SINCE ancient times, human beings have always pondered philosophical questions relating to living organisms, the planet Earth and the universe itself. What is life? Are human beings special living organisms? What is that twinkling star in the night sky? What is the universe? How big is the universe and where does it begin and end? These are just a few questions. However, these questions can har...

In his book, Conversations on Ethics, Alex Voorhoeve interviews eleven prominent moral philosophers about central aspects of their views as well as about their intellectual development.1 In their order of appearance, these are: Frances Kamm, Peter Singer, Daniel Kahneman, Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, Ken Binmore, Allan Gibbard, Thomas Scanlon, Bernard Williams, Harry Frankfurt, and David ...

This paper has two central aims. The first is to explore philosophical complications that arise when we move from (i) explaining the evolutionary origins of genetically influenced traits associated with human cooperation and altruism, to (ii) explaining present manifestations of human thought, feeling and behaviour involving cooperation and altruism. While the former need only appeal to causal ...

Although Motahari is not a political thinker but analyzing his political ideas and believes amongst the ideas of Iranian political thinkers in the last 5 decades is indeed essential because Motahari’s political standpoint has a key role in Islamic revolution of Iran. This paper regards Motahari''s vision to his time and studies his writings according to the questions he faced and posed in his t...

I WANT TO MAKE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN CONCEPTS (BEGRIFFE) AND CONCEPTIONS (Auflassungen), and a related distinction between descriptions (Beschreibungen) and pictures (Bilder). I will then try to put this material to work in clarifying an important dimension in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Invest&ations: the difference between conceptual analyses and overviews ( Ubersichten or Uberblicken) [comp...

This article introduces the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the relationships between implicit notions of human nature and explicit conceptualizations of social life within sociology. Philosophical sociology is also an invitation to reflect on the role of the normative in social life by looking at it sociologically and philosophically at the same: normative self-reflection is...

in this article, the writer, exploring the most important theories of psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists about the origin of religion and roots of religiosity, tries to show that there is no ultimate agreement and explanation about these questions and that the currently working theories are suffering from grave theoretical and/or empirical shortcomings. the writer, however, argues ...