Historical evidence shows that mental symptoms were constructed in a particular historical and cultural context (19th Century alienism). According to the Cambridge model of symptom-formation, mental symptoms are mental acts whereby sufferers configure, by means of cultural templates, information invading their awareness. This information, which can be of biological or semantic origin, is pre-conceptual and pre-linguistic and to be understood and communicated requires formatting and linguistic collocation. Mental symptoms are hybrid objects, that is, blends of inchoate biological or symbolic signals (...) and cultural configurators. "Culture" plays a very deep role in symptom-formation because templates can attenuate or abolish the specificity of the biological signals involved. This means that signals from different brain sites can be configured as the same symptom and signals from the same site as different symptoms. Although always present, the neurobiological substratum is not fundamental in the understanding and management of mental symptoms. These can only be comprehended in relation to the manner of their construction and the cognitive and emotional biographies of each patient. Direct interference with the brain sites involved may dull mental symptoms but is unlikely to offer long-term cure. If the configuratory style and needs of the patient are not understood and dealt with, he is likely to keep re-constituting or replicating his symptoms in relation to other biological signals. In summary, mental symptoms are not passive happenings but genuine mental acts. Hence, the manner and motivation of their construction may be more important than the signal of brain distress that might have provoked them in the first place. (shrink)

This paper seeks to bring cosmopsychism, a contemporary metaphysical position on the nature of mind and consciousness, into contact with the philosophical tradition of Hinduism. Behind this exercise lies the motivation to examine how ideas developed within this rich tradition could aid in the effort to think constructively and creatively about issues which occupy the contemporary literature on panpsychism, and in particular cosmopsychism. I argue that, within the Hindu philosophical corpus, contemporary cosmopsychism finds its most natural allies in two world-affirming (...) views: Kashmir Śaivism, and the integral Advaita of Sri Aurobindo. After discussing these views, and their affinities to cosmopsychism, I argue that one important potential contributions of such perspectives lies in the fact that they present us with a form of priority monism little developed within contemporary philosophy. I call this neglected perspective generative monism, and I offer a preliminary exposition of the view and of its explanatory potential. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the Ganser syndrome and gives a brief account on its clinical features. A significant number of clinicians in Europe continued accepting Ganser's basic postulates that the patients showed significant memory disorder and 'answers towards the question' within the framework of traumatic or reactive hysteria. In elderly patients, Ganser type symptoms may be indicative of the onset of dementia. Ganser syndrome raises the question of the interaction between concepts, ideology and clinical observation. The clinician must be aware that (...) a misdiagnosed case of Ganser-type hysteria may result in lawsuits, unnecessary surgical interventions, inappropriate use of minor and major tranquillizers, and social consequences that may be destabilizing for the patient and family. Positive results in the organic investigation should lead to a firm diagnosis and disconfirmation of Ganser syndrome. Persistent negative results and dramatic improvement should tend to confirm the diagnosis. (shrink)

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget contends that children below the age of 12 see no necessity for the logical law of non-contradiction. I argue this view is problematic. First of all, Piaget's dialogues with children which are considered supportive of this position are not clearly so. Secondly, Piaget underestimates the necessary nature of following the logical law of non-contradiction in everyday discourse. The mere possibility of saying something significant and informative at all presupposes that the law of non-contradiction is enforced.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the scientific approach that substantiates the impact of the creation of strategic alliances (SA) on the digital transformation of business and the development of their innovative power based on identified success factors. The aim was achieved using the following methods: abstract logic and typification (for classification of SA's success factors), generalization (to determine the peculiarities of SA's influence on their innovation development), analytical and ranking method (to determine the relationship between the dynamics (...) creating of SA and the degree of acceleration of digital transformation), expert evaluation (to determine the degree of influence of SA success factors by business areas). Implementing a business-integrated approach to understanding digital transformation will accelerate implementation of innovation and organizational change, identifies future prospects for market, customer and business relationships, highlighting the importance of researching the factors that ensure their success. An alternative vision of SA’s success factors is suggested, which are determined by the possibilities the organization of partnerships and organizational culture, integration of business sectors, compatibility of management goals, external relevance, obtaining synergies. Innovation is considered by the authors as an integration factor that reconciles all groups of SA success factors, giving them the necessary focus to solve business problems. The results of the study show that the creation of SA has a significant impact on accelerating and changes priority of digital transformation of business areas involved in strategic partnerships, and the impact of SA on the development of their innovation power is crucial. (shrink)

The current study is conducted to examine the following research question: How are healthy eating information-seeking ability and e-health literacy associated with healthy eating intention?

