Abbas Mahdavi
Abstract
In this article, I examine Fodor's modal argument for individualism and for narrow content. Fodor's modal argument wants to show that my twin-earth and I have thoughts with the very same causal powers; XYZ-thoughts and water-thoughts are not different causal powers with respect to water- behaviors and ...
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In this article, I examine Fodor's modal argument for individualism and for narrow content. Fodor's modal argument wants to show that my twin-earth and I have thoughts with the very same causal powers; XYZ-thoughts and water-thoughts are not different causal powers with respect to water- behaviors and XYZ-behaviors. If this is so, Fodor argues, then my twin and I do not differ in any psychological state, and individualism is true. Fodor examine his argument by “no-conceptual-connection test” or “New Logical Connections Argument”. Therefore To see whether causal powers are the different, there must be the no-conceptual connections between cause-properties and effect-properties. Fodor argues that the difference between my water-thoughts causing his intentional water-drinking behavior and my twin's XYZ-thoughts causing his XYZ-drinking is a conceptual difference. Hence, the water/XYZ thoughts are not different causal powers. finally, I show that Fodor’s version of the New Logical Connections argument or Fodor’s no-conceptual-connection test don’t work. If this is so, Then Fodor's defense of narrow content and individualism does not sufficient.
Sayyed Saied Mirahmadi
Abstract
As is well known, special theory of relativity rests on two postulates: (1) the postulate of “relativity”; (2) the postulate of “the constancy of the speed of light in vacuum in all inertial frames”. In this theory, the second postulate is neither an obvious principle nor a logical ...
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As is well known, special theory of relativity rests on two postulates: (1) the postulate of “relativity”; (2) the postulate of “the constancy of the speed of light in vacuum in all inertial frames”. In this theory, the second postulate is neither an obvious principle nor a logical consequence of other obvious principles. Therefore, in order to evaluate the validity of this postulate, its experimental verification is necessary. In this paper, it becomes clear that by accepting the common thesis of the conventionality of distant clocks synchronization, the experimental verification of the second postulate is not possible. However, it is shown that by conducting experiments to examine “the independence of the speed of light from the speed of its source”, the experimental refutation of the second postulate is possible. It is explained that under what conditions these experiments are crucial.
qasem Zaeri; Mohaddeseh Qashqaee Khavas
Abstract
David Bloor, one of the leading leaders of the Edinburgh School, refuted the theory of Strong Program by proposing four principles. These four principles include the principle of causality, the principle of symmetry, the principle of impartiality and the principle of reflexivity. According to the principle ...
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David Bloor, one of the leading leaders of the Edinburgh School, refuted the theory of Strong Program by proposing four principles. These four principles include the principle of causality, the principle of symmetry, the principle of impartiality and the principle of reflexivity. According to the principle of causality, sociology must go through a causal process because only then will it lead to the creation of a belief or a situation of knowledge, and there will also be a variety of causes apart from social affairs in the creation of beliefs. According to the principle of symmetry and impartiality, sociology is neutral towards dualities and must explain the same types of causes. And the remarkable point in the reflexivity principle is that the patterns of explanation of the sociology of knowledge must be applicable to the sociology itself. The two most important principles in a strong program are the principle of symmetry and then the principle of causality, which is widely discussed among the proponents and critics of a strong program.
ahmadreza Hemmati Moghaddam; Shima hadinia
Abstract
Phenomenal qualities of conscious mental states are commonly known as “qualia”. We say that a particular mental state has qualia if and only if There is something that it is like to be the mental state. Some philosophers have challenged the epistemic and explanatory values of qualia. They ...
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Phenomenal qualities of conscious mental states are commonly known as “qualia”. We say that a particular mental state has qualia if and only if There is something that it is like to be the mental state. Some philosophers have challenged the epistemic and explanatory values of qualia. They argue that the concept of qualia has no role to play in a mature and well-organized psychological theory. Consequently, this concept has no epistemic value. This paper aims at explaining and criticizing these arguments. It will be argued that these arguments are ineffective and cannot establish that the concept of qualia can not have functions in a scientific theories. The distinction between metaphysical subjectivity and epistemic objectivity, as it will be shown, can establish a scientific place for the concept of qualia.
Elham Rabiee; mahdi hosseinzadehyazdi
Abstract
Relationalism is at the opposite point of substantialism, and instead of studying objects separated from each other, it starts to study the objective relations that determine them. The Marburg school is one of the most important exponents of this idea. The explanation provided by the Marburg school of ...
