نشریه فلسفه تحلیلی
پیاپی 31 (بهار و تابستان 1396)

Richard Rorty gives a descriptive-historical account of philosophical views. He criticizes fundamentalism and representationalism which, since Descartes, have dominated epistemology. The fundamental assumption of philosophers is that philosophy has a prominent role in our understanding of the world, and that philosophical issues are permanent. This means that philosophy is regarded as the ground for our knowledge. Rorty is against that, and so he is in fact against epistemology. Now, the question is whether Rorty is successful in freeing himself from representationalism. Rorty declares his pragmatism according to which knowledge requires dialogue and social action. He calls this view epistemological behaviorism. Charles Taylor describes Rorty’s view as a secular viewpoint which leads to unethical consequences. Taylor says that Rorty’s view is still under sovereignty of representationalism.

The argument from design for the existence of God has been considered by almost all religions and religious preachers. This is because of the persuasive power of this kind of argument. In the 18th century, Hume and some modern philosophers severely criticized the argument and the emergence of evolutionary views reinforced these criticisms. Recently, there has been a new version of the argument which presupposes the validity of evolutionary view and gives a consistent account of theism and theory of evolution. There are instances of this new effort among Christian and Muslim philosophers. Using physics, mathematics, biology, and complex probabilistic calculations, Richard Swinburne formed an inductive argument which claims that theism is consistent with the evolutionary viewpoint. Among Muslims, Murtiza Mutahhari not only believes in this consistency, but also maintains that the evolutionary viewpoint is the best interpretation of God’s purposefulness in the world. These two thinkers are different in respect of the level and form of their discussions, though the content and the results of their arguments seem akin.

In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein attempts to make a distinction between two levels of the states of affairs in order to have a logical and accurate view of the world. For Wittgenstein, metaphysics, ethics, religion, and art belong to the realm of the Transcendental about which you can’t say anything. Rather, it can only be demonstrated. He refers to it as nonsense for it is meta-linguistic. The empirical world or nature is the realm which can be talked about and judged, since it is a picture of reality and the criterion for the truth of propositions, which is the pictorial relationship between language and reality. For Wittgenstein, precise understanding of the world requires the mentioned necessary distinction. He believes that the main metaphysical problem which philosophers historically encountered was due to the lack of this distinction and abuse of language. In fact, by making such a distinction he seeks to secure metaphysical propositions and protect them from philosophers’ interference. This implies Wittgenstein's mystical approach to this field. In this article, we will try to make it clear that Wittgenstein, through linguistic approach, made a distinction between linguistic and nonlinguistic state of affairs, and that this distinction is in itself a contradiction.

In his meta-ethics, Robert Adams endeavors to understand the nature of goodness in accordance with a platonic-theological viewpoint, and then to represent the components of a life of morality and well-being. Hence, inspired by Kripke-Putnam theory, he firstly explains semantic roles of goodness, and then tries to find what best plays those roles. In his view, God is good itself and goodness of things relies on their resemblance to God; things resemblance to God as infinite good makes their excellence. Excellence is a non-instrumental goodness which makes things suitable objects of admiration, love, honor, and even worship. According to Adams, well-being of human life relies on his enjoyment of the excellent: on the one hand, enjoyment of activities in life, and on the other hand the excellence of those enjoyable activities. There are different kinds of excellences (finite goods), including moral values as well as rational, religious and aesthetical values.

In this paper, we first discuss the main questions in evolutionary accounts of religion. Then we offer the main answers to these questions. The hypothesis of religion as a by-product, will be briefly introduced and then Richard Sosi’s criticism of this hypothesis will be explained step by step. In order to criticize the hypothesis of religion as by-product and to provide a proper basis for his criticism, Richard Sosi starts with the definition of religion and regards it as a system. He believes that a religious system is mixed of some primary elements, including various cognitive and behavioral processes. Cognitive assessments determine only one aspect of religion, while religion is a comprehensive system whose overall performance must be examined. Even if the cognitive assessments are precise and can show that metaphysical beliefs are the by-products of some brain functions, this can’t determine whether a religious system is a factor that leads to adaptation. Richard Sosi considers the concept of "by-product" and, through a scientific analysis, shows that religion can be seen as a secondary adaptation or exaptation, not as a by-product.

This article is about the diagnosis of logical paradoxes. That means we are going to examine paradoxes based on the diagnostic aspect. In these type of studies, the main question is that how the paradoxes enter into the inference, and how can they be detected properly. The article concentrates on the structural diagnostic proposals, and studies two kinds of them. First, those which are formed around notions like circularity and impredicativity, which we have studied under the title of “self-reference”. Second, those proposals that are formed based on the assumption of the actual infinite or some kind of indefiniteness and essential extensibility. These are studied under the title of “indefinite extensibility”. The latter group is presented in different versions and here we consider that of Wright and Shapiro. In both cases, the proposal and its conceptual context are surveyed initially. Then, its relation with the paradoxes and the way of inferring the paradoxes from them are explained. Finally, the fact that both proposals can explain common paradoxes leads us to offer an argument which shows that they are somehow identical, and, using a formal semantic mapping, we can adapt each one to the other.

Epistemology is well-known in philosophy, but agnotology, the opposite of epistemology, is a new subject that needs more investigation. Robert Proctor is the first one who initiated studying ignorance as an independent field and termed it agnotology. It is possible to examine agnotology in different areas, as Proctor conducted a detailed research on the agnotology of tobacco industry. Likewise, Science and Public Participation has been scientifically studied by academic institutions only for the past few decades. Public Participation in science is important to improving the interaction between scientists and laymen, science and society. The improvement of public participation in science, leads to scientific and cultural progress. In this essay, we try to study the patterns of public participation in science from an agnotological standpoint.