To
begin with Avicenna also places doubts on the existence of the world.
But it is not the radical skepticism of Descartes, where reality is
deceiving and the subject finds themselves unable to determine whether
they are waking or dreaming. The world does exist for Avicenna, but his
examinations were into why it exists, a question which would have
puzzled the First Teacher (Aristotle). For Avicenna, the entire world is
itself contingent and is necessary not through itself, but through
another, a Necessary Existent. It is this Necessary Existent which is
the ground for all reality as we see it, not the Efficient Cause of
Aristotle or the Neo-Platonist Final Cause. When Avicenna begins his
discussion on the Soul in his Shifa', he begins by observations of the
world around him, a contingent world whose necessity, and not being qua
being, was in doubt. He tells us at the beginning of his investigation
that we commonly observe certain bodies which perceive, feed and
reproduce, these are differentiated from other bodies in the sub-lunar
sphere such as rocks, fire or chairs and tables that do exist, but are
different. It is what can be referred to as living bodies, which concern
Avicenna. These bodies possess what he calls "a principle for the
issuance of any actions that do not follow a uniform course devoid of
volition". For example fire and air would always move upwards whilst
water and earth downwards. This principle, he calls the soul, and it is
the necessity for why living creatures move, reproduce and feed, even if
it is not the actual cause.
The purpose of his
thought experiment is primarily as a memory aid to assist future
students in remembering the conclusion of Avicenna's examination into
whether there is a soul and what that is. He meant it as a final defence
for his students to help them resist being taken in by clever arguments
and sophistry, to find that elusive I which thinks, reasons and is the
principle of all human enterprise, and that we also share a similarity
in with all living creatures. Avicenna is telling us that the soul
exists as an immaterial perfection of both our bodies and our forms,
which he later on uses to prove the possibility for eternal life of the
rational part of the soul, the intellect, fitting this in nicely within
an Islamic perspective. The "argument" is as follows and we will now see
why it is important for us to have forgotten about Descartes meditation
and the underlying assumptions associated with it which would affect
our understanding of what Avicenna is trying to say:
So
we say that it has to be imagined as though one of us were created
whole in an instant but his sight is veiled from directly observing the
things of the external world. He is created as though floating in air or
in a void but without the air supporting him in such a way that he
would have to feel it, and the limbs of his body are stretched out and
away from one another, so they do not come into contact or touch. Then
he considers whether we can assert the existence of his self. He has no
doubts about asserting his self as something that exists without also
[having to] assert the existence of any of his exterior or interior
parts, his heart, his brain, or anything external. He will, in fact, be
asserting the existence of his self without asserting that it has
length, breadth, or depth, and, if it were even possible for him in such
a state to imagine a hand or some other extremity, he would not imagine
it as a part of his self or as a necessary condition of his self - and
you know that what can be asserted as existing is not the same as what
cannot be so asserted and that what is stipulated is not the same as
what is not stipulated. Thus, the self whose existence he asserted is
his unique characteristic, in the sense that it is he himself, not his
body and its parts, which he did not so assert. Thus, what [the reader]
has been alerted to is a way to be made alert to the existence of the
soul as something that is not the body - nor in fact any body - to
recognise it and be aware of it, if it is in fact the case that he has
been disregarding it and needed to be hit over the head with it.
(Avicenna, Al-Shifa: Soul, I.1 (Hackett Reader 178-9))
Here
it is important for us to look at the key phrase in the flying man
argument and understand what it is that Avicenna wants us to grasp,
"...and you know that what can be asserted as existing is not the same
as what cannot be asserted and that what is stipulated is not the same
as what is not stipulated". For Avicenna, to assert that the self
exists, that it is real, is not the same as asserting that square
circles exist. Just as the world itself is exists and we cannot doubt
that this is true, it is to be taken as evident that the self exists.
