از حکمت پدرانه تا حرکت استادانۀ مهره‌های شطرنج: نابسندگی تمثیل‌های خداباوران شکاک در دفاع از اصل نارسایی معرفتی

نوع مقاله : پژوهشی

نویسنده
استادیار گروه فلسفه معاصر، دانشگاه ادیان و مذاهب، قم، ایران.
10.30497/prr.2026.249096.2050
چکیده
خداباوری شکاکانه، که امروزه یکی از مهم‌ترین پاسخ‌ها به استدلال‌های شواهدی شر تلقی می‌شود، بر اصل نارسایی معرفتی تکیه دارد که به ‌طور خلاصه از این قرار است: اگر خداباوری صادق باشد، آنگاه با توجه به محدودیت‌های شناختی‌مان، از منظر معرفتی شایسته است در این خصوص تردید کنیم که در تمام موقعیت‌ها می‌توانیم به فهم تفصیلی و همه‌جانبه از تمام دلایل و مقاصد الهی در سامان‌دهی جهان دست یابیم. یکی از شیوه‌های رایج برای دفاع از این اصل تمسک به تمثیل‌ها است که پژوهش حاضر با تمرکز بر دو نمونه برجسته، «تمثیل والدین» وایکسترا و «تمثیل شطرنج» آلستون، به تحلیل و ارزیابی آنها می‌پردازد. در گام نخست، این مقاله نشان می‌دهد که تمثیل والدین، با وجود شهرت گسترده‌اش در ادبیات خداباوری شکاکانه، در بازنمایی شکاف معرفتی انسان و خدا چندان موفق نیست، زیرا تناظر انسان بالغ با نوزاد نه‌ماهه تصویری اغراق‌آمیز از وضعیت شناختی انسان به دست می‌دهد. در ادامه، پس از تقریر تمثیل شطرنج نشان داده می‌شود که این تمثیل تصویر مناسب‌تری از شکاف معرفتی انسان و خدا به دست می‌دهد، زیرا بر خلاف تمثیل والدین، این شکاف را در چارچوبی از قواعد و مفاهیم مشترک به تصویر می‌کشد و امکان شناخت محدود را نیز محفوظ می‌کند. با این همه، این تمثیل نیز، چنانچه در مقام استدلال تمثیلی به کار رود، با دشواری‌هایی روبه‌رو است؛ زیرا ناهمانندی‌های مرتبط میان دو سوی آن از قوت استدلالی‌اش می‌کاهند و نمی‌تواند به‌تنهایی پشتوانه‌ای کافی برای اصل نارسایی معرفتی باشد. بر این اساس، در پایان، با تمایز میان کارکرد استدلالی و کارکرد تفهیمی تمثیل‌ها، پیشنهاد می‌شود این تمثیل‌ها نه در مقام استدلال تمثیلی، بلکه در کنار استدلال‌های مستقل خداباوران شکاک، به منزله ابزارهایی برای تصویرسازی و برانگیختن فهم شهودی به کار روند.
کلیدواژه‌ها
موضوعات

عنوان مقاله English

From Parental Wisdom to Grandmaster’s Move: The Insufficiency of Skeptical Theist Analogies in Defense of the Principle of Epistemic Limitation

نویسنده English

Shima Shahriyari
Assistant Professor, Department of Contemporary Philosophy, University of Religions and Denominations, Qom, Iran.
چکیده English

Skeptical theism, now regarded as one of the most important responses to evidential arguments from evil, rests on the Principle of Epistemic Limitation, which may be briefly formulated as follows: If theism is true, then, given our cognitive limitations, we should be skeptical of our ability to attain, in every situation, a detailed and comprehensive understanding of all of God’s reasons and plans for organizing the world. One common way of defending this principle is to appeal to analogies. This article analyzes and evaluates two prominent examples: Wykstra’s parent analogy and Alston’s chess analogy. First, it argues that, despite its considerable prominence in the skeptical theist literature, the parent analogy is not particularly successful in representing the epistemic gap between humans and God, because comparing an adult human being to a nine-month-old infant presents an exaggerated picture of the human cognitive condition. The article then reconstructs the chess analogy and shows that it offers a more apt representation of the epistemic gap between humans and God, since, unlike the parent analogy, it depicts this gap within a framework of shared rules and concepts while preserving the possibility of limited knowledge. Nevertheless, this analogy, too, faces difficulties when employed as an analogical argument, since relevant disanalogies between its source and target domains weaken its argumentative force, and it cannot, on its own, provide sufficient support for the Principle of Epistemic Limitation. Accordingly, by distinguishing between the argumentative and clarificatory functions of analogies, the article concludes by proposing that these analogies be used not as analogical arguments but, alongside independent arguments advanced by skeptical theists, as illustrative devices for eliciting intuitive understanding.

کلیدواژه‌ها English

skeptical theism
Principle of Epistemic Limitation
analogical argument
parent analogy
chess analogy
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