Mahmuda Akand

Moral absolutism holds that human actions should be guided and assessed by some absolute principles which are inviolable. That is, moral principles are context-neutral and applicable for all societies, cultures and for every human being. But we often find ourselves perplexed with the complexities of the situations in which we need to make a concrete decision and have to act accordingly. In this type of situations, only one simple principle may not be upheld without hesitations, since multiple considerations guided by equally significant principles are involved. Facing this type of situations while holding an absolutist outlook seems difficult. Thus, moral relativists claim that moral absolutism is not equipped enough to resolve the real-life issues or dilemmas which torment us often. This paper has analyzed the sources and types of moral absolutism and has suggested that moral absolutists have failed to provide proper justifications for their claims about the absoluteness or the inviolability of the moral standards and principles they consider to be absolute. This research also has pointed out and discussed the conceptual errors the absolutists have made in their proposals. Finally, this paper has shown that the problems of moral absolutism are not easy to resolve, since it requires to compromise the basic assumption, that moral principles are absolute and inviolable, on which the absolutist outlook relies on.

Social values and laws, both require to evolve following better conscience and reason. Recently, the High Court Division of Bangladesh has ruled that mothers can be the sole guardian of children. Before this verdict, only fathers were considered as legal guardians in Bangladesh and it was a practice that an individual, a child or a student, will be identified by father’s identity only. This paper shows that this verdict has not only provided an individual, in Bangladesh, with the opportunity to be identified only by mother’s identity, in required cases, but also has created an opportunity to rethink about the idea of individual identity which may influence the perceptions of Bangladeshi society regarding identity, human dignity and gender relations.

Language is a medium of communication. But there are debates in philosophy of language regarding the process of communication through language. Some claims that we follow the conventions of language use and these conventions interpret the meaning to the language users. They explain meaning by the logical analysis of the components of language. On the other hand, sometimes we communicate successfully without following any prior set of rules or conventions. H.P. Grice and his followers maintain that we can understand and explain this type of communications in terms of speaker’s intentions and have constructed a well-accepted theory of meaning in philosophy of language. It is notable that Grice himself and his followers have noticed and addressed that conventions are not completely excluded in this process. Speaker’s intention, in Gricean theory, is interpreted considering conventions, contexts and hearer’s intention to cooperate. But how does the audience understand speaker’s intention in a particular context to mean something by saying something? Are conventions and consideration of contexts sufficient for communicating? This research has addressed these questions and has shown that the audience understands what the speaker wants to communicate not only by conventions with the association of the context but also by the resemblance of their habits of relating an expression with a linguistic element.

John Rawls’ theory of justice has shown that the world is unjust and we have the responsibility to minimize the injustice that prevails. He has designed a model of justice in which ensuring the neutral choice of justice principle is required and liberty and equality of all should be preserved. His justice model bases on a hypothetical position named as original position and two basic principles. Apparently, it seems that Rawls’ model is a noble one to address the injustice issues in the existing world. But this theory has received several criticisms from many philosophers. This paper has analyzed the concept of liberty and equality in Rawls’ theory of justice and has shown that Rawls failed to uphold the promised equal liberty for all. This research has also considered the views of Robert Nozick and Amartya Sen regarding Rawls’ theory and has suggested that a proper theory of justice needs to include rectification principles along with the consideration of various contexts and alternatives.

It has been proved already that components of languages are not always gender sensitive. Gender biasness in languages ignite the discriminatory attitude towards the lesser mentioned gender. For this reason, some language communities have changed some grammatical components to ensure gender fairness in the concerned languages. This paper argues that changing the use of masculine pronouns and using more feminine terms is not sufficient to reduce gender discrimination in languages. Many languages contain abusive terms and words that undermines women, their body and women sexuality. These degrading terms are used in everyday conversations, films, various forms of literature and online activities. According to the language relativity theory language influences our thoughts and perceptions. In this paper I have considered the two versions of this theory and has argued that gender biased language constructs and promotes disrespectful and discriminatory attitudes and behaviors towards women and impedes all our efforts to achieve gender equality. This paper also claims that we need to construct rules and regulations to check gender biasness in everyday conversation and languages used in movies, songs, literature and other medium of entertainment and communications.

