Khosropanah’s Projection Instead of Accountability: An Obsolete Tactic

On 24 February 2018, the Shargh daily dedicated its thought page to three articles by Nasrollah Mousavian[1], Amir Saemi[2], and Kasra Panahi[3], respectively titled "Do Not Debase Speech So", "We and the Philosophical Windmills", and "The Accusation of Philosophizing", critiquing a portion of the philosophical writings of Abdolhossein Khosropanah, the head of the Iranian Institute of Philosophy and Wisdom.[4] These articles were republished on the Sedanet website. On 2 March, Sedanet published another article criticizing Khosropanah, this time by Soroush Dabbagh[5], titled "In the Land of the Short in Stature"[6]. Here, we will touch upon a portion of these critiques, which were made by Amir Saemi and Soroush Dabbagh, focusing on the criticism of three passages from Khosropanah's article titled "The Semantics of Religious Propositions".[7]

On pages 11 and 12 of his article, Khosropanah provides a report on the linguistic sciences. Among these, the eight sciences include: (1) "Grammar" (2) "Linguistics" (3) "Philosophy of Language" (4) "Analytic Philosophy or Linguistic Analysis". Then, in explaining the philosophy of language, he writes: "Third category) Philosophy of Language: The philosophy of language, like other secondary philosophies, deals with the subject matter—i.e., the general aspects of language—and reflects and investigates it using a rational method. Linguistics states the general rules of language obtained through empirical methods, and the philosophy of linguistics deals with linguistics from a second-order perspective and answers questions such as: What is linguistics? What is its definition? What is its subject matter? What sciences is it related to? By what sciences is it influenced? What sciences does it influence?" (Khosropanah, 2012: 11) Saemi, in criticizing this passage, says: "A basic familiarity with books on the philosophy of language is enough to prevent one from thinking that the subject of the philosophy of language is questions such as what linguistics is and what sciences it is related to. The philosophy of language is not the philosophy of linguistics. The philosophy of linguistics (if this subject has indeed received serious attention from philosophers) is a topic in the philosophy of science, not in the philosophy of language." Soroush Dabbagh also wrote in his critique of this passage: "The philosophy of language bears no relation to linguistics, for the former is a rational-philosophical inquiry and the latter an empirical science."

Further on in his article, Khosropanah explains the fourth category of linguistic sciences as follows: "Fourth category) Analytic Philosophy or Linguistic Analysis: Analytic philosophy, with linguistic analysis, is one of the Western philosophies introduced by the later Wittgenstein and others in opposition to logical positivism." (ibid.) Saemi here points to the conflation of a broad philosophical discipline with a specific theory in Khosropanah's words. The critique of this passage in Soroush Dabbagh's article is accompanied by more points: "The philosophy of language is not a 'counterpart' to analytic philosophy; rather, it is a branch and discipline among other fields of the analytic philosophical tradition, such as the philosophy of religion, philosophy of ethics, philosophy of art, and philosophy of mind. Nor does the philosophy of language begin with the early Wittgenstein [let alone the later Wittgenstein]; before him, Frege, Russell, and Moore pioneered this at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, turning language into a philosophical object and theorizing about the limits and boundaries of meaningfulness, as Wittgenstein himself speaks of his debt to Frege and Russell in the preface to the 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'[8]."

After this categorization, Khosropanah turns to logical positivism and writes: "The result is that, according to the view of the logical positivists, which was based on the principle of verifiability, not only most of the customary statements of philosophy, but all the common propositions in metaphysics, ethics, theology, and religion are neither true nor false, but rather meaningless and devoid of any real content or determinate meaning. The school of positivism was subjected to severe criticism by its own proponents, the later Wittgenstein and Popper. Some of the criticisms are as follows: a) Auguste Comte's evolutionary, three-stage theory has no precise historical or scientific support, and if one is lenient, it should be attributed to a specific period in the history of the European social system, and its generalization to the entire history of the world is incorrect. Moreover, today in the philosophy of science, the dependence of science on philosophy and the influence of metaphysics on scientific theories has been affirmed by philosophers of science." (ibid., 16) Both critics noted Khosropanah's conflation of logical positivism with Auguste Comte's positivism. Dabbagh also points out that Auguste Comte, who died in the mid-nineteenth century, could not possibly have been a critic of the ideas of logical positivists such as Carnap and Schlick, who gathered in the city of Vienna in the third decade of the twentieth century and, influenced by Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the empirical science of the time, discussed their philosophical reflections with one another!!; positivists who published their manifesto, "The Scientific Conception of the World,"[9] in 1931, some seventy-odd years after the death of Auguste Comte. Saemi also criticizes the final quoted sentence of Khosropanah's article and writes: "The dependence of science on philosophy—a doctrine that is highly dubious—has been accepted by whom? Why should it matter to us that someone has accepted it, and what does it have to do with the critique of positivism anyway?"

