Chapter II : Theory of Knowledge - I
A. General Considerations
Sadra affirms the identity of the knower and the known, i.e., of thought and being, in all knowledge. But the nature of this identity must be defined carefully. It is not the case that external objects, as they are, become objects of knowledge. Indeed, the forms of external objects, immersed as they are in matter and material concomitants, cannot move into the mind and become known, since mental forms and material forms are different in several essential respects.
It will be shown presently that the status of mental existence is radically different from the status of external existence.
When something becomes an object of knowledge, therefore, it acquires an altogether new genre of existence (nash'a ìlmiya) where several of its characteristics of external existence are removed and it acquires certain new characteristics. For example, a mental form ceases to be material and becomes a universal - a genus or a species, etc. Sadra, therefore, declares absolutely that neither of the external and mental existences can change into (la tanqalib) each other
a and thereby moves away from the position of naive realism adopted by Aristotle into a form of idealism with Plotinus.
This position is supported by a consideration of sense perception. It is not true that in sense perception the object of knowledge is the quality coming to inhere in the sense organ (through the external object) and producing a qualitative change in that organ. If that were the case, then, when my hand becomes warm or my tongue sweet, someone else could equally feel the same heat by touching my hand or coming into suitable contact with my tongue. But this is manifestly absurd. Again, if the perceptible form were to inhere in a bodily organ - and the organ, being physical, has a form of This chapter was first published in The Philosophical Forum, Boston University, Vol. 6, no. 1 (New Series), Fall, 1973, pp. 141-152. its own - then one physical organ will have two forms, which is also absurd. Indeed, when the soul perceives warmth or cold, it does not become warm or cold.
These considerations show that perceptible forms are not externally existent forms; nor are they forms present in the sense organs at the time of perception. Perceptible forms are, therefore, operations of or emanations from the soul itself and the presentation of an object to a sense organ only provides the occasion for the projection of the form from the soul. All forms in knowledge are produced by the soul in this way and Sadra says that the relationship of cognitive forms to the soul is analogous to the relationship of the contingent to the Necessary Being, God.
If this is so with regard to sense perception, how much more true it will be of imagination and still more of intellection? For in sense-perception at least the sense organ mediates between the external object and the act of perception, but in imagination and intellection there is no bodily organ employed.
As for the definition of knowledge, philosophers have given several views about it. Although each of these views is open to serious objections, it is, nevertheless, possible to arrive at a satisfactory definition, using them together as a basis; but it will be found at the same time that some of these views are so far from truth that they cannot be corrected. The first view to be considered is that which defines knowledge - particularly intellectual knowledge - in terms of abstraction or separation from matter. Abstraction is taken to mean abstraction from matter and elimination of material attachments. That is to say, abstraction is taken as something negative. Now, whenever we know something, we are aware that knowledge is something positive and we are not aware of any negations. Again, when we know animal or man, we do not negate matter from them; indeed, the concept animal or man includes material dimensions.
This shows that abstraction does not occur in the negation of anything. Secondly, whenever it is possible to say, “A knows B,” it would be absurd to say, “A is abstract to B,” or “B is abstract to A.” For if B is abstract, it must be so to everyone else as well as to A. Finally, ''to be abstract” can never be a translation of “to be knowledge”; that is why it requires a proof to show that all knowledge includes abstraction.
The second approach to the definition of knowledge is to say that knowledge consists in the imprinting of the form of the object in the subject. It is obvious that this is not true of serf-knowledge, since it is admitted by all that serf-knowledge does not come about by the imprinting of one's form into oneself. Secondly, the imprinting of forms in matter does not become knowledge for material bodies. Nor is it true to say that, in matter, the presence of quantity, space, position, etc. prevents it from knowing, for when the soul knows things, it knows them along with quantity, quality, position, etc. And to say that knowledge consists in the imprinting of forms in something whose function it is to know begs the question and is, therefore, not an answer. Certain philosophers, in order to avoid the difficulties that beset the theory of imprinting of forms, have defined knowledge as a unique relationship between the subject and the object.
