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Ayala (American philosopher and biologist) has presented new theories on the evolutionary ethical explanations. Due to the large scope of Ayala’s discussion on evolutionary ethics, only some of his theories will be reviewed in this paper after mentioning Ayala’s theoretical foundations about the formation of moral sense and moral norms. Following Darwin, Ayala distinguishes the moral sense and the moral norms accepted by the human community. Therefore, he believes that the biological-natural processes lead to the evolution of the human mind; this growth and development in the mind results in the moral sense in the human. On the one hand, the norms and ethical systems of any human society have been emerged due to the cultural evolution in that country. Hence, cultural evolution is the foundation of Ayala’s ethical pluralism theory. As such, Ayala advocates the objectivity of moral values and Kantian subjective morality. He rejects the dependence of the moral sense on evolutionary mechanisms such as group selection and relative selection since he, like Kant, regards human rationality as the only reason for justifying moral sense. In this paper, Ayala’s theories on ethical pluralism and the role of cultural evolution in the formation of moral norms are discussed and criticized. Ayala’s success in establishing a universal normative ethical system will be approached skeptically; however, his biological explanation of the origin of moral sense can be considered as a Kantian account of morality.

This paper focuses on the Anatman experience as described by Guatma(6th century BCE). Many Buddhist philosophers consider the absence of self as a foundational experience of Buddhism. This paper elaborates the Buddhist Absence of Self from the View of Existential Phenomenology. The paper articulates the phenomenological difference between the Ontic-Ontological absence of Self in early Buddhism and the Ontic-Ontological presence of Self in Contemporary Existential Phenomenology. Throughout the paper there is an Existential Phenomenological focus on the intertwining of our Sense of Self and our Sense of Being. The sense of self in early Buddhism is being-less, baseless and empty. Empty of What? Empty of Being! There is no presence of Being and no Being of presence. There is no experience of Being. There is no source of Being. There is no source of Being for our mind. The mind is absent of Being. There is no source of Being for us as person. In early Buddhism the absence of self is the absence of Being-ness.

Much recent discussion of the epistemology of religious belief has focused on justification of belief in the existence of God. Religious belief, however, includes much more than belief in God. In this paper, it is argued that the justification of belief in God is best seen in the context of other interrelated religious beliefs and practices. Philosophers of religion argue about whether religious belief requires evidence and on the sorts of arguments that have been presented. In this paper, a dialectical approach to the justification of religious belief is suggested that draws upon Hegel, Peirce, and W. E. Hocking. Rational reflection on the nature of experience that provides the solution to the problems of skepticism and solipsism in the Hegelian tradition, a tradition self-consciously developed by both Peirce and Hocking. If reason itself is only manifest in social exchanges, then the rationality of religious belief cannot be a private affair restricted to the subject of experience; rather it is the process of communicative interactions in accord with the overlapping norms of those who participate in them. Finally, some implications of this approach for the problem of religious diversity are sketched.

Abu Nasr Farabi focuses on influence of the music on emotions and emotional problems including extreme emotions and moods. But how effective is music in changing a specific emotional issue? This essay reports what is probably the first scientific study of the effect of music on a precise extreme mood. Using a randomized experiment, we measure how a music affects sexism. More specifically, the experiment measures the extent to which a piece of music that we have created weakens the belief among some Muslims that women are not as suitable as men for positions of chairmanship. We find that the music reduces sexism by 22.48 percent, compared to a control treatment that presents the same argument and story verbally. Results, moreover, indicate that prejudice against women is not an inherent feature of Islam and is rather a function of the descriptive beliefs that prevail in some Islamic societies regarding women’s capabilities.