A New Approach for the Abstraction of Philosophical Concepts; from the Perspective of Transcendent Philosophy of Mollasadrs

How to abstract concepts is one of the important issues of epistemology. Among the Muslim philosophers, Allameh Tabataba'i is the first Muslim thinker who has examined this issue independently. Her students - including Misbah Yazdi - have also raised different opinions in this field. According to Allameh, philosophical concepts do not have an objective reference, and a different explanation should be found for the origin of their abstraction (compared to the origin of the abstraction of essential concepts). In his book "Principles of Philosophy and Method of Realism", he believes that "judgment" is the origin of the abstraction of these concepts. Misbah Yazdi, following his teacher, is looking for a way to explain the origin of the abstraction of these concepts, because he considers these concepts to have no objective reference. According to him, the Consciousness of inner states, in addition to mental explorations, is the source of the abstraction of these concepts. In the following article, I have shown that these solutions are not without problems. Also, by examining two philosophical concepts (the concept of Consciousness and effect), I showed that these two concepts have "objective reference" like the substantive concepts and are directly obtained from the immediate knowledge.