Roozbeh Zare

The main issue of this article is how to harmonize determinism and moral responsibility (the classic problem of free will) by reconsidering the philosophy of Avicenna. Certainly, Avicenna believes in determinism and in various works has emphasized the necessity of the effect by its sufficient cause. Avicenna, on the other hand, certainly believes in the moral responsibility of autonomous agents, including human beings. We have shown in the first step that he denies free will in the libertarian sense (the ability to do otherwise) for any agents; Because this notion of free will requires objective possibilities and is not compatible with causal determinism. Avicenna has identified a new type of voluntary agent who does not need to have an over-intentional intention to do something. Here, he looks very similar to proponents of agent causation; His idea, however, was not intended to defend a libertarian notion of free will, but to get rid of the challenge of the infinite regress of wills. Hence, Avicenna can be considered one of the few proponents of the "compatibilist agent causation." In the second step, an overview of Avicenna's theory of action is drawn. Here, in particular, emphasis is placed on the activity of the soul in the stages of the causal process leading to action, and the quality of these activities is introduced as a criterion for the morality degree of the agent..

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the principle of sufficient reason attacked due to its controversial consequences. Among these challenges, necessarianism is the most significant one. Indeed, our intuition indicates that there are some things around us which are contingent which means that they could be in another way. Accepting the PSR seems to conflict with this common intuition; If all things have a sufficient reason, is it possible to have contingency or all things would be necessary? According to this problem, several answers raised that we count them in this paper briefly, nevertheless the main points of this paper are 1) Explaining the problem of necessarianism based on the text of one of the pioneer thinkers in this regard and 2) The answer to this problem from one of the most important researchers on the issue that tries to solve the problem by denying determinism in causation. Finally, we examine the solution of Muslim philosophers especially Ibn-Sina that solved the problem by holding determinism.

Intelligent Design is an attempt to defend the idea that the order of nature bears marks of its Creator. This image of the concept has a historical root in ancient Greek philosophy. ID argues that science and theology support each other, when they are rightly understood. Under the influence of investigations of modern sciences –especially biology and cosmology- ID became the most serious battle in contemporary debates between theists and atheists. In this article, after an introduction for describing ID in general, Sober’s view point on the subject is described and criticized. Sober’s main claim is that ID is not testable and so should be rejected from scientific enterprise. In this article, we show that his notion of testability is not complete and ID can satisfy the testability criterion with some considerations. Sober’s critics mainly underlie his notion of designer intervention in nature. The first response of this article is not only a deductive proof for ID, but also a critique of methodological naturalism.