At the intersection of social and virtue epistemology lies the important, yet so far entirely neglected, project of articulating the social dimensions of epistemic virtues. Perhaps the most obvious way in which epistemic virtues might be social is that they may be possessed by social collectives. We often speak of groups as if they could instantiate epistemic virtues. It is tempting to think of these expressions as ascribing virtues not to the groups themselves, but to their members. Adapting Margaret Gilbert's (...) arguments against individualist accounts of collective beliefs, I show that individualist accounts of group virtues are either too weak or too strong. I then formulate a non-individualist account modeled after Gilbert's influential account of collective beliefs. A crucial disanalogy between collective traits and beliefs, I argue, makes the success of this model unlikely. I conclude with some questions with which the future work on collective epistemic virtues should engage. (shrink)

The topic of disease mechanisms is of clinical importance, as our understanding of such mechanisms plays an important role in how we approach devising treatments for disease. In this paper, I critique an argument made by Mauro Nervi, in which he asserts that pathology is often better viewed in the context of distinct theoretical mechanisms. I use this critique as a starting point to argue that viewing pathology as a broken-normal, malfunctioning mechanism is more therapeutically practical and more relevant to (...) clinical drug design, than creating a theoretical separation of pathology from physiology. (shrink)

This book is about a Muslim Shi’i philosopher of the early 16th century, Najm al-Din Mahmud al-Nayrizi.

Publication date: 22 December 2020 Source: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 89 Author: Shiva Hemmati This paper examines Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre through Irigaray’s notion of feminine divine in order to argue how Charlotte Brontë’s main characters achieve their autonomous gendered identity by expressing their erotic desire. It discusses the resistance of Charlotte Brontë’s female protagonist, Jane Eyre, to the dichotomies of active subject/passive object, self/other, body/mind, passion/intellect, and the domination/submission through her ethical and intersubjective (...) relationship with Rochester, her counterpart, rather than being an object of his desire. It is argued how Jane challenges these dualities of patriarchal society and the logic of the same by expressing her erotic nature. Where the patriarchal society tries to confine women in the patriarchal culture, Brontë develops Jane within and against those confines and allows her to experience her female desire by exploring the internal and external nature. Jane’s liberation from the dualities can be read through the lens of Irigaray’s feminine divine which focuses on women’s autonomous gendered identity and creates a balance between their passion and reason. Charlotte Brontë indicates how women are able to achieve individuality, social standing, and subjective identity by expressing their female desire. (shrink)

In this paper, using the tenets of Situation-Bound Utterances and referring to Pragmatic Act Theory, the verb mordan, and its different realisations are analysed among Persian speakers. Through the analysis of authentic talk in interaction, this study aims to ponder nonstandard meanings of the term mordan and its different SBUs. The primary focus of the study is on strings of linguistic events as well as the “conventions of usage” or cultural understanding that may lead to standard and nonstandard meanings considering (...) mordan and its different SBUs. The findings suggest that the SBUs regarding mordan, a neglected sociolinguistic context, not only is affected by its actual situational characteristics but also by prior context encoded in utterances used, which manifests culture-specific ways of thinking. Overall, 19 SBUs and 7 generic categories were identified with regard to the verb mordan in Persian. This paper exhibits that mordan is a versatile verb, which, when combined with situational/contextual factors, conveys different nonstandard functions that fulfil social needs. This study will also refer to linguistic features underlying SBUs that are influential in assigning various distinct meanings to the verb mordan in Persian. (shrink)

