scholarly journals God beyond the Boundary-Stones of Thought

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 50-97
Author(s):  
Abbas Ahsan

In this paper, I make the case for epistemic relativism: the radical view that all human knowledge/truth is relative. I extend the application of epistemic relativism to include necessary laws such as the laws of logic. I argue that the truth of such laws are relative to human thought, which are ultimately instances derived from our experiences. These experiences act as limitations to which we are conceptually bound. As a result of this, we cannot apprehend God’s omnipotence. This includes God’s maximal power in being able toperform logically impossible actions. Our epistemic inability to conceive of such logically impossible actions is therefore testimony that God transcends the laws of logic.

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Tubert-Oklander

Freud’s momentous discovery that the largest part of mental life, both individual and collective is unknown to us and out of our control, brought about a major revolution in epistemology and our conception of the human being, but such evolution was stalled by Freud’s adherence to several assumptions that were an essential part of his Weltanschauung or ‘Conception of the World’. These were the individualistic paradigm and the misguided attempt to turn the discipline he had created into a positivistic science, framed in the model of the natural sciences. Orthodox psychoanalysis has since focused on the intrapsychic, leaving out the interpersonal and social dimensions. Group analysis, as introduced by Foulkes has been a bold attempt to transcend the limitations of psychoanalysis and integrate the dimensions it has ignored or denied. Nonetheless, the development of Foulkes’ revolutionary contributions was encumbered by his adherence to Freudian theory, just like the latter was by his creator’s subservience to positivistic natural science. Psychoanalysis and group analysis are two aspects of the wider field of analysis, but they are still impeded by a series of assumptions held by both science and common sense. These are: i) materialistic metaphysics, ii) the Cartesian subject, iii) deterministic positivism, iv) neutral objectivism, and v) rejection of teleology. Hence, the need to go beyond psychoanalysis and group analysis and formulate a new paradigm of the human being. This is a work in progress, being tackled by many people from different fields of human knowledge and practice, such as physical science, biology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, group analysis, sociology, political science, philosophy, theology, hermeneutics, and the Humanities, among many others. It is an interdisciplinary enterprise, to which analysis may and should contribute, but only through an open dialogue with its peers in the field of human thought.


1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Quinn ◽  
Peter D. Eimas

The authors discuss the origins of categorical representations in young infants, using recent evidence on the categorization of animals. This evidence suggests that mature conceptual representations for animals derive from the earliest perceptually based representations of animals formed by young infants, those based on the surface features characteristic of each species, including humans. The shift from perceptually to conceptually based representation is a gradual and continuous process marked by initial, relatively simple, perceptually based representations coming to include more and more specific values of common animal properties. Development is thus a process of enrichment by perceptual systems, including that for language, and without the need of specialized processes that alter the nature of human thought and the representation of human knowledge.


ULUMUNA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-230
Author(s):  
Asep Kurniawan

Human beings are the only creature whose capability of knowledge enabling them to develop. However, this could be hampered by the wrong epistemology understanding based on a religion they believe. This research aims to encourage human thought to be dynamically progressive without jeopardizing values of Qur’an. This is carried out through placing the Islamic epistemology on the autonomy of ration and empirical experiences and conducting dialectical process between them and Al-Qur’an.  Conclusions derived are that human knowledge can develop dynamically and progressively in line with the spirit of the Qur’an. It automatically has an impact on the development of holistic human resources. In this context, Islamic epistemology then is the main drive for the development of human resources.  


