A Criterion of Meaning in Science & Religion

Entelekya Logico-Metaphysical Review, 2021

The subject that we have tried to mention in this article mainly intensifies on the meta-ontological or metaphysical field. Although we cannot know the real existence of objects, at least, we say something that cannot be expressed. Then, we should not ignore that our judgments belonging to the unknown field can be interpreted, more or less, on account of the relation to the area of the facts we know them. It is clear that trying to get the meaning of the world in itself or noumenon through the image of the concrete world is useless. Nevertheless, this condition does not mean that it should not make inquiries concerning the noumenon world and discontinue thinking about what the field of existence in itself is. Interpretations on this field of existence in itself cannot be expressed by mere knowledge of the actual area or the real notions. Because, in our image of the real world, there seems a situation that continually changes and which converts its meaning in each change.

Academicus International Scientific Journal, 2012

It is claimed sometimes that science on the one hand, and metaphysics and religion on the other, are incompatible conceptual schemes, in the sense that their statements are not inter-translatable. Our view, instead, is that science and religion deal with fundamentally diverse aspects of human experience. This means that, when each field stays within its proper domain, they can get along without problems. We must deny the still popular opinion that science is the only instrument which allows us to know nature. And we must also question the idea that science has acquired the exclusive right to speak about nature by progressively expelling metaphysics from the field. In order to do this one should, however, reject the neo-positivist characterization of the relations among science, metaphysics, theology and religion.

Zygon®, 2010

Pratidhwani, the echo, 2019

'What is meaning'? This is a topic of interest for linguists, philosophers, Computational linguists and those who deal with NLP, Artificial Intelligence etc. How does a Natural language convey efficiently the ideas from speaker to listener? This topic is studied here, based on the discussions available in Vakyapadiya, an ancient Sanskrit text. In modern linguistics 'word meanings' are analyzed often and the most famous theories are 'Referential theory, Ideational theory and truth-value theory. A very significant theory suggested by Vakyapadiya in this regard is the 'Akhandavakya sidhanta'-the sentence is the unit of language, and sentential meaning happens as a flash of understanding in the mind.

This paper intends to present the origin, concepts, and methodological approaches in the study of hermeneutics-semantics, semiotics, logical analysis, ontology, and phenomenology-in order to explain the workings of language in human experience. The question of being is the most important question in the whole of philosophy. In parallel, the question of meaning is the most fundamental when it comes to hermeneutics. The research aims to respond to the question of being by means of understanding language. To be able to answer this question, the paper will elaborate the philosophy of language of Ferdinand de Saussure, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Edmund Husserl, and his successor at Freiburg, Martin Heidegger. Hans-Georg Gadamer found a way of explicating hermeneutics in which he asserts that truth is beyond method. Paul Ricoeur grafts this assertion to phenomenology through the narrative theory. This paper argues that there is no singular method of understanding the meaning of meaning because the truth makes itself manifest in its different ways of unfolding.

Journal of Dharma

The present study starts from the question if there can be any logic of religion. The answer is affirmative for logic in a wide sense. The attempts from the logic of beliefs account for this. However, the study focuses on the specific of the logic of religious terms, a less approached domain by logicians and philosophers. In this line issues like those of the logic of analogy, of the distinctions between the specific, general and total content of terms, between logical distributive and collective conjunctions, etc are brought into discussion. In the end, dogmatic concepts are analyzed, as the core of religious concepts. Key

Studies in Science and Theology 5, 239–246, 1999

The notion of incommensurability has been advanced to claim that adherents of rival scientific theories cannot fully understand each other. If this is true even within science, is there any hope for understanding between the scientist and the theologian? Serious consideration must be given to the philosophical criticism of incommensurability, i.e., arguments that show how communication across theories, and by extension across disciplines, is possible. The parallel consideration of (a) rival scientific theories of light, and (b) scientific and theological understandings of creation show that problems arise from potentially resolvable misunderstandings rather than an unremediable lack of understanding. Some theologians have tried to minimize communication problems by adopting a “scientific” way of speaking, for example by transferring the scientific concept of complementarity into the science–theology dialog. However, since the subject matters are irreducibly different, this approach creates its own problems. Analyzing potential language problems between science and theology can lead to some practical suggestions on how to improve mutual understanding.