Violence has always accompanied human societies, and appeared in various forms of artworks such as movie, painting, and even cave art, but Persian painting by showing the utopian calm images surprisingly kept itself away from representing the violence, even in the scenes of war and slaughter. This paper aims to study the Persian painting –with focus on the early Safavid dynasty as the age of glory of Iranian art- on the basis of Žižek’s theory, to show that invisible violence floated (...) in Persian painting regardless of its extreme calm beauty and its different context from contemporary philosophy. Žižek categorizes the violence into three modes: visible subjective, and two modes of objective violence -Symbolic and Systematic - which are invisible and flow in latter layers. By going to deeper level of creation and content of Persian images which were illustrated in the court and on the command of rulers of the time, it is concluded that some elements of invisible violence such as strict law, visual symbols like “Qizilbash Hat”, the issue of the language, neighbor, fear of error, repetition of historical characters, extremism and nonviolent situation can be analyzed in the content or illustration of Persian Painting. (shrink)

Application of technologies has an important role in agricultural development. Identifying and assessing the impacts of agricultural technologies is necessary. This study aimed at assessing the impacts of laser levelling economically, socially, environmentally, and technically in the viewpoint of the agricultural experts and identifying factors determining their perception of the impacts. The study samples (151 experts) were selected using multi-stage random sampling in Fars Province, Iran. The results revealed that experts considered uniform distribution of water, using conservation tillage, facilitating agricultural (...) activities, decreased water consumption and decrease of water wasting as the most important technical impacts of laser levelling technology. The most environmentally important impacts were the decrease of soil erosion and retention of crop residues. Experts stated the most significant social impacts as improvement in villages living conditions and sense of belonging to rural areas. Besides, an increase of income and reduction of inputs costs were among the economic impacts of laser levelling technology. According to the results, attitude towards water and soil resources conservation and environmental beliefs had the highest direct effect on individual perception toward impacts. Practical recommendations have been presented based on the results of the study. (shrink)

This study examines the role of the principle of Sikh liberalism in promoting communal harmony in today’s world. Communal harmony has been under threat in almost all countries for decades, and bigotry, distrust, and animosity prevail among the followers of diverse faithbased communities. Individuals need to be whole-hearted, liberal in approach, and tolerant toward the followers of other communities to reduce such inconsistencies in our society. The paper explores that the ideology of Sikh liberalism can be a role model for (...) establishing peace in today’s world of communal violence. This work is a sincere effort to deal with several issues, e.g., humanism, tolerance, fraternity, equality, freedom, secularism, religious pluralism, and accessibility to and honor for contrasting opinions, based on the principle of Sikh liberalism, which are the root of Sikh liberalism. The qualitative research evaluates the all-embracing aspects of Sikhism, where the liberal notion of Guru Granth Sahib and the liberal attitudes of the Sikh Gurus, especially Guru Nanak (1469-1539), the founder of Sikhism, have mainly been highlighted. It discovers the role of Sikhism in promoting communal harmony by analyzing the idea of Sikh liberalism. Thus, the study aims to make the states, governments, and the general people aware of their responsibilities and duties towards promoting communal harmony through comprehending the Sikh approaches to liberalism. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#69-70; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2021 P 189-209. (shrink)

Cognitive science, is the science of the mind and examines cognition, in all its scope, as a mental-brain process. Cognitive social sciences are resulted from the encounter, interaction and integration of social and cognitive sciences, and are hoped to deepen our understandings and explanations of the social phenomena. This paper will discuss four views about what this integration is and how it takes place, namely explanatory grounding, theoretical unification, constraints, and complementarity. some people have preferred explanatory grounding and constraints approach, (...) and maintain that based on these approaches, social cognitive science will have a better and a clearer perspective. In spite of them, I prefer a complementarity approach, Based on which, cognitive social science can be seen as an extension and improvement of social science and cognitive science, not a product of an interdisciplinary approach, This preferred approach considers the subject of cognitive social science as a socio-cognitive issue. (shrink)

The current study aimed to explore effective strategies for preventing cheating in online examinations by surveying students to determine their cheating strategies. A total of 406 Iranian students at BA, MA, and PhD levels in four programs, including English language teaching, English literature, Linguistics, and English language translation, participated in this study using a convenient sampling technique. The sample was drawn from 83 universities across all 31 provinces of Iran. The researchers developed a 30-item questionnaire and a 4-item interview to (...) collect data. The results revealed that searching in PDFs and using social media groups were the most commonly used cheating strategies. To prevent this form of academic dishonesty, teachers used various strategies, the most effective being the use of conceptual questions and one-by-one oral exams with turned-on webcams. The main reason for students to cheat was their desire to perform better. The implications of this study are relevant for educational stakeholders, particularly teachers, and students, in promoting academic integrity. (shrink)

