Explaining the Status and Function of Imaginative Faculty in Rational Emission of Behavior and Action with an Emphasis on Mulla Sadra's Doctrine of Soul

Ibn Sina explains the emission of the human conscious-rational action by practical reason utilization of imaginative faculty and the companionship of these two. In contrast, despite he doesn’t reject this interpretation, Mulla Sadra, with his new definition of imaginative faculty, considers it as the whole of the animal soul and the imagination as effective in all respects of human rational and irrational behavior. The effect and function of imaginative faculty in the emission of rational action for Molla Sadra could be explained in two levels. First, the conscious-rational action is constitutive of thought for making the ultimate cause of the action emission in the actor’s mind. Believing in the influence of imagination on thinking, Mulla Sadra regards the rational thinking as always infected with imaginative faculty and under its influence and rejects the idea that in the principles of action and behavior emission there is only rationality or philosophical thought in work. The other functions of imaginative faculty in the principles of action and behavior emission are converting the universal ends to individual ones, case-finding and programming the movement from present status to the desirable one and new behavior.