The Nature of Designation: Between the Prevalent View and that of Ayatollah Fayāḍi

The prevalent view among epistemologists about “mental forms” is that they designate things by essence and in actuality. Ayatollah Fayyaḍi accepts this idea, but renders such a designation an instance of knowledge by presence and has a different view about the designator.The authors in this article try to compare the two theories and analyze their commonalities as well as their differences. Fayyaḍi believes that the designator is not the mental form, but the soul of the perceiving agent. He thinks that the designator of the objective things shows subjective designator, objective designator, and all its instances at the same time, and this is the implication of designation by essence. He introduces knowledge be presence as the source by which one can understand the mode of such a designation and all its attributes, and suggests that by esoteric analysis one can find out about such matters. Although he renders the designation of simple concepts, propositions, and judgments essential to them, he thinks that there are differences in the way of their designation.