Kripke admits that Donnellan's distinction between two different uses of definite descriptions is of great importance. But he denies that this distinction can pose any threat to Russell's theory of definite descriptions. Kripke distinguishes between semantic reference and speaker's reference by using Gricean apparatus and analyzes Donnellan's referential-attributive distinction to show that the referential use of definite descriptions is not a concern for a unitary theory of definite descriptions. This paper analyzes Kripke's definition of speaker's referent and the Gricean account of meaning to argue that Kripke's definition of speaker's referent is inconsistent with the Gricean account. Though, Kripke has claimed that he has followed Gricean notion of speaker's meaning while defining speaker's referent, his definition fails to include the role of the hearer or audience in the process of determining speaker's reference. A new definition of speaker's referent has also been provided here which is consistent with the Gricean account of speaker's meaning.

Induction as a process of inference provides us with new knowledge. This knowledge is revealed through observing particular instances using some general propositions. A question raises, what accounts for the justification of this leap from particular to general? Mill assumes that nature is uniformed, and a particular instance is likely to produce the same effect under the same conditions. Hume, on the other hand, describes that the cause-and-effect relation is not a necessary connection, but a matter of habit and this connection is inadequate to settle down the ground for the legitimacy of induction. Bradley, on the contrary, refuses that induction can move from particular to the general. Russell argues, more frustratingly, that the induction principle cannot be proved or disproved by appealing to experience. Despite being suspicious about the cogency of induction, it cannot be rejected as a process of reaching to the unknown from the known, as a method of producing new knowledge. For this, it is necessary to provide a rational ground for induction in which it is justified. First, this paper argues that there is no such universal logical principle to prove the justification of induction, and second, this justification is to be supported by appealing to the pragmatic worth of the process.

The threat of extremism is multidimensional and ever changing. It is not Newtonian but Darwinian. Hence, it is difficult to develop a flawless counter-terrorism policy to eliminate the threat completely. Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country with secularism as one of its founding principles. The penetration of extremist ideas in the country undermined the secularist spirit to a great extent. The rising involvement of women along with men in extremism is an indication of moral rapture in the society. This problem needs to address vigorously and efficiently. The root causes behind the involvement of women in extremism should be unveiled and an unbiased effective policy needs to be formulated to eliminate future and prevailing threats. This paper attempts to unveil those issues and provide necessary guidelines to counter and prevent violent extremism.

Extremism is regarded as one of the most grievous threats in contemporary time. It has always been a complex idea incorporating various elements simultaneously such as political motives, spread of intolerance within the society, degradation of social and cultural values and most recently the misinterpretation of religions. Hence, it isa matter of paramount importance to understand the nexus between extremism and religion properly in order to minimize the threat effectively. Though there is no connection between Islam and extremism, Islam is very often associated with extremism. In Bangladesh, we have observed sporadic incidents of extremist activities in the distant past, which had been dealt with effective anti-extremism measures. However, we see a rise of extremist activities in the recent past. Therefore, we need to analyze the causes behind this sudden rise of extremist activities and construct a neutral attitude towards the problem deciphering the complexities. This paper is an attempt to analyze the current level of threat of extremism in Bangladesh, importance of constructing a neutral attitude towards extremism analyzing the perception of common people and suggest possible alternative methods apart from those which are already in effect in the country to eliminate the threat of extremism.

The early proponents of functionalism (Putnam and Fodor) have put forward arguments for antireductionism. They argue that mental states are multiply realizable by possibly multifarious physical states. We cannot expect that psychological laws are reduced to the laws of physics in the way envisaged by identity theorists. This argument from multiple realizability has been challenged by Jaegwon Kim. After presenting the argument and Kim's challenge, this paper considers Block's response to Kim. I argue that Block's response is unconvincing and claim that multiple realizability does not lead to antireductionism. In addition, by analyzing Lockean idea of nominal and real essence, I show that the functionalist explanation about the essence of mental states allows the local reduction of mental states to physical states.