Chapter III: Theory of Knowledge - II: Perception and Imagination
A. External Sense
According to Aristotle and the Muslim Peripatetics, sense perception consists in the fact that sense organs undergo a qualitative change under the impact of the external object of perception and receive its imprint. In this view, it is sometimes held that the object of immediate perception is this imprint which the soul then refers to the external object, sometimes that the imprint is a sensation while perception is directly of the external object. In either case, the occurrence in the sense organ is directly constitutive of the act of perception and the perceptible is a bodily form, either in the sense-organ or in the physical world. Plotinus holds that physical sensation, far from being constitutive of perception, is a mere outward reflection or image of the proper sensation of the soul, which has as its object of perception not the external object, but an internal form. Physical sensation is nothing but the “soul in sleep,” as it were.
Plotinus nevertheless shows some hesitation about the nature of the imprint, as to whether it is in the bodily organ or only mediated by the bodily organ, although at all events it is received by the soul: “The soul receives the imprint which [either] is of the body [i.e. the physical organ] or comes via the body” (Enneads, II, 3, 26; see also ibid., I, 1, 7).
Sadra, who adopts a strongly neo-Platonic line of thought, argues, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, that nothing physical as such can become the proper object of knowledge, since knowledge involves an entirely new status of being with which the object of knowledge is invested (nash'a ìlmiya). This is the result of the doctrine that (1) knowledge consists in a “presentation (hudur)” of the object to the subject: (2) nothing physical can be “present” either to anything else or, indeed, to itself since its parts are mutually “absent”; and (3) since both the external objects and the sense-organs are physical, there is no question of the former being “present” to the latter.
What is, then, sense perception, and how does it come about? And how is this radically non-physical view of sense perception compatible with Sadra's view of the genesis of the soul, since unlike Plotinus (who holds that the soul is a transcendent substance pre-existing the body that subsequently enters it), and like Aristotle and Ibn Sina, he believes that the soul is “generated in and with the body?''
The answer to the second question is that, as indicated earlier, the soul, although generated in and with the body, is, from its very inception, not of the body but something higher than it, for even the souls of plants are not bodily but employ bodily functions. The emergence of the soul is, indeed, a spectacular case of substantive change. In the case of the animal soul, Sadra's contention is that its faculty of imagination is separate from matter. As for sense perception, its subject is also the soul and not the sense-organ or the sense-faculty: You may say that the visual faculty which is in the eye is the organ which perceives the perceptible object, then it transmits what it has perceived through the connection which exists between it and yourself and thus you gain an awareness of the thing which (actually) the visual faculty has already perceived. (In that case) we will ask: After the transmission to you, do you (again) perceive the visible object as the organ had perceived, or not? If you say, “yes,” then in that case your perception is one thing and your organ's perception is another.
But if you say that you do not perceive after the transmission, then you have not perceived or heard or felt your pleasure and pain.... For the knowledge that the eye sees, the ear hears, the feet walk, and the hand seizes is not identical with seeing, hearing, walking, and seizing, any more than our knowledge that someone else is hungry or feels pleasure or pain is identical with our feeling hungry, pleasure, or pain.
Physical organs are required for sense perception but only thanks to the accidental fact that we exist in a material world, not intrinsically. Pure souls when they are separated from the body can have all the perceptions wherein in ordinary life physical organs mediate. This is a psychic phenomenon which is a matter of experience and not a mere fantasy. Dreams already point in that direction, since in dreams we see and hear and have all perceptual experiences.
Sadra also holds that the heavenly souls are possessed of all perceptual experiences, and not merely imagination, even though their perceptions are not mediated by a potentiality and receptivity on the part of any perceptual organ; nor do they have localized organs of perception.
Since perceptual experience - like hearing pleasurable sounds and smelling and tasting pleasurable things - is in itself a perfection, it cannot be denied that the heavenly souls possess it. In fact, Pythagoras was able to perfect the art of music by ascending to the heaven by his pure soul, “hearing” melodious sounds there, and then translating them into physically audible tunes by the use of his physical faculties.
The reason for this is that the external sensibles and the affections of the sense organ are merely preparatory and provide the “occasion” for the rise in the soul, or rather, the creation by it, of the perceptible form.
This is the very meaning of the famous statement - going back to Aristotle - that the actually sensible form and the actually sentient soul are identical, for how can the doctrine of the identity of the sentient and the sensible be upheld if we regard the sensible either as the external material form or the affection of the sense organ? Thus, when the tactible external form affects the tactual organ, the soul creates its own form or God creates that form in the soul. Similarly, in the case of audition, it is not the case that the external sound produces a movement in the air which is exactly transmitted through successive air-waves to the interior of the ear and thus hearing takes place. The movement of the air and its air-waves are preparatory conditions for the sound to be heard, but they do not transmit the sound.
