causation

The issue of causation is one of the most important philosophical issues, so that without having a good understanding of this concept, it is impossible to understand the world. Any kind of discussion, speaking, and experience, or any human action is based on some kind of understanding of the concept of causation and accepting its reality. The issue of causation can be discussed from various aspects. Modern Western philosophers including Hume and Kant have treated this issue from epistemological point of view. But Muslim philosophers consider it as an ontological one. Mullah Sadrā as a great Muslim philosopher has dealt with this issue and has given its correct meaning with reference to its various forms in his works particularly, in his main book al-Asfār. By proving the principality of existence and mentally-positedness of quiddity, he claimed that it is not possible to explain causation on the basis of quiddity and quiddative possibility. At first, he explained causation on the basis of gradational unity of existence, but since this unity may lead to the separation of cause and effect, he finally by following a mystical approach to this principle, shifted from gradational unity to the individual unity of existence. He explained the principle of causation with reference to the mystical oneness of being, since there is no room for multiplicity. In such an approach, effect will be nothing other than a symbol or sign and has no identity other than a kind of mirror

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.

This paper aims to investigate the light verb constructions (LVCs) formed with the light verb dādan ‘to give’ in Persian by employing the principles of cognitive lexical semantics. It examines the semantic relationships between the heavy verb dādan and its uses as LVCs. The analysis of attested examples reveals that the use of dādan as a light verb (LV) is a function of the semantic structure of its simple verb counterpart. This suggests that its lightness status is highly systematic and can be explained in terms of cognitively driven motivations. In addition, a significant number of the LVCs express certain causation meanings, suggesting that Persian speakers tend to use the LV dādan to convey causative notions as newly emerged LVCs. This stance will constitute our line of argument to analyze the data in this study. By presenting a cognitive configuration of LVCs in Persian, the current paper can pave the way for a fine-grained theorization of typological aspects of LVCs in some other languages.