A Critical Examination of the Causal Explanation of Action in Mulla Sadra’s Philosophy

The main issue of this research is to investigate the causal explanation of the action and its purpose is to discover the deductive-nomological model and to criticize it in the philosophy of Sadr al-Mutalahin. According to him, an intentional action is the volitional act of a person, of which he has second-order awareness; therefore, the causal explanation of it requires the discovery of the basics of these two elements. The main cause of creating volitional action is the recognition of its benefits by the imaginative faculty. The reign of the imaginative faculty in the creation of volitional action is moderated by the intervention of practical reason as the source of awareness, so that intentional action is volitional action that passes through the channel of practical reason. the cause of the creation of an intentional action is either the acknowledgment of one of the two rational or imaginative faculty to perform that action without the presence of the opposite confirmation, or the confirmation of one of these two faculty to perform an action and the overcoming of the enthusiasm caused by the contrary confirmation of the other faculty. Therefore, "confirming the usefulness of an action" in the case of "absence of confirmation of the opposite" or "overcoming the enthusiasm caused by the confirmation of the opposite" makes the deductive-nomological model regarding the action, in transcendental wisdom. The normativism, lack of causal explanation when passions conflict, and determinism are the three problems of Sadr al-Mutalahin's theory.