A Research Journal of
Epistemology and Related Fields
Vol.14/ No.55/Autumn.2013
Executive Director: Ali-Akbar Rashad
Editor-in-Chief: Ali Reza Qaeminia
Published by Institute for Islamic Culture and Thought (IICT)
Tel: 88501064, 88743008- Fax 88764792
P.O.Box: 13145-444. Tehran
E-mail: zehn@iict.ac.ir
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The Epistemological Fundamentals of Religious Science Production
/Ali Akbar Rashad
The significance of Religious Texts according to Neo-Mu'tazilites
/Mohammad Arabsalehi
Certainty in the Illuminative Philosophy/Mahdi Abbaszadeh
Comparative appraisal of Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge and T.S. Kuhn’s theory/Gholamhossein Moghaddam Heidari
Immediate knowledge a solution for some problems in primary propositions
A view of Mr. MuhammadTaghiMesbahYazdi’s theory
/Amirhossein Zadyousefi and Davood Hosseini
Typology of Quranic concepts and areas of common understanding
/Abulqasem Alidoost, Alireza QaemiNiya and Muhammad Hussein Rafeei
Pathology of the Continental philosophy of language
/Mohammad Reza Asadi and Mohammad Raayat Jahromi
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The author of this article is about to present the epistemological fundamentals of religious science production.
He supports the claim by presenting a specific model in the epistemology of science entitled “The Religious Realistic Theory”, composed of two processes as “linear-vertical” and “lateral-horizontal” based on eight principles.
At the final part of the article, he designates the functions of intellect in religious science production in details.
Zehn Quarterly Journal and the author of the article welcome any opinion or criticism about the article’s claims.
Keywords:Religious science, Religious realistic epistemology, The process of knowledge formation, Religious knowledge, Functions of intellect.
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From the beginning, religious text including the holy book (holy Quran) and tradition were considered as two main and major cognition sources of Islam and there were consensus over the authority of the holy book and the authority of the real tradition (against narrated tradition) among the Shia and Sunni scholars (although Akhbari scholars consider the understanding of the book restricted to the Infallibles). But while we perceive the book and tradition in the view of many Neo-Mu'tazilites, we can see that it received criticisms form many sides, both in the quality of forming and survival; and not only many doubts were raised for the authority of many of its teachings, at least after the time of the holy prophet, but it has been denied. In this article, we only criticize and examine the fluidity respect of the signification and the meaning of religious texts from Neo-Mu'tazilites’ perspective. It is only the divine book and narrative texts available for us which is carrying and narrating the tradition. From their perspective, the signification of the texts, including religious texts, are fluid and dependent to the time context not to the state and intention of the author, and the meaning of the text will change during the pass of time and thus religious teachings would be bound to historicism and time. Examining this problem in philosophical hermeneutics and mentioning Neo-Mu'tazilites’ remarks, this article is to express criticisms against this Idea for its influences on some Neo-Mu'tazilites. Explaining the main source of some of these Ideas which can be found in philosophical hermeneutics, it has been tried, in this article, to draw appropriate responses. It is noteworthy that some of the Neo-Mu'tazilites who hold the signification as to be fluid, in addition to hermeneutics, are influenced by linguistics and semiotics and other discussions in language which are not investigated in this article.
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Keywords:Religious texts, Fluidity of meaning, Signification of text, Historicism.
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The problem of certainty is one of the most fundamental problems of epistemology, to the extent that there is no important epistemological school, which, affirmatively or negatively, do not discuss on the definition of certainty and its possibility and conditions. In general, Islamic epistemology, including Suhravardi’s epistemology, is a certainist school, so that it does not consider uncertain knowledge as a true knowledge.