¿Debate? Para que lo sea es imprescindible dudar de uno mismo y escuchar al otro. A esto Kant le llamó «juicio» (ver la Crítica del Juicio [1]): ser capaz de ponerte en la posición del otro. Pues si no hacemos el esfuerzo de retrotraer con la imaginación lo que el otro está diciendo, si no somos capaces de colocarnos en el lugar del que nos habla para comprender exactamente los fundamentos de lo que afirma y cómo lo hace, ¿cómo vamos (...) a considerar y razonar acerca de la verdad o falsedad de esa argumentación? (shrink)

This page provides a quick glance at official publications that use either the bayesvl package in R or the BMF analytics (or both). The data will tell a bit about the research community’s efforts made over time and the growth of the bayesvl/BMF analytics community.

The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: 1) How are coastal activities enabling close connections to nature associated with the mental health condition of the visitors in the previous year? 2) How are coastal activities that have close connections to nature associated with the perceived general health condition of the visitors in the previous year?

This collection of writings on aesthetics includes selections from Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Amy Mullin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Frederich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. This collection may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University bookstore.

This collection for a course in Social Thought and the Critique of Power includes selections from Sandra Bartkey, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Luc Boltanski, Eve Chiapello, Juergin Habermas, Margaret Kohn, Saskia Sassen, Margit Mayer, David Ciavatta, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Jeremy Waldron. Selections include material on the city, neoliberalism, computer-mediated life, precarity, cosmopolitanism, and gender. This packet may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University Bookstore.

This out-of-print collection in the area of European twentieth-century political philosophy includes selections from Adorno, Benjamin, Benhabib, Marcuse, Ciavatta, Comay, Honneth, and Fraser.

This out-of-print collection on animal rights, applied ethics, and continental philosophy includes readings by Martin Heidegger, Karin De Boer, Martha Nussbaum, David De Grazia, Giorgio Agamben, Peter Singer, Tom Regan, David Morris, Michael Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Sue Donaldson, Carolyn Merchant, and Jacques Derrida.

This out-of-print collection in the area of the history, politics, ethics, and theory of privacy includes selections from Peter Gay, Alan Westin, Walter Benjamin, Catharine MacKinnon, Seyla Benhabib, Anita Allen, Ann Jennings, Charles Taylor, Richard Sennett, Mark Wicclair, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Nozick.

The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: 1) How are health information-seeking ability and e-health literacy associated with illness response capability? 2) How are health information-seeking ability and e-health literacy associated with the frequency of health checkups?

I show that the recent account of levels in neuroscience proposed by Craver and Bechtel is unsatisfactory since it fails to provide a plausible criterion for being at the same level and is incompatible with Craver and Bechtel’s account of downward causation. Furthermore, I argue that no distinct notion of levels is needed for analyzing explanations and causal issues in neuroscience: it is better to rely on more well-defined notions such as composition and scale. One outcome of this is that (...) apparent cases of downward causation can be analyzed away. (shrink)

The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: 1) What information sources on social media are associated with the general intention to try space tourism? 2) Does the automatically recommended information moderate the associations between multiple sources of information and the intention to try space tourism?

The current study is conducted to examine the following research question: How are the temperature and rainfall associated with the countries’ cultural values of embeddedness and hierarchy cultural values?

The current study is conducted to examine the following research question: 1) Who were the people who had no access to wildfire smoke notifications during the smoke event in the summer of 2018 in the Boise Metropolitan Area in Idaho? 2) Who were the people who were not familiar with the air quality rating system?