Journal of philosophical Investigations , 2024

Considering the fact that the words in the intra-religious attitude are considered in two ways, the first is towards jurisprudential words and the second is a rational and conceptual view focusing on their meanings. we have tried to deal with one of the most important issues of intra-religious attitude with a rational approach by descriptive and analytical method, which is the category of "hermeneutic interpretation" of words, especially the most influential idea of interpretation & that is the view of the "spirit of meaning" of Ghazali. After Ghazali, Ibn Arabi used this theory of Ghazali regarding the development of meaning in creating his new idea, and by re-reading Ghazali's idea with a mystical approach, he presented his own theory regarding the expansion of meaning. While accepting the argument of the focal point of the theory of the spirit of meaning, he removes it from the exclusivity to the "linear", and for this purpose, he brought up arguments as well as the Conditions of Hermeneutic Interpretation in this regard. Ibn Arabi's arguments on transversal interpretation include new formulations in the argument, which after him, this theory was favored and accepted by Mulla Sadra, and then it was accepted by his students.

New Directions in Philosophy and Literature, 2019

For centuries now, science has been revolutionizing traditional domains of knowledge. The world has been thoroughly ‘disenchanted,’ and now, at long last, science has begun revolutionizing the domains of the human. Every essay in this collection is betting that this revolution will somehow bypass or redeem some traditional conception of the human, presuming some prescientific notion of meaning will either be confirmed by the science, or left largely unscathed. The present article interrogates the basis of this optimism, and the possibility that these discourses offer no proof against disenchantment. Rather than presuming the best, it considers the worst case scenario, the possibility traditional accounts of meaning turn on various, covert forms of supernaturalism. It argues that massive, systematic deception regarding the nature of meaning is every bit as inevitable as massive, systematic deception regarding nature of the world more generally. It demonstrates how the standard critiques of meaning skepticism beg the question, how the apparent contradiction of ‘using meaning to eliminate meaning’ turns on obvious sophistry. It then outlines a genuinely naturalistic account of semantic phenomena, one that allows us to parse traditional theories of meaning from actual applications of meaning talk—theoretical meaning from practical meaning. Using this distinction, it offers an account of why all our received forms of meaning, theoretical and practical, are very likely doomed.

Zygon®, 2011

The purpose of this essay is to introduce a collection of five papers, originally presented at the 2009 summer conference of the International Society for Science and Religion, which explore the reception of Darwin's science in different religious traditions. Comparisons are drawn between Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Indian responses to biological evolution, with particular reference to the problem of suffering and to the exegetical and hermeneutic issues involved.

This paper examines meaning in language. It is therefore a study in semantics. Semantics is the study of meaning in terms of the linguistics. Semantics begins from the stopping point of syntax and ends from where pragmatics begins. A separate discipline in the study of language, semantics has existed for decades. The term semantics was first used by Breal in 1987 and it does not suggest that there had never been speculations about the nature of meaning (Ogbulogo (2005). Words, phrases and sentences are used to convey messages in natural languages. Semantics is the study of meaning systems in language. If meaning is a system, then language is systematic in nature. In this paper, we investigate the nature of meaning to locate the significance of semantics in contemporary linguistics. Frege, cited in Sandt (1988:1) rightly notes that “... [If ] anything is asserted there is always an obvious presupposition that the simple or compound proper names used have reference.” Hinging on different submissions in the literature, we conclude that meaning is: socio-cultural, dynamic, grammar-driven, conventional, representative (referential), individualistic (non-conventional) and is not exhaustive.

The metaphysics of meaning parts I and II

On Adam's Edenic task of taxonomy in relation to the modern disappearance of the author and the death of God. On language and meaning and metaphysics in a Postmodern world of "slippage" and epistemological agnosticism. On the fundamental key to all reality, the law of non-contradiction and unity and distinction in the Trinity and in creation.

International journal of health sciences

This research deals with an important topic about Imad al-Din al-Kashi, which is his views on the science of semantics when responding to the objections of al-Khatib al-Qazwini, in his book called (The Answers of al-Kashi to the objections of the author of the clarification on al-Sakaki fi Miftah al-Ulum). Including three models to be studied.