To illuminate the problems and perspectives of water management in Iran and comparable (semi-) arid Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, three paradigms can be distinguished: the traditional, the industrial and the reflexive paradigm. Each paradigm is characterised by its key technical system, its main social institution and its ethico-religious framework. Iran seems to be in a state of transition from the ‘hydraulic mission’ of industrial modernity to a more reflexive approach to water management. This article sketches the contours (...) of the emerging paradigm: a complementary system of traditional and modern methods of water provision, a participatory water resources management and a ‘post-mechanistic’ ethico-religious framework. (shrink)

This study examined cross-sectional links of the theistic and non-theistic sanctification of marriage and positive and negative religious coping with marital adjustment for 316 married Muslims from Iran. Perceiving marriage to be a manifestation of God and reflective of sacred qualities as well as engaging in positive and negative religious/spiritual coping strategies each uniquely contributed variance to marital adjustment, after controlling for each other and global indicators of devotion to Islam, and demographic variables. Specifically, theistic sanctification, non-theistic sanctification, and positive (...) r/s coping were uniquely tied to higher marital adjustment whereas negative r/s coping was uniquely tied to lower marital adjustment theistic in a hierarchical regression model with all primary variables and controls entered. These findings replicate and extend prior findings on the perceived sanctity of marriage with US samples of predominantly Christians to Muslims living in the Middle East, and offer novel cross-cultural insights into the possible roles that sanctification of marriage and r/s coping may play for marital well-being for non-distressed married Muslims. (shrink)

According to a common interpretation, most explicitly defended by Onora O’Neill and Patricia Kitcher, Kant held that epistemic obligations normatively depend on moral obligations. That is, were a rational agent not bound by any moral obligation, then she would not be bound by any epistemic obligation either. By contrast, in this paper, I argue that, according to Kant, some epistemic obligations are normatively independent from moral obligations, and are indeed normatively absolute. This view, which I call epistemicism, has two parts. (...) First, it claims that in the absence of other kinds of obligations, rational agents would still be bound by these epistemic obligations, i. e., that the latter are normatively independent. Second, it claims that, no matter what other obligations are at stake, rational agents are bound by these epistemic obligations, i. e., the normativity of these epistemic obligations is absolute in that it cannot be undercut by any moral or other sort of obligation. The argument turns on an exploratory reading of Kant’s remarks in “What Is Orientation in Thinking?” (1786) about the maxim of “thinking for oneself” as the “supreme touchstone of truth”. In contrast to O’Neill and Kitcher, I argue that if we interpret this maxim as stating the unifying principle of theoretical and practical reason, then we must interpret it as stating an epistemic, and not merely practical imperative. This result, I argue, vindicates epistemicism and illuminates interesting lessons about Kant’s conception of the category of “epistemic” norms. Further, it helps us make headway with Kant’s enigmatic remarks about the unity of practical and theoretical reason in the Groundwork, the first and second Critiques, and the Lectures on Logic. On my proposal, principles of the practical and theoretical uses of reason are unified through a formal epistemic principle. (shrink)

This paper argues that gossip can be a central element in inducing cooperation. The underlying assumption here is that human beings value payoffs in most societies, and are willing to have less now for more in the future. This basic interaction is tempered through gossip - as our behavior now may affect our future interactions and subsequent payoffs. As such, reputation matters and plays a crucial role in inducing cooperation. In order for gossip to be an effective policing mechanism a (...) number of conditions must be met: namely, there must be an incentive for behavior and the behavior must be conducted in a credible manner. Herein lies the utility of charisma and perhaps problem, in inducing cooperation. (shrink)

