combat varieties of skepticism, this optimism gradually waned as many such arguments turned out, on examination, to deliver much less than was originally thought. In this paper, I distinguish between two species of transcendental arguments claiming that they do not actually constitute distinct forms of reasoning by showing how they (...) collapse into more familiar inferences. I then turn to the question of their epistemic potentials which I argue to be a function of both their types as well as their targets. Finally, these claims are reinforced by uncovering links between certain recent claims about the efficacy of transcendental arguments and the so-called Moore’s paradox. (shrink)

In their paper titled “Gender and philosophical intuition,” Buckwalter and Stich argue that the intuitions of women and men differ significantly on various types of philosophical questions. Furthermore, men's intuitions, so the authors claim, are more in line with traditionally accepted solutions of classical problems. This inherent bias, so the argument goes, is one of the factors that leads more men than women to pursue degrees and careers in philosophy. These findings have received a considerable amount of attention and the (...) paper is to appear in the second edition of Experimental Philosophy edited by Knobe and Nichols , which itself is an influential outlet. Given the exposure of these results, we attempted to replicate three of the classes of questions that Buckwalter and Stich review in their paper and for which they report significant differences. We failed to replicate the results using several different sources for data collection (one being identical to the original procedures.. (shrink)

An important question in epistemology concerns how the two species of justification, propositional and doxastic justification, are related to one another. According to the received view, basing one’s belief p on the grounds that provide propositional justification to believe p is sufficient for the belief to be doxastically justified. In a recent paper, however, John Turri has suggested that we should reverse the direction of explanation. In this paper, I propose to see the debate in a new light by suggesting (...) that the best way to understand the relationship between these species of justification is by viewing propositional justification as an dispositional property that a subject can have with doxastic justification as its manifestation. I show how the debate in metaphysics over the question of how disposition statements should be analyzed runs parallel to the epistemological debate, and bring some of the results in the dispositions debate to bear on the epistemological question. I end by offering some tentative remarks regarding the order of priority of these two species of justification. (shrink)

This book sheds new light on the history of the philosophically crucial notion of intentionality, which accounts for one of the most distinctive aspects of our mental life: the fact that our thoughts are about objects. Intentionality is often described as a certain kind of relation. Focusing on Franz Brentano, who introduced the notion into contemporary philosophy, and on the Aristotelian tradition, which was Brentano’s main source of inspiration, the book reveals a rich history of debate on precisely the relational (...) nature of intentionality. It shows that Brentano and the Aristotelian authors from which he drew not only addressed the question whether intentionality is a relation, but also devoted extensive discussions to what kind of relation it is, if any. The book aims to show that Brentano distinguishes the intentional relation from two other relations with which it might be confused, namely, causality and reference, which also hold between thoughts and their objects. Intentionality accounts for the aboutness of a thought; causality, by contrast, explains how the thought is generated, and reference, understood as a sort of similarity, occurs when the object towards which the thought is directed exists. Brentano claims to find some anticipation of his views in Aristotle. This book argues that, whether or not Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotle is correct, his claim is true of the Aristotelian tradition as a whole, since followers of Aristotle more or less explicitly made some or all of Brentano’s distinctions. This is demonstrated through examination of some major figures of the Aristotelian tradition (broadly understood), including Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Neoplatonic commentators, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Francisco Suárez. This book combines a longue durée approach – focusing on the long-term evolution of philosophical concepts rather than restricting itself to a specific author or period – with systematic analysis in the history of philosophy. By studying Brentano and the Aristotelian authors with theoretical sensitivity, it also aims to contribute to our understanding of intentionality and cognate features of the mind. (shrink)

