Similarities and Differences between Emergentism and Mulla Sadra’s Psychology

A philosophical paper compares Sadra's theory of the soul's bodily origination with contemporary emergentism in the philosophy of mind. It distinguishes strong from weak emergentism and reviews physicalist challenges to the strong version. The author then examines Sadra's account of the soul's occurrence and its ranks, finding similarities and differences with strong emergentism. Most objections to strong emergentism are argued to be reformable from Sadra's perspective. The paper also critiques Sadraian explanations of mind-body connection as insufficient to satisfy physicalist objections, concluding that Sadra's philosophy of mind requires further development.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper - in order to make a comparative study between Sadra’s theory and a new western theory about soul’s occurrence - first focuses on studying and explaining a new theory in philosophy of mind; called “Emergentism” by contemporary philosophers. The author distinguishes between two version of Emergentism: strong and weak, and describes two challenges against the strong version which have adduced by physicalists. He, then, makes a brief review of Sadra’s theory about soul’s occurrence and its ranks, and thus considers the similarities and differences between Sadra’s view and strong emergentism. This paper, by referring to the common aspects of these two theories, believes that most challenges which have made against strong emergentism are reformable versus Sadra’s theory. He, finally, implicates some explications of Sadraian philosophers about mind – body connection, and shows their inefficiency to meet the objections and ambiguities of physicalist philosophers. He believes that Sadra’s philosophy of mind needs further completion to satisfy this requirement. The main contribution of this paper is explaining the intersections and dissociations of these two theory, and some deficiencies and ambiguities of Sadra’s view before physicalism.