Apart from the fact that this view still does not cover the phenomenon of self-knowledge (since it is difficult to construe self-knowledge as a relation between the self and itself), it necessitates the conclusion that those things which do not actually exist cannot be known in any sense, for there can be no relationship between the mind and the non-existent. It is also difficult on this view to explain ignorance in the sense of mis-knowledge, since, if this relationship is present, there is true knowledge; and if it is absent, there is no knowledge at all. If one holds with Fakhr al-Din al-Razi that knowledge is not a mere relation but a relational quality (kaifiya dhat idafa), one is vulnerable to similar objections. It would also follow that God's knowledge is an extrinsic quality to His being and not essential to Him.
Indeed, the view that knowledge is an accidental quality of the mind was also held by Ibn Sina in certain contexts.
But Ibn Sina notes the well-known difficulty as to how, if the mental form is to correspond to the external reality, a substance in external reality can become an accident in the mind. Ibn Sina's answer is that this mental form, which is an accident to the mind, is of such a nature that, if it were to exist externally, it would be a substance and not an accident. That this is not a genuine solution of the difficulty is obvious, since this explanation commits the same mistake as the doctrine of abstraction. For it is meaningless to say that something which is a substance-in-itself turns into an accident in the mind. It is the same thing as if someone were to say that animal, when it exists in a mind, is neither a substance, nor a body, nor growing, nor sentient, etc., which is manifestly absurd. This view, when logically pressed, would make the mental forms exactly like paintings or engravings of an animal on a wall, for it is also true of these that if they were to exist in the external reality, they would be substances, physical, growing, sentient, etc. This fatal mistake arises because “abstraction by the mind” is held to denude objects of their essential characteristics and turn them into mere engravings on the mind.
Al-Suhrawardi sought to translate the phenomenon of cognition into the terminology of Light. He posited the categories of Light as that which is Light to itself, and that which is Light to something else. The first is the serf-existing, self-knowing substance, which is correct insofar as it identifies true being with knowledge. He was inconsistent, however, in the rest of his theory of knowledge. For even those things which are, according to him, pure Darkness (ghawasiq), he allowed to be cognizable by direct illuminational awareness, like pure body and pure quantity. Again, since animals possess cognition, at least of particulars, they must be taken, on his principles, to be endowed with Light; but since all cognition entails self-cognition, it follows that animals are pure intellects.
Sadra then proceeds to state his own view of knowledge:
Knowledge is neither a privation like abstraction from matter, nor a relation but a being (wujud). (It is) not every being but that which is an actual being, not potential. (It is) not even every actual being, but a pure being, unmixed with non-being. To the extent that it becomes free from an admixture of non-being, its intensity as knowledge increases.
Primary matter, which is pure indeterminacy and potentiality, is the furthest removed from possessing the status of knowledge. It becomes determinate by receiving a bodily form. But body itself cannot become knowledge, since it is not pure being: parts of a body, being mutually exclusive, are never present to each other and hence body can never attain a real unity which is requisite for true being and knowledge. None of the imagined parts of a continuous body can be predicated of the whole, nor can the whole be predicated of them, and yet the body as a whole attains its being through the continuity of these parts and its perfection lies in an increase in that continuity. Now how can something, whose perfection (kamal) entails its non-being (zawal), belong to itself (i.e., as a self-subsistent entity)? And a thing which cannot belong to itself, cannot attain or possess itself and when a thing cannot possess itself, how can it be possessed by something else?
Now “attainment and possession (al-nayl wa'l-dark)” are of the essence of knowledge. Therefore, body and its physical relations can never be a proper object of knowledge, except through a form other than this bodily form. This other form is an altogether new form having a spiritual character, a form arising from within the soul. In the words of Coleridge:
... We receive but what we give, And in ourselves alone does Nature live.
Knowledge, then, is pure existence, free from matter.
