چکیده:
Today, one of the important issues in the field of epistemology is the impact of non-epistemic factors on human religious belief. William James (1842-1919) is the first one who attributed only one factor among the eight to have influence on the belief development process to reasoning and considered the other seven factors non-epistemic. He suggested that human beliefs are formed in light of non-epistemic factors. According to his viewpoints, religion and religious beliefs are phenomena belonging to the human psyche dimension which is inner and individual. He considered religion to be associated with human emotional dimension rather than ideological one. This paper will identify that William James considers religion only a subset of emotional issues and suggests that the impact of non-epistemic factors on religious beliefs is very high. However, emotion and thought cannot be separated from each other. With reference to religious texts such as the Quran, we realize that the intellectual cognition is important in the faith parallel to emotional dimensions, and one is not merely affected by emotions in accepting the religious content but also she makes a choice using her thought. In this paper, we attempt to clarify whether the development process of human beliefs is formed apart from non-epistemic dimensions, or human existential dimensions (yet differentiated from each other) are in such interaction with each other that one cannot simply determine that the epistemic dimension is independent from other dimensions so the epistemic or emotional dimensions of human belief cannot enter the cognition domain in an independent manner.
خلاصه ماشینی:
William James (1842-1919) is the first one who attributed only one factor among the eight to have influence on the belief development process to reasoning and considered the other seven factors non-epistemic.
This paper will identify that William James considers religion only a subset of emotional issues and suggests that the impact of non-epistemic factors on religious beliefs is .
Keywords: existential dimensions, non-epistemic factors, religious beliefs, William James, Introduction Epistemology and the related areas have been so long the concern of human’s mind.
Since talking about the components of knowledge needs a long discussion, we just deal with the belief as this research is aimed to study the effects of non-epistemic factors on religious believes in a sense that knowledge is not possible without belief.
(نجمه الحسینی، علی تورانی، نرگس نظرنژاد ) Rationality & Irrationality of religious belief Now this is under question: ‘Is religious belief rational or a complete irrational process the same as Pascal’s conditionals, Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard’s mere theism, or is it related to both?’ Before dealing with this subject which is the main point here, it is necessary to introduce the existential areas of humankind and then to discover their probable effects on human ideologies and believes.
In his ‘The Will to Believe’ he stated, when the logical reasons are not sufficient (regarding religious belief), our emotional and volitive areas come in and we decide either of them (James, 1978, p.