In this book, Ilhan Inan questions the classical definition of curiosity as _a desire to know._ Working in an area where epistemology and philosophy of language overlap, Inan forges a link between our ability to become aware of our ignorance and our linguistic aptitude to construct terms referring to things unknown. The book introduces the notion of inostensible reference. Ilhan connects this notion to related concepts in philosophy of language: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description; the referential and the (...) attributive uses of definite descriptions; the _de re/de dicto_ distinction; and Kripke’s distinction between rigid and accidental designators. Continuing with a discussion of the conditions for curiosity and its satisfaction, Inan argues that the learning process—starting in curiosity and ending in knowledge—is always an effort to transform our inostensible terms into ostensible ones. A contextual account is adopted for the satisfaction of curiosity. It then discusses the conditions of successful reference to the object of curiosity and its presuppositions. The book concludes with a discussion on the limits of curiosity and its satisfaction. (shrink)

The paper presents a pioneering approach to assessing the effectiveness of innovation processes in logistics. Indicators and the procedure of evaluating the efficiency of innovation processes in enterprise logistic activity are described. Possibilities of applying this approach are suggested.

In his text, “The Question Concerning Technology”, Heidegger argues that modern mind is unaware of Being’s self-destining which determines Dasein’s relation to their own essence and that of other beings because it is in a delusion of being an ‘efficient cause’. A bluntness of this kind not only endangers human-freedom but also puts natural entities at the risk of losing their authenticity since the modern mode of production regards nature as a reserve that is constantly in the service of human-doings. (...) Accordingly, the discussion carried out in this article is, despite his criticism of the conception of ‘agency’ underlying western metaphysics, whether or not Heidegger overcomes the problem of anthropocentrism in his own philosophy. (shrink)

In her Idea of Perfection, Ms. Murdoch criticizes what she takes to be an existentialist conception of ethics. This conception is not, however, existentialist, either in the sense in which Sartre characterized it, or any of those other existentialists from Dostoyevsky onwards. Whether her alternative ethic is better or worse than that of the existentialist, I do not know; but the one is not in contrast to the other.

Background: Dengue Disease is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by the dengue virus, symptoms typically begin three to fourteen days after infection. This may include a high fever, headache, vomiting, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash. Dengue serology is applied in different settings, such as for surveillance, in health care facilities in endemic areas and in travel clinics in non-endemic areas. The applicability and quality of serological tests in dengue endemic regions has to be judged against a (...) background of potential cross reactivity with other flavi-viruses, difficulties in distinguishing primary from secondary infections and technological problems related to the fact that most dengue endemic regions are relatively poor of resources .Objectives: to help doctors and patients in diagnosing Dengue Disease and give them the information of how to prevent Dengue Disease and to be able to understand the signs and symptoms of Dengue Disease. Methods: We collected all relevant material for Dengue Disease. Then we designed and implemented a knowledge based system for diagnosing Dengue Disease using SL5 Object Language. Results: The knowledge based system was evaluated by a group of Patients and specialized doctors and they found it very friendly and easy to use. (shrink)

Concordance of the poetic works of Giorgos Seferis which presents all the principal “words” of the texts in an alphabetical list, stating how often each word occurs, giving a precise location and a relevant piece of text for each occurrence. We found ca. 9500 different Greek words in 39000 different occurrences, so our concordance has 50.000 lines of text. The technical procedure required four main steps: text entry and tagging, production of the concordance, correction of the contexts, formatting for print.

The idea of levels of organization plays a central role in the philosophy of the life sciences. In this article, I first examine the explanatory goals that have motivated accounts of levels of organization. I then show that the most state-of-the-art and scientifically plausible account of levels of organization, the account of levels of mechanism proposed by Bechtel and Craver, is fundamentally problematic. Finally, I argue that the explanatory goals can be reached by adopting a deflationary approach, where levels of (...) organization give way to more well-defined and fundamental notions, such as scale and composition. (shrink)

Robustness is often presented as a guideline for distinguishing the true or real from mere appearances or artifacts. Most of recent discussions of robustness have focused on the kind of derivational robustness analysis introduced by Levins, while the related but distinct idea of robustness as multiple accessibility, defended by Wimsatt, has received less attention. In this paper, I argue that the latter kind of robustness, when properly understood, can provide justification for ontological commitments. The idea is that we are justified (...) in believing that things studied by science are real insofar as we have robust evidence for them. I develop and analyze this idea in detail, and based on concrete examples show that it plays an important role in science. Finally, I demonstrate how robustness can be used to clarify the debate on scientific realism and to formulate new arguments. (shrink)

According to data provided by CRAN, in November 2023, the number of downloads of the bayesvl program reached 293, showing an increase of +57.5% compared to the previous month.

