نشریه فلسفه تحلیلی
پیاپی 17 (بهار و تابستان 1389)

The meaning of life is one of the most important subjects in philosophythat John Cottingham in “on the meaning of life” discusses this. Thequestion of the meaning of life is important in his view because justhuman being asks “what is the meaning of life” because of his certainexistential situation. In Cottingham’s view, the characteristics of themeaning of life are profundity or seriousness, achievement, selfawarenessand autonomy, moral life i.e. moral objective values, successand theism or religious life. Cottingham holds that moral life cansatisfy human needs and flourish his talents. But our human nature ispurely result of genetic mutation in simply human view. Thereforemoral judgments do not have objective value because they depend onthis nature. Moreover, human being would not be successful in hisprojects and activities because of his vulnerable and fragile nature. Wecan reach conclusive reason for objective moral judgments and valuesand being hopeful for successful and meaningful life only if we rely onreligious and spiritual worldview which that benevolent god desires usto be moral. In Cottingham’s view, Understanding and acceptingreligious and spiritual worldview depends on exercising religiouspractices. in my humble opinion, Cottingham cannot explain howtheism support successful life because he does not use the concept oflife after death.

In history of ideas, although traditional rationalists used reason andreasoning to justify any claim (hypothesis, theory, and…), Popper andhis pupils, as critical rationalists, emphasis on falsifying any. Criticalrationalists believe that human knowledge is fallible; and thisknowledge not only can’t fulfill any justification, but also need to noone. For human knowledge is fallible and confined, critical rationalistsrelay on rationality to the extent that it help us to detect our errors andfailures. According to critical rationalists, critical method is merely tocriticize all of ideas, beliefs, and etc. unstoppably in order to reveal theprobable, tacit faults. Scientific theories, in their view, are daringconjectures which come from encountering with problems; theseconjectures are not justifiable and must be falsifiable (and thereforerefutable) through severe test. The refutation to old theory is theparamount process of scientific discovery. If any new theory survivemore of such refutations, it would have a higher verisimilitude andtherefore, critical rationalists suggest that it is closer to truth. So criticalrationalists have exposed some innovations in philosophy of science,but there are a few critiques which they are (or should be) going to dealwith.

With the discovery of second law of thermodynamics and the attemptto supervene it on the classical dynamics, the paradox of irreversibilityshowed up for the first time, as the laws of classical dynamics, incontrast to the second law of thermodynamics, were reversible andsymmetric with respect to time. In this paper, after reviewing theproblem of irreversibility, we pin down two rival approaches to theproblem. The first approach whose pioneer is Ilya Prigogine claims thatirreversibility arises out of dynamical instabilities defined as “disorder”at microscopic level. However, according to the rival theory, which isadvocated by Price and Bricmont, irreversibility at macroscopic levelarises out of specific initial conditions of the world. This is notcontrasted with the notion of irreversibility at microscopic level.Although the two rival theories are completely different with respect totheir theoretical foundations, I will show that one can trace a consensusin a view that reversibility is “practically in principle” impossible. Thisis the term I have coined for the commonality between the two opposedtheories

This paper analyzes critically how the philosophy of engineeringaffects to collect the history of engineering so that it is answered indetail to this problem that “Does the history of engineering entail thephilosophy of engineering”. At first, it is identified the relation ofbetween engineering and technique, in order to be explored the relationof between engineering and technology. Therefore, it is definedtechnology as an actual epistemic system and engineering as aknowledge and potential creative practice into the technologicalframework. Thus, it is understood the philosophy of engineering as adeveloped field of the philosophy of technology so that it isdistinguished as an independent philosophical field with having, atleast, a unique original question “what is engineering”. Therefore, someof issue and problem in the philosophy of technology transfer into thephilosophy of engineering and influence it, some of problem such as:the demarcation problem between engineered artifact and naturalobject, the demarcation problem between engineering and science, theexistential and historical priority problem between engineering andscience, and the autonomy problem of engineering knowledge to socialcontext. Finally, according to the applicable and open problems, it isshowed how the philosophy of engineering and its problems affects tocollect the history of engineering. Consequently, it seems thatresearchers of the history of engineering should concern the problemsfor their studies and think about them critically and strategically.

The infallibility of Prophets has been considered as a significant matterfor Muslim theologians from the ancient periods. Fakhr Razi (died in606 A.P.) is regarded as the most prominent Sunni theologians whofollowed Ashari school.He ascribes prophets as infallible persons. Hence, he believes that theinfallibility is necessary rather for passing the prophet hood, but notbefore the incidence. He believes that an individual has the capacity toreach eminence of infallibility merely at the time he bears certain traitswithin the body or spirit in order to prevent him from committing sinsin this respect. He should obviously be aware of the obscenity of sinand grace of obedience to hear the divine inspiration of GodAlmighty’s sublime Excellency. If this individual committees anymiscue in the lapse, he must be blamed for it to be aware of theobscenity of committed sin.Fakhr Razi considered the realm of belief, prophet hood, sentence,Judgment, deed and inclination as the subject of controversy amongtheologians in the issue of infallibility of prophets.

Aristotle and Spinoza are two stream making Philosophers in thehistory of philosophy, and both has chosen the matter of substance astheir philosophical subject. The root of many disputes on a huge part ofwest philosophy can be obtained through comparing the characteristicsof the sub from their point of view. This is notable that thesephilosophers has some similarities in defining the substance, but theyget far from each other in defining the characteristics and instances ofsubstance. The article's first step to examining Aristotle's viewpoint intwo books of Arganon and Metaphysics, and analayzing Spinoza,stheory in book of Ethics. However, looking toward the meaning ofsubstance in the Avecina's custom context and expression, and hisinnovation can also help for better understanding of substance throughMashaism's views. The researchers scale for analyzing has been theamount of consistency of substance definition with the other parts ofphilosophical system. With examining the following the conclusionwould be that Spinoza's definition bears more logical stability andprovides a more solid system.

Duhem’s viewpoint about physics is a systematic and mathematical onethat surely somehow has effected to his philosophical explanation ofscientific theories. For Duhem, the aim of science is classifying thephenomena in a good mathematical frame in which it could identify thereal relationships among the theoretical identities without manifestingthem. Theories are not only full boxes of phenomena classified toolsthat are proper for today and improper for tomorrow. The mostimportant characteristic of a scientific theory is to predict phenomenaand experimental laws that is not discovered, but what is effective inthis novel predict is the relationship between identities. In the view ofontology, scientific theories make no commitment for theoreticalidentities. In spite that Duhem is a scientific historian, and by searchingin his works and ideas we can’t clearly say Duhem is the realist or theinstrumenalist about scientific theories. Even some believe that he istried to find a way between realism and instumentalism. In this paper,at first Duhem ideas about the aim and structure of physical theory willbe surveyed. Then by some pro and opponent ideas with Duhem'srealism we will demonstrate his ideas about scientific theories has moretendencies to structure realism.