Furthermore, in thinking of body parts it would not follow that these
would naturally be connected to his self, nor would they appear to be
necessary for his self to exist, for that is far from obvious that they
do. Whilst it can be stipulated that sight would require an eye, or
hearing would require ears, it is not stipulated that the self would
have a body, even though, for the most part, we do have one. This is the
crux of his floating man argument, the self or soul can be imagined
abstracted from a body. The body is not necessary for the souls
existence, though the opposite is true if we are to have a living animal
or plant. For Avicenna, the soul is like a form, but the form is used
in reference to matter and it is not enough, this soul he speaks of is a
perfection of the body. Like a captain to a ship or a ruler to a city,
each is a perfection of something though they are not the form of it. In
this way, Avicenna wants us to know that a soul is the perfection of
the body. It is "...a first perfection of a natural body possessed of
organs that performs the activities of life."
To
say that modern science has managed to map all 25,000 genes in the
human genome, to be able to give a clear overall picture of the
intricacies of human life, is precisely what Avicenna is not concerned
with. In the same way that he discounts Aristotles First Cause as a
satisfactory explanation for the existence of the world, so too is the
explanation of causation for why living creatures differ from inert
bodies. As we saw earlier, when Avicenna tells us "what can be asserted
is not the same as what cannot be asserted", he is telling us that what
we can claim exists without causing a contradiction is not the same as
what would. Furthermore, that which we claim exists must be examined to
see whether it is necessary through itself or through another and here
we can use our imagination to see that the point in question is not
about the set of events which led to the first flickers of life in some
primordial mud millions of years ago, but as to the necessity of life
itself and whether it was necessary through itself or through another
for existence. If the causal chain of events which led to that
particular point were themselves what resulted in the existence of soul
in previously inanimate objects, then life is necessary through itself
and there is no need to seek a soul to explain it. But that is to say
that something is because it is, which is a circular argument. The only
way out of this circular argument for a critic of Avicenna would be to
begin the investigation by saying the following:
We
commonly observe certain bodies perceiving by the senses and being
moved by volition; in fact we observe certain bodies taking in
nutrients, growing, and reproducing their like. That does not belong to
them on account of their corporeality; so the remaining option is that
in themselves there are principles for that other than their
corporeality.
This is how Avicenna begins his
investigation, and where the circular argument of those who deny the
existence of a principle called "soul" eventually leads them. When
Avicenna is telling us that this same principle is responsible for the
issuance of any actions that "do not follow a uniform course devoid of
volition", he is attacking the strict determinism which the proponents
of a material and only biological view of life express. Avicenna is
telling us that there is a principle which is beyond the material,
beyond the formal which is inseparable from the matter, a principle that
perfects life and makes it what it is - necessary. The "I" which is the
subject of the flying man experiment is the first perfection of this
complete unit of life. It has come to exist with the existence of the
human body and the components of life necessary for it, but it then
continues to develop and grow through its second perfection, "a body
possessed of organs that performs the activities of life". The temporal
cage within which this "I" grows to find itself becomes the very key
which will allow it to reach beyond the temporal and grasp universals,
the true objects of knowledge and philosophy.
The
flying man argument is intended to remind us that we cannot know
empirically what it is that makes living beings qua living beings alive
necessarily. We possess this soul, on account of our intellect, at a
level much higher than plants and animals. Avicenna gives us a crude
method for experiencing what it is he is referring to through this
simple thought experiment, which is not telling us much, nor is it
supposed to. It is simply a pointer that would allow us, as fellow
souls, to begin seeking questions higher than what can be answered
through only a cursory reading of the input from our body's senses.
Avicenna wants us to demand more from these bodies, to look further
inwards to develop that innate "I" that we all experience and from which
there is nothing to escape from. If understood in this more sobre
light, where we succeed in imagining our souls existing separately from
our bodies, Avicenna is successful in his goals and the flying man helps
him to achieve this objective.
Bibliography
Ibn
Sina, "The Soul I.1", in, McGinnis, J. & Reisman, D.C. (2007),
Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources, Hacket publishing
Company, Indianapolis/Cambridge (Hackett Reader)
No comments:
Post a Comment