HUMA1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Ontological Argument, Atomism, Al-Farabi
28 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Historical Overview
Plato
-
Aristotle
-
Plotinus
-
Al Kindi and Al Farabi
-
Prophet Muhammad
-
Uthman and formation of Qu'ran
-
Dynasties
-
Crusades and Iberian Peninsula
-
Avicenna
980-1037
•
Persian descent, early proigy
•
Initally a court physician in Bukhara (Uzbekistan)
•
Samanid Dynasty (819-999)
•
Later travelled amidst different patrons (e.g. Urgench [Turkmenistan]; Rey neat Tehran, Iran)
•
Died in Hamadan, Iran (mausoleum today)
•
Key Sources
Primary Sources
Canon of Medicine
-
The book of healing )Al-Shifa) (Book of Salvation abridged)
-
The Life of Avicenna
-
Modern Translations
Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings
-
Secondary Sources
Robert Wiznovsky, Avicenna's Metaphysics in Context
-
BBC4 In our time
-
Metaphysics
Aristotelian Ontology
After physics
-
Being as being (ontology)
-
Why something rather than nothing?
-
What is the nature and relation of things (quiddity)?
-
Platonic Formalism
Essential ideas illuminated by the good (cave)
-
What is true? (Essential Correspondence)
-
What is the relation of essential forms to material existence?
-
What is a soul's (psyche) relation to the body?
Plato
The Republic
○
Soul exists before the body and after
○
Anamnesis (remembrance)
○
-
Aristotle
De Anima (lifeforce)
○
First entelekheia of the organism (fully realised essence, actuality)
○
-
Aristotelian Causality
Material
-
Formal
-
Efficient
-
Final (telos)
-
Avicenna's predecessors
Atomists focus on indivisible parts
Soul as an atomic part of/in the body
○
-
Soul a substance diffused throughout the body
-
Soul an entelekheia as formal and efficient cause, but also a final cause that could transcend the
body
-
Necessary Being
Avicenna's ontological argument:
Divine simplicity (tawhid)
-
Necessary existent
Does anything have to exist?
○
-
Three kinds of existence
Impossible existence - round squares
○
Possible, but contingent. If the exist or not, an explanation is needed. There must be a cause
to explain why it exists. If you take all contingent things as one set, the world, then there
needs to be a cause for it, i.e. God. To stop the infinite regress, you posit a necessary
existent.
○
-
"Now this other can either be internal or external to the set. If it is internal, and so is one or more
members of the set, then again that member exists either necessarily through itself or possibly in
itself. Whatever is internal to the set of all and only things possible in themselves could not exist
necessarily through itself, since only things possible in themselves were include within the set,
and thus something would be both necessary through itself and possible in itself, which is a
contradiction." (McGinnis, 63)
-
"If this member were possible in itself then since the set and all the members of the set of which
it is one, exist through that member, that member's very existence would be through itself, in
which case it would be self-necessitating. If something is self-necessitating, though, it is necessary
through itself; however, this member was assumed to be possible in itself. So there is again a
contradiction"
-
"Thus, the existence of the set must be through something external to the set, but all possible
existents were included within the set. So this things external to the set cannot be possible in
itself, and the only other division of existence is that which exists necessarily though itself,
namely, God, exists"
-
Difficulties debated
Infinite regress is not as problematic as it might appear
○
Mathematic infinite and 'real' infinite
○
-
Floating Man
Self-awareness is fundamental to our mental life
-
It is conceptually possible to think of the self as distinct from the body
-
The self builds sense experience from tabula rasa to participation in an Active Intellect (common
sense, imagination, faculty of memory, estimation)
-
Three uses of the example (tanbih - way of alerting)
Self-knowledge direct, not mediated
○
Self is not the body because body is known through external senses
○
Self is not known through action …
○
-
Week 6: Avicenna
Wednesday, 5 April 2017
9:03 am
Historical Overview
Plato
-
Aristotle
-
Plotinus
-
Al Kindi and Al Farabi
-
Prophet Muhammad
-
Uthman and formation of Qu'ran
-
Dynasties
-
Crusades and Iberian Peninsula
-
Avicenna
980-1037
•
Persian descent, early proigy
•
Initally a court physician in Bukhara (Uzbekistan)
•
Samanid Dynasty (819-999)
•
Later travelled amidst different patrons (e.g. Urgench [Turkmenistan]; Rey neat Tehran, Iran)
•
Died in Hamadan, Iran (mausoleum today)
•
Key Sources
Primary Sources
Canon of Medicine
-
The book of healing )Al-Shifa) (Book of Salvation abridged)
-
The Life of Avicenna
-
Modern Translations
Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings
-
Secondary Sources
Robert Wiznovsky, Avicenna's Metaphysics in Context
-
BBC4 In our time
-
Metaphysics
Aristotelian Ontology
After physics
-
Being as being (ontology)
-
Why something rather than nothing?
-
What is the nature and relation of things (quiddity)?
-
Platonic Formalism
Essential ideas illuminated by the good (cave)
-
What is true? (Essential Correspondence)
-
What is the relation of essential forms to material existence?
-
What is a soul's (psyche) relation to the body?
Plato
The Republic
○
Soul exists before the body and after
○
Anamnesis (remembrance)
○
-
Aristotle
De Anima (lifeforce)
○
First entelekheia of the organism (fully realised essence, actuality)
○
-
Aristotelian Causality
Material
-
Formal
-
Efficient
-
Final (telos)
-
Avicenna's predecessors
Atomists focus on indivisible parts
Soul as an atomic part of/in the body
○
-
Soul a substance diffused throughout the body
-
Soul an entelekheia as formal and efficient cause, but also a final cause that could transcend the
body
-
Necessary Being
Avicenna's ontological argument:
Divine simplicity (tawhid)
-
Necessary existent
Does anything have to exist?
○
-
Three kinds of existence
Impossible existence - round squares
○
Possible, but contingent. If the exist or not, an explanation is needed. There must be a cause
to explain why it exists. If you take all contingent things as one set, the world, then there
needs to be a cause for it, i.e. God. To stop the infinite regress, you posit a necessary
existent.
○
-
"Now this other can either be internal or external to the set. If it is internal, and so is one or more
members of the set, then again that member exists either necessarily through itself or possibly in
itself. Whatever is internal to the set of all and only things possible in themselves could not exist
necessarily through itself, since only things possible in themselves were include within the set,
and thus something would be both necessary through itself and possible in itself, which is a
contradiction." (McGinnis, 63)
-
"If this member were possible in itself then since the set and all the members of the set of which
it is one, exist through that member, that member's very existence would be through itself, in
which case it would be self-necessitating. If something is self-necessitating, though, it is necessary
through itself; however, this member was assumed to be possible in itself. So there is again a
contradiction"
-
"Thus, the existence of the set must be through something external to the set, but all possible
existents were included within the set. So this things external to the set cannot be possible in
itself, and the only other division of existence is that which exists necessarily though itself,
namely, God, exists"
-
Difficulties debated
Infinite regress is not as problematic as it might appear
○
Mathematic infinite and 'real' infinite
○
-
Floating Man
Self-awareness is fundamental to our mental life
-
It is conceptually possible to think of the self as distinct from the body
-
The self builds sense experience from tabula rasa to participation in an Active Intellect (common
sense, imagination, faculty of memory, estimation)
-
Three uses of the example (tanbih - way of alerting)
Self-knowledge direct, not mediated
○
Self is not the body because body is known through external senses
○
Self is not known through action …
○
-
Week 6: Avicenna
Wednesday, 5 April 2017
9:03 am
