On the Historiography of Subjectivity
Avicenna on Negative Judgement
Avicenna’s logical theory of negative judgement can be seen as a systematic development of the insights Aristotle had laid out in the De interpretatione. However, in order to grasp the full extent of his theory one must extend the examination from the logical works to the metaphysical and psychological bases of negative judgement. Avicenna himself often refrains from the explicit treatment of the connections between logic and metaphysics or psychology, or treats them in a rather oblique fashion. Time and again he is satisfied with noting that this or that question is not proper for a logician and should be dealt with in metaphysics or psychology—without bothering to refer his reader to the …
Introduction: Subjectivity and Selfhood in the History of Philosophy
In our everyday dealings with ourselves, other persons and the world, we commonly take our selves, or the entities signified by our employment of the first-personal pronoun ‘I’ in simple assertoric sentences such as ‘I am’, ‘I think’, or ‘I am walking’, to be the uncontroversial loci of our experiences of being, knowing, and acting. But when we glance at contemporary literature on the philosophy of mind and action, on a steady increase for much of the twentieth and the present century in naturalist, analytic, and phenomenological approaches alike, we find that few of the intuitions we may have about that first-personal pivot actually stand uncontested. In fact, it rather seems that if there…
Book Review: Arguments for God’s Existence in Classical Islamic Thought : A Reappraisal of the Discourse
Book Review : Damien Janos. Avicenna on the Ontology of Pure Quiddity
Valtaantahto ontologisena periaatteena
Post-Classical Islamic Philosophy – a Contradiction in Terms?
This paper engages critically with Dimitri Gutas’ recent characterization of post-classical Islamic philosophy and theology as a form of paraphilosophy or intellectual activity that merely simulates philosophy. I argue that this view arises from a misguided understanding of the concept of philosophy that should provide the standard for its historiography. In order to avoid a number of problematic consequences, such as gaps in historical continuity or a disconnection from what we understand by philosophy today, we must take our cue from a sufficiently uncontroversial contemporary concept of philosophy instead of any particular historical concept, such as the Peripatetic amalgam of metaphysic…
Illumination
A Closed Book: Opacity of the Human Self in Mullā Ṣadrā
Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1636) subscribes at large to the Avicennian view according to which the human subject is always and fully aware of herself. At the same time, his eschatology hinges on the Qur’ānic motive of the soul as a closed book that is first opened on the Final Day, that is, on the idea that each soul’s share in the afterlife should be understood as the full revelation of the soul’s true nature to itself. The two ideas thus have seemingly contradictory entailments: the soul is fully aware of and transparent to itself, but at the same time it has aspects that can remain opaque to it, at least in this life. The task of this paper is to investigate whether Ṣadrā can coherently hol…
SUBJECTIVITY AS A NON-TEXTUAL STANDARD OF INTERPRETATION IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Contemporary caution against anachronism in intellectual history, and the currently momentous theoretical emphasis on subjectivity in the philosophy of mind, are two prevailing conditions that set puzzling constraints for studies in the history of philosophical psychology. The former urges against assuming ideas, motives, and concepts that are alien to the historical intellectual setting under study, and combined with the latter suggests caution in relying on our intuitions regarding subjectivity due to the historically contingent characterizations it has attained in contemporary philosophy of mind. In the face of these conditions, our paper raises a question of what we call non-textual (as…
The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra * By MOHAMMED RUSTOM.
