Abstract

Islamic Philosophers have treated knowledge from two angles: ontology and epistemology. So far as the former concerns, they have posed the question of whether knowledge exists. As for the latter, they have dealt with the nature and reality of knowledge, that is, the relation between knowledge and the known.Concerning the former, Islamic philosophers believe that knowledge has a reality. In Mulla Sadra's view, the soul represents God on the earth and is as creative as He is. God creates the world and bestows objective existence to the creatures. Similarly, the soul gives mental existence to objects in itself through imagination.The difference is that what God creates enjoys reality, while what the soul creates lacks reality.According to Islamic philosophy, what exists in our mind consists of the quiddities of objects. They believe that the relation between the mind and the outside is something beyond correspondence, in fact, is a kind of identity. When we have the very objects in the mind, why should we go after correspondence? "Identity" does not exist among existents but among quiddities. Of course, quiddities have two dresses: the mental dress and the external dress. Therefore, mental existence is one kind of existence and external existence is another kind. However, both of them have the same mould or form which is the very quiddity itself.According to Islamic theosophy, the mind conceives the external quiddity and even if we do not have access to the existence of an object, we can perceive its reality through its quiddity.