Since 2001, the ‘Islamic threat’ has become increasingly prominent in debates on migration policy, religious affairs and security at the federal level in Switzerland. Supported by the far right-wing parties, the paradigm of the Islamic threat reveals how Islamophobia is gendered and affects Muslim women and men differently. By analysing debates between the Federal Council and Swiss Parliament, this article shows how the Islamic threat shaped the border politics of the Swiss Nation between 2001 and 2015. It reveals how the (...) ruling elite justified the socio-spatial exclusion of Muslims living in a Muslim-minority context. As consequence of the success of the far right-wing Swiss People's Party, legal measures have increased with regard to security, protection of Swiss culture and women's rights, and exclusion of Muslims from the boundaries of the Swiss nation. (shrink)

Truth and the aim of belief -- Belief, interpretation, and Moore's paradox -- Belief, sensitivity, and safety -- Basic beliefs and the problem of non-doxastic justification -- Experience as reason for beliefs -- The problem of the basing relation -- Basic beliefs, easy knowledge, and the problem of warrant transfer -- Belief, justification, and fallibility -- Knowledge of our beliefs and privileged access.

While there is general agreement that knowing a proposition p involves knowing that nothing incompatible with p is true, there is much controversy over the range of possibilities that have to be ruled out if knowledge claims are to be sustained. With the failure of attempts on behalf of commonsense to delimit the range of counterpossibilities in order to leave room for knowledge, some theorists, most notably Adler, have sought to introduce a set of so-called ‘universalizability principles’ that require us (...) to extend our epistemic judgments about particular beliefs to those held under similar circumstances. These principles, it is claimed, not only identify which counterpossibilities must be countenanced, but also have enough power to generate skeptical results. In this paper I distinguish between minimalist and full-blooded versions of the universalizability thesis, and argue that the thesis can have skeptical consequences only when conjoined with certain epistemically significant assumptions. This is followed by a discussion of the epistemic import of the minimalist version of the thesis by considering how it can arise naturally in epistemic contexts, in virtue of either being semantically linked to the concept of justification or as a result of enforcing certain constraints on its application. (shrink)

In recent years a new discussion on the nature of philosophical expertise has emerged: whether philosophers possess a special kind of expertise, what such expertise would entail, how to measure it, and related concerns. The aim of the present article is to clarify certain related points across these debates in the hope of paving a clearer path forward, by addressing the following. (1) The expertise defense, which seems central to many discussions on methodology and expertise, has been misconstrued at times. (...) (2) Questions of expertise and methodology could be separated more clearly. (3) The study of expertise may be important in its own right; however, there may be good reasons to give priority to methodological concerns. (4) Finally, when viewed in light of methodological concerns, a new project emerges when engaging with recent contributions to the expertise debate. The present article attempts a brief outline of this project. (shrink)

It is not difficult to make sense of the idea that beliefs may derive their justification from other beliefs. Difficulties surface when, as in certain epistemological theories, one appeals to sensory experiences to give an account of the structure of justification. This gives rise to the so-called problem of ‘nondoxastic justification’, namely, the problem of seeing how sensory experiences can confer justification on the beliefs they give rise to. In this paper, I begin by criticizing a number of theories that (...) are currently on offer. Finding them all wanting, I shall then offer a diagnosis of why they fail while gesturing towards a promising way of resolving the dispute. It will be argued that what makes the problem of nondoxastic justification a hard one is the difficulty of striking the right balance between a notion of normative justification that is content-sensitive and truth conducive and the possibility of error while acknowledging the fact that our experiences can justify our beliefs in cases we are hallucinating. (shrink)

Ethics is a study which deals fundamentally with the rules of conduct from moral point of view. The main characteristic of ethics is to judge the value of moral act or moral conduct. Therefore, ethics means a code of conduct. The history of the development of morality grew through a long process of evolution of certain morality like ‘taboos’, habits and customs in the primitive society. There are two broad divisions of ethics i. e., secular ethics and theological ethics. The (...) history of the development of secular ethics flourished through four periods i. e., the Greek ethics, the Medieval ethics, the Modern ethics and the Contemporary ethics. Each period has its own prominent characteristics. Moreover, the history of theological ethics grew with the rise of different religions like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Morality has been developed during the period of more than two thousand years. Within this long span of time, many doctrines, ideas and values are included in it. Hence, morality takes different shapes in different periods and ethical views also develop accordingly. In this article, an attempt has been made to show a gradual development of morality- secular and theological. Again, the similarities and the dissimilarities between secular and theological ethics are the additional concerns of this paper. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#73-74; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2023 P 59-94. (shrink)

