مطالب

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.

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.

Iran is a multicultural country that encompasses various ethnic, lingual and religious groups. The purpose of this article is to show how does the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran deal with the issue of cultural diversity? We used the method of conforming theory with sample. Cultural citizenship theories are also used as a theoretical framework to analyze the solution. The most important finding of this study is that the Constitution of Iran provides a two-layer solution for the issue of socio-cultural diversity. The lower layer comprises cultural politics of centralism which, in turn, is the result of domination of Islamic, Shiite, Persian, and patriarchal culture. In contrast, the upper layer comprises a combination of politics of wide recognition (especially in language and ethnicity areas) and politics of narrow recognition (especially religion, women, and vulnerable social groups). Although the constitutional solution has similarity with modern culture citizenship, some citizens (including ethnic, religious and sexual minorities) do not consider the complete autonomy.

Archaeology of children and childhood is rather a new field of study within archaeology and anthropology. However, it is very difficult to trace the presence of children in archaeological material. Their manifestation is mainly limited to mortuary, artefacts or objects considered to be toys or built environment that too may have been either in connection with specific items used by or were in relation to children or iconographic evidence from past. The present study tries to examine depictions of children in Sasanian rock reliefs which have long been the subject of extensive research, nevertheless it seems such depiction on art objects was not a matter of attraction by itself. On the other hand, lack of coherent literary evidence about social status, roles and realm of children and childhood in the Sasanian society leave many questions unanswered. Hence, despite a large number of researches in the field of Sasanian history and archaeology, one cannot postulate a coherent research background specific to the aforementioned subject. Children are displayed in a number of Sasanian rock reliefs which are introduced and presented in chronological order. Identity of these children and purpose of their depiction is discussed based on available works. Although, the historical identity of these children may never be certainly established, but those shown in investiture and parade reliefs of Ardashir I, Shapur I and Narseh at Firuzabad, Naqsh-e Rajab and Naqsh-e Rustam are certainly the children of high status or having royal lineage. In two of Shapur I reliefs, a putto is depicted and a probably captive child –enemy’s son- are seen in Bahram II/Shapur II relief in Tang-e Chowgan.