Social Transformation including Class Conflict, Historical Restrictions and Free Will

A study of Determinism and Free-will in Persian Proverbs

Proverbs as a part of colloquial literature are always nourished by religion, culture, traditions, and philosophical beliefs of a community, and thus they mirror the common beliefs of a people. The frequent repletion of a proverb pregnant with a specific thought makes that type of thought a behavioral pattern and affects the actions and behaviors of the people of a society. In the Iranian socie...

Social Inequality and Conflict beyond Class: Developments in Contemporary China

In order to understand the nexus between inequalities, conflict and change in contemporary China, social inequalities should be seen broadly (i.e. include both hierarchy and exclusion), and perceived from social actors’ perspective: as those aspects of social hierarchy and division/exclusion which are problematic because they violate the popular sense of justice. This is in line with the theore...

The Scope of Man's Free Will

Free Will and Moral Responsibility in Islamic Philosophy

According to a common view among Muslim philosophers, a moral agent has free will if and only if she is able to do an action when she wants to and is able to avoid it when she wants otherwise. Implicit in this view is the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). On the other hand, according to this view, free will is dependent on requirements such as conception, judgement, tendency, decisi...

Compulsivity and free will.

‘‘The perfection of a science is shown in the perfection of its language,’’ Condillac said in 1746. A concept that is gaining in popularity and cropping up in scientific articles with increasing regularity is ‘‘compulsivity.’’ Off the cuff, the word ‘‘compulsive’’ makes us think of something that is controlled, repeated, inexorable, repetitive, imperative, stereotyped, and necessary—something y...