The Ontological Analysis of Mentally Constructed Entities

When we come to speak about current issues of life, we realize that our speech is littered with many things the philosophical reality of which demands precise examination unprecedented. These issues have occupied our life altogether such as, address, home, place of work, money, organization, bank account, seminary school, university, president, inflation, social traditions and institutes, and law. Such issues are not like concrete or physical realities bearing existential characteristics; rather, they are called mentally constructed entities by the intellectuals. Generally speaking, the most difficult philosophical inquiry about those issues is their ontological analysis; i.e. can we consider them as the concrete entities in the outside world? Where is the residence of such issues? Is it inside or outside the mind? Were it the former, is it the mind of the agent or that of those who have accepted them? What does mentality mean when we say that something is mentally constructed? What is the relation between such things and other mental, natural, or physical things? Having followed up their study in the framework of philosophical analysis and according to the principles of Mulla Sadra’s metaphysics, the authors have arrived at the conclusion that mentally constructed entities are realities dependent on valid agents; they exist through the causa subsistendi, though. In this regard, there is no external plurality between mental act of construction and entities mentally constructed. The reality of mental constructions is no more than a shadowy existence to the mental act of construction