truth

The importance of modernity is because of man's place as the axis of all beings and existents like God and the World, and they get their meaning and validity in the light of him. Although man has reason and freedom and he is the noble master of all creatures, in the meanwhile, he has many defects in his existence, and his accomplishments have been gradually increased during the centuries. Hence, we can say that man actually and absolutely does not have any perfection, and he cannot get his achievements perfectly. However, with changing in the relationship between man, God, and the world during the modernity age, the whole of man's approaches to God and the world changed, and this brings about some basic problems and crises. In this process, man gained and acquired a kind of genuineness and principality towards God and the existents of world that their place and importance, especially divine truths like God, were defined in the light of human epistemic abilities and their validity were depended on human knowledge. Hence, the place of divine truths was lowered to the limits of human understanding, which I call it the humanization of divine truths. On the other hand, because of his weakness for understanding the divine truths, man has gradually put them aside from his philosophical thought, and has recognized them meaningless. In the meanwhile, he has tried to understand the empirical world and its managing without considering what is beyond it. I call this demystification of the existents by the other areas such as ethics, politics, and even science, which all of them have been depended on the human being. Consequently, certainty and truth became humanistic, that is, man became as the axis of certainty and truth, which the most important result of that is the relativity of certainty and its restriction to human knowledge, will, and ability. This paper tries to discuss the above subjects, considering some of the important thinkers of modern and postmodern philosophy like as Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Heidegger. It also attempts to show that although Heidegger complained to subjectivism and modernistic approach of truth, his effort to redefine truth and certainty was not successful and could not rescue it from a crisis. That is because he could not go beyond human understanding to reach a holy and absolute certainty and truth, while – according to this paper – the only real way is paying attention to divine certainty, revelation, and God.

W. V. Quine borrows the principle of charity from Neil Wilson, but modifies and enriches its content to fit into his naturalistic philosophy and epistemology. While Wilson ties this principle to the notion of truth, Quine’s attempts in finding a ground for it lead him to the concept of common rationality shared by all human beings, which is ultimately what makes communication, as the basis of our social life, possible. According to the paper's argument, three other expressions, that is, the principles of psychological plausibility, empathy, and projection, which Quine uses in the contexts akin to that of the principle of charity, are not but different terms for one basic idea. Given the ties between the principle of charity and rationality, Quine's wide use of the principle and its affiliated notions proves that rationality is a central, often neglected, idea in his philosophy. The paper begins with an introductory account of the brief explanation Wilson gives of the principle of charity. Then it spells out four concepts or principles of charity, psychological plausibility, empathy, and projection showing how these four notions or principles basically express the same thing. Examining the relation of these last three principles with the principle of charity and rationality, the paper's main objective is to highlight the centrality of common rationality in Quine's philosophy, despite the common view that Quine is purely engaged with semantical aspects of Language. 

Early Muslim philosophers, theologians, logicians and experts in jurisprudence understand knowledge as “firm true belief supported by evidence”. They consider conjectures as a kind of ignorance, the domain of certain knowledge confined in necessary truths; and the domain of uncertain knowledge limited to contingent facts. From their definitions and postulates, we can conclude that they took “having appropriate source” as the criterion of knowledge. For this reason, they included the qualifications “firm” and “immutable” in their definition of knowledge in lieu of distinction between the definition and the criterion of knowledge and separation of cognitive characteristic features of beliefs from the non- cognitive ones. Their approach in epistemology is externalistic but it accommodates foundationalism and fallibilism while evading epistemological relativism. In this approach, knowledge is defined as true belief with proper source. Having proper source is a criterion for knowledge which is not explicitly stated but is implied by different qualifications introduced by them. A source of belief is proper iff it bears a causal relation of some sort to the state of affairs the belief depicts.

Fascinated by the recent scientific progress, even some philosophers today claim that philosophy is dead and that natural sciences (quantum cosmology, cognitive sciences) can answer questions which were once considered a domain of metaphysics: is our universe finite? Do we have free will? etc. The essay tries to problematize this claims by raising a series of questions. First, it is easy to show that modern science itself relies on a series of philosophical propositions. Second, what accounts for the role of science in our world is its link with capitalism. Third, we should distinguish between knowledge and truth: not only philosophy, other discourses (like Marxism or psychoanalysis) also practice a notion of truth which cannot be reduced to knowledge.  