Such existence is the soul when it has fully developed into an acquired intellect. The soul then does not need forms inhering in it as its accidents but creates forms from within itself or, rather, is these forms. This is the meaning of the identity of thought and being. This also explains the dictum referred to previously, viz., that all knowledge is related to the soul as the contingent world is related to God. For just as God is Pure and Simple Existence, the Absolute Mind and all other existents are related to Him, thanks to the “unfolding existence (wujud munbasit),” at different levels - which constitute a systematically ambiguous world of existence of identity-in-differences,
at the same time generating a semi-real realm of essences - so the soul gives rise, thanks to the unfolding knowledge (which is a perfect analogue of the “unfolding existence” of God) to different levels of knowables - of perception, imagination, estimation, and intellection - as systematically ambiguous knowables which are, in a sense, different and in a sense identical.
It is important to note clearly the sense in which the phrase “pure existence free from matter” has been used; otherwise, it is liable to be gravely misunderstood. Something which is free from matter is also called a form or pure and abstract form. Form, in this sense, can also mean essence. This is precisely what is not meant here, else we will revert to the doctrine of abstraction of forms whose relationship to the soul will again become one of accidental quality. On the contrary, when a form is free from matter, it becomes a pure existent, not an essence, and an existent cannot be known through a form but through an intuitive self-identity or direct knowledge. Without this existential dimension to the form and the consequent identity of knowledge and existence, it would, indeed, be possible to object that from the concept “form free from matter,” it is not possible to deduce “knowledge,” for the two are not the same.
That is why even when we know that God, for example, is free from matter, we have still to prove His self-knowledge by a further argument. The answer is that we are not here talking of an abstract concept “form free from matter,'' but of the fact that existence cannot be known except through self-identity and direct intuition, and tiffs is possible only in a being free from matter.
A similar answer applies to the following objection reported by al-Tusi to have been raised by al-Masùdi : “If my self-knowledge is identical with my self, what about my knowledge of my self-knowledge... ad infinitum? If this latter is also identical with my self, then my self is no longer simple but composite. If not, then perhaps my primary self-intuition is also not identical with my self.” The answer is that whereas my primary self-intuition is identical with my self, my higher-order statements are not about my self existentially but only indirectly or as a concept. Thus, whereas my primary intuition can be expressed by saying, “I know myself,” my higher-order statement about my self-knowledge will take the form “I know that I know myself.” This answer of Sadra's does not appear to be sound, for it is obvious that even my primary self-intuition can be stated in the indirect form: “I know that I am.” Al-Tusi's answer, therefore, would seem to be more correct than Sadra's, viz., that my primary self-knowledge is in an essential manner identical with my self, and therefore, direct, but it can also be stated in an indirect manner where it is not identical with my self but is about myself.
Elsewhere, Sadra himself states that an indirect knowledge of the self is also possible, in which case it is not an intuition but is of a conceptual order.
B. The Problem of “Mental Existence (al-wujud al-dhihni )”
Sadra's statements that knowledge requires a new status of being for the known object, a “being-for-knowledge,” raises the question of the nature of mental existence (al-wujud al-dhihni), and the relationship of this existence to the known object. The first task in this connection is to prove that there is such a thing as “mental existence” as distinguished from real existence; this Sadra claims to have accomplished by showing that since, in sense-perception, the external material object in itself cannot be presented to the mind and hence known, the soul must create a corresponding form, of its own nature. This is much more true in the case of images which the soul creates from within itself. As for the intellective form, Sadra's position is that these forms exist in their own right in a Platonic sense, and as immaterial individuals (afrad), and that when the soul fully knows them, it does so by an illuminationist direct knowledge whereby it becomes identical with them. However, since the ordinary soul cannot intellect them fully due to its preoccupations with the ''affairs of the body and material things,” it can see them only in a “blurred” manner as a weak sighted person might see a distant thing in the dark.
