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Showing 9 results for Causation


Volume 1, Issue 4 (12-2021)
Abstract

Emergentism bears similarities to the Islamic Transcendent Philosophy about the relationship between the soul and the body. At the same time, despite these similarities, there seem to be fundamental differences in the ontological picture of these two. The main issue of this paper is to identify these differences. The result of this effort can be summarized as saying that the ontological foundations of Emergentism are consistent with scientific findings, while this is not the case with Transcendent Philosophy, and that there are fundamental differences between the ontological picture of Transcendent Philosophy and Emergentism in relation to the soul and the body relation; Differences rooted in the contradiction between the classical or Aristotelian image of the world and the new scientific image of the that.


Volume 12, Issue 1 (3-2021)
Abstract

The causation has a special and important role in the philosophy, especially traditional philosophy. Main question in this study is whether the description of causal relations in Islamic philosophy can be justified and explained in the framework of the theory of conceptual metaphor. The study is focused on theology section of Al-Shifa (Healing) written by Ibn Sina. The book of Al-Shifa (Healing) is one of the most important works of Ibn Sina. The theology section of this book should be considered as the most important philosophical work of Ibn Sina. To answer the question, conceptual metaphors of causation in this book are identified. Ibn Sina uses many different words to describe the causal relations. By extracting and categorization of those words, several conceptual metaphors about causation are found. In this study, the role and importance of every one of these conceptual metaphors is determined by statistical method. The statistical data is extracted by counting words related to source domain of conceptual metaphors.
Conceptual metaphors related to causation in the book can be divided into two major categories: metaphors based on the primary metaphor of “Cause Is Physical Force" and metaphors based on natural causation. By extracting the abundance of each of the two categories, it becomes clear that the metaphors based on natural causation have a greater frequency than another in the theology of Al-Shifa( Healing)
1. Introduction
In the theory of conceptual metaphors, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson claim that understanding of abstract concepts is made possible by understanding of less abstract concepts. Causation is one of important abstract concepts in traditional philosophy. Ibn Sina is one of the greatest Muslim philosophers and Al-Shifa is his most important philosophical book. The Al-Shifa includes the sections of logic, physics and theology. This research focuses on the theology section of this book.
 This study is about following basic questions by focusing theology section of Ibn sina’ Al-Shifa :
A) Can Ibn Sina's understanding and description of the causal relationship be explained in the framework of the theory of conceptual metaphors?
The hypothesis of this study is that Ibn Sina's understanding of causation can be explained by the theory of conceptual metaphors. Assuming that this hypothesis is true, other questions are raised in this study:
B) What are the important conceptual metaphors related to causation in the theology of Al-Shifa?
C) What is the importance and position of each of the above-mentioned conceptual metaphors in the theology of Al-Shifa?
The position and importance of each conceptual metaphor is determined by calculating the statistical frequency of each of these metaphors.
 
2. Literature review
For Aristotle, philosophy are the knowledge of the causes and principles of things (Aristotle: 981b-983a). He also believes that it is not possible to know objects without knowing their causes (Aristotle: 993b23, 983a24, 194b18). Ibn Sina, following the ideas of the first teacher, introduces philosophy as recognizing the principles and first causes of beings (Ibn Sina, 1376: 12).
Lakoff and Johnson introduce causation as one of the most important concepts to understand and describe the events in the human thought and language. They believe that the causation has been conceptualized by an initial skeletal literal structure, the central prototype, and finally the metaphorical extensions of this prototype (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980:71; 1999: 177-178).
They introduce several conceptual metaphors to describe causation focusing on everyday English language such as “Causation Is Forced Movements”, “Causation Is Transfer Of Possessions” , “Causation Is A Forced Change Of Shape” , “Causation Is Upward Motion” and “Causation Is Motion out” (Lakoff, 1993: 220-229; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 69-76). They believe that the same conceptual metaphors of causation are also used in philosophical texts. Every philosophical theory of causation is based on one or more the conceptual metaphors. Every philosopher believes that only his view of causation is correct, but according to Lakoff and Johnson, none of these theories alone can represent all aspects of this concept (Lakoff, 1999: 226).
 
