Abstract:
gradual
Machine summary:
Key Terms: Mulla Sadra, being, ontology, epistemology, correspondence theory Introduction Let us put aside for a moment the common debates in contemporary epistemology, such as the relations between belief, truth and justification, and only suppose that in this world some people have knowledge.
Being is genuine and has primacy, however, when we consider being and quiddity in our mind; the priority of quiddity in the mind and its important role in mental perceptions and judgments misleads us to consider quiddity to be primary in the external world (Mulla Sadra 1981, Vol. 1, 56).
To the extent that knowledge is more general and covers more known objects, it is more intense (Mulla Sadra 1981, Vol. 3, 378-379).
The next step in Sadra’s system is the claim that knowledge is mental existence (see for example Mulla Sadra (1981, Vol. 1, 268-314)).
The second point is that although an external object provides some appropriate conditions for the soul to create a correspondent mental existence, our real known object is not the external object, but the mental existence (Mulla Sadra 1981, Vol. 3, 462-4).
11 Sadra has two arguments for this theory: according to the first, the real and active knower agent is the soul and the actual known object is mental existence in our soul, which has been created by it.
However, if the actual being of the known object is different from its real being in the external world we have knowledge by acquisition (Mulla Sadra 2002, 4-6).
Non-correspondent conceptions of the external objects and false judgments have mental existence; however, they are not part of our knowledge.