The creation of the human being is an issue that has arisen from time to time in both Western and Eastern philosophy. Does the human soul have an eternal preexistence, or was it, just like the body, created at a point in time? If created at a point in time, does the soul join the body as a created but incorporeal existence or does it join the body as a physical thing that changes into an incorporeal existence? Finally, does God (...) produce the human soul instantaneously? The present essay is a comparative investigation of the views of Thomas Aquinas and Mullā Ṣadrā on this topic.In his writings Thomas treated the problem of the creation of the human being from both philosophical and theological perspectives. His .. (shrink)

Robert Alexy’s theory of legal argumentation is among the notable contributions made to mainstream jurisprudence in the last three decades. Remaining true to its rational discursive mission, it engages with both analytical positivism and natural law theories. A recent collection of essays edited by George Pavlakos explores Alexy’s theory from a number of philosophical standpoints, revealing its theoretical potential and flaws. By doing so, this volume helps us to gain a better understanding of the implications of Alexy’s theory of legal (...) argumentation, but also to identify new areas of research within the discourse theory of law. Although this collection is concerned with a critical examination of various aspects of Alexy’s work, it nonetheless draws attention to the dual characteristics of positive law, that is, the problematic separation of facts from values, law from morality, legal certainty from justice, which continue to preoccupy legal theory. In what follows I shall attempt to examine the debate between Alexy and the contributors to Pavlakos’s volume in order to gain a deeper understanding of the role of dichotomies in legal theory. Part 1 starts by explaining the theoretical background against which I have read the debate on Alexy’s theory of legal argumentation. I have explored the role of dichotomies in socio-legal research elsewhere. However, in the following pages, I shall use Alan Norrie’s critical examination of antinomies to throw light on some of the shortcomings of Alexy’s theory and also to discuss the concerns of mainstream jurisprudence. In that sense, this essay presents both Norrie’s and Alexy’s works, using the former to critically assess the latter. In Part 2, I briefly sketch the layout of Pavlakos’s collection to provide an overview of the type of questions that are discussed by the various contributors. Parts 3 and 4 bring into focus two issues that loom large in the collection. The first issue is Alexy’s central thesis on law’s claim to correctness, while the second concerns the duality of law exemplified by the attempts of mainstream jurisprudence to cope with the tension between the positivist notion of law and the idea of justice. In Part 5, I conclude the essay by reflecting on some of the implications of Alexy’s thesis. (shrink)

The recent literature on epistemic virtues advances two general projects. The first is virtue epistemology, an attempt to explicate key epistemic notions in terms of epistemic virtue. The second is epistemic virtue theory, the conceptual and normative investigation of cognitive traits of character. While a great deal of work has been done in virtue epistemology, epistemic virtue theory still languishes in a state of neglect. Furthermore, the existing work is non-naturalistic. The present paper contributes to the development of a naturalistic (...) epistemic virtue theory by presenting a virtue-theoretic evaluation of need for cognition as informed by the relevant psychological studies. (shrink)

An inventory of his entire oeuvre provides detailed information on the extant manuscripts. The volume furthermore includes editions of nine of his writings.

The relationship between the photographic and optical images and time has been the subject of great deal of debate. Despite their differences, what many of these considerations have in common is their focus on the receiver, whether mechanical, biological, social or the memory and imagination of the observer. My aim here is to shift the emphasis from the receiver to the object or vista that is photographed or viewed and to explore how the constraints implied by our modern understanding of (...) the Universe, concerning space and time, impact on the way we perceive photographic and optical images. Viewed from this perspective, photographs can be treated as light projections of sections of the four-dimensional observable world onto two-dimensional spatial photographic or viewing surfaces. I shall show that despite the severe reduction that such projections imply, these modern considerations have the important consequence of bestowing a complex temporality upon optical images, including photographs. This realization dramatically changes the way we view photographs. I give examples of this rich temporality through considerations of terrestrial images – and more significantly images of the Sky, where these temporal effects are far more pronounced. (shrink)