La rencontre de deux façons de croire transgressives, le moment pour Robert Hossein de partager les fruits de sa quête : " Il y a un âge, confie-t-il, où l'on a tout à redistribuer. " Croire, c'est moderne, rock'n roll, et quelquefois salvateur. Au fil de ce récit en forme de confidences croisées, Robert Hossein et Delphine de Malherbe nous invitent à renouer avec le spirituel dans cette société cynique, violente. Ils abordent avec émotion les grands thèmes qui (...) relient l'humain, l'art, la science et la foi. Selon eux, l'athéisme forme quelquefois les croyants les plus fervents, les mystiques les plus exigeants. Un livre bouleversant, mais sans optimisme béat, sur deux renaissances. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉMalgré son usage très répandu, l'inférence à la meilleure explication a souvent été considérée avec suspicion par des théoriciens d'allégeances diverses. On lui a reproché à maintes reprises defaire reposer son recours à la simplicité et ses autres vertus explicatives sur des présuppositions métaphysiques douteuses. J'aborde ces questions, dans le présent article, dans le contexte d'une discussion large de l'usage de l'IME pour fonder notre croyance au monde extérieur. Distinguant entre la légitimité et l'efficacité de l'IME, je soutiendrai qu'elle constitue (...) bien une forme légitime d'inférence, mais que son efficacité dépend de la fonction de la théorie de la connaissance qui la supporte. (shrink)

Crispin Wright has advanced a number of arguments to show that, in addition to evidential warrant, we have a species of non-evidential warrant, namely, “entitlement”, which forms the basis of a particular view of the architecture of perceptual justification known as “epistemic conservatism”. It is widely known, however, that Wright's conservative view is beset by a number of problems. In this article, I shall argue that the kind of warrant that emerges from Wright's account is not the standard truth-conducive justification, (...) but what is known as the deontological conception of justification. It will be argued that the deontological justification has features that make it a better candidate for representing a conservative architecture. These results will be reinforced by showing how the deontological framework can make better sense of a recent theory of justified belief that takes its inspiration from Wright's conservative account. Thus understood, we may see the liberalism–conservatism controversy as actually an extension of the older debate over which conception of justification, truth-conducive or deontological, can best represent the epistemic status of our belief-forming practices. (shrink)

Knowledge and its desacralization --What is tradition? -- The rediscovery of the sacred : the revival of tradition -- Scientia sacra -- Man, pontifical and Promethean -- The cosmos as theophany -- Eternity and the temporal order -- Traditional art as fountain of knowledge and grace -- Principal knowledge and the multiplicity of sacred forms -- Knowledge of the sacred as deliverance.

In this paper, I shall examine William Alston's influential view that the cognitive element in religious faith should be identified with ‘acceptance’ rather than ‘belief’. Although I am sympathetic to Alston's reluctance to regard belief as essential to faith, I shall argue that one can redescribe the cases that Alston invokes in support of his claim in terms of the standard notion of degrees‐of‐belief without loss. It will be further argued that, given Alston's constraints, his notion of acceptance, if not (...) identical to belief, is at least a species of belief. (shrink)

"The most comprehensive and intelligent treatment of [religious ecology]....Nasr is one of the major intellects of our day."--Huston Smith, University of California, Berkeley.

