نشریه متافیزیک
سال یازدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 28، پاییز و زمستان 1398)

Roman Ingarden is a significant figure in phenomenological Aesthetics. Generally, his phenomenological studies are in the realm of Aesthetics. He believes that the work of art has a peculiar mode of being. Based on his viewpoint, the work of art is not a wholly determined and autonomous object, and its being depends upon the intentional acts of the creator and the reader. In fact, the work of art is “an intersubjective intentional object” of which the musical work is one of the best example. This article considers the relation of two fundamentally phenomenological terms: Schematization and Concretization. Based on these terms and step by step, we show that the work of art as an intentional object has schematic and incomplete structure and by its concretizations changes into aesthetic object. Work of art is not a closed cognitive structure manifested by the reader. It is an “open entity” the meaning of which arises from its concretizations. Thus, work of art is an eternally alive and novel entity.

This article studies one of the two current conceptions of free will i.e negative conception or the definition of free will to having alternative possibilities; and tries to assess and ascertain the truth or untruth of this historically popular conception, by means of rational counting of all possible rejections and defends of it. The investigations indicate that the disputes on this truth and untruth is the first dispute that causes philosophers to revolt against one another in debate of free will problem in form of two main groups of Compatibilist and incompatibilist philosophers. The dispute of these two groups begins with debating on the relation between negative free will and Determinism, continues with researching on possibility of free will in a determined world and finally firms in form of two fundamental objections against one another: The harm-mind hypothesis of Determinism on side of Incompatibilists against of Intelligibility challenge on side of Compatibilists. And thus confirming or rejecting of such conception at last depends on assessing these two objections. The result of our assessment in this article consists of rejecting the negative conception.

Denis Dutton's Evolutionary Approach to Art and BeautyDenis L. Dutton (1944- 2010), American-NewZealandian philosopher of art, in many of his works, especially his latest book entitled The art instinct: Beauty, pleasure, and human evolution offers a new theory of art. He believes that the human tendency to art and beauty, in fact, is an evolutionary product and is one of many adaptations that are achieved through natural and sexual selection in the struggle for existence. Dutton thinks interest in art and beauty is a result of genetic programming and left for modern human of her earliest ancestors. In support of this claim, he points out aesthetic tastes of people in different historical periods and different cultures are alike. In Dutton perspective, art and aesthetics, derived from human instincts and are rooted in human nature. He defends the idea that the evolutionary approach doesn’t undervalue the importance of artistic masterpieces that are admired by everyone. He speculates that evolution - and above of every things the imagination and reason evolution- which enables the human to transcend their brute nature instincts and again the natural and sexual selection is that put him or her in a wise man or woman position. This research seeks to answer the question "How can we justify the desire of humans to the arts and beauty and the reason for their enjoyment of their eternal pleasure from the artworks from the viewpoint of Dutton?”

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary study what is the mind and how it works. By contrast, metaphysics concern is the study and discovery of objective structures of reality. Apart from the "metaphysics of mind", which is the point of reference for these two domains, there is not much connection between them. The "Naturalized Metaphysics" project is a metaphysical approach in which contemporary philosopher, Alvin Goldman, seeks to show that the findings of cognitive science play an essential role in accepting or rejecting a metaphysical theory. In his view, although the study of the mind is only part of the metaphysics, it plays a role in any metaphysical inquiry. He believes that the study of the mind is part of any metaphysical inquiry, even those metaphysical investigations that are not a question of the mind and the mental state of their purpose. Our goal in this paper is to analyze the relationship between metaphysics and cognitive science based on Naturalized Metaphysics of Alvin Goldman. Accordingly, we will show that although cognitive science findings can play a significant role in the metaphysics of mind and conceptual metaphysics, their role in realistic metaphysics is doubtful. In addition, we will show that the findings of cognitive science alone can not play a role in metaphysical judgments without using a metaphysical background

This paper explores the significance and the status of thought experiments in philosophy. In the first step, we briefly survey the history of how the term "thought experiment" emerged and its role in the history of thought. In the second step, we analyze two important definitions of thought experiment offered by Sorensen and Gandler, and after pointing out four general approaches to thought experiments, we examine the role of intuition in them. We also discuss the difference between the experiments with apparently similar status, such as science fictions, ideal experiments and mathematical arguments. After analyzing the role of imagination in thought experiments, we further analyze the role of thought experiment in philosophy and argue that there are four main functions for thought experiments namely, explaining defective examples, theorizing, confirming a theory, and explaining essential connections. At the end, the floating man of Avicenna has also been briefly analyzed as an example of a thought experiment offered by a Muslim philosopher.

There are two main criticisms that are brought against any divine command theory (DCT); namely DCT undermines the autonomy of morality and DCT puts morality on an arbitrary foundation. Audi has suggested that these two problems can be avoided by adopting the a priori groundedness view of DCT. He takes the property of being obligatory to be identical to the property of being divinely commanded (commandable) arguing that both of them supervene on non-moral (natural) properties. The grounding of moral properties on natural ones is a priori as well as necessary. So, basic moral principles are necessary truths and necessary truths are not determined by the Divine Will. It means that we can know moral concepts independent of theological ones. This study is an attempt to show that, Audi’s DCT is inconsistent with the well-known and highly plausible view of God’s free-command thesis. For this purpose, I used Murphy’s trilemma against the property identity version of the divine command theory.