While there is general agreement about the list of epistemic virtues, there has been much controversy over what it is to be an epistemic virtue. Three competing theories have been offered: evaluational externalism, evaluational internalism, and mixed theories. A major problem with internalism, the focus of this paper, is that it disconnects the value of epistemic virtue from actual success in the real world (the Disconnection Problem). Relying on a novel thesis about the relation of “trying” and “exercise of virtue,” (...) James Montmarquet (1993; 2000) has offered, to my knowledge, the only solution to this problem. In this paper, I evaluate this solution by deriving from it an important implication and arguing that, if examined in the light of the recent work on self-control in philosophy and psychology, this implication proves problematic. I conclude by drawing a general lesson about the prospects of internalism and suggesting that in the absence of a satisfactory solution to the disconnection problem, externalism and mixed theories become more attractive. (shrink)

Justification of believe in God had been one of the most challenging problem throughout history of philosophy. The problem is "is believe in god epistemically justified?" Gutting's theory in justification of theism is combined of two parts. He critiques Witgenstainian's view firstly, and then considers Aquinas’, Plantinga's, and some other views as incorrect views on theism. Gutting says that Witgenstainians and Tomistic approaches cannot draw a religious language exactly. He also considers Plantinga's view as an incorrect view, because it is (...) completely possible that the viewpoint of believers in believing to the existence of God to be evaluate epistemological as true as the non-believers’ view to the nonexistence of God. Discussing his own view, Gutting justifies believing in God regarding the religious experience. This article explains Gutting's critique of Witgenstainian's, Thomistic and Planting's approach on justification of believe in God. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose three lines of argumentation against Nannini’s eliminativist approach towards consciousness and the Self. First, we argue that the premises he uses to argue for eliminativism can equally well be used to draw a completely different conclusion in favor of naturalistic dualism according to which phenomenal consciousness irreducibly emerges from a physical substrate by virtue of certain psychophysical laws of nature. Nannini proposes that in contrast to dualistic theses which represent the manifest image of the world, (...) eliminativism represents the world’s scientific image just as classical physics and theories of relativity respectively represent the world’s manifest image and scientific image. And if developments in a scientific field reveal a conflict between these two images we should always vote for the scientific image. In our second line of argument, we challenge this claim by comparing two rival interpretations of quantum mechanics, i.e. the Copenhagen and Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics. Finally, we argue that Nannini’s identification of consciousness and the Self as illusions does not shed any light on the hard problem of consciousness since illusions themselves are instances of phenomenal experiences and need to be explained. (shrink)

Exploring illusions of control in a wide variety of domains, the authors posit a practical way to minimize negative consequences.

The conventional production model based on extensive use of chemical inputs such as pesticides is increasingly challenged. Organic agriculture is considered as one of the most important alternative agricultural systems to produce healthy food without any chemicals. Current models are not suitable for prediction of environmental behaviors. The current study aims to analyze the diffusion of organic agriculture to produce healthy food with the environmental sociology approach among farmers. The study was conducted using the survey research and multi-stage random sampling (...) in Fars province, in the south of Iran. The samples included 215 farmers. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by conducting a pilot study out of the main sample. The results showed that the farmers have strong attitude to the environment and are for the most part, highly intentioned to perform organic activities. Based on the results, the farmers’ intention toward adoption of organic agriculture, environmental identity, and responsibility of pro-environmental behavior, and their moral norms play an important role to accept organic agricultural activities. There are also some effective factors in implementation of organic agriculture including farmers` increasing awareness about the principles of organic farming, controllability of environmental behaviors as well as their accessibility to the resources and facilities for organic farming. The study emphasized that the attitude and enhancing the knowledge do not lead to pro-environmental behaviors and organic activities directly. Using the models and environmental sociology theories is more efficient to explain pro-environmental behaviors. To this aim, some suggestions were presented to increase the adoption of organic activities and persuade the Iranian farmers to select this kind of cultivation. (shrink)

