Editor's Note

We open this issue by examining the inner logic of perception and consciousness. The first article, “Robert Brandom’s Inferential Interpretation of the Degrees of Perceptual Clarity in Leibniz,” investigates the role of perceptual clarity in differentiating monads. Drawing on Brandom’s inferentialist reading, the author argues that perceptions bear an “inferential load,” and that greater richness of inferential content results in greater distinctness of perception. The study proposes a model that, while preserving the principle that each monad represents the entire world, explains differences in their degrees of consciousness and shows that not every distinct perception is necessarily conscious.
Cognition, however, is not confined to the mental sphere and requires a redefinition of the relation between mind and body. The second article, “The Dialectic of Causality and Constitution؛ A Structural Rereading of the Phenomenology of Embodied Cognition,” argues that the way beyond the impasses of Cartesian dualism is a shift from “causal” explanations to “constitutive” explanations. The author’s analysis shows that phenomenological concepts are all manifestations of a single “Constitutive Turn,” in which constitution is redefined as a diachronic process intertwined with causality, and thus a dynamic and dialectical model for understanding cognition is offered.
In the third step, the question of cognition leads to the question of the human being’s existential truth and freedom. The article, “An Account of the Reality of Freedom According to Mullā Ṣadrā’s Theory of the Soul’s Unveiling,” by distinguishing between Ṣadrā’s intermediate and final views, presents freedom not as the transition from potentiality to actuality, but as a “manifestational transcendence” grounded in the “unveiling of what lies within.” On this basis, the “reality of freedom” is not an accidental or acquired matter, but rather the “manifestation of latent inner perfections” in the human essence, whose end is the station of the Perfect Human.
Extending the discussion of consciousness and personal identity into the horizon of contemporary technology, the fourth article, “A Critical Study on the Mind Uploading Hypothesis,” addresses a hypothesis which, on the basis of a computationalist reading, promises the possibility of transferring the mind from a biological substrate to a non-biological one. The author argues that by disregarding human embodied existence, this approach reduces identity merely to psychological states and therefore fails to account for two fundamental metaphysical issues: the phenomenological character of consciousness and the preservation of personal identity (especially numerical identity).
Challenges concerning the continuity of identity are rooted in how we understand time. Accordingly, the fifth article, “The Paradox of Discontinuity and Continuity of Time in Descartes’ Physics and Metaphysics,” is devoted to this issue. By examining Descartes’ scattered and sometimes seemingly contradictory remarks on time, the study shows that textual evidence and philosophical interpretations support Descartes’ commitment to a version of “temporal atomism” (strong discontinuity). It also presents the opposing reading, according to which Descartes affirms temporal continuity, and critically assesses its scope and limits.
If, in Descartes’ thought, the issue of the discontinuity and continuity of time is contested, then in Iranian–Islamic philosophy, especially in Suhrawardi’s works, we also witness a conceptual rupture with the Greek tradition. The sixth article, “Suhrawardi’s Break with the Foundations of Aristotle’s Political Thought,” explains how Suhrawardi refers the Aristotelian concept of “chance” to human ignorance regarding events. The authors show that Shaykh al-Ishrāq, by basing political administration on a law that the philosopher enacts and by linking the provision of suitable material and people to the political sage Farah Kiani, completely cuts off the role of luck and chance from the realm of politics and, in this way, creates a fundamental rupture between the Greek tradition and the Islamic philosophical tradition.
Finally, this issue closes with a reflection on the fundamental limits of the human condition. The article, “Thomas Nagel’s Theory of Tragic Epistemology: The Limits of the Subject and the Ideal of Objectivity,” focuses on the basic paradox of realism and skepticism. By examining the knowing subject’s fourfold limitations, existential, temporal, perceptual, and epistemic, the author shows that the human epistemic condition is “tragic,” because human beings are condemned to seek a truth that, due to their structure of existence, they can never fully possess, even as reason relentlessly draws them toward it.
It is hoped that this collection of studies will open a new window onto philosophical reflection.