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Relationalism is at the opposite point of substantialism, and instead of studying objects separated from each other, it starts to study the objective relations that determine them. The Marburg school is one of the most important exponents of this idea. The explanation provided by the Marburg school of relationalism was to solve the crisis of science in the 20th century. In other words, this school sought to provide an answer to the paradox of the progress of science at the same time as revolutionary changes occurred in it without losing scientific objectivity. The idea of the Marburg school was that if these changes could be explained based on an objective method or law, the credibility of science would be preserved. This objective method is the transcendental method that was reformulated inspired by Kant's transcendental logic. In this approach, the relationship between concept and reality has been revised, the reality is completely conceptual and at the same time dynamic, and it is explained how the object of scientific theories is continuously reproduced as a cultural component.
Zahra Zargar
Abstract
“Gender” has a transformative nature in both its conceptual and practical aspects. As a result of changes in the material conditions of human life and social contracts, gender issues vary over time and across cultures and societies. In recent centuries, “technology” has been one ...
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“Gender” has a transformative nature in both its conceptual and practical aspects. As a result of changes in the material conditions of human life and social contracts, gender issues vary over time and across cultures and societies. In recent centuries, “technology” has been one of the major sources of change in human life, that mutually has affected gender issues and is affected by them. Exploring the mutual relation between technology and gender is a field of research that places in the overlap area of Technology Studies and Gender Studies. This paper focuses on the technology’s impact on the transformation of gender in both its conceptual and practical aspects. To this end, Verbeek’s post-phenomenological theory of “Mediation of Technology” from Philosophy of Technology, and Stoljar’s “Cluster Paradigms of Womanhood” from Metaphysics of Gender are appealed. It is suggested that using these theories provides a comprehensive and subtle theoretical framework for analyzing and exploring varieties of technology’s mediation in gender transformation.
saeid zibakalam
Abstract
In a previously published short article, I had simply remarked that in the extremely complex and fluctuating political arena, political scientists, political philosophers, political activists and politicians have never been able to reach a tentative trans-historical and trans-social consensus about criteria ...
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In a previously published short article, I had simply remarked that in the extremely complex and fluctuating political arena, political scientists, political philosophers, political activists and politicians have never been able to reach a tentative trans-historical and trans-social consensus about criteria of “correctness” and “rationality”, nor can they. In this paper, I want to go further to explain why they, along with sociologists and economists, have never been able, and will never be able, to reach such a trans-historical and trans-social consensus. To do so, I have raised and tried to critically analyze the following questions:- What factors or causes have prevented social scientists and political philosophers from reaching, even tentatively, a trans-historical and trans-social consensus about criteria of “correctness” and “rationality”? - Do social scientists and those active in the socio-political realm typically encounter the question of what the epistemological criteria of “correctness” and “rationality” are?- Why do social scientists have typically no clear and articulated conceptualized understanding of the criteria of “correctness” and “rationality”?
Mohsen Khademi
Abstract
Paul Karl Feyerabend is one of the extremely influential philosophers of science in the second half of the twentieth century that his controversial works and opinions have reduplicated his reputation. This is his provocative works led to a misunderstanding for some academics and experts in philosophy, ...
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Paul Karl Feyerabend is one of the extremely influential philosophers of science in the second half of the twentieth century that his controversial works and opinions have reduplicated his reputation. This is his provocative works led to a misunderstanding for some academics and experts in philosophy, so that someone called him the Worst Enemy of Science. In this article I'm going to show that this idea isn't true: Feyerabend feels hostile towards neither science, nor any tradition else. He fights only against dogmatic and destructive ideologies. Generally speaking, Feyerabend's ideas express only his hostility to technocracy and chauvinism of science. According to Feyerabend, modern science has a lot in common with the Medieval Church. He would maintain that nowadays science has been turned into a rigid religion whose prophets are scientists, whose miracles scientific discoveries and whose judgements scientific statements. Then it's up to us to put science in its place in order to make room for other traditions and human knowledge.
Hadi Samadi
Abstract
This article is an evolutionary defense of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), which is an approach to medicine that considers researches published in reputable medical journals as the main basis of therapeutic interventions. In this approach, physician’s personal experiences and her intuition, and ...
