Philosophical Interest Research Articles

Polemics on Philosophy: A Comparison of The Thoughts of Al-Ghazāli and Ibn Taymiyyah

Philosophy is one of the most pressing matters that have polarized the views of Muslim scholars. Among Muslim scholars who’s contributed to the philosophical discourse and left an indelible mark on the thought of subsequent Muslims across the globe; Al-Ghazāli (d.1111C.E.) and Ibn Taymiyyah (d.1328C.E.) are very prominent. Hence, this work is an attempt to compare the views of the two scholars on Philosophy. The study adopts an analytical method. The findings of the study reveal that there is no controversy between the two scholars and even among the generality of Muslim theologians over the impropriety of Peripatetic and Neo-Platonic versions of Philosophy which were the areas of interest of the so-called Muslim Philosophers in the medieval era; the approach adopted in refuting them remains the area of contention between the two scholars. Despite his reputable criticism of the Philosophers, Al-Ghazāli has also been accused by some Muslim theologians of being tainted with some philosophical heresies, while Ibn Taymiyyah, although not like that of the former, has also been alleged of some philosophical influences. The major contribution of the research is the highlight of similarities and dissimilarities between the two scholars vis-à-vis Philosophy

Restoration as world-making and repair: A pragmatist agenda

The UN’s Decade of Ecosystem Restoration commenced in June 2021, with the expectation that ecological restoration will be vastly scaled-up internationally. Millions of hectares of the earth’s surface is projected to be restored, from forests and peatland to rivers, reefs and grasslands. This will transform restoration from a predominantly localized, community-driven field to a highly capitalized, professional activity. As the renowned biologist E. O. Wilson proposed, the twenty-first century certainly does look likely to be characterized by restoration. And yet, thus far, the still emerging field of ecological restoration has been dominated by the natural sciences, in both theory and practice, neglecting broader questions of how to live in and with restored landscapes. This paper contends that if restoration is to be significantly expanded over the next decade, the social sciences and humanities must be involved to ensure its purpose is given adequate scrutiny, by engaging wider publics of interest in scheme planning, design and implementation. This is crucial given the dominance of natural capital accounting in restoration, which privileges economic reasoning over alternative, more radical forms. Pragmatism, which has a substantive philosophical interest in the relationship between humans and their environment, can offer a distinctive orientation to inquiry conducive to collaboration between the natural and social disciplines. Focusing on waterway restoration in the United Kingdom, and drawing on social and natural science literature, this paper outlines a pragmatist research agenda that recognizes multiplicity in nature, advocates experimentation in human-environment relations, and foregrounds community in democratic renewal. The paper considers not only ways that pragmatism can inform restoration but how restoration can advance a pragmatist agenda for invigorating public life. This encourages scholars to think with not only against restoration, attending to composition as well as critique, as part of a political urban ecology.

Joint attention and communication

ABSTRACT Joint attention occurs when two (or more) individuals attend together to some object. It has been identified by psychologists as an early form of our joint engagement, and is thought to provide us with an understanding of other minds that is basic in that sophisticated conceptual resources are not involved. Accordingly, it has also attracted the interest of philosophers. Moreover, a very recent trend in the psychological and philosophical literature on joint attention consists of developing the suggestion that it holds partially in virtue of communication: it is because we share our thoughts or feelings about an object that our individual attention becomes joint. This paper unpacks the communicative suggestion in a way that accounts for joint attention's basicness.

О свободе воли, принуждении, манипуляции в философии, психологии и праве: к постановке проблемы