In the case of vision, again, three views have been held. Physicists (Aristotelians) have held that the form of the visual object is transmitted through the rays of light that impinge upon the retina of the eye. When the objection is raised against them that we see the object outside and not the form in the retina or the brain, they simply reply that what is perceived is the object itself and not its form, which is transmitted - as is the case with all external perceptibles. This reply, however, begs the very question. The second view, that of mathematicians (Platonists), is that vision takes place by the rays of light emanating from the eye and impinging upon the object. The third view was advocated by al-Suhrawardi. It says that vision is accomplished, when a luminous object is situated facing the visual organ, as a direct illuminationist event of awareness ('ilm ishraqi). This view rejects the necessity of a transparent medium. “But the truth, according to us,” says Sadra, “is neither of these three views. The truth is that vision consists in the creation, by the power of God, of a form resembling it (i.e., the form of the external object) from within the domain of the soul, this form being separate from the external matter, present to the cognizant soul, and related to it as an act is related to its actor, not as something received is related to its recipient.”
It is to be noted that Sadra's position on sense perception is a consequence of the doctrine of the identity of the subject and object in knowledge which was initiated by Aristotle but carried to its logical extremes by neo-Platonism and elaborated and rationally vindicated by Sadra. For this is what Sadra means by saying that knowledge is being, i.e., the status of being and the status of knowledge are the same. For knowledge to be possible, the being of the external material objects has to undergo a transformation, an actual metamorphosis, and this is the meaning of nash'a 'ilmiya or a being-for-knowledge. An important feature of the doctrine is the rejection of the “doctrine of abstraction” as expounded by classical philosophers. Sadra says that the statement that perception “abstracts the form from matter” or that imagination “abstracts the form from material attachments” is not acceptable.
In perception we know the material thing and not something that is ''abstracted” from matter. The psychic nature of the act of perception, therefore, requires not abstraction but a transformation of the object of perception; and physical or physiological accounts, therefore, cannot explain it:
Perception in general does not take place - as the well-known doctrine of the majority of the philosophers states - by the perceptual faculty's abstraction of the perceptible form itself from matter and encountering it along with its enveloping material attachments - since it has been established that forms imprinted in matter cannot move locally.... Perception occurs because the giver (of forms, i.e., the soul itself) bestows another psychic and luminous cognitive form, thanks to which perception or knowledge arises. Tiffs form is the actual sentient and the actual sensible at the same time. As for form-in-matter, it is neither sentient nor sensible, but is only a condition (or occasion) for the emanation of that (actually cognized) form
An obvious question arising out of this account of perception is that if the proper object of our knowledge is the “forms within the soul,” how do we know the external world? or how do we know, indeed, that there is an external world? Sadra's own explicit answer to this question is extremely unsatisfactory: the external world is known accidentally, indirectly, and secondarily.
But he does not deny that what we know is the external object; nor does he hold that we know two things, the one outside us and the other inside us or in our sense organs.
Even though his commentator al-Sabzawari holds, on this issue, a subjectivist point of view and adopts solipsism,
Sadra himself gives no evidence of a solipsistic doctrine. Indeed, the suggestion of his anti-abstractionist account of perception is also clearly anti-subjectivist: what we know is not an abstraction or an arbitrary creation of our mind but the real world, and the real world in its totality, without loss or interpolation. The meaning of the dictum that as an object of knowledge the external world of matter has to be transformed into a new being or status of reality - the being-for-knowledge - does not mean that we know a different world, a duplicate, as it were, of the external world. Indeed, what we know is the external world, the full-blooded real world of sense perception, with all its relationships. That the soul creates its own forms is simply another way of asserting the identity of thought and being, of the truly existential and the mental. The world as we know it is exactly the world as it exists; but its status of being changes, and attains a mental quality for knowledge to become possible. In spite of his assertions that the external world is known “accidentally,” Sadra's overall position appears to be a kind of “idealist realism,” which is the only position compatible with his critique of the abstractionist doctrines.
B. Internal Sense: Imagination and Wahm
Imagination is different from sensus communis, since sense perception, the function of sensus communis, is pure acquisition (kasb) without a skill (malaka,) whereas imagination implies a skill or power on the part of the soul.
