فصلنامه معرفت فلسفی
سال نهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 33، پاییز 1390)

Primary premises, as one of the most important parts of a demonstration, play an essential role in the epistemological system of foundationalism. Some philosophers, including Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, believe it impossible to prove primary premises through a demonstration. Before him, Fakhr Rāzi and Mullā Sadrā had suggested the same idea, and Ayatollah Javadi Amoli has put the last touches on it, and has answered its critiques. Therefore, the present article briefly evaluates the arguments suggested by Razi and Mulla Sadra, and then appraises, in more detail, that of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli. Finally, the authors conclude that there is no reason for considering the principle of the impossibility of coexistence and negation of two contradictories as the first of the first things.

The most important type of conditionals, in Ibn Sina’s logic, is “concomitant hypothetical propositions”. The nearest conditional element of the modern logic to this type of conditionals is “relevant concomitance”. That part of modern logic that deals with such concomitance is called, “relevance logic”. There is a debate among relevance logicians on whether accepting a contradiction implies any arbitrary proposition. In other words, is a contradictory proposition related to any arbitrary proposition? A positive answer leads to a logic called “KR”, which benefits from a simpler and more intuitive semantic, compared to other relevance logics which reject concluding arbitrary propositions from contradiction.Determining the validity of arguments in various systems and semantics of relevance logic is a difficult task, which is rarely dealt with in the literature of relevance logic. Inspired by Hughes’ and Cresswell’s valuation method in modal logic, called “relevance testing”, the author in this article suggests a relevance testing for KR logic, and shows its use through some examples.

Temporal origination or eternity of the world, in the sense of having or not having a temporal beginning, has been debated among Muslim and non-Muslim thinkers since antiquity. This article has a review of this issue in the history of philosophy, and concludes that its origins go back to ancient Greece. Some of Greek philosophers’ arguments, especially that of Proclus, had a great impact on the popularity of the theory of temporal eternity of the world. Although the followers of peripatetic philosophy along with those of the Ishraq school have often preferred the theory of eternity of the world, there emerged a new vision in Hikmat Muta‘āliyah, which gave priority to the theory of temporal origination of the world.

The term, “Barzakh” (inter-world) has different literal and technical meanings, and confusing them leads to misunderstanding. This preoccupation was the motive behind this article to sift through to works of philosophers, gnostics, and theologians in order to clarify the exact meanings they invest this term with. The authors conclude that Muslim philosophers use the term “barzakh” to refer to a world between the material and the intellectual worlds, and they divide it into distinct and indistinct ones. Gnostics, on the other hand, divide it into ascending and descending ones. They together form parts of the philosophers’ distinct mithāl. For theologians, however, barzakh represents the intermediary gap between one’s death and the one’s resurrection in the hereafter. It differs, conceptually, from that of philosophers and Gnostics, but it refers to the ascending curve of barzakh in Gnostics.

Both a priori and a posteriori physicalists agree with each other in holding that physicalism, as a metaphysical approach to the world, is an appropriate approach that includes the nature of mind. However, they disagree on whether certain truths are knowable a priori. Of course, both of them_ a priori physicalists and a posteriori physicalists_ maintain that the doctrine “physicalism” can only be known a posteriori. Despite such a consensus, there is no consent about how exactly the doctrine should be formulated. The author has a critique of physicalism on the basis of this dispute and its division into a priori and a posteriori. It seems that physicalism requires a priori knowledge, but on the other hand, it seems also that it is impossible. It seems that there are some a priori entailments (implications) from microphysical truths to ordinary macroscopic truths. But it will be argued that there are no a priori entailments (implications) from microphysical truths to phenomenal truths because these truths cannot be functionalized. The purpose of this article is to argue that since such entailments (implications) are necessary for physicalism to be true, physicalism would be false regarding the phenomenal consciousness.

All notions pertaining to quiddity are prone to re-interpretation after one accepts the idea of the principality of existence, because one has to interpret them on the bases on the attributes of existence. The authors in this article try to infer Mulla Sadra’s idea about “genius” based on his unique idea and ontological interpretation of “differentia”. They want to know that, according to him, with an intuitive knowledge of which level of existence one becomes capable of contemplating about genius. In fact, they want to apply the same approach Mulla Sadra has taken with regard to the real differentia to the problem of genius. Since he considers differentia as reflecting “individual being”, the authors take the real genius as reflecting the all-pervading existence. They also refer to the incompatibility of this idea with Ibn-Sina’s well-known idea of the abstraction of genius from matter.

It is one of Mulla Sadra’s masterpieces to establish the gradation of existence. Some consider “principality of existence” and “gradational levels of existence” as two major wings of Mulla Sadra’s Transcendental Philosophy (Hikmat Muta’aliyah). This means that any critique of each one of these two principles leads to depriving it of one of its wings, and this shows the import of the issue of gradation for his philosophy.The author in this article wants to criticize an article entitled “Mulla Sadra’s Theory of the Gradation of Existence under Debate,” published in Ma’rifat-e Falsafi 29, to defend Mulla Sarda’s theory of the gradation of existence and to answer the questions and comments by the author of that article.