Mahdi Zakeri

Whenever we are discussing the nature of faith, we often have a classification based on the object of faith. Accordingly, faith is generally either propositional or non-propositional. It means that if faith belongs to one or several propositions, its nature is also propositional and a kind of knowledge. But if the object of faith is a real thing or person, the nature of faith is related to such feelings as affection, and loyalty. Through examining the prerequisites of this distinction, the following study intends to show that this classification has some formal and logical problems. Secondly, it is not strong and qualified enough to clarify the nature of faith. The second part of the article classifies faith according to the soul aspects into three groups of evidential, volitional, and emotional faith. Later, it provides some examples of Christian and Moslem philosophers and theologians' ideas regarding every kind of faith. Consequently, the paper comes to this result that determining the nature of faith based on soul aspects is a much more defensible choice than classifying based on the object of faith.

We defend Laurence Nemirow’s and David Lewis’s Ability Hypothesis against Paul Raymont’s criticisms in defense of Jackson’s Knowledge Argument. According to the Ability Hypothesis, what Mary lacked when she was in her black-and-white room was a set of abilities; she did not know how to recognize or imagine certain types of experience. Her subsequent discovery of what it is like to experience color amounts to no more than her acquiring these abilities. Appealing to the Molyneux test, Raymont has argued that knowledge of what an experience is like cannot be equated with the possession of any set of abilities, since one can be in possession of a recognitional ability concerning a certain type of experience without knowing what that experience is like. We argue that the intermodal recognitional ability in the Molyneux test and similar ones depends on previous experience and thus makes an implicit appeal to knowledge of what it is like.