Embodied Cognition: Explaining the Status and the Effect of Body on the process of Cognition within Mulla Sadra’s Perspective

In such fields as phenomenology and cognition, the effect of the body and its conditions on the process of cognition have been demonstrated and studied philosophically and empirically. In Islamic philosophy, Sadr al-Muta'allihin’s particular view on the relationship between the soul and the body can have significant implications for the effect of the physical body on the process of acquiring knowledge and cognition. Analyzing the status of physical body in acquiring cognition within Mulla Sadra’s perspective, this study attempts to gain insights into the philosophical implications of embodied cognition (body-dependent) in the intellectual system of this thinker. This paper, which analyzes the status of the body and its relation to the soul with an ontological approach, is to prove the direct influence of different bodies and their conditions on how to acquire knowledge (despite believing in the abstraction of cognition in transcendental wisdom) and demonstrate that the difference between bodies and their characteristics causes differences in cognition. In the light of this conclusion, the philosophical implications of the embodiment of cognition have also been explored.