Since imagination creates its own objects ab initio, there is no need to postulate an ontological “active imagination” for the production of images, just as it is essential to postulate an “active sense” in the case of sensibles or an “active intelligence'' in the case of intelligibles, since these latter two arise from potential sensibles and potential intelligibles, while images are always actual.
Sadra believes, like al-Suhrawardi and subsequent thinkers such as Ibn 'Arabi, in the ontological “World of Images (Àlam al-Mithul)” with which the mind makes contact, but at the same time he regards the images as creations of the soul. There are thus subjective images as well as objective images. This is because the soul can and does create all kinds of grotesque and false images which cannot be attributed to the “World of Images,” but to the activity of the soul itself.
As distinguished from the ontological realm which he calls.the “Greater World of Images,” he calls the soul “The Lesser World of Images.” Indeed, the fact that the soul creates images is Sadra's evidence par excellence that the soul creates all knowledge and that the soul is immaterial.
Ibn Sina, in his K. al-Shifa' and K. al-Najat, gave an elaborate argument to show that all images are imprinted on and located in a bodily substance (although in some of his smaller works he tried to show that these images cannot be so located and at the same time noted the inconsistency of this doctrine with his general view of images, pointing out this difficulty in his thought).
Ibn Sina's first argument is that if we imagine two small but equal squares, each on one side of a big square, then the relative and distinct positions of these two small squares is due neither to the nature of squareness - since both are equal - nor to a dependency on the supposition of the person who imagines them, since it is not up to the imaginer to interchange their positions and, in any case, the imaginer cannot create distinctions between them unless they were already there in the image itself. Secondly, we can imagine a small and a big man; this difference in size must be due to the space the two images occupy, since it cannot be explained by the essence of manness, which is the same in both cases and is, in fact, universal. Thirdly, we cannot imagine both whiteness and blackness to occupy the same space in an image, although they can occupy different places in the same image. This shows that an image occupies a certain space and has extension; the organ of imagination must, therefore, be material.
Sadra rejects this view. First, he says, it is impossible to relate the parts of the brain to images which differ infinitely both in number and in size; a one to one relationship between parts of the brain and images is impossible to establish.
On the other hand, if all simultaneous images are related to exactly the same part of the brain, the putative part of the brain may just as well be taken to be superfluous, since it is indifferent to qualitative and quantitative differences in images.
The soul, indeed, says Sadra, is not related to the images as their recipient, but as their creator; hence their character is radically different from the material forms in the outside world. In the case of a figure in the material world, say that of a square shaped out of wax, it is possible to change it because there is a receptive factor, the matter, and a received factor, viz the shape of a square; when the latter is removed, the former - the matter - still remains ready to receive another form. In the case of a mental image, there is only one factor, viz., the figure which is created by the soul itself. In other words, whereas in the case of a material figure, there is a “compound production (jàl murakkab),” i.e., making of a material into a figure; in the case of a mental image, there is a “simple making (jàl basit),” i.e. making or creation of an image. Hence the unchangeability of the mental image. Ibn Sina's argument from the un-changeability of the mental image, therefore, far from proving the materiality of that image, proves its very opposite. Hence, contrary to what Ibn Sina asserted, viz that the character of a mental image does not depend on the imaginer's supposition, that character is the very creation of the imaginer's imagining; an image cannot, therefore, be changed, but only replaced by another image.
The nature of an image is “pure extension,” i.e., it does not occupy space. That is why we can imagine an image of the magnitude of the entire world and, indeed, entertain such images a number of times over without “intruding” into each other. It is also not true to say that these images are “in” the soul. The soul, indeed, creates them and becomes, therefore, identical with them, as in the case of all knowledge which is, nevertheless, not “in” the soul.
The images which the soul creates in this world are weak and unstable compared to the perceptual objects. This is because the soul in this life is immersed in matter. But when it leaves the material realm, it becomes capable of creating stable, “real” images. In fact, as we shall see in the discussion on eschatology, this image-life will be the fate of undeveloped human souls which have not perfected themselves with pure intellect. The images in the case of such souls will take the place of perception in this life and whatever the soul entertains in terms of images of physical pleasures and pains will be virtually true in the after-life. Therefore, although imagination in this world gives a hint of this second “emergent status (nash'u)” of the soul's being - a level of being which puts the soul outside the limits of natural, material existence - it is only in the afterlife that imagination will play its full role. Sadra rejects the view adopted by al-Suhrawardi that after death undeveloped souls - whether good or bad - use some other body, like a heavenly body, for projecting their images. He says that in that case, such images cannot be the images of these souls but will be the images of the heavens. Moreover, these images do not need the help of a material body but are self-subsisting entities and will “appear” to the soul. Finally, since these images will be the representations of the deeds and acts of the agent himself, it is illogical to suppose that they could exist in a heavenly body. (The doctrine that undeveloped souls can contact a heavenly body or some other body for their imagination to function is reported by Ibn Sina in his al-Risala al-Adhawiya to be the view of “a certain serious scholar” identified by al-Tusi as al-Farabi.)