The issue of free will and the violence opposing it is of scientific interest for philosophers, psychologists, lawyers. Manipulation is a category related to violence, and it has mainly deserved a scientific explanation either as a method of social management in sociology and philosophy, or as a method of interaction between the state and society in political science. Lawyers have shown less interest in it. The expansion of «information warfare», the establishment of criminal liability for «fakes» under art. 2071, 2072 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation made a legal understanding of these categories particularly relevant. The purpose of this study is an attempt to «implement» achievements in the field of philosophy, psychology, political science into the canvas of modern criminal law to develop a functioning definition of the coercion, manipulation, responsibility, and their relationship with free will as the basic category of all normative legal acts. Therefore, the novelty of the presented research lies in the very formulation of the question.
 The methodological basis of the research if the system-functional and existential-phenomenological method and the experimental method.
 Novelty. Criminal law studies have not been conducted before through the lens of the correlation of free will, coercion and manipulation. 
 Results. Freedom of will in criminal law is the possibility of choosing a certain behavior, whether coercion or manipulation opposes it. It is important to understand that there can be no categories of semi-freedom in law, free will is postulated, it acts as a kind of legal fiction, axiom, hypothesis. Therefore, the emphasis shifts to the establishment of responsibility, based on the premise that the subject had sufficient free will, which is opposed either by coercion or manipulation. The latter can only act as a way of committing a crime. Coercion and manipulation in criminal law have the same structural elements, therefore, the analysis of the phenomenon of «manipulation» in criminal law is constructed through a similar category of «coercion», which has a developed conceptual and methodological apparatus. 
 Practical significance. The results of the study offer a new approach to solving a number of practical problems related to the conceptual apparatus of the criminal law. 
 The conclusions of the work can become a theoretical basis for the practical activities of lawyers practicing «risk-oriented approaches» in criminal law.

How not to decide whether inner speech is speech: Two common mistakes

Philosophical interest in inner speech has grown in recent years. In seeking to understand the phenomenon, many philosophers have drawn heavily on two theories from neighbouring disciplines: Lev Vygotsky’s theory on the development of inner speech in children and a cognitive-scientific theory about speech production. I argue that they have been too uncritical in their acceptance of these theories, which has prevented a proper analysis of inner speech.

A forgotten logical expressivist: Strawson’s philosophy of logic and its challenges

P.F. Strawson contributed to many philosophical domains, including the philosophy of language, the history of philosophy, metaphysics, moral philosophy and philosophical methodology. Most of his contributions in these areas have influenced contemporary debates, either because his views are still defended or because they are still considered worthy of detailed responses. His views on the philosophy of logic have been only rarely discussed, however. My aim in this paper is threefold. First, I provide a systematic account of Strawson’s philosophy of logic. I argue that Strawson is an important predecessor of logical expressivism, a contemporary position in the philosophy of logic most notably defended by Robert Brandom. My main focus is on Strawson’s largely-neglected 1982 paper ‘Logical Form and Logical Constants’, which contains his most mature ideas on the topic. Second, while Strawson’s position is of historical and independent philosophical interest, I argue that he leaves many points unclear. Finally, I propose several clarifications of Strawson’s position.

There Is No Spooky Action at a Distance in Quantum Mechanics.

Einstein became bothered by quantum mechanical action at a distance within two years of Schrödinger’s introduction of his eponymous wave equation. If the wave function represents the “real” physical state of a particle, then the measurement of the particle’s position would result in the instantaneous collapse of the wave function to the single, measured position. Such a process seemingly violates not only the Schrödinger equation but also special relativity. Einstein was not alone in this vexation; however, the dilemma eventually faded as physicists concentrated on using the Schrödinger equation to solve a plethora of pressing problems. For the next 30 years, wave function collapse, while occasionally discussed by physicists, was primarily a topic of interest for philosophers. That is, until 1964, when Bell introduced his famous inequality and maintained that its violation proved that quantum mechanics and, by implication, nature herself are nonlocal. Unfortunately, this brought the topic back to mainstream physics, where it has remained and continues to muddy the waters. To be sure, not all physicists are bothered by the apparent nonlocality of quantum mechanics. So where have those who embrace quantum nonlocality gone wrong? I argue that the answer is a gratuitous belief in the ontic nature of the quantum state.

O DISCURSO FOTOGRÁFICO ENTRE A DOXA E O PARADOXO

Photographic discourse between doxa and paradoxe appearing in 1839 as a technical process of representation of the image, in the amateur and enlightenment middle, Photography will produce a popular speech that will be exclusive for almost three decades: the photographic image is beautiful more perfect it is as an imitation of the reality. Clear and with formal information about time and space. This popular speech includes a short historical information about some authors of technical inventions that improved fixation and circulation image. In the last quarter of that century, as a sensibleness against Industrial making, amateur photographs define an artistic and creative sight supported with a photographic theory, the Pictorialism, that overvalues the creative subject coinciding with new forms of Thought and Art. When Pictorialism is exhausted after the 1st G. War, a new sight which includes the ability of the new camera to mimic cinema effects, the subjective sight will no longer abandon the photographic practice while the photographic literature multiplies itself with the interest of philosophers, thinkers, film makers, psychologists and psychiatrists since the developing of the mass society. In the last quarter of the XX century, with post-modern inspiration, it appears as an international pattern a new History of Photography treated as History of Art, with styles and authors, that still remains. The objective of this work is to distinguish popular and scholarly photographic reading from its origins to the technological revolution that provokes a real crisis through the analysis of its greatest analysts. Taking into consideration our time, a period of numeric change, facing the new computational technology, that work with algoritms, image reading must change, but photographs and analysts repeat analog concept and strategies.