1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Kalin

The question of knowledge presents itself as one of the most importantissues for human thought and society because it is through knowledge thatwe establish a bond with God, ourselves, other human beings, the world, itsmeaning and purpose. We establish sociopolitical systems and civilizationson the basis of it. Defined as such, no society can dispense with knowledge.Knowledge, however, transcends the limits of social function and revealssomething of the deepest nature of the human being. Our state of being-inthe-world and being-created-by-God is revealed to us in our knowledge ofourselves. More importantly, we do not simply exist but also know that weexist. It is this knowledge that enables us to make sense of the world, conceiveit as an intelligible state of being, and realize our place and role in it.Knowledge, however, is always the knowledge of something. Everymeaningful statement is the affiition or negation of something. In knowinga physical entity, a concept, or a feeling, we affirm or negate the existenceof that “thing” which has become the subject of our knowledge. This“thing” and the “of” of our judgments ultimately hark back to the allencompassingreality of being, because what can be affirmed or negatedcannot be other than being. In this regard, there is no knowledge that precedesbeing. Every cognitive act directed toward ourselves or other thingsthat can be the subject of human knowledge is grounded in the all-inclusiveand penetrating reality of being. This aspect of being has been called inIslamic philosophy the in&@ al-wujud, “expansion of being,” and sometimesal-sarayun al-wujiid, “penetration of being.” In sharp contrast to theepistemologies of subjectivism, one is before one knows. Our existencealways precedes our knowledge of it, even though the latter may effect andmode the former in a myriad of ways. Said differently, the reality of beingis not exhausted in the deliverances of conceptual thought.’ ...


1863 ◽  
Vol 8 (44) ◽  
pp. 482-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Maudsley

Although the axiom ex nihilo nihil fit may unquestionably in strict logic be pronounced to be a pure assumption, for as much as it is not impossible that an enlarged experience may sometime furnish us with an instantia contradictoria, yet it is plainly necessary within the compass of human knowledge to consider it an established truth. Within human ken there is, indeed, no beginning, no end; the past is developed in the present, and the present in the prediction of the future; cause produces effect, and effect in its turn becomes cause. Dust is man, and to dust he returns; the individual passes away, but that out of which he is created does not pass away. The decomposition of one compound is the production of another, and death is an entrance into a new being. This is no new truth, although modern science is now for the first time making good use of it; the earlier Grecian philosophers distinctly recognised it, and it has many times been plainly enunciated since their time. “All things,” said Empedocles, “are but a mingling and a separation of the mingled, which are called birth and death by ignorant mortals.” Plato expressed himself in like manner; and the plain statement of the truth was one of the heresies of the unfortunate Giordano Bruno. The imagination of Shakspeare, faithful to the scientific fact, traces the noble dust of Alexander till it is found stopping a bung-hole, and follows imperious Caesar till he patches a hole to keep the wind away. The immortality of matter and of force is an evident necessity of human thought.


2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (03) ◽  
pp. 314-320
Author(s):  
Zakia MEHENNA

The world witnessed a tremendous intellectual flow towards technological development in its conceptual, cognitive and technical perspective, in order to reach the highest levels of human knowledge, which had precedence in human existence within Qur'an. This research is focusing on the reproduction of the HolyQur'an miracle in human thought, through the successive researches and scientific studies via the high technology, especially if it's related to the semantic linguistic and its contents translated into the realities of human existence in its real space, which we see in the semantics of the digital system within the language of the Holy Qur'an, and accordingly we will focus on the reality of the emergence of a mathematical system that is well-established in the space of Arabic for the technics of the technological age that we are witnessing today, as the letters, words and sentences in the verses and surahs of the Noble Qur'an come in a precise form bearing connotations, according to a numerical system, a mathematical complex indicative of the language of the Furqan, which the statement and Arabic rhetoric are wrapped in its digital miracle.


Author(s):  
Pierre Aubenque

Pierre Aubenque’s “Science Regained” (1962; translated by Clayton Shoppa) was originally published as the concluding chapter of Le Problème de l’Être chez Aristote, one of the most important and original books on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In this essay, Aubenque contends that the impasses which beset the project of first philosophy paradoxically become its greatest accomplishments. Although science stabilizes motion and thereby introduces necessity into human cognition, human thought always occurs amidst an inescapable movement of change and contingency. Aristotle’s ontology, as a discourse that strives to achieve being in its unity, succeeds by means of the failure of the structure of its own approach: the search of philosophy – dialectic – becomes the philosophy of the search. Aubenque traces this same structure of scission, mediation, and recovery across Aristotelian discussions of theology, motion, time, imitation, and human activity.


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