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This article is an evolutionary defense of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), which is an approach to medicine that considers researches published in reputable medical journals as the main basis of therapeutic interventions. In this approach, physician’s personal experiences and her intuition, and mechanical explanations for medical interventions are deemphasized. Since the advent of EBM, many criticisms have been made on it. Two of them will be mentioned in this article. First, it has been claimed that the replication crisis is a threat for EBM. Second, according to critics, EBM is based on a kind of extreme empiricism, while there are many criticisms for this kind of empiricism. From an evolutionary point of view some rejoinders have been offered to these criticisms. We will also see how to update the theoretical foundations of EBM in the light of these criticisms. In this regard, a defense is presented that in two cases, medical implications can be carried out rationalistically, that is, by considering general medical theories: first, to abandon or ignore any "seemingly" harmless medical advice; and two, by rejecting unqualified articles. At the end, it is mentioned that although by doing so we may reduce the speed of new data entrance in medicine, but from an evolutionary point of view, this level of conservatism is necessary to maintain the credibility of medicine.
Ramin Kazemi; Mohammad Raayat Jahromi; Javid Kazemi
Abstract
The subjective interpretation, as one of the four conventional interpretations of the philosophy of probability, was introduced by Frank Ramsey and Bruno De Finetti to overcome some problems of Bayesianism. This interpretation has fans today and is of interest to many Bayesians. The epistemological feature ...
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The subjective interpretation, as one of the four conventional interpretations of the philosophy of probability, was introduced by Frank Ramsey and Bruno De Finetti to overcome some problems of Bayesianism. This interpretation has fans today and is of interest to many Bayesians. The epistemological feature of the Bayesian framework is subjective trust (or credence). The purpose of this article is to further investigate the subjective interpretation of the philosophy of probability, from the perspective of the tension between probabilistic cognition and non-probabilistic perception. The meaning of probabilistic cognition is knowledge based on mathematical relationships and especially the Bayesian formula, which provides the level of certainty of an event by using credits (degrees of belief). On the other hand, non-probability perception is the result of individual interpretations or any other type of probability assignment without considering the mathematics of probability. The investigations will show that this tension is real, and the solution presented in this article is that in predicting events based on subjective interpretation, non-probability perception cannot be ignored.
Mahmoud Mokhtari
Abstract
The main idea of this article is based on the comparison of "social innovation" with "technological innovation". In innovation studies, based on Schumpeter's view, innovation is "any invention in ideas, methods, products, services, etc. that are connected to the market and customers" (commercialized ...
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The main idea of this article is based on the comparison of "social innovation" with "technological innovation". In innovation studies, based on Schumpeter's view, innovation is "any invention in ideas, methods, products, services, etc. that are connected to the market and customers" (commercialized invention). According to this definition, until an "invention" has reached the market, it cannot be considered an (Schumpeterian) innovation. Most invented technological artifacts can be commercialized with definite mechanisms, but in the case of social innovations, such a thing is not necessarily desirable even if it is possible. Therefore, the main issue of the article is whether "social innovation" can/should be considered Schumpeterian innovation in principle? To answer this question, "ends" and "means" in social innovation are examined and claim that social innovation is not a Schumpeterian innovation. In a social innovation, the "ends" cannot be "purely non-social" although it may fulfill "in addition to" the social ends, other (economic, technological, ...) ends. If the goal of an innovation is only the economic profit of the company, but the method of achieving the goal is social changes, it is still outside the circle of social innovation. In terms of "means", social innovation depends on the "active role" of individuals and social groups, and is a bottom-up process (active social innovation versus passive social innovation). It is shown that the best "means" for an “active social innovation” is “designing” the social objects (rather than using pre-existing social objects).
Mesbah Khandan; Morteza Nouri
Abstract
Husserl presents a scheme of his philosophy of physics in paragraphs 40 to 52 of treatise Ideas1, relying on the foundations of the idea of transcendental phenomenology. The main pillar of his theory is the discussion of the nature and existence of unobservable and theoretical entities in mathematical ...
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Husserl presents a scheme of his philosophy of physics in paragraphs 40 to 52 of treatise Ideas1, relying on the foundations of the idea of transcendental phenomenology. The main pillar of his theory is the discussion of the nature and existence of unobservable and theoretical entities in mathematical physics. He expands his opinion while rejecting and violating two theories of primary-secondary qualities and critical realism and tries to propose an alternative model. In this article, I will first reread the clear and explicit aspect of Husserl's theory about unobservable entities by referring to the text of Ideas1, then by proposing an epistemological framework based on transcendental phenomenology, I will try to complete and reconstruct the ambiguous and controversial aspects of Husserl's theory. In this regard, I will argue that theoretical entities in physics have a "Universal" status, and therefore the discussion of what they are should be done using the doctrine of categorial intuition. In the following, while paying attention to the two ways of realizing universals in Husserl's view (Platonic and Kantian) and emphasizing the role of a ‘primary imaginary given’ in the constitution of universals, I will consider theoretical entities as universals in the Kantian sense and I will give evaluate the advantages and limitations of this interpretation.