Despair of Self: Strategies of Seeing and Becoming in Linn Ullmann'sDe urolige

Despair of Self: Strategies of Seeing and Becoming in Linn Ullmann's<i>De urolige</i>

Did Einstein predict Bose-Einstein condensation?

The successful prediction of new phenomena by scientific theories has gained much interest in philosophy. I will discuss a case that is often taken to be such a successful prediction within physics: Bose-Einstein condensation. The common story goes: the phenomenon was predicted in 1925 by Einstein, and the prediction was confirmed in 1995 ​at JILA and MIT. I will discuss the history of Bose-Einstein condensation and argue that the observations made in 1995 were inconceivable in several ways in 1925. Therefore, it stands to reason that this is not a story of a confirmed prediction, at least not in the common sense of “prediction”. I will suggest that it would be worthwhile for philosophers to investigate further into differences between types of predictions and the various roles those play in science.

John Locke: The “Jocose Problem” and the Theoretical Foundation of Toleration

Two years after the publication of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he sought advice from his Irish friend, William Molyneux, concerning improvements for the second edition. This discussion resulted in the most substantial alterations of the Essay. Among these changes, Molyneux proposed a “Jocose Problem”—a 17th Century “brain-teaser”—concerning the ability of a formerly blind person to recognize the simple difference between the appearance of a cube and a sphere. Molyneux’s jocose riddle eventually awakened “the greatest philosophic interest” and became the “common center” of attention for 18th Century thinkers like Berkeley, Voltaire, and Diderot (Cassirer 1951, 108-9). The following is meant to reintroduce Molyneux’s Problem by suggesting its origin in the thought of Thomas Hobbes and its bearing on the role of religion in public life. After examining Molyneux’s Problem and its importance for understanding the Essay, I conclude with a brief comparison to Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration in order to stress its bearing on theoretical and practical considerations for a wide range of political scientists.

Michael Field, German Philosophy and Sapphic Identity: Towards Martin Heidegger

Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, also known jointly as Michael Field, took a special and enduring inter-est in philosophy, chiefly in its Germanic branch, but this aspect of their highly intellectualised lives has received no systematic inquiry to date. In this article, I propose to offer an integrative three- fold account of (1) how contemporary critics have approached the Fields mostly from gender-based philosophical viewpoints, (2) how the couple engaged with prominent German thinkers such as Hegel and Nietzsche, and lastly (3) how their ahead- of-time poetics can be fruitfully associated with Martin Heidegger’s deconstructive ontology as expounded in Being and Time. The conclusions I reach, reinforced by a brief comparative study of Michael Field’s Long Ago (1889), are audacious yet promising: the Fields and Heidegger seem to coincide at least in their reverence for ancient Greece, their radical deconstruction of Cartesian individuality, their defence of an aesthetic existentialism, their original reconceptualisation of time, and more importantly in my view, the dismantling of the artificial dichotomy between life and death.

Nietzsche's Dawn: Philosophy, Ethics, and the Passion of Knowledge

Nietzsche's <i>Dawn:</i> Philosophy, Ethics, and the Passion of Knowledge

THE SOPHYAN THE (AL-REFAA) BETWEEN THE META-PHYSICS AND REALITY

The Metaphysics as a branch of the philosophy has be come the interest of the ‎Arab philosophers in cluding the sophyan, so it appeared in their literary texts ‎from which the "the" (AL-Refaa) texts since it includes the meaning of separation ‎from reality. When we stop at it we find it as s trip that makes the spirit moves ‎towards the divine, it requires the approaching despite the impossibility to do ‎that. Allah is the subject of the meta-physics as Ava Sina claimed this research ‎deals with the trip texts as it includes meanings that pass the difficulties, ‎eagerness, love depending on the analytical aspects trying to approach the ‎sounding of the sophyan text‎‎.‎

Introduction

Introduction

The Supreme Being (God) and Man: Who Is to Blame for Bad Destiny?