Herman Philipse considers “religious beliefs, faith and religion [to be] incompatible with science or reason”; he defines religion scientifically and specifically rejects religious doctrine. He describes reason “… as the whole of methods of empirical scientific research and critical discursive thinking as they have evolved in the scientific tradition and will continue to develop in the future” and he defines “… the phenomenon of conscience as a mental organ that can be scientifically explained and that makes the religious explanation superfluous …”. Herman Philipse classifies science as the highest in rank, discards religion and sees philosophy, a rational view of the world, as based solely on the sciences. For his subject, Hans Achterhuis “… primarily cites biologists, ethologists and evolutionary psychologists with a philosophical interest” because “they presently have more to offer [him] than do his immediate colleagues”. Furthermore, “… it will be clear that ethologists and sociobiologists are of the opinion that the violent behaviour of human beings must be understood in part from the point of view of the evolutionary history of the sort ….. most philosophers and anthropologists are not aware of this. Their considerations suggest that violence only entered our world together with humankind”. Achterhuis’s choice is a “historic concept of violence”.

The challenge to re-think Post-Modernity opens up if we see modernity in the light ef the phenomenological reduction. 5uspending belief in the central tenets of Modern Philosopf?y discloses that the so-called post• modernist pbilosopby mere!J extends the earlier projec: The failure o] calculative reason trumpeted by po-mo thinkers need not result in the end of the proiect ef rationality. Rather, rethinking the philosophic tradition in a radical fashion leads to greater inclusion ef other perspectives andfaculties and more possibilities far reasoning together in the search for truth.

Recognizing the link between “Cognition" and "Architectural Creation” indicates that there is a relation between subject and object. Correct understanding of this relationship helps artistic creativity, especially in the architecture, to take steps towards proving truth that have caused works to be continued over the past times. Knowledge and cognitions in architecture are categories that today theory of which have been neglected to be explained. Failure to comply with epistemology1, i.e. incorrect epistemology, has resulted to subjective ideas which are emerged in the framework of ideologies expressed in architecture, as a form inconsistent with national and Islamic identity. So that once more, the ideas resulting from perception of the created works, with replacement of concepts and ideas instead of principles and truth of work, tend to reject previous cognition and suggest new cognition-based theories which not only will not lead to integration in works creation but it will be one step away from reality. This process continues until now, due to lack of understanding about the origins of the crisis, the trend is adopted as an individualistic process and art knowledge is juxtaposed with artistic taste. This study is an attempt to review and recognize the role of knowledge in the past process of Islamic architecture in Iran with an analytical- interpretation approach in order to show the role of knowledge in the circle of creation and understanding of architecture as causes of inefficient contemporary theories put forward in this area, by exploring a philosophy of cognition.

Badiou offers a concept of the subject that is completely intertwined with event and truth; in his view, the subject is not an isolated and secluded entity that is supposed to contemplate the world only, rather it is linked to the event, and as a faithful element, initiates the process of truth. Every human being is not necessarily a subject, but in the face of an event and the acceptance of its occurrence, the person in the situation can become the subject. For Badiou, the subject is only part of the process of truth, and this reduces the subject to a part of a material process that has no existential independence. He explicitly states that the subject subordinates to the truth and considers the subjectification of some members of the situation as the result of the occurrence of an event and the beginning of the process of truth. The authors are of the view that Badiou's theory of the subject eventually leads to the relativity of the subject and makes it impossible to provide any explanation about the existence of the subject. He considers truth to be not general but dependent on any particular situation in which the event takes place; again, in his view, truth has a general proclamation and address. But in the authors' view, his type of explanation of the subject also makes the generality of the proclamation of truth relative and so, the truth cannot be generic anymore.