Accomplishing the sustainable development goal is challenging and requires the joint effort of the whole community, especially when humans are approaching the climate tipping point [1]. To contribute to promoting sustainable development, the AISDL Team has aggregated reliable and open-access scientific journals about environmental issues here as sources of knowledge for any interested researchers.

In this paper, I argue that the conscious awareness one has of oneself as acting, i.e., agentive awareness, is not a type of sensory awareness. After providing some set up in Sect. 1, I move on in Sect. 2 to sketch a profile of sensory agentive experiences as representational states with sensory qualities by which we come to be aware of ourselves as performing actions. In Sect. 3, I critique two leading arguments in favor of positing such sensory experiences: the (...) argument from pathology and the argument from cognitive impenetrability. Since neither of these arguments succeeds, the case for positing SAEs is dealt a significant blow. I proceed in Sect. 4 to advance my positive argument against SAEs. The argument runs as follows: If SAEs exist, then they must exist in some sensory modality or set of sensory modalities. Either the relevant sensory modalities are ones that we already recognize, or they are novel sensory modalities. I will argue that neither of these options is workable, and so we have nowhere to locate SAEs. Agentive awareness is not sensory awareness. (shrink)

Psychiatric patients sometimes ask where to draw the line between who they are – their selves – and their mental illness. This problem is referred to as the self-illness ambiguity in the literature; it has been argued that solving said ambiguity is a crucial part of psychiatric treatment. I distinguish a Realist Solution from a Constructivist one. The former requires finding a supposedly pre-existing border, in the psychiatric patient’s mental life, between that which belongs to the self and that which (...) belongs to the mental illness. I argue that no such border exists, and that attempts to find it might even render the felt ambiguity worse. Instead, any solution must be constructivist; the patient (and others) should deliberate and discuss what to identify with or not. I further argue that psychiatric patients need not see their mental illness as wholly distinct from themselves to avoid ‘identifying with their diagnoses' in a problematic way. Finally, we can excuse problematic behaviour by mentally ill people – in fact, we can do so in a more nuanced and constructive way – while rejecting the view that the mental illness is wholly distinct from the patient’s self. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

Wall, G. Locke's attack on innate knowledge.--Harris, J. Leibniz and Locke on innate ideas.--Greenlee, D. Locke's idea of idea.--Aspelin, G. Idea and perception in Locke's essay.--Greenlee, D. Idea and object in the essay.--Mathews, H. E. Locke, Malebranche and the representative theory.--Alexander, P. Boyle and Locke on primary and secondary qualities.--Ayers, M. R. The ideas of power and substance in Locke's philosophy.--Allison, H. E. Locke's theory of personal identity.--Kretzmann, N. The main thesis of Locke's semantic theory.--Woozley, A. D. Some remarks on (...) Locke's account of knowledge.--Laudan, L. The nature and sources of Locke's views on hypotheses. (shrink)

This paper analyzes what it means for philosophy of science to be normative. It argues that normativity is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than a general feature that a philosophical theory either has or lacks. It analyzes the normativity of philosophy of science by articulating three ways in which a philosophical theory can be normative. Methodological normativity arises from normative assumptions that philosophers make when they select, interpret, evaluate, and mutually adjust relevant empirical information, on which they base their philosophical theories. (...) Object normativity emerges from the fact that the object of philosophical theorizing can itself be normative, such as when philosophers discuss epistemic norms in science. Metanormativity arises from the kind of claims that a philosophical theory contains, such as normative claims about science as it should be. Distinguishing these three kinds of normativity gives rise to a nuanced and illuminating view of how philosophy of science can be normative. (shrink)

