فصلنامه معرفت فلسفی
سال نهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 34، زمستان 1390)

In the domain of epistemology, being true and corresponding to reality are considered as the criteria for epistemological value. Despite alternative views, there is a consensus among Muslim philosophers on this. Scrutinizing this issue, one recognizes that this criterion is only applicable to knowledge by representation (al-‘ilm al-husuli). This runs counter to the fact that knowledge has a general meaning in the tradition of Islamic epistemology, and includes knowledge by presence (al-‘ilm al-huduri) too. Hence, the question arises as to whether knowledge by presence has any epistemological value; and if yes, how this criterion is applicable to this type of knowledge. The author tries to suggest a new interpretation of epistemological value, so that it incorporates knowledge by presence. According to this new meaning, being truly representational is a general criterion, and being self-representational is a specific criterion for epistemological value. Knowledge by presence is epistemologically valuable because it is self-representational. On this footing, the author discusses new requisites for epistemological value.

Mental existence is one of the hot issues in philosophy. Agnosticists and Sophists have tried, unsuccessfully, to deny it, and it has added to its import as well as its epistemological direction. Such philosophers as Ibn Sina and Fakhr Razi are among avant-gardes to deal with this issue, and paved the way for more discussion in this regard. Surprisingly, Ibn Sina’s efforts have sometimes been neglected, and Fakhr Razi is thought to have rejected this idea. The authors want to show the inaccuracy of such claims, and to prove otherwise. They do this through interpreting different passages in the two philosophers’ works, some of which suffer from ambiguity, along with explaining the nature of mental existence and arguments for their existence. Moreover, a comparison between the two seems helpful in this regard.

In the tenth Namat of Ibn Sina’s Isharat, his philosophical discourse about the faculties of imagination and common sense takes a new form. He attributes to them understanding and maintaining images that transcend matter, belong to the world of unseen and the supreme dominion, and are conceived through vision and non-conceptual knowledge. This approach has epistemological consequences: solving the dilemma of materiality/ immateriality of imagination in Ibn Sina, and his implied admission to substantial motion and activeness of nafs in the process of understanding. Mulla Sadra, however, considers imagination and common sense as one faculty. He introduces the common theory of the materiality of this faculty as an obstacle to accepting bodily resurrection. Instead, he suggests brain to be the locus of manifestation for imagination, and not its place. He ascribes three characteristics to imagination, i.e. imaginal immateriality, creativity, and comprising the opposites, which make possible the explanation of bodily resurrection and angelic metempsychosis.

What is the reality of meaning? Is it a subjective or an objective category, or is it a third one? What is the relation between meaning and usage? These are some key issues in the ontology of meaning. Knowing the reality of meaning is a basic step toward analyzing different propositions. Some Western philosophers of language consider meaning to be the same as an instance, and some others regard it as the relation between a word and its instance. John Luck thinks of meaning as a subjective idea, while some others look in the objective and behavioral expressions for meaning. Wittgenstein, in his earlier philosophical life, emphasized on the picture theory of meaning, while later on suggested the use theory (or instrumental theory) of meaning. John Austin accepted the use theory too.The author explains and evaluates different theories, and then brings up his own theory in this regard. He believes that meaning is the mental image itself, without taking its subjectivity into consideration. In other words, meaning is the same as the designated (or known) per essentia vis-à-vis concept and instance (known per accident).

The question of conventions (i’tibariyat), and the way it is answered, has great consequences for branches of philosophy that deal with the foundations of other sciences, especially the philosophy of rights, philosophy of politics, philosophy of law, and philosophy of ethics. The reality of convention and conventional affairs, differentiating between various meanings of convention, necessity of convention, primary convention, types of conventions, and finally convention’s relation to the problem of truth and falsity are some of the most important issues to be dealt with in a discussion of conventions.The author claims, although many scholars have studied and propounded valuable ideas on these issues, two Muslim sages, that is Ghravi Isfahani and Allamah Tabataba’i have presented the most accurate theories. In this article, he wants to explain and scrutinize what Allamah Tabataba’i has said about the problem of conventions and the way he approaches it.

This article deals with Mulla Sadra’s theory about soul-body relationship, which is one of the most debated issues in the history of philosophy. His theory has some points of convergence with that of the Peripatetic theory, but Mulla Sadra thinks it impossible for an immaterial entity to connect to a material one. Benefiting from his general principles such as the principality and gradation of existence, substantial motion, and the integration of matter and form through unification, Mulla Sadra comes up with the theory of the essential integration of soul and body through unification. He considers the reality of soul to be relational, which comes to existence in the form of a purely material and physical entity. It gradually, and as a result of substantial motion, moves toward immateriality while maintaining its previous levels and it is by becoming material-imaginal at the second stage, and may arrive at the level of material-imaginal-intellectual too. As a natural consequence, Mulla Sadra believes in the theory of the unity of the soul and its faculties. On the basis of this theory, he interprets the interrelation between soul and body as an interrelation between different levels of one entity.

Natural law includes the most fundamental propositions of practical reason about human volitional acts. To discover the content of natural law needs two stages: recognizing the nature of humanity and distinguishing the goal of human creation. The author in this article suggests an Islamic view of natural law as an original and novel view on this issue. He argues that according to the Islamic philosophy, human soul has three stages: vegetative soul, animal soul, and human (rational) soul. The content of natural law (i.e. reason’s judgment about human actions) can be understood by taking the natural potentialities of each stage into consideration and comparing it with the goal of creation. He concludes that propositions of natural law are self-evident, and are understood through knowledge by presence by the soul of its needs.