KNOWLEDGE (JOURNAL OF HUMAN SCIENCES)
Year:2014 | Volume:- | Issue:69/1|Papers Count:7

A philosopher of the Safavid period and a representative of Mulla Rajab Ali Tabrizi’s school, Mir Qawam al-Din Muhammad Razi Tehrani (d. 1093/1682) is one of the commentators of the Isfahan School of Philosophy. Mir Qawam al-Din, like his master Mulla Rajab Ali Tabrizi, is a staunch critic of Mulla Sadra. He repeatedly criticizes the foundations of Mulla Sadra’s philosophical system in his works. The present study deals, after a brief account of Razi’s life and works, with Mir Qawam al-Din’s objections to Mulla Sadra’s existential approach in relation to such issues as the subject of philosophy, content participation of the concept of existence, fundamental reality of existence, existence being made and the graded unity of existence. The study also examines his most important views which are incompatible with philosophy in general, and Sadarai philosophy in particular including the ascription of the necessary to God, and the division of the necessary into the necessary by itself and necessary by the other.

The term of consciousness in philosophy of mind is based upon the psychological approach of Descartes and the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth century. But we can approximate the doctrine of Aristotle about sense perception to the discussion of consciousness in contemporary philosophy. Aristotle considers the topic of consciousness in the frame of soul-body relation. Thus, primarily, we analyze the term of substance to perceive the relation of soul-body. In the next stage, we analyze the structure of perception that is inherently conscious, in Aristotelian psychology and this is comparable with the theory of first-order representationalism in contemporary philosophy of mind. The possibility of naturalistic interpretation of perception in Aristotelian philosophy does not exist, because we must probe the naturalistic approach in modern physics. Ultimately we pose two new approaches to studying Aristotle’s psychology that is, the theory of person and functionalism and represent the critical analysis of them.

Husserl believes that under the impact of modern science as inaugurated by Galileo, the Life-world - i.e., the world of common experience - has been replaced by the objectively true world of science which, in the thinking of modern western man, passes for reality. On the one hand, Husserl in opposition to the objective view of the world insists that the Life-world is the meaning-fundament of scientific thinking and the sphere of original evidences. On the other hand, he maintains that the theoretical results of science take on the character of validities for the Life-world, adding themselves as such to its own composition. Husserl, at first, considers the Life-world in the context of the objective science critique, but describing the subjective-relative Life-world, which includes science, it would not remain as a partial problem within the general problem of the objective science. The invariant and common structures that abstract from the subjective-relative Life-world yield the universal Life-world a priori. Therefore, the Life-world which firstly appeared as a partial problem within the general problem of the objective science, namely, functions as the foundation of sciences. Eventually, it is disclosed, in terms of Husserl, as a universal and genuine problem for philosophy. This paper deals with the view of the relationship of the Life-world and science, and demonstrates the Life-world conception as a universal problem.

The mind-body problem is one of the fundamental issues of philosophy that addresses the relationship between mental states and brain (physical) states. Substance dualism sees mental states as distinct from physical states and each of the minds and the body is two substances separate and apart from each other, that have specific characteristics of their own. Behaviorism explains mental states as modes of behavior and reduces mental states to behavioral states. Identity theory takes mental states as brain states. Functionalist theory considers mental states as a functional state which given the inputs, outputs, and other mental states, plays a functional role and is not reducible to modes of behavior, mental and physical one. In this article, the problem of explaining the mind-body dualism is dealt with first, and then, substantive perspective, behaviorism, and identity theory are evaluated. We discuss functionalism and all its forms in comparison with other theories.

This article explains the importance of philosophical analysis in defining art in Danto's approach. Danto’s philosophy of art is at the confluence of the continental philosophical tradition and the analytical, while his approach to the philosophy of art could also call post-analytical. Danto has attempted to provide a full definition of art in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. In this sense, he tries to overcome the neo-Wittgensteinian’s ban on defining art, as well as provide alternative view to the aesthetic theory of art. He has formulated the problem of the definition of art in terms of the experiment of indiscernible counterparts, which consists in presenting sets of perceptually indiscernible objects that belong to different ontological categories-some are artworks while others are mere objects or representations. Danto thinks that the development of art history was over in 1964, because Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Box” appeared. We can no longer make a distinction between this work of art and the real Brillo Box, which is just a commonplace object.

In his philosophical system, Hegel changes the subjective and reductionist aesthetic project that is related to the philosophy of the Enlightenment age and redirects it so that the new paradigm of "taste" is substituted with thinking about the revelation of art and truth. Revising the legacy of Enlightenment thought, alongside underlining art in the area of aesthetics, he specifies art as an appearance of truth. Along with philosophy and religion, art, in the overall system of Hegel's philosophy, is the great manifestation of the truth, but in a sensible form. Hegel's dialectical approach to aesthetics, without willing to going back to the pre-criticism period, followed by opening new horizons for the philosophy of art in a historic way. In this new paradigm, art transcends to the truth realm, and is shared with philosophy. Through the transition from mere aesthetics, the philosophy of art could possible. Thus, his central distinction in aesthetics, led to several developments that radically changed its approach. Pursuant to art, instead of addressing natural beauty in aesthetics, concepts of art and beauty correlated to human history, and thus came in line with knowledge and freedom. Hence, art and philosophy belong to one realm, even if Hegel claims that philosophy is superior.

There is a little doubt that we can consider the personal unity theory of existence as the most influential theory in theoretical mysticism, mystical literature, and Molla Sadra’s Philosophy. By focusing on mystical intuition, the perspective of the existence world is explained by that approach as the single truth that manifests itself in various and manifold specifications and forms. The acceptance and realization of this view, by human reason that has become aware of them and recognized them from each other through an analytic demarcation, seems impossible. Pantheism’s (transcendence unity of being) point of view is apprehensible and acceptable provided there is clear explanation of the expansion process of the single truth, so that both plurality and unity are focused in this explanation. This paper reread such a process at first, then introduces some center concepts, and considers some ontological and epistemological results at the end.