This study was conducted to explore the effects of cloud-based m- learning on students’ motivation and creative performance in computer illustration course. Variables of motivation, creative behavior, creative process and creative product were conducted to understand the situations, differences, and the predictive power cloud-based m-learning had in creative performance. A nonequivalent pretest–posttest design was adopted, and 123 university students from Taipei City, Taiwan,were recruited as research participants in the study during 10-weeks experiment. They were asked to complete a motivation questionnaire. (...) Creative concept form and students’ illustraion work were also collected for statistics analysing. Through the descriptive statistics, one-way ANCOVA, and multiple linear regression analysis, the findings are as follows: (1)cloud-based m- learning had a positive effect on students’ motivation in computer illustration course; (2) cloud-based m-learning had a positive effect on creative performance in computer illustration course; (3) students with higher motivation performed better on creative performance, and(4) motivation could partially mediate cloud-based m-learning and creative performance. (shrink)

The paper begins with the assumption that in order to explain the efficacy of harmony as an organizing force in human and natural affairs we must pay attention to the dynamic features characteristic of the growth and maintenance of harmonious forms. Two dynamic features are highlighted for their especial significance: revitalization, and self-surpassing. It is then argued that the two are substantively connected through the agency of creativity which, when given free reign, tends to preserve and fortify harmony by surpassing (...) existing harmonious configurations. It follows that the impetus towards self-transcendence is a vital aspect of the growth, the sustenance, and the flourishing of harmony. I then argue that this urge towards self-transcendence can be broadly identified with Plato's notion of Eros. Nevertheless, I also argue that this affinity does not commit us to a rigid Platonic scheme of the sort criticized by Chenyang Li (2014) as harmony by conformity. (shrink)

Saul Smilansky’s theory of free will and moral responsibility consists of two parts; dualism and illusionism. Dualism is the thesis that both compatibilism and hard determinism are partly true, and has puzzled many philosophers. I argue that Smilansky’s dualism can be given an unquestionably coherent and comprehensible interpretation if we reformulate it in terms of pro tanto reasons. Dualism so understood is the thesis that respect for persons gives us pro tanto reasons to blame wrongdoers, and also pro tanto reasons (...) not to blame them. These reasons must be we ighed against each other (and against relevant consequentialist reasons) in order to find out what we all things considered ought to do. (shrink)

The original book chapter does not have an abstract. However, I have written an abstract for this repository: Religious life encompasses a wide diversity of situations for which the emotional tone is on a continuum from extreme euphoria to extreme dysphoria. In this book chapter, we propose the novel hypothesis that euphoria and dysphoria have distinctly separate functional consequences for religious evolution and survivability. This is due to the differential cognitive states that are created in euphoric and dysphoric situations. Based (...) on readings from religious studies and cognitive psychology, we propose that euphoria in religion is conducive to social bonding and situations needing lateral thinking and creativity; whereas dysphoria in religion is conducive to situations where precision and analogical reasoning are necessary. (shrink)

It is sometimes thought that the Problem of Evil entails the inexistence of God. However, this is not the case: it only entails the inexistence of an omnipotent-benevolent god, of which the God of Classical Theism is an example. As for ‘limited’ deities such as that of process theology, or malevolent deities such as that of dystheism, the problem of evil is not a problem at all.

There has been no challenge to ‘the tradition of philosophy’ in contemporaneity: philosophy has since evolved past the criticisms of the twentieth century. Indeed, contemporary philosophy is such a diverse pursuit that it is impossible to identify ‘the tradition of philosophy’. There is, however, an ontological philosophic metatradition. This ontological philosophy is inchoate, lacking a meontological pole. This pole can be provided by the spirituality of the east in the form of the philosophy of the Kyoto School, but first, philosophy (...) must recognise this Zen meontology as ‘philosophy’ (哲学) rather than some other ‘thought’ (思想史). (shrink)

It is reasonable to say that the team had efficiently managed its limited resources to overcome the very challenging months before its fifth anniversary (Aug. 1, 2022).