3. Methodology
In conceptual metaphors, a conceptual domain - the target domain - is conceptualized by another conceptual domain - the source domain.
Conceptual metaphors in a text can be identified and introduced by relying on words related to source domain, or target domain, or combination of the two ( Stefanowitsch, 2006: 2-3). Target domain of all conceptual metaphors related to causation are words that literally mean causation. Although the Al-Shifa is full of descriptions of causal relationships, there are not many cases of using words that have a literal causal meaning. Therefore, in this study, the conceptual metaphors of causation in the Al-Shifa are extracted and introduced by words related to target domain of these metaphors. Every conceptual metaphor in the Al-Shifa is represented through the derivations of one or more lexical roots. This book is written in Arabic language.
By qualitative study of the theology section of the Al-Shifa, the most important conceptual metaphors related to causation in this book and the lexical roots related to each of these metaphors were extracted. Then, by counting the frequency of using derivatives of roots related to each of the conceptual metaphors in this book, the frequency of each of the conceptual metaphors in this book was calculated.
 
4. Conclusion
Some of the conceptual metaphors related to causation in Al-Shifa are similar to the conceptual metaphors introduced by Lakoff and Johnson, but the other part of these metaphors is new and original.
Conceptual metaphors in this book can be divided into two categories: (A) metaphors based on the primary metaphor "Cause Is Physical Force" and (B) metaphors based on natural causation. Category A includes metaphors that conceptualize causation as a kind of forced movement, while category B conceptualizes causation as an action or state that arises from the essence of an object and occurs automatically.
Category A includes “Causation Is Transfer Of Possessions”, “Causation Is Making” and “Causation Is Making An Impression” metaphors.
Category B includes “Causation Is Motion out”, “Causation Is Being Basis” and “Cause Is Source” metaphors.
“Causation Is Transfer Of Possessions” metaphor (108) is represented by the derivations of «‘-ṭ-w» (12), «w-h-b» (2) and « f-y-d » (94) roots. “Causation Is Making” metaphor (39) emerges through derivations of «j-‘-l» (30) and «ṣ-n-‘» (9) roots. “Causation Is Making An Impression” metaphor (59) related to the derivations of «‘- th-r»(59) root.
“Causation Is Motion out” metaphor (122) is represented by the derivations of «ṣ-d-r» (67), «n-sh-’» (2), «f-y-ḍ» (53) roots. “Causation Is Being Basis” metaphor (250) involves the derivations of «q-w-m» (250) root. “Cause Is Source” metaphor (317) is represented by the derivations of «b-d-’» (317) root.
The numbers in parentheses indicate the frequency of metaphoric usage of each lexical root or conceptual metaphors in theology section of Al-Shifa written by Ibn Sina.
Category B (689) has more frequency than Category A (206). This shows that Ibn Sina's philosophy is based on an essentialist view. In such a view, the events of the universe are the result of the inherent characteristics of beings, not the application of an external force on object.

Volume 16, Issue 1 (5-2012)
Abstract

          Causation relationship, as one of the pillars of fulfillment of tort liability, is a matter that besides other pillars of lawsuit, should be proved by the claimant. But this general rule has exceptions in which the claimant is exempt from proving some pillars of lawsuit.  One of the exceptions is presumption of causation. It means that in some cases, despite of the necessity of existence of causation relationship, the claimant does not need to prove it. None of the articles mention the presumption of causation expressly. What is discussed in this research is surveying the cases of presumption of causation in tort. With analysis of the tort-relevant topics, we understand that in tort, presumption of causation mainly exists in two cases: 1) Cases with presumed faults and 2) Cases in which  proving the existence of causation in them is difficult because of some special circumstances; so we can apply presumption of causation in them.             
                       

Volume 17, Issue 2 (9-2013)
Abstract

            Causation relationship, as one of the pillars of fulfillment of tort liability, is a matter that besides other pillars of lawsuit, should be proved by the claimant. But this general rule has exceptions in which the claimant is exempt from proving some pillars of lawsuit.  One of the exceptions is presumption of causation. It means that in some cases, despite of the necessity of existence of causation relationship, the claimant does not need to prove it. None of the articles mention the presumption of causation expressly. What is discussed in this research is surveying the cases of presumption of causation in tort. With analysis of the tort-relevant topics, we understand that in tort, presumption of causation mainly exists in two cases: 1) Cases with presumed faults and 2) Cases in which  proving the existence of causation in them is difficult because of some special circumstances; so we can apply presumption of causation in them.         
     