In response to these criticisms, Khosropanah takes a non-epistemic stance twice on his channel, and through mind-reading, which carries no weight on the scales of research, accuses the critics of having critiqued him through the blue-tinted glasses of politicization, and that the criticisms are raised by individuals and an opposition that does not want a revolutionary to occupy the directorship of the Institute.[10] What was expected of Khosropanah was that he would either provide an answer, if he had one, or honestly acknowledge his errors. The conclusion the critics had drawn from their set of critiques concerning a small portion of Khosropanah's written works—you yourself read the detailed tale from this summary—was that how could a person with such glaring mistakes, which perhaps would not even be made by an undergraduate student, occupy such a position?! What does this correct conclusion have to do with Khosropanah's being a revolutionary? Khosropanah, through the fallacy of "confusing motive and motivated"[11] and by means of mind-reading, tries, instead of a technical response, to shift the playing field from a scholarly discussion toward political maneuvering, and through the "red herring" fallacy[12] to divert minds from his obvious scholarly weakness. He also, by mentioning the engineering and pharmacy backgrounds of the critics, commits the "genetic fallacy"[13]; critics who, incidentally, have both studied at prestigious universities around the world and are currently teaching at the best philosophical centers in the country or are engaged in philosophical research in the field of religious studies at reputable academies worldwide. Interestingly, by mentioning the academic backgrounds of the critics, he has implicitly sought to question their competence to comment on philosophical matters, but as it happens, individuals with a background in the empirical sciences are perhaps better able to understand the relationship between the empirical sciences, philosophy, and religion than persons with a jurisprudential-theological background. Therefore, the genetic fallacy not only has not come to Khosropanah's aid, but has inadvertently pushed him into a weaker position in this non-epistemic dispute he has initiated. In short, he must know that even with a collection of fallacies, he cannot cover up his scholarly weakness, and with these obsolete tactics, he will get nowhere. He must either acknowledge his scholarly errors or, if he has a technical answer, provide it.

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_{[1] Faculty member, Institute for Research in Analytic Philosophy, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM)}

_{[2] Faculty member, Institute for Research in Analytic Philosophy, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM)}

_{[3] Philosophy researcher}

_{[4] Article links:}

_{http://www.sharghdaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=2523&pageno=8}

_{http://www.sharghdaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=2523&PageNO=9}

_{http://www.sharghdaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=2523&PageNO=10}

_{[5] Researcher, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto; Visiting Scholar, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, New York University}

_{[6] In addition to the Sedanet website, this article was also published on his Telegram channel. Dr. Soroush Dabbagh's Telegram channel address:}

_{https://t.me/Soroushdabbagh_Official}

_{[7] This article was published in the scientific-research quarterly Islamic Theology, Fall 2012, No. 83, pp. 9-28. Article link:}

_{http://www.namayenarjes.com/files/31779.pdf}

_{[8] For an introduction to the history of analytic philosophy, see for example:}

_{Soroush Dabbagh, On Analytic Philosophy: With a Focus on Wittgenstein, London, H&S Publishing, September 2017.}

_{[9] Scientific Worldview}

_{[10] @khosropanah_ir}

_{[11] Appeal to motive}

_{On this fallacy, see:}

_{https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/9/Ad-Hominem-Circumstantial}

_{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive}

_{[12] The red herring}

_{For this fallacy, see:}

_{https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/150/Red-Herring}

_{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring}

_{[13] Genetic fallacy}

_{For this fallacy, see:}

_{https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/99/Genetic-Fallacy}

_{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy}

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Khosropanah’s Projection Instead of Accountability: An Obsolete Tactic

Author: Hamidreza Saadat Niaki

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