Introduction
Self-awareness, presence, appearance: theishrāqīcontext
Avicenna on subjectivity : a philosophical study
Ab? cAl? Ibn S?n? (980–1037 jaa., lat. Avicenna) oli keskiajan arabifilosofeista kenties tärkein. Hänen ajattelunsa yhdisti omaperäisellä tavalla uusplatonistisen ja aristoteelisen perinteen aineksia. Ibn S?n?n vaikutus keskiajan latinankieliseen filosofiaan oli varsinkin psykologian alalla merkittävä, koska hänen psykologinen pääteoksensa käännettiin ennen Aristoteleen tutkielmaa Sielusta, ja se määritti olennaisella tavalla ymmärrystä Aristoteleen psykologiasta. Islamilaisessa filosofisessa perinteessä Ibn S?n? on merkitykseltään Aristoteleen veroinen hahmo.Kaukuan tutkimus käsittelee Ibn S?n?n teoriaa subjektiivisuudesta. Hän käsittelee Ibn S?n?n teoriaa intentionaalisesta tietoisuudesta…
Freedom and responsibility in Avicenna
It is still a matter of some debate whether Avicenna grounds moral responsibility in a robust notion of free will. In this contribution, I will first delve into Avicenna’s theory of voluntary agency, arguing that he holds voluntary agency to be responsive to reasons but also thoroughly determined by the agent’s beliefs concerning the relevant goals, instruments, and qualifying circumstances. Since these beliefs in turn are caused, it seems that there is little room for a causally undetermined will in Avicenna’s theory. I will conclude by considering the question of whether Avicenna is some kind of compatibilist concerning the relation between determinism and responsibility. peerReviewed
The Flying and the Masked Man, One More Time: Comments on Peter Adamson and Fedor Benevich, ‘The Thought Experimental Method: Avicenna's Flying Man Argument’
AbstractThis is a critical comment on Adamson and Benevich (2018), published in issue 4/2 of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. I raise two closely related objections. The first concerns the objective of the flying man: instead of the question of what the soul is, I argue that the argument is designed to answer the question of whether the soul exists independently of the body. The second objection concerns the expected result of the argument: instead of knowledge about the quiddity of soul, I claim the argument yields knowledge about the soul's existence independently of the body. After the objections, I turn to the masked man fallacy, claiming that although the Adamson-…
Ibn Sina itsetietoisuudesta
Philosophy of Mind in the Early and High Middle Ages: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, Margaret Cameron (ed.)
Sense-Perception and Self-Awareness: Before and After Avicenna
Iʿtibārī Concepts in Suhrawardī : The Case of Substance
Abstract Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191) famously criticised the central concepts of Avicennian metaphysics as merely mind-dependent (or iʿtibārī) notions. This paper aims to show that despite his critique, Suhrawardī held that these concepts are meaningful, indeed necessary for human cognition. By the same token, it is argued that their re-emergence in Suhrawardī’s ishrāqī metaphysics is not a matter of incoherence. Although the paper’s findings can be generalised to hold of all iʿtibārī concepts, mutatis mutandis, our focus is on the concept of substance, mainly because of the importance of the concept of ‘dusky substance’ in ishrāqī metaphysics.
Future contingency and God’s knowledge of particulars in Avicenna
Avicenna’s discussion of future contingent propositions is sometimes considered to entail metaphysical indeterminism. In this paper, I argue that his logical analysis of future contingent statements is best understood in terms of the epistemic modality of those statements, which has no consequences for modal metaphysics. This interpretation is corroborated by hitherto neglected material concerning the question of God’s knowledge of particulars. In the Taʿlīqāt, Avicenna argues that God knows particulars by knowing their complete causes, and when contrasted with the human knowledge of particulars, this epistemically superior access shows that the contingency of statements about future partic…
Avicenna's Outsourced Rationalism
Arabic terminology related to self-awareness
On the Standards of Conceptual Change
Abstract It is a necessary condition for recognising change that there is a yardstick against which the change can be perceived. The same applies to changes that philosophical concepts undergo. This paper delineates standards for recognising conceptual change that meet the requirements of conscientious history of philosophy. More particularly, we want to argue for the need of what we will call non-textual standards. These are features of the world of experience that must be assumed to be shared between us and the historical authors we study. While they must be used in tandem with the recognised contextual standards of conceptual change, we will argue that without recourse to at least some n…
Kirjan Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy: Avicenna and Beyond esittely
Teksti luonnehtii lyhyesti islamilaisen filosofian tutkimuksen nykytilaa sekä esittää tiivistelmän symposiumissa käsiteltävän kirjani keskeisestä sisällöstä. nonPeerReviewed
Self, Agent, Soul: Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī’s Critical Reception of Avicennian Psychology