Because of its “blurred vision” of the Form, the mind is then enabled to form “essences,” which come to behave as “universals” applicable to different species. In doing so, the mind necessarily does violence to the nature of reality, since reality is not essence but a spectrum of existences. Essences are merely something “unreal” and “negative,” being concomitants of partial existence and accompanying the latter at all of its levels. Nevertheless, the mind's operation with them is also a reality of its own order and it is true that in some sense they “exist in the mind.”
Hence all forms, whether sensible, imaginative, or intellective, exist in the mind. But we must be very careful in trying to understand the meaning of the expression “in the mind.” These forms do not inhere in the mind as the form of a horse inheres in a piece of wax, for example. They are rather attached to the mind as acts or creations are attached or present to their actor or creator.
The use of the particle “in” differs with different types of exis tents.
Something may exist in a place as water exists “in” a pitcher or a pitcher “in” a room. But when things are said to be “in” space or time, this is a different use. A third, philosophic use of “in” is when things are said to be “ in the external world.” In this usage the “external world” does not mean a place “in” which things exist but merely denotes a status or level of existence, i.e., a level where things operate with their natural properties. When, again, something is said to be “ in the mind,” the mind cannot in this use be conceived of as a “container,” but it simply means that the mind has a set of properties or essences which it is able to apply to the external reality and to classify things.
Of course, the mind, as an external existent and as a piece of the furniture of objective reality, is qualified (muttasif) by the known essences which can, in this sense, be said to qualify the mind (kaif nafsani). However, intrinsically speaking, the mind looks upon the external world and operates upon it with notions, concepts, or essences (maàni, mafahim, mahiyat).
The question of the relationship of this mental form to the external reality has troubled most Muslim philosophers since Ibn Sina, and has produced elaborate discussions. At the root of these discussions is the consideration that if the mental form is to reflect the reality faithfully, then the former must preserve the latter's characteristics. From this arises the demand that if something is a substance in the external reality, the mental form must be a substance as well.
But Ibn Sina and others have described the mental form as a quality or accident of the soul which, as we have said, is, in a sense, correct. But this description, from the point of view of knowledge, is extrinsic. Others have argued that the mental form retains the essential characteristics of the external reality with certain modifications. Just as for example, a piece of magnet, when outside the hand, attracts iron, but when held in the hand, does not attract it! This line of argument is absurd and commits the fallacy of confusing different orders of existence. For an idea or form in the mind does not move out of itself and exist externally so that when it is outside the mind, it has certain characteristics while, when in the mind, it has certain other characteristics.
Others, in order to escape these difficulties, invoked the doctrine of abstraction and, as we have seen above, asserted that what the mind knows (and possesses) is not the outside reality itself but a picture or copy of it and that such a mental image need not possess what the outside reality possesses - it might not be a substance, for example. Some others define the mental form or image as being such that if it exists outside the mind, it would be a substance. This is the view, among others, of Jalal al-Din al-Dawwani. Shall we also conclude, then, that the mental form, say, of man, is such that if it exists outside the mind, it would have two hands, two feet, etc.? This abstraction doctrine is even more absurd and dangerous than the example of the magnet, for it has as its necessary consequences that we should not know reality. For, surely, the one thing that is certain about our mental act of knowledge is that we know about man, for example, that he is a substance, has a body with all its parts, has a straight or upright stature, etc.
According to Sadra, this problem has arisen from a confusion of the types of proposition of logically different orders. In an informative categorical proposition, the mental concept or idea is asserted of, and hence related to,
something outside the mind, e.g., “such and such is a man.” These propositions are “existential (wujudi),” and such predications are called “ordinary informative predications (al-haml al-sha'ì).'' But in propositions where a concept or idea refers, not to reality, but to itself, the predication is called “primary or tautological (al-haml al-awwali). “ In this case, the predicate only gives the meaning or definition of the subject, e.g., “man is a rational animal.” The mental form is, therefore, only the meaning or the essence and does not go beyond itself whereas in the informative proposition the mental form is not contemplated per se, but is made only the “way of seeing through (hikaya li'l-manzur ilaih)” to reality.