Bradley proposes a regress according to which, any theory that considers external objects as a unit composed of multiple components is flawed. Since most tropists consider the concrete object to be composed of coexisting tropes, Bradley's sregress embraces tropism as well. Maureen is of the opinion that Bradley's view about the existence of a relationship is incorrect and that a relationship is something that has an existential dependence on its surroundings, and based on this, he has resolved the problems of (...) Bradley's regress. However, based on an understanding of Allameh Tabataba'i's statements and analysis regarding the existence of a relationship, it is possible to criticize Maureen and consider the dependence between the relationship and its surroundings to be two-way. In addition, although Maurin's view solves the problem of Bradley's regress, it seems incompatible with the tropism. In this article, after a brief look at tropism, Bradley's regress is presented, and then this problem for tropism is explained. Next, Maureen's solution is proposed and after that, this solution is criticized and defended from the point of view of internal and mutual dependence between the relationship and its surroundings. (shrink)

We consider the domain of applicability of general relativity (GR), as a classical theory of gravity, by considering its applications to a variety of settings of physical interest as well as its relationship with real observations. We argue that, as it stands, GR is deficient whether it is treated as a microscopic or a macroscopic theory of gravity. We briefly discuss some recent attempts at removing this shortcoming through the construction of a macroscopic theory of gravity. We point out that (...) such macroscopic extensions of GR are likely to be nonunique and involve non-Riemannian geometrical frameworks. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a reconstruction of Ghazālī's encounter with scepticism in the Deliverance from Error. For Ghazālī, I argue, radical scepticism about the possibility of knowledge ensues from intellectualist assumptions about the nature of justification. On the reading that I will propose, Ghazālī holds that foundational knowledge can only be justified via actions that lead to transformative experiences.

In the waking state, in the absence of meta-awareness, mind wandering with specific contents can lead to negative mood. Such negative mood can be incorporated into dreaming according to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. In this paper we argue that in the presence of what we call ‘sustained phenomenal meta-awareness’, negative mood would not follow mind wandering in waking. Sustained phenomenal meta-awareness has a non-sensory, non-affective phenomenal character. It is essentially intransitive, prereflectively self-aware, non-propositional, non-conceptual and devoid of subject-object structure. (...) In other words, this unique kind of meta-awareness is non-representational. Evidence is then provided that such sustained phenomenal meta-awareness can be incorporated into the subsequent dream state as non-dual lucid dreaming in which, again, no negative mood would arise. Based on the latter observation, we have coined the term ‘mindful mind wandering’ and defined it as mind wandering in the presence of sustained phenomenal meta-awareness. We argue that not only does mindful mind wandering not lead to negative mood in waking, but also its incorporation into dreaming, as non-dual lucid dreaming, result in a state that is free of negative affection. (shrink)

Scientific study of dreams requires the most objective methods to reliably analyze dream content. In this context, artificial intelligence should prove useful for an automatic and non subjective scoring technique. Past research has utilized word search and emotional affiliation methods, to model and automatically match human judges’ scoring of dream report’s negative emotional tone. The current study added word associations to improve the model’s accuracy. Word associations were established using words’ frequency of co-occurrence with their defining words as found in (...) a dictionary and an encyclopedia. It was hypothesized that this addition would facilitate the machine learning model and improve its predictability beyond those of previous models. With a sample of 458 dreams, this model demonstrated an improvement in accuracy from 59% to 63% on the negative emotional tone scale, and for the first time reached an accuracy of 77% on the positive scale. (shrink)

Herbert Simon viewed innovation as a particular type of problem-solving behavior that entails refocus of attention and search for alternatives outside the existing domain of standard operations. This exploration outside of standard routines involves heuristic-based discovery and action, such as satisficing search for information and options. In our observations on the innovation process, we focus on knowledge generation. We propose viewing the process of generating knowledge—when knowledge is sufficient to instigate action, but not necessarily enough to eliminate the uncertainty of (...) the situation—as a heuristic process. Because many personal and organizational decisions are acted upon in the presence of some degree of uncertainty, we argue that heuristics structure the way in which information is processed innovatively. We provide a catalogue of instances in business decision making. (shrink)