Volume 18, Issue 1 (5-2014)
Abstract

            One of themost important issues incivil liabilityis"uncertain causation”. Whenwe know that the cause of loss is one factor out of several factors, but we can not determine itwith certainty, then "uncertain causation" comes to mind. Aboutthe "uncertain cause",differentideasandsolutionshave been proposed.Early lawyers with stressing on the need to prove legal causation relationship between the harmful act by a certain person and the affected loss, generallybelieved that,inthis case,there is nocivil liability. But after a while,the view ofcollective responsibilitywas made, whichwas ofliabilitypartnership typeinFrance and in thecommon law, it was of proportionate type; the positive side ofthisis an important point. InIslamicjurisprudence, one ofthe existingviews is the"draw rule" that was adopted in IslamicPenal Code1375 (2006). But the Islamic Penal Code, adopted in 1392 (2013), considered and approved the views of contemporary scholars, and preferred an equal responsibility of several uncertain factors.      
*Corresponding Author’s E-mail: z.afshar@stu.qom.ac.ir
Vahid Khademzadeh, Mohammad Saeedimehr,
Volume 24, Issue 1 (1-2017)
Abstract

Unlike Aristotle, Lakoff considers metaphor as an integral part of the process of human thinking and believes that humans often automatically and unconsciously learn and use a wide range of conceptual metaphors. A large part of our scientific and philosophical literature is full of conceptual metaphors. According to Lakoff, like other abstract concepts, causation is made of a small literal part which is extended by various kinds of conceptual metaphors in several directions. The current paper shows that a large part of the metaphors introduced by Lakoff, has been used by Muslim philosophers to describe causation. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Mulla Sadra are two of the most significant Islamic philosophers. According to Ibn Sina, causation is based on ‘Causation is Transfer of Possessions’ metaphor. This metaphor depicts causation as a three-component relation in which the boundaries are very strong and sharp. According to Mulla Sadra, causation is based on ‘Causation is Motion out’ metaphor. This metaphor makes causation to have two components and decreases the strength of boundaries between the components of the relation.

Khadijeh Hassan Bigzadeh, Seyed Hassan Hosseini,
Volume 24, Issue 2 (5-2017)
Abstract

Questions about the metaphysics of causation may be usefully divided into questions about the objects that are causally related, and questions about the causal relations themselves. For instance, is causation merely a physical concept? What is the connection between causation and probability? According to Wesley Salmon, an analysis of causation in terms of physical and causal relations of propensity is possible. But he replaces the notion of necessity with what he calls propensity. This approach to causality is consistent with a probabilistic approach. Another approach would be to reduce such relations to the physical causation. These questions should be resolved. As it turns out, in order to resolve these fundamental and metaphysical disputes, we can turn to a concept of causation that has been discussed within the Islamic philosophy. This approach treats causality as a rational and philosophical notion, and, in contrast to the probabilistic approach, it retains the necessity of causal relations.

Volume 25, Issue 3 (12-2021)
Abstract

Man is a voluntary being, and having this quality causes human responsibilities to be borne And if a person is reluctantly influenced by her will, it is not possible to hold her responsible to some extent. Of course, this view is foreseen in the discussion of the general rules of contracts and criminal liability in the laws of Iran and France, but the Iranian legislator has been silent on civil liability law. Scholars of Islamic sciences have addressed this issue in jurisprudential books and disagree on some issues, including the issue of reluctant murder. The Islamic Penal Code legislates the punishment of the reluctant person, but in the legal field, Iranian jurists, in their books on civil liability, briefly refer to the books of jurisprudence and related laws, but a special rule for It has not been predicted. Carefully in the laws of Iran and France, the need to provide separate materials for the issue of reluctance in civil liability of Iran due to the growing importance of civil liability and to prevent disagreement in the judicial process has been felt and the proposed materials have been presented.

Volume 28, Issue 1 (5-2024)
Abstract

Assembled goods are goods that are made by assembling prefabricated parts. If damage is caused by the assembled product, the injured party usually files a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the final product due to easier access. The defendant may argue that he relied on actions or omissions of component manufacturers or raw material suppliers to exemption from liability in this research, we answer the question that on which basis is the producer of the part is responsible to the injured party? In order to answer this question, the legal system of the United States has been studied first, and by extracting the model of this legal system based on the judicial procedure, the issue has been discussed in Iran legal system. Finally, it was concluded that in the American legal system, the general principle is that if the manufactured part is non-defective before distribution, the part manufacturer is not responsible. However, in exceptional cases, the component maker is responsible for compensation to the injured party, and for these cases, four models have been followed by the courts of this country. In Iran's legal system, inspired by the model obtained from the American legal system, the manufacturer of the part is responsible in case the component is defective and there is a certain causal relationship between the defect and the occurrence of damage, in contrast in cases of design defects and or issuance of warning by the component manufacturer, the responsibility of the part manufacturer is assumed.
 

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