The idea that science is objective, or able to achieve objectivity, is in large part responsible for the role that science plays within society. But what is objectivity? The idea of objectivity is ambiguous. This paper distinguishes between three basic forms of objectivity. The first form of objectivity is ontological objectivity: the world as it is in itself does not depend upon what we think about it; it is independent of human thought, language, conceptual activity or experience. The second form of objectivity is the objectivity of truth: truth does not depend upon what we believe or justifiably believe; truth depends upon the way reality itself is. The third form of objectivity is epistemic objectivity: this form of objectivity resides in the scientific method which ensures that subjective factors are excluded, and only epistemically relevant factors play a role in scientific inquiry. The paper considers two problems that arise for the notion of epistemic objectivity: the theory-dependence of observation and the variability of the methods of science. It is argued that the use of shared standard procedures ensures the objectivity of observation despite theory-dependence. It is argued that the variability of methods need not lead to an epistemic relativism about science. The paper concludes with the realist suggestion that the best explanation of the success of the sciences is that the methods employed in the sciences are highly reliable truth-conducive tools of inquiry. The objectivity of the methods of the sciences leads to the objective truth about the objective world.

Scientific scepticism, fundamentally, questions the veracity and epistemic value of claims not supported by scientific evidence. Motivated by the assumption that only the empirical investigation of reality leads to the truth, the scientific sceptics often maintain that only scientific method is best suited for this purpose. Claims found to be wanting in scientific evidence are considered untrue, and of little or no epistemic consequence. Using the analytical and critical methods, this paper interrogates this epistemic criterion of justification of scientific scepticism. It shows the inherent epistemic deficits in this criterion of the scientific sceptics, and how absolutizing its demands in such a manner as to undermine the veracity and epistemic significance of claims outside the mainstream discipline of science is not only to entrap themselves in many epistemic burdens, but also to sink under the unsavoury weight of criteriological egocentrism, detrimental to cognitive progress. As a credible alternative, this paper explores the epistemic fecundity of contextualistic pluralism – the pluralism of contextually underwritten cognitive positions – in truth and knowledge justification. It concludes with the relevance of this approach in epistemic justification as evident in its inclusive nature as well as its shift of the focus of philosophical thinking from identity to diversity in an interculturality society.  

The aim of this research paper is to study the notion of power and other related concepts devised by Foucault in the novel of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Foucault's theory of power suggests that power is omnipresent, that is, power can be found in all social interactions. In fact, that power is interwoven in all social relations. Moreover, a discourse is made by the government in which identity of characters does not remain fixed and autonomous; truth, as a metaphysical concept, which is supposed to exist as a definite reality becomes a mere game by power relations. The most important aspect that can be seen in this novel is the role of discourse and power in society. Since the novel is set in Jazz age and it coincides with rise of new ideology called American dream, it could be concluded that the characters are influenced by the discourse in which they are living. In fact, the ideology of American dream controls their lifestyle – particularly, the main character – Jay – who has changed himself from a proletarian into a member of bourgeoisie society. Therefore, the identity of the characters is not a fixed concept since how they have gone through process of changing influenced by power relationship which can be seen within them. Moreover, the concept of truth is distorted and unstable in this novel.

What is the state of democracy today? In the Western world, people often take the meaning of this term for granted, but do they genuinely know what democracy is? In this sense, how can we define democracy in today’s digitalized world? What is the relationship between democracy and information? Furthermore, do we really live in a democratic world? In Infocracy: Digitalization and the Crisis of Democracy—the 2022 translation of the original German book Infokratie. Digitalisierung und die Krise der Demokratie, published in 2021 by MSB Matthes & Seitz Berlin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH—Byung-Chul Han reflects on these and other related issues. Han’s analysis of the current political, social, and technological situation indicates that a profound democratic crisis is emerging. The loss of interest in truth, the end of grand narratives, the replacement of reason with data analysis (even in philosophy), the fragmentation of the population due to digitalization, and the predominant role of information in everyday life are all symptoms of a radical transformation underway in Western society, with severe consequences for democratic stability. In these terms, Han’s vision, at times excessively pessimistic, orients us on the crucial issues of our time.