This paper examines the adequacy of causal graph theory as a tool for modeling biological phenomena and formalizing biological explanations. I point out that the causal graph approach reaches it limits when it comes to modeling biological phenomena that involve complex spatial and structural relations. Using a case study from molecular biology, DNA-binding and -recognition of proteins, I argue that causal graph models fail to adequately represent and explain causal phenomena in this field. The inadequacy of these models is due (...) to their failure to include relevant spatial and structural information in a way that does not render the model non-explanatory, unmanageable, or inconsistent with basic assumptions of causal graph theory. (shrink)

Abstract:This article describes the village of Bayung Gede, a village in Kintamani sub-district which has a variety of unique traditions. The uniqueness can be seen from the social system which still adheres to the ulu apad leadership pattern, has a set of burial ground for placenta and other traditions. Thus, Bayung Gede has a lot of uniqueness. One of the uniqueness currently being discussed is an initiation ritual (malampuhan). This ritual is a rite of passage or regeneration of new teruna (...) (youth) candidates, replacing the old. Before they enter a new life, jero sanghyang teruna lan istri (boys and girls), the melampuhan ritual is performed. The problem is what values can be transformed through this melamphan ritual to shape the character of the next young generation in Bayung Gede. The results of the analysis show that various values can be transformed through the ritual of overthrowing this generation, including the values of honesty, courage, loyalty, reliability, justice, discipline, knowing limits, potential, purity and suitability, peace, trustworthiness, respect, love, compassion, unselfish, kind, friendly, aesthetic, togetherness or mutual cooperation. Through this ritual, it is hoped that someday will produce a transformative generation that has character in accordance with these values that are internalized, socialized and then acculturated. The main purpose of this ritual is a ritual of inauguration (tegteg) in order to become a strong generation to build civilization in Bayung Gede. (shrink)

This paper examines various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary. It aims to provide a map of relations between philosophy and sciences, some of which are interdisciplinary. Such a map should also inform discussions concerning the question “How much philosophy is there in the philosophy of science?” In Sect. 1, we distinguish between synoptic and collaborative interdisciplinarity. With respect to the latter, we furthermore distinguish between two kinds of reflective forms of collaborative interdisciplinarity. We also briefly explicate (...) how complexity triggers interdisciplinarity. In Sect. 2, we apply the distinctions of Sect. 1 to philosophy of science and analyze in which sense different styles of philosophy of science are interdisciplinary. The styles that we discuss are a synoptic-general, a reflective-general, a reflective-particular, a particular-embedded and a descriptive or normative style. (shrink)

Researchers and practitioners are increasingly using machine‐generated synthetic data as a tool for advancing health science and practice, by expanding access to health data while—potentially—mitigating privacy and related ethical concerns around data sharing. While using synthetic data in this way holds promise, we argue that it also raises significant ethical, legal, and policy concerns, including persistent privacy and security problems, accuracy and reliability issues, worries about fairness and bias, and new regulatory challenges. The virtue of synthetic data is often understood (...) to be its detachment from the data subjects whose measurement data is used to generate it. However, we argue that addressing the ethical issues synthetic data raises might require bringing data subjects back into the picture, finding ways that researchers and data subjects can be more meaningfully engaged in the construction and evaluation of datasets and in the creation of institutional safeguards that promote responsible use. (shrink)

Personal identity is one of the important and complex issues in the field of the philosophy of the soul. It is also related to the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics in different respects and has given rise to some problems in these two areas. The justification of ethical responsibility and man's eternity in the posthumous state have attracted psychologist-philosophers' attention to the significance and necessity of explaining personal identity. This paper examines the issue from the view point of Mulla Sadra. (...) Here, the writer initially refers to some of the most important contemporary theories about personal identity which can generally be divided into two reductionist and non-reductionist branches. Reductionists intend to reduce the human identity to elements such as memory, biological specifications, or continuous psychological states, while non-reductionists are against this. Mulla Sadra's theory in this regard is not in conformity with any of the above theories; however, it is more consistent with the non-reductionist approach from certain aspects. Though relying on the fundamental ontological and psychological principles of his own philosophy, Mulla Sadra tries to present a picture of human identity that, while depending on human nature, reveals personal identity, too. This is an identity in whose process of formation the three elements of habits, intentions, and acts play major roles. The extent of the consistency of these three elements with rationality is the reason behind having people with different identities. It should also be added that no human being enjoys a single and fixed identity; rather, identity is a continuous reality that, while being one, is a plural truth. (shrink)