In Yoruba traditional thought, human destiny has a mysterious power that controls human events. It is believed that every person has their life history before coming to the world. This implies that anything one does is not something done out of free will is done in fulfillment of a preordained or preordained sequence of events. However, Yoruba has such a controversial understanding of the meaning, nature, relevance and reality of the concept of destiny (ayanmo), which has long elicited philosophical interest. While various metaphysical interpretations have been given for this issue, it could be said that most of these interpretations may be seen in four forms: fatalism, predestination, soft-determinism and hard-determinism. However, less emphasis has been placed on man’s free will in determining destiny. Who is to be blamed for bad destiny between the Supreme Being (Olodumare) and man was not completely resolved. Therefore, this paper re-examines who is responsible for the bad destiny suffered by man, between God and Man. Having used critical analysis, this paper argues that in the light of human moral responsibility, character, afterlife, justice andjudgment, there is a shared responsibility between Supreme Being (God) and the man on the bad destiny suffered by man.

Rethinking Ethnography for Philosophy of Science

AbstractWe lay groundwork for applying ethnographic methods in philosophy of science. We frame our analysis in terms of two tasks: (1) to identify the benefits of an ethnographic approach in philosophy of science and (2) to structure an ethnographic approach for philosophical investigation best adapted to provide information relevant to philosophical interests and epistemic values. To this end, we advocate for a purpose-guided form of cognitive ethnography that mediates between the explanatory and normative interests of philosophy of science, while maintaining openness and independence when framing such an investigation to achieve robust unbiased results.

Exculpation and Stigma in Tourette Syndrome

PurposeThere is a widespread recognition that biomedical explanations offer benefits to those diagnosed with a mental disorder. Recent research points out that such explanations may nevertheless have stigmatizing effects. In this study, this ‘mixed blessing’ [2] account of biomedical explanations is investigated in a case of philosophical interest: Tourette Syndrome.MethodWe conducted a vignette survey with 221 participants in which we first assessed quantitative attributions of blame as well as the desire for social distance for behavior associated with Tourette Syndrome.ResultsIn our study, it is confirmed that in the case of biomedical explanations, less blame is attributed than in the case of psychosocial explanations. When presented with a mixed (or an epigenetic) explanation stressing an entanglement of biological and psychosocial factors this did not increase blame attribution. The desire for social distance is unaffected by the type of explanation but the participants’ free text feedback indicates this might obfuscate an underlying dilemma between stigma and blame revealed in recent research.ConclusionThere seems to be potential for blame reduction in explanations where biological and psychosocial factors are entangled. However, dynamic, ‘epigenetic’, explanations require further qualitative research to be performed as well as a philosophical framework to account for the ‘mixed blessings’ account.

Samuel Beckett as World Literature

Samuel Beckett as World Literature

The development of the political system of Russia and Argentina in the 30-40s of the twentieth century

The article is devoted to the features of the development of the political system of Russia and Argentina in the 30-40s of the twentieth century. A special emphasis is placed on the formation of state policy and key aspects of the creation of political institutions during the reign of Stalin in Russia in the context of the development of communist ideology and socialist construction. It is also indicated that the liberal system established by the Constitution of 1853 in Argentina has shown its inability to cope with the political, social, economic and ideological challenges and transformations of Argentina after the falsification of elections in 1930.In this context, the experience of the rather difficult development of the political system of Argentina and Russia in the 30-40s of the twentieth century is of considerable interest, since these two countries faced similar problems of state structure, especially in the field of economics and politics. The political system of a society currently undergoing transformational changes is at the modernization stage of development, which brings it to the status of an object of research and professional interest of political scientists, lawyers, philosophers, sociologists, historians and specialists in the field of other humanities. As a result of these shifts, one of the pressing problems that political science is currently dealing with is the development of clear ideas about the consequences of institutional changes. The issues of the development of democracy, democratic transits, transformations of political systems have become one of the main directions of political science in recent decades. The task of finding out the sources of changes in political institutions and predicting their consequences became especially acute at the beginning of the twentieth century, when a number of countries in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe began to move away from the authoritarian way of government and embarked on the path of democratic development.