Ma`rifat Farhangi Ejtemaei

In his book “A System of Logic,” John Stuart Mill proposed a view of the development of moral and social sciences that had specific methodological requirements. Based on the general logic of empiricism, he outlined the path of development of moral and social sciences based on the science of general rules of mind or pure psychology. However, since the general rules of mind were not sufficient for explaining human and social phenomena, the path of scientific explanation needed a mediator to connect this higher-level knowledge to the human and social phenomena. Mill introduced into his model of explanatory logic an area of knowledge called ontology, which acted as a mediator between the upstream science of knowing the human mind and the fluid social and human phenomena. The presence of ontology at the center of Mill's idea of moral sciences has logical and methodological outcomess. He called the logical method of inference in moral sciences the historical method or reverse syllogism. Sadr al-Mutalahin also created the conditions for the realization of a specific type of social science by elevating the issue of science of the soul (ilm al-nafs) from natural sciences to ontology. The ontological foundations of transcendental wisdom will also have a special logic for this social science. Using an analytical-critical comparison, in this article, we will criticize John Stuart Mill's idea as the origin of positivist social science based on the philosophical ilm al-nafs of Sadra'i wisdom.