In any case, this will be experienced by the soul in its ''second emergent level of being (nash'a thaniya)” in “After-Life” and not in this world as the accounts of al-Suhrawardi and Ibn Sinia suggest.
At that level of existence, since the images will take the place of perceptibles in this life, they will constitute sense perception and will be literally visibles, audibles, tactibles, etc. Indeed, sense perception in this life is nothing but an exteriorization and a shadow of imagination itself. Sadra once again invokes his principle that “abstraction” in this context does not imply any removal or privation but simply means a higher level of existence which, far from excluding what exists at the lower level of existence, contains it in a unitary and more meaningful manner. Indeed, even the body is not excluded at this higher level; only it is not coarse material body but of a different nature, as will become clear in our account of eschatology.
Ibn Sina and his followers had posited a faculty among the internal senses called “Wahm (estimation).” The function of this faculty was to perceive non-material but particular ideas or meanings in particular sensible things,
as, for example, a sheep perceives danger in this particular wolf or a mother perceives love in her particular young one. Sadra rejects the existence of this faculty and says that Wahm, as such, has no being. The perception of harm or danger or love in a particular object is the function of reason as attached to imagination. Nor do the objects of perception attributed to Wahm have a being of their own, subsisting in the sensible image. The perception of these non-material ideas is not the work of pure reason because they are not universal, i.e., danger-in-general or affection-in-general. Nor can it be the work of imagination or sensus communis because they perceive only the exterior form and not the inner meanings. Nor, as we have just said, do these meanings actually exist or subsist in material objects because in that case they would have to be perceived by the external senses - like existence and unity.
How, then, are these meanings perceived and what does their nature consist in? They are perceived by a relationship of the rational faculty to a particular object or image. We perceive, not this particular dangerous figure, but danger as attributable to this particular figure. The relationship of a particular case of danger to the universal object of reason is analogous to the relationship of an instantiated universal or a case of a universal (hissa) to the universal. In a case or instance of a universal, the gaze is fixed on the universal as so instantiated and not on the particular object (fard itself; for example, in the case of a human being A, the gaze falls not on A as this particular object (fard) as such, but on this case or instance of humanness or humanness as attributed to this person. The difference between an instance or a case, on the one hand, and a particular, on the other, is that, whereas the latter is not a universal - although a universal can be reached by a process of universalization from several particulars - the former already exemplifies a universal and the difference between a universal and its example is merely a difference of our own way of looking at them (ìtibar mahd). Similarly an instance of danger already exemplifies danger-in-general and is, therefore, an object, if not of pure reason, of reason as attached to imagination.
Further, since nothing in terms of real existence corresponds to the findings of Wahm in an external sensible object, these findings are purely mental abstractions like 'cause' and 'effect' and are not like 'black' or 'white' which are universal mental reflections of the external reality.
This highly 'unorthodox' doctrine of Wahm was severely criticized by Sadra's commentators, notably al-Sabazwari.
How can a rational operation be attributed to animals which are by definition devoid of reason?
Besides such technical criticisms, it is, of course, equally obvious that the whole import of the perception of danger or love is this particular danger or love on the part of a percipient and not danger-in-general or love-in-general or as general ideas as instantiated cases. And if what is meaningful is this danger here and now, it is impossible to hold that nothing corresponds in the real structure of the perceived object to what we call danger or love and that these are purely mental abstractions. Whatever weaknesses there be in Ibn Sina's doctrine of Wahm - e.g., how can something be both non-material and particular on Ibn Sina's own principle? - it is evident that Sadra's constructions upon Wahm as something quasi-universal hardly do justice to something whose whole meaning lies in the particularity of a certain situation. The only correct way to rescue Sadra - and this may well be what he means when he says that Wahm is something between pure sense-perception and pure rationality, although his conceptual framework does not allow him to formulate this explicitly - would be to say that reactions like love, hate, and fear are certainly not perceptible by senses (as Sadra does say) but while they are not technically rational either, they are not without reason. That is to say, they are instinctive and an instinct is not devoid of reason.
So understood, Sadra's doctrine would be perfectly sound and the objections raised against him would have no force at all.
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Author: Dr. Fazlur Rahman