Indeed, even the talk about “mental forms” is not correct because it gives the impression of pictures, likenesses, etc.
What the mind has are the notions or concepts or essences (maàni, mafahim, mahiyat), as has been said before. In order to have these, the mind is not in need of “forms existing in the intellect.” Philosophers have gone astray on this point because they have identified the mental act of knowledge with an accident or a picture in the mind and have not really believed in the identity of the knower and the known in the act of knowledge in a mental order of existence.
There are other philosophers who do not concede the mental order of existence at all and think that the doctrine of mental existences, far from solving problems, creates certain formidable difficulties. We must now turn to the more serious of these objections to the thesis of mental existence, and its solution.
In the realm of concepts or notions, there are those which do not correspond to the outside reality; indeed, some cannot exist at all in reality since they are serf-contradictory (like a square-circle). Now, these notions, as such, are genuine, since among other things, they are distinct from one another and have meanings. The belief in mental existence would, therefore, entail that these serf-contradictions exist in the mind. Sadra's reply is that although the mind can conceive impossibles, this does not make them genuine concepts. But their reality as notions must be admitted and there is no difficulty in this since we have argued that mental existence is disparate with real existence.
We must, however, distinguish between a notion in this sense and a real essence. Some people, because they did not distinguish between the two, have asserted that when we say that, e.g., “a square-circle is impossible,” a square-circle must exist in our minds to make such a proposition possible. Indeed, an impossible like “God's peer,” must exist not only in the mind but also in reality, for if “God's peer” exists in the mind, then for it to be God's peer, it must also exist externally! By this argument, they seek to destroy the mental order of existence. According to Sadra, the area of the conceivable is larger than that of the real and the possible. In other words, not all that is impossible - logically impossible - is absurd in the sense that it has no meaning at all. In this sense, a mind can even conceive itself to be non-existent - which is, of course, logically impossible. But to be a meaning - and hence exist in the mind - is one thing and to be a real essence is quite another. The impossible has no essence, for it can have no instances in reality. In general, Sadra seems to distinguish between: (1) the real which has an essence and real instances; (2) the non-existent, e.g., the 'anqa', which is not real and has no instances in reality but can logically have instances and since it is not impossible, also has an essence; and (3) the impossible, which logically cannot have real instances and consequently has no essence (haqiqa), but is conceivable by the mind and therefore has meaning and is a genuine notion (mafhum).
In the realm of propositions, we predicate positive attributes of things that do not exist, e.g., in the proposition “every 'anqa' (a mythical bird) can fly.” Even in the case of a thing that really exists, we do not confine ourselves to its existent examples but also pass judgments on its potential members, as, for example, when we say, “the sum of the three angles of all triangles is equal to two right angles.” The objection to the first example is that it does not really refer to anything non-existent or mental, but refers to external reality in a hypothetical mode. The proposition, therefore, actually states, ''Something, if it were to exist and possess such-and-such at-tributes, would be an 'anqa'.”
All existence is, therefore, real existence and no other order of existence is called for. In the case of the second example, the judgment must be true of an infinite number of particular instances of triangles, all of which must be simultaneously conceived in the mind, which is impossible. In his reply, Sadra states that in the case of universal or general propositions, the judgment does not concern itself directly with individuals as such, as the latter-day philosophers appear to be “firmly of the view,” but rather with the notion; and only through the notion does the judgment pass indirectly to the individuals and universality characterizes the meaning of the notion itself.
Third, the antagonist argues on the basis of our propositions about the past, if we have seen a man A in the past, who is no longer there, but talk about him, surely we are talking about him and not about our present images of him. In reply, some people have suggested the identity of the object of this past experience and the mental image, which is absurd. Sadra's answer is that we use our present mental images to refer to or to describe the object of our past experiences (just as, of course, we can use these images to describe subjectively or reflexively our own mental state now).
Notes
0%
Author: Dr. Fazlur Rahman
