فصلنامه نقد و نظر
سال بیستم شماره 2 (پیاپی 78، تابستان 1394)

Causation and efficient causation have always been subject to reflection in the Islamic Philosophy. Before Mulla Sadra, Muslim philosophers classified the efficient causation in various terms. The classification was gradually developed by Sadra; he classified efficient causation in innovative ways. The thesis of Agent by Subjection (fā'il bi al-taskhīr) was one such innovation. The thesis has been subject to ambiguity, different interpretations, misunderstandings, and serious objections. In this paper, I present two way to understand the Sadraean jargon of Agent by Subjection and seek to reject misunderstandings and wrong interpretations. I will show that Agent by Subjection is a Sadraean innovation that makes sense as part of his philosophical system, and his classification of subjection into different varieties, such as the natural, psychological and accidental ones, demonstrates that he managed to introduce new types of agency.

By an appeal to his philosophical principles—the gradation of existence and the soul's substantial motion (al-ḥaraka al-jawharīyya)—Mullā Ṣadrā denied the type-unity of human beings; he takes humans to be of different types because of their volitional substantial motion. Philosophers, such as Ibn Sīnā, Fakhr Rāzī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī and Suhrawardī, have dealt with the problem of the type-unity of humans, but they lacked the philosophical principles that Sadra had at his disposal. In various works, Sadra presents several arguments for the rejection of the type-identity of humans and provides, instead, a formulation of their type-variety. Given his theses of natural and imaginal (mithālī) bodies and the soul's substantial motion, we can come to the human type-variety in this world.

Initially it seems that Sadra has provided divergent accounts of the problem of the human-God relation such that two or even four views might be attributed to him. The first two views are his philosophical accounts consisting in his quiddity-based and existential conceptions of the issue. These views have been said to be maintained by Sadra in the early stages of his so-called "Transcendent Wisdom". The third view is his mystical view that provides a more delicate view than his philosophical ones, though it can only be explained at the level of the First Intellect (al-'aql al-awwal). In this paper, I will present a fourth view that could be attributed to Sadra: his Quranic or revelatory (waḥyānī) view, which I take to be in continuity with his philosophical and mystical views. Then the question is whether these different views exhibit a change of mind in Sadra's views. I will then offer different ways of reconciling them.

Early works in Islamic ethics have, among other things, focused on the issue of moral virtues and vices leading to psychological habits, as well as the mutual impact of such habits and knowledge. Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī provided a philosophically-oriented ethical system in which he considered such a mutual impact in two respects. He also illuminated the types of virtues and vices and their influence on the formation of knowledge as well as the role of knowledge in the acquisition of moral virtues and vices. Contemporary moral epistemologists distinguish virtues and vices into moral and rational; we seek to track the distinction back to Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī's works.

The use of computer systems and connect them via network and internet, leading to the creation of a real storm of problems in the computer's security. The increasing development of technology and the growing dependence of humans on a computer to do their vital work imply that future security problems may have more serious consequences than events have occurred to date.One of the most effective skills to establish security in cyberspace is hacking skills and break-in. Hack have various kinds that seem some of them are ethical and some are unethical.Some people say that as long as hack has not no serious damage, break-in can lead to development of system’s security. But many people disagree with this idea and believe that break-in is almost always damaging and wrong. Due to the impact of cyber security in everyday life on the one hand and on the other hand the importance of bioethics, in this paper we investigate the ethics of hacking.

The issue of the language of religion that was introduced in reaction to positivism is very significant in the philosophy of religion. One approach to the semantics of such a language is non-cognitivism according to which religious propositions do not describe any facts. D. Z. Phillips is a well-known proponent of non-cognitivism. He distinguished different aspects of the human nature, taking each to be conceived in its own context. Thus the task of the philosophy of religion is not to prove religious propositions; rather it should clarify religious concepts. He maintains that it is a mistake to talk about the fact of there being a God; he thinks that God is just a mental construct. The main problem with this non-cognitivist view is its inconsistency, since one cannot be a non-cognitivist and be a religious believer at the same time. For one cannot relate to God as an unreal mental construct. There is also a sociological worry about the view: if there is no inclusive realm, then it would be impossible to understand other cultures and religions, and thus it would not be possible to provide an alternative to religions. Moreover, Phillips's analysis of religious propositions is Procrustean and it fails to explain the conceptions had by believers of religious propositions. Though he has tried to rescue religious propositions from positivist criteria, he finally falls in the positivist trap.