فصلنامه معرفت فلسفی
سال سوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 10، زمستان 1384)

Anselm’s argument is one of the most debated arguments for the existence of God. It is based on the notion of “the Supreme Being”, bridging it to its reality. This argument, however, has had its ambiguity and its pros and cons. For instance, Descartes affirmed it while Kant and Russell rejected it. From among Muslim philosophers, Shahīd Mutahari and Ayatullāh Javādi Āmuli have criticized this argument. This article tries to restructure the argument in a way that it can answer all criticisms.

Sense perception can be studied from different perspectives. Reviewing the place of sense perception in various disciplines, the author suggests some of the most important issues in this regard that can be investigated from an epistemological point of view. He considers most notable from among them problems such as whether sense perception is a kind of knowledge by presence or a type of knowledge by representation, the way sense concepts refer to their referents, the possibility of understanding essentials and the nature of objects, and the reliability of sense perception.It seems that our knowledge of sense perception—namely, corporal reaction itself—is born by way of knowledge by presence, while sense perception is a knowledge by representation, leading to a notion and idea, not to a proposition and affirmation. On the one hand, one cannot reach the depth and real differentia of things through senses nor through reason, and on the other, sense perception is unerring. Possible errors are the result of rational judgments and interpretations about them.

There are at least four main theories about the relation of belief to knowledge:First is the idea of inconsistency of belief and knowledge, which was first proposed by Plato. Second is the idea of their correspondence which was suggested by such philosophers as Ayer, with which some Muslim logicians and philosophers have sympathized. Third is the separability of belief and knowledge and their different spheres, put forward by Colin Radford. And finally, is the theory supported by behaviorism, and called “eliminativism”. One of the consequences of these viewpoints is their different interpretations of the most important facet of belief, namely, “intentional aspect”, the history of which goes back to Ibn-Sīnā. This article is an attempt to explore these points of view. In the first part, the metaphysical issues about belief are discussed, and in the second part, epistemological aspect is studied. The author favors the idea that “understanding” is what can constitute knowledge.

The problem of “the internal inconsistency of propositions” has caught the attention of philosophers and thinkers from the early days. Some of them have considered it as a fallacy, others as a fundamental incoherence between science and mathematics. Still some have called it a linguistic problem, and others thought about it as an ontological and objective issue. Each and every group has also tried to explain and solve this problem. This paper is an effort to study and briefly scrutinize different approaches. In this study, three solutions are examined: a) philosophical solutions, b) logical solutions, and c) meta-philosophical and meta-logical solutions. It looks into different ideas proposed under each solution as well.