Philosophy and Kalam
Year:2013 | Volume:46 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

In the nineteenth century, with the rise of the literary schools in France and giving heed to oriental literacy and mystical works, the commentators and translators of Ibn Sina began to work on his treatises. Since they knew Ibn Sina as an Aristotelian philosopher, the following question was raised: Why has Aristotelian Ibn Sina given heed to mystical attitudes? In response to the question whether or not there is any unity between the two mentioned tendencies, the French researchers have three views: Some have attempted to find a sort of relationship between Ibn Sina's philosophical writings and his mystical works. Others have not questioned his mystical character and his spiritual works and have clearly pointed out that his intuitions and mystical words has a sort of metaphorical and mysterious theme showing his mystical experiences. The rest have introduced him as an Aristotelian philosopher who has only quoted the words of Sufis and mystics. Our goal in this paper is to critically analyze these three perspectives.

Condensation (contraction) and rarefaction (expansion) are two terms in natural philosophy (physics) used in several different meanings. In this article the meanings of the two terms and their real and artificial kinds are introduced and their differences with some terms such as growth, tumor, and, also, their opposite ones are expressed. We have also evaluated the philosophical and experimental arguments offered by Islamic Peripatetic philosophers for the real condensation and rarefaction from the perspective of modern science. Finally we have shown that although there are some criticisms against their arguments, the Islamic Peripatetic philosophers have been realistic in describing these terms, and the opponents’ words such as Suhrawardi’s are not correct.

Differentiation of the two terms imagination and judgment is a main distinction in Islamic logic and Neo-Sadraean epistemology. Both disciplines believe that the divider of the two is "acquired knowledge". But, the concept of “judgment”, in epistemology, is not the same as the concept of "acquired knowledge" in Islamic philosophy. Differentiation of imagination and judgment is an ontological one, and Islamic philosophers consider acquired knowledge as an "epistemic being". In logic and epistemology "Judgment" is the same as "proposition", and is not an “epistemic being". “Judgment" is the origin of the two concepts: "representation" and "assertion". In logic, "Judgment" is "asserting the truth of a proposition", and in epistemology, it is the knowledge of realization or non- realization of something.

Although Aristotle has considered the “universal substance” as a substance, he introduced knowledge as an accident. The question then arises as to whether a “universal substance”, whereas it is a substance, can be an accident. Answering the question, Ibn Sina has changed the subject of the dispute from “mental substance” to “quiddity of substance”, so that he could guarantee its truth in the form of an “essential artificial common predication” (haml shaye sana’i be-al-dhdhat). Considering this change and criticizing Ibn Sina, Mulla Sadra has posed “essential primary predication” (haml awwali dhdhati) as a solution. By considering these two solutions, the necessity of posing essential primary predication by Sadra can be understood. It also can be well realized that their solutions, despite Qawam Safari’s claim, are not the same, and Sadra’s solution cannot be seen as inefficient, as Fallahi says, although it can only solves some part of the problem.

For the first time in the history of logic, Afzal al-Din al-Khunaji has found tautologies and contradictories among the verity and actuality propositions. These have been formalized and investigated in First-Order Logic and it has been shown that their perpetual truth requires the assumption of ‘the presupposed existence of non-existence.’ In this paper, I investigate the tautologies in Second-Order Logic and show that there is no need to the aforementioned assumption, and they can be proved as theorems without any assumption in Second-Order Logic. But, the analysis of these tautologies in Second-Order Logic has its shortcomings; for example, the formalization of actuality I-propositions in many cases is contradictory. This shows that the analysis of the tautologies, whether in First- or Second-Order Logic, has shortcomings, which need to be removed.

Oppenheimer and Zalta, in a co-Authored paper, argue that the Anselm’s ontological argument can be formalized based on free logic and the concept of conceivability. According to their version, there are only two premises in Anselm’s argument. We will argue that one can extend their formalization by introducing an argument for one of the two premises based on Anselm’s text. We will also show that our formulation is in more accordance with Anselm’s text.

The problem of “imagination”, as raised by Muslim philosophers, has several epistemic consequences in subjects as diverse as ontology, prophecy, conceptualization and the functions of art. In Illuminationist Philosophy of Suhrawardi, moreover, bears the topic of imagination a correlation to other subjects. Of the foundations of Suhrawardi's processing of the theory of imagination, the most prominent is the principle of vision, which he has developed in some positions, and based on which he has considered imagination as the illumination of the soul. Apart from intuitive proofs, Suhrawardi's major argument for illumationist imagination is the refutation of manifold cognitive faculties. It is based on this refutation that he devotes an echelon of the universe to suspended archetypes (incorporeal forms). He rejects the affinity between sensual and imaginative perception.