Mind’s Reality and States A comparative study between Western philosophers and Muslim philosophers

Safdar Ilahi Rad

The issue of mind and mental states and the relation between them is one of the most important and complicated issues that have occupied contemporary philosophers of mind. Many important questions have been raised in this concern, such as: Is mind or soul a material reality or it is beyond matter? Are mental states the same as brain states, or they are different and immaterial? Philosophers have so widely differed on answering these questions. In this study, we discuss the opinions of Islamic and Western philosophical schools on this subject in a comparative method. Muslim philosophers have agreed on the abstractness of the soul and the states of the soul, and that these states are symptoms of the existence of mental essence or its affairs. But as for Western philosophers, they emphasize man’s duality and the abstractness of mind. in contrast, there is a large number of Western philosophers who, despite their agreement in their physical and material view about mind, differ extensively in the details of that. It is worth mentioning that physicalism leads to consequences and effects on personal identity and the purpose of creation and life after death.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)