3rev- Avicenna and Aquinas on the Soul

7/27/2019 3rev- Avicenna and Aquinas on the Soul

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Avicenna and Aquinas on the Soul - Lecture 3

This lecture will look at how Avicenna discusses our process of cognition, especially thatwhich involves the intellect.

1. Avicenna (ibn Sn; before 980 1037)

Born nr. Bukhr (Eastern extremity of Islam)

Philosophy forcArd(al-Hikma al- cArdya)The Healing(al-Shif)

The Salvation (al-Najt)

Philosophy forcAl al-Dawla (Dneshnme-ye cAl)Pointers and Reminders (al-Ishrt wa-l-Tanbht)

Re-formulator of Aristotelian logic: importance of modal logic (cf. Paul Thom)

Metaphysics and Frb: (cf. Gutas) Avicenna strongly influenced by a short piece by

Frb, because of difference in goal of metaphysics from that set out by Kind.

abstractionism and universals: the end of the Alexandrian tradition? cf. below (De

Libera)

things necessary through themselves/ through another (Wisnovsky)

essence and existence

Intellectual knowledge in Avicenna

2. Avicennas standard account. The soul engages in intellectual thought only bymeans of joining with the Active Intellect and receiving an intelligible form from it - it

does not do its own intellectual thinking. The soul as it exists in a new-born baby is what

Avicenna calls material intellect: it is pure potentiality. From the Active Intellect itacquires, first of all, the primary notions. The structure of these notions give it the basic

tools for logical thinking. The complex and difficult process of human cogitation, putting

thoughts together and framing syllogisms, is a physical process in the brain and involves

finding appropriate images: it serves to prepare the human intellect to conjoin with theActive Intellect and actually think a thought. Through this pattern of cogitation and

conjunction, the soul becomes more and more able to conjoin with the Active Intellect.

Avicenna denies that there is any memory for thoughts, and he insists that humans canonly think that one thought at a time. But a human intellect does not need to go through

the process of cogitation again in order to think a thought it has previously thought: it can

simply conjoin at will with the Active Intellect to think this thought. Eventually, as theintellect gains this capacity with regard to more and more thoughts, it becomes like an


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eye which has been restored to health: it can see whenever it wishes, although that does

not mean that it is always seeing.

For some people, however, the lengthy process of cogitation can be avoided. They have

the gift of intuition (hads), which enables them to establish conjunction with the Active

Intellect without preparation and find the middle terms and conclusions of syllogismseffortlessly and without the possibility of error. Avicenna and intuition. His

autobiography.

One puzzle which al-Najatmay help to unravel is how the state of the person with

intuition differs from that of others. Does the person with intuition just reach his

cognitive destination more quickly, or does he understand more and in a different way?

3. The account in al-Najat

* (p. 27)The practical intellect and theoretical intellect are only homonymously intellects.

Awkwardness of practical intellect in Avicennas scheme.

*(p. 29)Potentiality -> actuality as being by degrees. (cf. Aristotles first actuality,second actuality). Avicenna. (1) The infant. (2) The boy ready to start writing. (3) The

person who knows how to write.

Stages. [1] Material intellect (pll. prime matter) [2] First principles (a priori truths):

habitual intellect [3] the forms have been in it and it can reason about them whenever

is wanted without having to reacquire them; it is as though they are stored in it: actual

intellect (but also, in another sense, potential). [4] Acquired intellect: cf. bottom of p. 30.Characteristics. The intelligible form is present in it, self-consciousness, form from

outside, due to an intellect that is always actual. What is the connection between (3) and

(4)?

*(p. 31) Intuition. Syllogisms and middle terms. Very rare, but seems to be having

automatically the habitual intellect - i.e. Stage 2. But (p.32) this holy intellect is equated

with the acquired intellect i.e. Stage 4. Is the explanation that ordinary habitual intellectleads to [3], but intuition leads to [4]? Note here: emphasis on imprinting. Overflow into

imagination and theory of prophecy.

*(p.33) Sensation, representation, estimation, intellect. Degrees of abstraction.

sensation coupled with matter and so cannot exist without the matter

representation more abstract i.e. inner sense images, memory

estimation - (need to explain behaviour of non-human animals) more abstract stillBottom of p.35 As for the faculty this must be intellect problem of retained.

--- Avicennas theory of universals and common natures. Cf. (HealingMetaphysics V.1-2) is Universals, which are one and many, exist only as concepts - this does not prevent

there from being real common natures of things. We can consider something, John

Marenbon, for instance, just from the point of view of its nature his being a human. Indoing so, we must not, add anything external which would make our consideration two-


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fold.Avicenna means that we should not be considering whether this nature is universal

or singular The universal is one thing qua universal, and another thing qua thing to

which universality attaches. The definition of, for instance, horseness, is not the sameas and does not include universality in it, although the concept of horse can indeed be

predicated of many. If we ask about this common nature, horseness, we should deny that

it is either one or many, and that it either exists only in the mind or as a concrete thing.

Why this not a contradiction? Avicenna holds that the disjunctions one or many and in

the mind or as a concrete thing are each equivalent to A or not-A: they are exhaustiveof everything: how, then, can the these disjuncts be denied of horseness and other

common natures?

Avicenna answers: He is not asserting

Horseness qua horseness is notA or not-A but ratherQua horseness, horseness is notA or anything else.

Horseness qua horseness might be taken as a referring expression, picking out some

particular sort of object,B, and that, if this were the case, it would be a matter of logicthatB isA or not-A. In fact, however, the referring expression is horseness, and the

qua horseness indicates the aspect under which alone it is to be considered: that of itsbeing horseness. Considered under this aspect, any affirmation about horseness other

than that it is horseness is false (compare: qua author of this book, the author of this

book is not male or female.)cf. passage on p.34 which bears this out

But what about the Active Intellect? Three ideas: imprinter/ sun - illumination of

imaginary forms it is intelligible itself

3. How does the al-Najataccount fit with the Standard Account? At first it seems as

though there is a stark contrast between (SA): physical processes go on and preparehumans for contact with the Active Intellect, from which they receive the forms that

allow them to engage in thinking and (al-N): the Active Intellect is like a light which

abstracts the universal forms from the imaginative representations, and thereby enablesthought to take place.

In fact, the difference is less stark. Only through finding appropriate images a physical

process are we able to think, and that thinking is carried out in conjunction with theActive Intellect. The standard account tends to stress the jump between the ordinary

processes of our inner senses and the process of thinking, whereas al-Najtfocuses on

the process of illumination which connects the two. But al-Najtalso suggests a differentroute, that of the person of intuition. It seems that when he talks here of acquired

Intellect or Holy Intellect he is referring to a different and fuller sort of conjunction

with the Active Intellect than in ordinary acts of thinking. (The comparison betweenacquired intellect and habitual intellect is appropriate, because for most people the only

direct infusion is of first principles.)


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Some reading

Translation

Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings, ed. M.A. Khalidi, Cambridge; Cambridge

University Press, 2005, 27-58

De Libera, A. (2002)LArt des gnralits. Thories de labstraction, Paris; Aubier

Gutas, D. (1988)Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, Leiden; Brill

Sebti, M. (2000)Avicenne: lame humaine, Paris ; Presses Universitaires de France

Wisnovsky, R. (2003)Avicennas Metaphysics in Context, Ithaca; Cornell University

Press

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3rev- Avicenna and Aquinas on the Soul