At a glance, certainty has two types: epistemological certainty and psychological certainty. By epistemological certainty I mean what logically and philosophically considered as certain. Epistemological certainty has also many types: Rational certainty and intuitive certainty. Rational certainty is the result of reasoning and argumentation, and intuitive one is the result of human’s direct experiencing of objective or subjective reality, without mediate any mental form. But the nature of psychological certainty is mainly a sort of conviction and it is not considered as certainty logically and philosophically. This article discusses about epistemological certainty and its sorts in Suhravardi’s thinking, with a glancing mention to his view about psychological certainty.
Suhravardi speaks of both epistemological and psychological certainty. He, in perpetetic stage of his thinking, similar to other perpetetic philosophers, regards certainty as a result of reasoningandargumentation (Al burhan). However, he finally, in Illuminativestage of his thinking, regards certainty as a result of hearty intuition (Al Shohud). Some of thinkers criticize Suhravardi’s view, but this criticism can be answered by attention to his writings.
Keywords:Suhravardi, Certainty, Knowledge, Argument, Intuition, Self evident, Illumination.
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In Ideology and Utopia(1936), Mannheim expresses the constituents of sociology of knowledge. He believes that the process of knowledge is influenced by social processesthat is social process penetrates deep into perspective of thought. Sociology of Knowledge is the theory of the social determination of knowledge except scientific knowledge.
In The structure of Scientific Revolutions(1962),Thomas Kuhn uses similar method to study of scientific knowledge. He shows sociological constituents have a big effect on the formation and development of science.This article is comparative study of Kuhn’s theory about scientific knowledge and Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge.
Keywords:Gestalt- Perspective- Paradigm- incommensurability- communication breakdown- relativism- Relationism.
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Among contemporary Islamic philosophers Mr. Muhammad TaghiMesbahYazdi, sporadically, in some of his works has explored the truth of primary propositions. In this paper firstly we will extract, coherently, a theory from his works and present the theory in three steps. These three steps have designed to answer three questions: What are primary propositions? , Why primary propositions are true? Why primary propositions are universal? We will see that immediate knowledge has important role in his theory. Secondly, we will explore of immediate knowledge role in his theory and show that there are different kinds of immediate knowledge in his theory. Thirdly we will argue that in order to being a successful theory, these immediate knowledge are not sufficient for the theory and we should add some other kinds of immediate knowledge to his theory.
Keywords:Primary propositions, immediate knowledge, truth, philosophical secondary concepts, Mr. Muhammad TaghiMesbahYazdi.
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One of the current theories in the language of the Qur'an, is the common language. Regardless of whether the language of the Qur’an is of a Specific or general norm, at first glance, it seems obvious that the verdict of the language of the Qur'an and the explanation of all areas and aspects of the "norm", do not get us close for benchmarking in the language of the Qur’an. In this process the forms and different types of Qur’anic concepts also should be considered, since all the Qur’anic concepts are not from a conceptual domain and area, so that a single verdict could be issued about the common language and as a result claim the possibility of common understanding from the language of the Qur'an. Thus, in determining the language of the Qur'an, first, different types of concepts and then the validity of the common understanding (whether specific or general) must be identified in those types. In this paper we follow the issues in two discussions: In the first topic we discuss about the analysis, evaluation and definition of the word "common". In the second, we identify different types of Qur’anic concepts and terminology and determine the validity of common understanding from each type. From our perspective, the realm of common sense or understanding contains only some of the Qur’anic types of concepts, not all of them. Thus, for understanding the other types we must refer to other conceptual and interpretation resources.
Keywords:Custom, Common sense, Qur’anic concepts, The scope of common understanding, Norm.
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Regardless of any geographical and historical boundaries between two main domains namely analytical and continental philosophies on one hand and challenging nature of authority of science in its empirical conception, historicism, anti-metaphysics and systematization current on the other hand, which caused to theoretical diversion between that domains, the language is a common field. The innovation of this paper is the theory of “Continental philosophy of language”. This paper intends to peruse the contemporary approaches to philosophy of language.
Keywords:Truth, Language, Culture, Continental,Analytical philosophy.
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