This paper investigates Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī’s critical reception and development of an Avicennian argument that hinges on the intuitive evidence provided by our awareness of ourselves. According to the argument, each of us is indubitably aware of enduring as a single subject and agent behind the constantly varying stream of experience and action. On the basis of this intuitive certainty Avicenna concludes that the human soul is similarly one. By introducing problematic acts related to the Peripatetic concept of soul, such as digestion and growth, Abū al-Barakāt suggests that if we want to save the argumentative power of the relevant phenomena, we must revise the Avicennian concept of…
Avicenna on the Soul’s Activity in Perception
Certain famous innovations notwithstanding, Avicenna’s cognitive psychology is Peripatetic in its principles. In particular, he holds that sense perception is best explained as a process in which the five senses passively receive their proper percepts from an external object. This general framework, however, leaves considerable room for the soul’s other cognitive faculties (the internal senses and the intellect) to make their contribution. The present article studies three case examples: the production of experienced temporal duration in the common sense, the incidental perception of an object as something, which Avicenna conceives as the result of the co-operation of the internal senses un…
On Common Sense, Estimation, and the Soul’s Unity in Avicenna
This paper addresses two questions related to Themistius’ alleged influence on Avicenna’s theory of the common sense. The first question concerns the phenomenon of incidental perception, which Themistius explained by means of the common sense. For Avicenna, on the contrary, the explanation of cases like our perceiving something yellow as honey involves the faculty of estimation and the entire system of the internal senses that he coined, and this results in an analysis that is considerably more complex than Themistius’. The second question concerns Themistius’ claim according to which an incorporeal spirit is the primary subject of perception. I argue that Avicenna departs from such a view …
In the first person: Avicenna’s concept of self-awarenessreconstructed
Subjectivity as a Non-Textual Standard of Interpretation in the History of Philosophical Psychology
Contemporary caution against anachronism in intellectual history, and the currently mo mentous theoretical emphasis on subjectivity in the philosophy of mind, are two prevailing conditions that set puzzling constraints for studies in the history of philosophical psychol ogy. The former urges against assuming ideas, motives, and concepts that are alien to the historical intellectual setting under study, and combined with the latter suggests caution in relying on our intuitions regarding subjectivity due to the historically contingent charac terizations it has attained in contemporary philosophy of mind. In the face of these condi tions, our paper raises a question of what we call non-textual…
Arguments for God’s Existence in Classical Islamic Thought: A Reappraisal of the Discourse By Hannah C. Erlwein
Arguments for God’s Existence in Classical Islamic Thought: A Reappraisal of the Discourse
Illumination
The Case of Substance
Avicenna’s Outsourced Rationalism
This paper refutes the claim that Avicenna's theory of science is empiricist in the robust, Lockean sense. I argue that his denial of innatism notwithstanding, the theory of formal identity, together with the metaphysical idea that the ontological structure of the sublunary world is grounded in the active intellect, commits Avicenna to a peculiar kind of rationalism in which the ultimate source of knowledge is an intellect, albeit one extraneous to the human mind. I then introduce two hitherto insufficiently discussed texts to challenge this conclusion. In the end, I claim that although this new material may provide some evidence for a robust empiricism in Avicenna, its consequences remaine…
Intuition (ḥads)
The Heritage of Ibn Sīnā’s Concept of the Self
If the historical importance of a philosopher is measured by her influence, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Sīnā, the Latin Avicenna (d. 1037 CE), should merit an uncontested entry in even the narrowest of canons. The development of Islamic philosophy and theology in the so-called post-classical period, that is, from the twelfth century CE down to the dawn of the postcolonial era, is unthinkable without him. By the same token, the Latin translations of a portion of his works were pivotal for the scholastic renaissance of Aristotelian philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and many Avicennian ideas, such as his modal metaphysics and its theological implications or his theor…
Ayman Shihadeh, Doubts on Avicenna: A Study and Edition of Sharaf al-Dīn al-Masʿūdī’s Commentary on the Ishārāt
The Question of Providence and the Problem of Evil in Suhrawardī
Abstract Šihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī’s philosophical works seem to contain two conflicting views on providence: in the Talwīḥāt and the Mašāriʿ, he endorses the Avicennian view, only to deny providence altogether in the Ḥikmat al-išrāq. This contribution aims to explain the seeming inconsistency by investigating it in light of the underlying question of God’s knowledge of particular things. I will also argue that despite his qualms concerning providence, Suhrawardī accepts the closely related Avicennian answer to the problem of evil.