Critical study of of the addresses of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938 from philosophical and religious point of view.

On the philosophy of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938 with special reference to religious experiences and philosophy.

Collection of studies on a leading moral philosopher and his work, or dedicated to him.

Arabic philosophy; man; God; modern critical study.

In this paper we show that first-order languages extended with partially ordered connectives and partially ordered quantifiers define, under a certain interpretation, their own truth-predicate. The interpretation in question is in terms of games of imperfect information. This result is compared with those of Kripke and Feferman.

In this paper I present an argument for the claim that you ought to do something only if you may believe that you ought to do it. More exactly, I defend the following principle about normative reasons: An agent A has decisive reason to φ only if she also has sufficient reason to believe that she has decisive reason to φ. I argue that this principle follows from the plausible assumption that it must be possible for an agent to respond (...) correctly to her reasons. In conclusion, I discuss some implications of this argument (given that some other standard assumptions about reasons hold). One such implication is that we are always in a position to be justified in believing all truths about what we have decisive reason (or ought) to do. (shrink)

When people think about how a situation might have turned out differently, they tend to imagine counterfactual alternatives to their actions. We report the results of three experiments which show that people imagine alternatives to actions differently when they know about a reason for the action. The first experiment ( n = 36) compared reason - action sequences to cause - effect sequences. It showed that people do not imagine alternatives to reasons in the way they imagine alternatives to causes: (...) they imagine an alternative to an action more than an effect, and to a cause more than a reason. The second experiment ( n = 214) and the third experiment ( n = 190) both show that different sorts of reasons have different sorts of effects on how people imagine alternatives to actions. People imagine an alternative to an action (the protagonist went to a ball) less often when they know the reason for the action was an obligation (he had to participate in fundraising) compared to when they know about a weaker reason (he wanted to meet a famous violinist) or no reason. The second experiment shows the effect for a social obligation and the third experiment replicates and extends it to a health obligation. We interpret the results in terms of the possibilities that people keep in mind about actions and their reasons. (shrink)

If the physical constants, initial conditions, or laws of nature in our universe had been even slightly different, then the evolution of life would have been impossible. This observation has led many philosophers and scientists to ask the natural next question: why is our universe so "fine-tuned" for life? The debates around this question are wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary, complicated, technical, and heated. This study is a comprehensive investigation of these debates and the many metaphysical and epistemological questions raised by cosmological fine-tuning. (...) Waller's study reaches two significant and controversial conclusions. First, he concludes that the criticisms directed at the "multiverse hypothesis" by theists and at the "theistic hypothesis" by naturalists are largely unsuccessful. Neither of these options can plausibly be excluded. Choosing between them seems to turn on primitive metaphysical intuitions. Second, in order to break the philosophical deadlock, Waller moves the debate from the level of universes to the level of possible worlds. Arguing that possible worlds are also "fine-tuned" in an important and interesting sense, Waller concludes that the only plausible explanation for the fine-tuning of the actual world is to posit the existence of some kind of "God-like-thing.". (shrink)

This paper attempts to fill an epistemological gap in our theorizing about love with a sketch of an epistemology of love that unfolds by addressing Whitney Houston’s famous epistemological questions pertaining to how we can know whether another loves us. After arguing for three possible sources of the knowledge of love, it offers initial answers to how the knowledge of the presence or absence of another’s love can be acquired from the relevant possible sources previously established. These initial answers, though, (...) are unsatisfying because they invite more difficult questions that are then addressed, such as those pertaining to the kinds of things that constitute love’s expressions along with how to detect these expressions given the possibility of false positives. Addressing these questions ultimately leads to a sharpened, Aristotle-inspired account of how to acquire the knowledge of the presence or absence of another’s love by inferring it, respectively, from the successful or failed detection of love’s expressions. (shrink)

『대승기신론』과 원효가 펼치는 일심一心의 언어에 대한 이해들에는 ‘본체·현상 존재론’이 적용되는 경우가 흔하다. 일심一心에다가 ‘모든 생멸하는 현상들을 지어내거나 포괄하는 본체’의 지위를 부여한 후 ‘생멸하는 현상들’과 ‘생멸현상으로부터 벗어나 불생불멸하는 본체’의 상호관계를 설명해 보려는 시선이 일반화되어 있는 것으로 보인다. 이런 시선은 ‘생멸生滅’과 ‘진여眞如’라는 개념도 각각 현상과 본체에 배정하곤 한다. 일심一心을 이런 시선으로 읽는 한, 원효나 『대승기신론』및 대승의 일심一心철학을 우파니샤드 아뜨만 철학의 범주에서 구출하기는 어렵다. 불변의 본체든 공한 본체든, ‘본체·현상 존재론’으로 일심一心에 접근하는 한, 우파니샤드의 사유구조에서 탈출하기가 어렵다. 그런데 흥미로운 것은 정작 원효가 펼치는 일심一心의 (...) 언어에는 그 어디에서도 ‘본체·현상 존재론’이라 할 내용이 목격되지 않는다는 점이다. 『대승기신론』의 경우도 마찬가지이다. 그렇다면 일심에 대한 ‘본체·현상적 이해’가 난무하는 현상은 어디에서 비롯하는가? 두 가지 이유를 주목하고 싶다. 인간에게는 ‘본체·현상 존재론’을 쉽사리 수긍하는 사유방식이 내면화되어 있을 가능성이 그 하나이고, 원효가 구사하는 용어에 대한 일상 언어적 오해가 다른 하나이다. 본고는 ‘본체·현상 존재론’을 선호하는 사유방식을 발생시킨 조건들을 살펴보는 동시에, 용어의 의미를 발생시키는 조건들을 간과하는 일상 언어적 이해가 원효사상 이해에서 작동하는 사례를 음미한다. 새로운 독법의 정초를 마련하기 위해서이다. (shrink)