Kant discerns various beauties not in objects but in aesthetic attitude. Some approaches absorb practical, theoretical, and even direct, and sensory interests. As a result, beauty becomes dependent, and its expression in an aesthetic proposition is a symbol of moral concepts. If the aesthetician`s point of view is based on mere design and composition, she expresses a pure aesthetic proposition, but if she focuses on free materials or colors and sounds, makes use of symbolic representation which alludes to the moral concepts. Dependent beauty in Kant's discussions deals with the substance or content of the motif, and then design and composition will set aside. In this case, not only beauty but also branched-out concepts of pure beauty will prevail. Kant considered Arabesque as a motif in the first place as free beauty and non-symbolic. Here the question arises: is Kant's classification of Arabesque as free and non-symbolic beauty can be regarded as an appropriate perspective for the controversy arising from adapted approaches to Islamic art? Kant's aesthetics may seem to be supportive of new approaches in Islamic art. From this perspective, we can remember the very pure beauty is on the basis of the prior harmony of understanding and imagination which can be considered as a kind of the sublime. This article proposes the aesthetic approach as the foundation of the historical and symbolic attitude to Islamic art.

Georg Edward Moore realized that although sentences like "p but I do not believe that p" and "p but I do believe that ~p" can have true content, their assertion can be absurd and paradoxical. Moreover, he realized that asserting the sentences in third-person or past tense forms are not absurd. Later on, it became clear that the sentences are not assertible nor truly believable. In this paper we will first introduce the most important features of the sentences; we will then, along with clarifying Moore's account for accommodating the sentences, argue that there are at least four criticisms against Moore's account and thus it is not tenable.

This paper focuses on the analysis of one of the most important aspects of the psychology of phenomenology which is named Aesthetic perception of consciousness. The central question of the essay is how the transcendental life of intersubjective transforms into an aesthetic one? The Writer detects three-stages in this upheaval process. First, this process gets started from Husserl and implementation eidetic reduction. The result of this theory is transcendental transformation life of intersubjective from mere intuition of essences in the pure subjective to an objective science that constitutes objects. The second begins with Heidegger’s objection to this aspect. So the result of the eidetic reduction is the replacement of Dasein to consciousness. So Heidegger’s pattern was consciousness-Existence. The three, but in Sartre’s viewpoint consciousness and freedom are unified. And the final goal of eidetic reduction is to discover this point that consciousness has many properties: mere spontaneity and bi-essence. We can design consciousness to a sketch that creates himself freely. The Writer concludes that the deepest root of approach aesthetic perception of consciousness is leaning back to pattern consciousness- freedom.

In property emergentism's view, consciousness is merely a property that is emerged by the smallest atoms, molecules, proteins, polymers, cells until tissues, organs, as the effect of interaction with the whole universe and this property, however, is distinct from the components and structures of its physical, chemical and nervous bases. In contrast, substance emergentism has argued for the realization of the immaterial substance of soul/mind. The philosophical analysis of the two claims and their arguments is the main issue of this paper. Property emergentists due to systemic view and dependence of consciousness on neural states and brain regions, and observing the nervous-psychological disorders, attribute the state of consciousness to the nervous sub-layers and do not confirm the substance of soul/mind. But based on the features of consciousness including having the first-person perspective, being representational state, having mental qualification (qualia), we will argue that substance emergentists are in a better position to explain consciousness and its essential properties.

With the departure of Western philosophies from their original application, the question came to the forefront of thinking: how can thoughts encounter, and what is their relation to each other? This basic question, with the effort of numerous thinkers, underlies the way of thinking that is called comparative philosophy. But rather than being a method or a model, comparative philosophy was more a horizon that examined the possibility of meeting ideas. Comparative philosophy was basically a question rather than an answer; The question is, what is the condition for the possibility of turning to the other? The subject of the present article is a re-reading of the basic components and grounds of Heidegger's thought in order to show the possibilities of correspondence in them. The article argues that Heidegger has been deeply involved in the central question of comparative philosophy in many periods of his thought, although he never took advantage of the title of comparative philosophy, but considered philosophy to be the same as confrontation with the other. In his view, the task of thinking is to continuously pursuit a new beginnings for thought; His approach to pre-Socratic thought, Holderlin's poetic thought, and confrontation with Eastern traditions may be the clearest examples of this quest. The guiding question of the article is that is it possible to attain a project for comparative philosophy and its central question about the possibility of confrontation with the other on the basis of fundamental components of Heidegger's thought?

Logic tells us what come from a set of propositions, as premises; it tells us when our arguments are valid. And logic can show us the inconsistency of our theories. The claim is that, in addition, logic requires us to believe in the implications of our beliefs and to disregard inconsistent beliefs. So, it seems that logic, except for studying the validity of the arguments, have special merit. This particular position, which is called normativity of logic, issues requirements for thinking as such, and distinguishes it from other sciences. Frege is one of the advocates normativity of logic, which sees logic, as Ethics, as normative science; but Harman argues that logic does not interfere in the evaluation and guidance of everyday human reasoning. Meanwhile, MacFarlane, with the exact expression of the problem of normativity of logic, seeks to make the slightest form of the problem, but Field with an essentially normative conception of the implication tries to avoid any barrier to the normativity of logic.