Patient advocacy has been a topic of much discussion in the nursing literature for a number of decades. Ambiguities remain, however, concerning definitions of advocacy in nursing. This qualitative grounded theory-type study aimed to inquire into the meaning of patient advocacy from Iranian nurses' perspective. A purposive sample of 24 nurses (staff nurses, head nurses and supervisors) working in a large university hospital in Tehran was used. Data were collected using in-depth semistructured interviews and reflective diaries kept by the participants. (...) The data were analyzed using elements of Strauss and Corbin's' approach. Advocacy was defined by the participants as: informing and educating; valuing and respecting; supporting; protecting; and promoting continuity of care for patients. The participants also believed that advocacy could take place only if there was respect for patients' individuality and their inherent human dignity. Many of the descriptions given by the participants are consistent with previous research in this area and represent a comprehensive account of their perceptions of patient advocacy. (shrink)

The field of socio-legal research has encountered three fundamental challenges over the last three decades - it has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to legal doctrine, for failing to develop a sound theoretical foundation and for not keeping pace with the effects of the increasing globalization and internationalization of law, state and society. This book examines these three challenges from a methodological standpoint. It addresses the first two by demonstrating that legal sociology has much to say about justice as (...) a kind of social experience and has always engaged theoretically with forms of normativity, albeit on its own empirical terms rather than on legal theory's analytical terms. The book then explores the third challenge, a result of the changing nature of society, by highlighting the move from the industrial relations of early modernity to the post-industrial conditions of late modernity, an age dominated by information technology. It poses the question whether socio-legal research has sufficiently reassessed its own theoretical premises regarding the relationship between law, state and society, so as to grasp the new social and cultural forms of organization specific to the twenty-first century's global societies. (shrink)

Mental being has always been an issue of paramount importance and interest to Muslim philosophers. The first philosopher to raise mental being as an independent philosophical case is Fakhr al-din Razi. Others including Khwaje Nassir Tusi, Katebi Qazwini, Taftazani and Mulla Sadra have also used various reasons to prove the existence of mental being. In his famous book of Asfar, Mulla Sadra introduces three philosophical reasons:a) Istibsar i.e. envisaging possible beings which are non-existing as well as impossible beingsb) Celestial revelation; (...) he considers mental being a heart-felt reality revealed to him through inspiration.c) Tanbeeh i.e. envisaging things which have once been possible but are presently impossible such as miracles. (shrink)

The traditional approaches to epistemology are task-oriented and enjoy prescriptive aspects. They do not allow the employment of empirical sciences in epistemology. This is because they believe that such sciences lack any kind of prescriptive aspect and enjoy a descriptive nature. Some contemporary epistemological theoreticians, such as realist naturalists, believe that we have no choice but to employ empirical sciences in epistemology, for they provide us with a more accurate understanding of concepts such as justification and knowledge. It appears that (...) we are able to provide the necessary answers to the problems posed by traditional epistemologists in this regard. Therefore, the use of empirical sciences in epistemology is not only permissible but also necessary. (shrink)

Mullā Sadrā appeared in the philosophical field when the prevalent philosophical questions were principality of existence and principality of quiddity. Although he first held the theory of principality of quiddity, later in a cognitional rotation he accepted the theory of principality of existence. Such a rotation gradually causes a wide revolution in the realm of philosophy, and consequently it yields principles such as unity of existence, analogicity of existence, and intensification of existence. He propounds external objectivity of existence, knowledge, beauty (...) and other qualities of perfection as his philosophical principles. Thus, due to Mullā Sadrā’s basic principles, we can attain to principles such as principality of beauty, unity of beauty, analogicity of beauty, and intensification of beauty. (shrink)