نشریه متافیزیک
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 6، بهار و تابستان 1389)

One general categorization by some of the contemporary analytic philosophers divides the facts into institutional and brute. The characteristic of institutional facts is that they are constituted by collective recognition. Typically, these facts follow the constitutive rules formula: "X in C counts as Y". These facts have raised some important questions for philosophers: How is it possible that some facts are realized only through human recognition? What is the nature of institutional facts? Can we count them as objective? If yes, in what sense? Here we argue that the essence of institutional facts is status functions. Humans recognize these functions which contain a set of deontic powers through collective intentionality. Therefore, institutional facts are ontologically subjective and epistemologically objective. Nevertheless, objectivity of institutional facts totally depends on language; which itself is a fundamental institution for other institutions.

As Derrida points out, Husserl needs the logical purity of meaning to constitute phenomenology, and he assures this by differentiating expressive and indicative signs. The realm of Platonic senses is confirmed by adopting expressive signs, wherein language expresses phenomenological ideal truths. But by refusing Husserl’s arguments and showing paradoxical faces of Husserl’s program, Derrida declares the impossibility of phenomenological project. Here we want to evaluate Derrida's analyses.

Kant’s view on existence leads to problems. This paper starts with formulating two of those problems, which were originally discussed by Jerome Shaffer (1962) − the problems that I call “the problem of contradiction” and “the problem of triviality”. According to the first problem, existential propositions while should be synthetic, as Kant believed, become analytic. According to the second problem, Kant’s view implies that in the act of predicating either the subjects cannot have exact objects as their extensions (epistemological idealism) or nothing could be a real predicate (all propositions become tautologous or pseudo-propositions). Then, I will look at very briefly different approaches to these problems. Finally, it will be shown that the abovementioned two problems can find satisfactory solutions if Kant’s views on existence are interpreted, not on the basis of the post-Fregean approaches, but on the basis of the same assumptions of his preceding philosophers; the assumptions whose background can be traced back to Descartes’, Gassendis’, Aquinas’, and before them, Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna) thesis concerning essence, existence and their relation.

This paper is devoted to investigating the philosophical place of Subjectivity in the contemporary thought. My justification for engaging in further study on this much-discussed concept is that three significant questions concerning subjectivity have remained insufficiently examined: What is the problem of philosophical foundation of modernity from Cartesian Cogito to the Kantian autonomous will and to the Hegelian subjectivity? Is there any possibility to overcome the proposed problem from an internal point of view and from the perspective of Jürgen Habermas? Whether the radical criticism of the Enlightenment idea of an autonomous subject by thinkers like Foucault and Derrida leads to loss of freedom or to the robust notion of freedom being deeply improved? This paper, accordingly, will examine the three above mentioned questions regarding subjectivity across three sections. I have argued, in the first section that the Enlightenment’s heritage is contradictory. On the one hand, the notion of subjectivity has generated a kind of emancipation. On the other hand, the subjectivity has enthroned a conception of reason and of method that can be interpreted as a new form of domination. In the second section, I have argued that Habermas’s answer to the philosophical dilemma of subjectivity is to accept the criticism of subject-centered reason but to find a basis for reason in communicative action. Habermas’s conception of subjectivity has been criticized by the help of some contemporary thinkers, in the third section of this paper, and it has been argued that based on his notions of modernity and subjectivity the marginalized populations of the World- namely the Other- can no longer expect intellectual and ethical support for their plight from Frankfurt and should immigrate to Paris in order to purse the emancipatory aspect of subjectivity.

Many rules of Ancient Logic need the existence of the subject, and this existence can be either added into the propositions’ structures or regarded as a part of the rules, as enthymematic premise. The two approaches can be named “intra-proposition” and “intra-rule” commitments. The first thinkers who used the latter explicitly are Avicenna and Nasir Al-din Al-Tousi, respectively, on Obversion and Contraposition. Al-Tousi added the proviso of the existence of the subject as not only the premise of Contraposition, but also as its conclusion. In contemporary period, Al-Muzaffar added Inversion to the body of Ancient Logic’s rules. Inversion can be validated by none of the commitments mentioned: Avicennian or Al-Tousian intra-proposition and intra-rule. We show that it can be defended by no other means.

It is usually thought that the best way to describe the second order philosophical concepts is to describe them as those concepts that are predicated mentally or in mind, but characterize objects externally. This description has been in widespread use, and has been accepted by many philosophers after Mullasadra. Two contemporary Muslim philosophers, Motahari and Javadi Amolei have made serious endeavors to clarify the description in recent years. Motahari believes that these concepts exist in mind though applicable to things that exist in the external world. His view in fact reflects the traditional view. Ayatollah Javadi Amolei, on the contrary, has rejected the description, and criticized the view on many points. He believes that the second order philosophical concepts exist whenever their subject matter exist externally, things from which they are abstracted and to which they are applied, though their existence is non-substantial and non-concrete. Yet, there exists a relation that relates them to the mind. This article is intended to provide an analysis of the issue, and make some comments on the both views. The article ends with some reference on the theory of “principality of existence" and the effect it can have on a better understanding of the subject.

One of the most popular accounts of the teleological argument for the existence of God is the analogical account that is the center of Hume’s knocker criticisms. Since Hume’s age, many theist scholars have attempted to propose convincing responses. Motahari is one of the rigorous thinkers who tackled the challenges which Hume posed. The purpose of this paper is to address Hume’s criticisms and assess Motahari’s rejoinders to them. It will be argued that Motahari’s responses do not seem successful. Although Motahari has tried to refute Hume’s criticisms in some of his works, he implicitly endorsed Hume’s assessment of the analogical account of the teleological argument in other works, and came ultimately close to the Hume’s view. As Hume believed that the argument from design is not a successful philosophical argument to prove God’s existence that the theist contend, Motahari also admits at the end that this argument alone cannot prove God’s existence and emphasizes that the argument from design cannot prove God of Abraham’s religions, that is a person with necessary being, who is immaterial and eternal, is omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good, and the creator of the universe. Motahari ultimately believed in deficiency of the argument from design too, and assessed it as an argument with limited functions for God’s existence.