Even if religiosity has long been introduced as the major cause for backwardness by anti-religion philosophers, the divine religion has been an important source of value for individuals and society, encouraging them to shape economic and sociocultural outcomes. In this manner, religiosity and religious capital (RC) are the stimuli for society-wide development. Against this background, religion can have positive implications for enriching individual and social economy. Assigning tasks, providing guidance on productivity and more effort, living a purposeful life, establishing effective (...) socio-economic institutions and assessing functional behaviours in organisational settings are accordingly among the ways in which RC induces economic behaviours. On the other hand, job engagement (JE) has been one of the relatively common concepts within the novel approaches to human resource management. Considering employment and the promotion of standard Islamic culture, how religion and JE are associated is thus of utmost importance. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the effect of RC on JE among 2500 Malaysian Muslim nurses working in Kuala Lumpur and Penang hospitals during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2021, as the statistical population selected via random sampling. A standardised questionnaire was also administered as the data collection tool, whose validity and reliability were confirmed. The SPSS and LISREL software packages were further utilised to analyse the data. The study results revealed that RC had a significant positive effect on nurses’ JE in the course of COVID-19 (p = 0.83, t = 11.94).Contribution: The research findings suggest that reinforcing RC in Islamic societies, such as Malaysia, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, affects nurses’ sense of hope, faith and beliefs regarding their capabilities to achieve career success. (shrink)

This book explores the concept of epistemic justification and our understanding of the problem of skepticism. Providing critical examination of key responses to the skeptical challenge, Hamid Vahid presents a theory which is shown to work alongside the internalism/externalism issue and the thesis of semantic externalism, with a deontological conception of justification at its core.

Anton Marty (Schwyz, 1847–Prague, 1914) contributed significantly to some of the central themes of Austrian philosophy. This collection contributes to assessing the specificity of his theses in relation with other Austrian philosophers. Although strongly inspired by his master, Franz Brentano, Marty developed his own theory of intentionality, understood as a sui generis relation of similarity. Moreover, he established a comprehensive philosophy of language, or "semasiology", based on descriptive psychology, and in which the utterer’s meaning plays a central role, anticipating Grice’s (...) pragmatic semantics. The present volume, including sixteen articles by scholars in the field of the history of Austrian philosophy and in contemporary philosophy, aims at exposing some of Marty’s most important contributions in philosophy of mind and language, but also in other fields of research such as ontology and metaphysics. As archive material, the volume contains the edition of a correspondence between Marty and Hans Cornelius on similarity. This book will interest scholars in the fields of the history of philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, historians of phenomenology, and, more broadly, contemporary theoretical philosophers. (shrink)

In a number of articles Donald Davidson has argued that the charitable nature of his method of radical interpretation rules out the possibility of massive error and thus refutes Cartesian skepticism. The diversity of such arguments and the suggestions that are all being made under the name of the principle of charity have prompted a large body of conflicting responses, adding only to the obscurity of the issues that are generally associated with the question of skepticism. In this paper I (...) propose to consider the debate in a new light by reconstruing the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint on belief attribution. This would help explain some of the puzzling features of Davidson's arguments, like the idea of an omniscient interpreter, and the ensuing commentaries. Having provided an analysis of the limitations of Davidson's arguments, I shall then suggest an alternative explanation of the purported necessity of the principle of charity. Finally, having construed the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint, I shall examine what consequences this construal has for the logical status of the principle itself and its alleged epistemic potentials. (shrink)

This paper argues that the informative and persuasive dichotomy of advertising is an empty concept. All advertising messages perform only one function and that function is to persuade. It is pointed out that in a moral appraisal of an advertising message, a distinction between rational and irrational persuasion can be made. Rational persuasion is consistent with the autonomy of the consumer and hence moral. Some forms of irrational persuasion may have an adverse effect on consumer autonomy and, therefore, should be (...) viewed as immoral. (shrink)

Brentano distinguishes between intentionality and reference. According to Brentano, all mental acts are intentionally directed toward something. Some mental acts also refer to something, which is the case when their object exists in reality. For Brentano, such acts, besides their intentionality, have a peculiar relation of similarity to their object. However, there is no mention of Brentano’s distinction between intentionality and reference in the literature. Drawing on some lesser known texts, this paper aims both at showing that Brentano makes such (...) a distinction and at underscoring the philosophical significance of his position. (shrink)