Gholamhossein Moghaddam Heidari
Abstract
Hysteria is one of the diseases that have been known for more than two thousand years, and the research about it led to the emergence of psychoanalysis in the late 19th century. But in the 80s of the 20th century, this disease was removed from the list of mental diseases. The change of the etiology of ...
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Hysteria is one of the diseases that have been known for more than two thousand years, and the research about it led to the emergence of psychoanalysis in the late 19th century. But in the 80s of the 20th century, this disease was removed from the list of mental diseases. The change of the etiology of hysteria should be examined in two parts: pre-modern medicine and clinical medicine. In this article, we examine the etiology of hysteria in pre-modern medicine. The article has three parts: In the first part, the etiology of hysteria - the wandering uterus - in humoral medicine is examined. In the second part, the controversies related to the influence of magic factors in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance in the investigation of the etiology of hysteria are examined. In the final part, the impact of the mechanical attitude ruling the 17th century on the etiology of hysteria will be described by the theory of spirits.
Ali seyedi
Abstract
The wide application of mathematics in science raises the challenge of why and how mathematics is so effective and applicable in natural sciences. The explanation of this problem, especially after Wigner's famous article entitled "Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics", has fascinated many scientists ...
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The wide application of mathematics in science raises the challenge of why and how mathematics is so effective and applicable in natural sciences. The explanation of this problem, especially after Wigner's famous article entitled "Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics", has fascinated many scientists and philosophers of science. In this article, we examine different recent approaches to this issue. In addition, we show how metaphysical assumptions and different understandings of mathematics and physics have been involved in the formulation of this problem and the answers given to it. This review can help to a deeper understanding of the problem.
Hamed Bikaraan-Behesht
Abstract
It has been several decades since the center of excellence (CoE) schemes, which are policy instruments for achieving specific goals, have been developed, and several CoEs with different functions have been established. These centers provide suitable environments for research collaborations, especially ...
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It has been several decades since the center of excellence (CoE) schemes, which are policy instruments for achieving specific goals, have been developed, and several CoEs with different functions have been established. These centers provide suitable environments for research collaborations, especially interdisciplinary collaborations, which are essential for mission-oriented innovations for addressing the grand societal challenges. However, CoEs are faced with serious problems. One problem is that, although these centers aimed to create a critical mass of top researchers, which is essential to tackle the grand challenges, there are barriers to doing so. Besides, it seems that CoEs are in opposition to the value of equity that are important in scientific activities. In this paper, after discussing the concept of excellence and the classification, ways of establishing, funding, and the rationale for centers of excellence, I will discuss the two issues of critical mass and equity. Then, inspired by the structure of networks of excellence, I will propose a CoE scheme that can address both issues by establishing a collaborative network of researchers from different institutes to work in a research area or to tackle a societal challenge.
Hadi Samadi; Bahar Manbachi
Abstract
While the significance of beauty and symmetry in science has been a recurring theme in the discourse of many eminent scientists, the philosophical contemplation of aesthetics within the philosophy of science has garnered attention only in recent years. This paper examines the perspectives of renowned ...
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While the significance of beauty and symmetry in science has been a recurring theme in the discourse of many eminent scientists, the philosophical contemplation of aesthetics within the philosophy of science has garnered attention only in recent years. This paper examines the perspectives of renowned scientists on the role of beauty and symmetry, revealing a spectrum of views where beauty is variously seen as a hallmark of truth or regarded with skepticism. We propose a psychological explanation for the scientific preoccupation with beauty and symmetry, suggesting that the human ability to recognize facial symmetry is an evolutionary adaptation. This adaptation's byproduct, we argue, is the inclination to appreciate symmetry in domains beyond the original adaptive purpose. Furthermore, the paper explores how portraiture often deviates from biological standards of beauty, indicating a potential to transcend biological predispositions. The final assertion posits that while the pursuit of beauty and symmetry can drive scientific inquiry, it may also impede the attainment of truth. Drawing parallels with artists who have transcended their biological inclinations, we suggest that scientists, too, might overcome these aesthetic biases.