Since the first discussion of Brentano’s relation to (and account of) medieval philosophy by Spiegelberg in 1936, a fair amount of studies have been dedicated to the topic. And if those studies focused on some systematic issue at all, the beloved topic of intentionality clearly occupied a hegemonic position in the scholarly landscape . The following pages consider the question from the point of view of ontology, and in a twofold perspective: What did Brentano know about medieval ontology and what (...) kind of access did he have to that material (section 1)? What kind of use did Brentano make of medieval material in his own philosophy, and with what kind of results (section 2)? (shrink)

Covering moral intuition, self-evidence, non-inferentiality, moral emotion and seeming states, Hossein Dabbagh defends the epistemology of moral intuitionism. His line of analysis resists the empirical challenges derived from empirical moral psychology and reveals the seeming-based account of moral intuitionism as the most tenable one. The Moral Epistemology of Intuitionism combines epistemological intuitionism with work in neuroethics to develop an account of the role that moral intuition and emotion play in moral judgment. The book culminates in a convincing argument about (...) the value of understanding moral intuitionism in terms of intellectual seeming and perceptual experience. (shrink)

This paper argues that Wolff’s rejection of Leibnizian monads is rooted in a disagreement concerning the general notion of substance. Briefly, whereas Leibniz defines substance in terms of activity, Wolff retains a broadly scholastic and Cartesian conception of substance as that which per se subsists and sustains accidents. One consequence of this difference is that it leads Wolff to interpret Leibniz’s concept of a constantly striving force as denoting a feature of substance separate from its static powers, and not as (...) their replacement. For Wolff, powers are essential possibilities of acting in subjects suited for independent existence. Force is a further ingredient that provides a reason for the contingent operation of powers. Unlike Leibniz, Wolff conceives force narrowly as a principle of actuality, which he calls the “nature” of substance, as distinct from its principle of possibility, or essence. (shrink)

Any theory of epistemic justification must address the question of what its aim is and why we value it. The almost general consensus among epistemologists is that there is an intimate link between justification and truth. However, the standard formu- lation of this connection (as the truth-directed goal of maximizing true belief and minimizing false belief) has been increasingly challenged in recent times on the ground that it leaves no room for justified false beliefs and unjustified true beliefs. In this (...) paper, I shall argue for a diachronic version of the truth-directed goal in the face of the objections raised against it. To provide further support for this conclusion, I criticize Foley’s synchronic account of the truth-directed goal by showing how it is undermined by certain consequences of his egocentric theory of epistemic rationality. (shrink)

According to one prominent account of perceptual justification, “dogmatism,” whenever you have perceptual experience as if p, and lack defeaters, you thereby have immediate, prima facie justification for believing that p. The most important challenge is to show how experience can, on its own, provide justification for the belief in its content. Dogmatists often try to meet this challenge by highlighting the phenomenal character of perceptual experience and the mode of presentation of its content and defending their justifying roles by (...) appealing to intuitively plausible examples. What is lacking here, however, is a theoretical framework to sanction and justify those roles going beyond the mere appeal to examples. Finding such a framework is the main goal of this article. I begin by criticizing a prominent response to this challenge, which suggests a composition view of perceptual experience consisting of sensory experiences and seemings. I then highlight the need for a theoretical framework to provide the rationale for the justifying roles that dogmatists allocate to perceptual experience. It is claimed that the framework in question involves the mechanism by which we possess reasons. Adapting the framework to cases where perception functions as a reason, a principled defense of dogmatism is provided. (shrink)

In this paper, I present Brentano’s account of sensation. In the first part, I focus on Brentano’s positive views on sensation, according to which it is an intuitive fundamental presentation of a real physical phenomenon. In the second part, I discuss the way Brentano distinguishes sensation from other mental acts, namely, outer perception, inner perception, acts of interest, proteraesthesis, memory, conceptual presentations, and imagination.