Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Laws in...  53

2019

In the present research, the aim was to examine some of the metaphysical foundations of knowledge from the view point of Avicenna whose theories of knowledge were influentially echoed in the epistemic theories in the Islamic world and the next schools of thought. The main problem with the statement of current research is a critical question of whether Avicenna’s metaphysical foundations are capable of forming a representative operation for our knowledge that is accurately representing the external world. If his metaphysical foundations fail to justify the fact that our knowledge represents the real world as it is, the metaphysical foundations of his epistemology, in spite of his realism, would inevitably slip into a fundamental gap between the known-object and the knower-subject. Such research on the principles of epistemology of Avicenna who is one of the pioneers of major thought stream in Islamic philosophy i.e. Peripatetic philosophy, can open up new perspectives for further sys...

This paper argues that, in spite of interpretations to the contrary, Avicenna and Aquinas are fundamentally agreed as to subject and principles of metaphysics. The first part shows the philosophers' common metaphysical starting points in the realm of assent and the realm of conceptualization as well as their common use of the distinction between principles common by causality and common by predication to provide the overall structure for their metaphysics (Avicenna, Physics of the Shifa' 1.2.8–10; Aquinas, De Trin. V.4). The second part argues that both philosophers have similar descriptions of God and common being and thus similar views on the relation between God and the subject of metaphysics; and the third part, by surveying some remarks by Avicenna on Sufism and the use of the Qur'ān's description of God's attributes, argues that Avicenna is not forced by his naturalistic theory of prophecy to include God under the subject of metaphysics.

The paper offers some observations with a view to correcting ostensible misunderstandings of the so-called New Natural Law ("NNL") theory, concluding that the NNL theory is unworkable and unsustainable, even on its own terms. It is argued that the NNL theory is based on fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of necessity in Aquinas; the nature of propositions which are "known in themselves" (per se nota); and the nature of fundamental practical reasoning.

2016

ion 39; Abraham D. Stone: Simplicius and Avicenna on the essential corporeity of material substance 73; David C. Reisman: Avicenna at the ARCE 131-182. ———. 2003. Avicenna's Metaphysics in Context. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 75. ———. 2003. "Towards a history of Avicenna's distinction between immanent and transcendent causes." In Before and After Avicenna. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group, edited by Reisman, David C. and Al-Rahim, Ahmed H., 49-68. Leiden: Brill. 76. ———. 2005. "Avicenna and the Avicennian Tradition." In The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, edited by Adamson, Peter and Taylor, Richard, 92-136. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. "My aim in this book is to present a history of the metaphysics of Abú `Ali al-Husayn ibn `Abdallah ibn Sinâ, known in the West by his Latinized name Avicenna. Since 1937, when Amélie-Marie Goichon published La distinction de l'essence et de l'existence ...

The philosophical masterpiece of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037), the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure), is an extensive summa with four main parts (logic, natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics). The three first parts are further divided into distinct sections (nine sections of logic, eight of natural philosophy, and four of mathematics). The metaphysical part, despite consisting of a single section, includes at the end a succinct treatment of practical philosophy. One remarkable aspect of this massive work is the connection between the parts dealing with logic and natural philosophy, on the one hand, and the part devoted to metaphysics, on the other. Thus, some metaphysical doctrines are announced either in logic or in natural philosophy: Avicenna informs the reader that further developments of certain logical or physical issues will be found in metaphysics, since the scientific scope of logic and physics is limited. Conversely, many logical or physical doctrines are quoted in metaphysics: Avicenna summarizes these doctrines in order to use them in metaphysics, taking them as already sufficiently clarified in logic and physics. 1 A more peculiar -and, in my opinion, more interesting -type of 'interface' between logic and physics, on the one side, and metaphysics, on the other, is the case of logical or physical doctrines repeated in metaphysics: there are certain doctrines already developed in logic and physics which Avicenna expounds extensively in metaphysics for a second time. This third case

The Metaphysics Within Physics, 2007

Philosophical analyses may be pursued via a myriad of methods in service of as great a multitude of goals. Frequently the data upon which an analysis rests, and from which it receives its original inspiration, recount systematic connections between diverse realms of discourse or diverse sets of facts, events, actions, or objects. The aim of the project is elucidating the underlying logical, conceptual, or ontological structure that accounts for these connections. As an obvious example, John's beliefs about what Sarah knows covary systematically with his beliefs about what Sarah believes, about what Sarah has good evidence for, and about what is actually the case. We may explain these covariations by postulating that John at least tacitly adheres to the theory that knowledge is some species of justified true belief. The results of such a preliminary investigation of correlations among beliefs may be put to various uses. If we choose to endorse John's theory we will simply assert that what Sarah believes, what Sarah has good evidence for, and what is true determine what she knows. We may endorse John's theory, as revealed by his inferences, but criticize his particular judgements. For example, John's inferences may imply that he takes knowledge to require infallible evidence and so, by his own lights, he should not ascribe knowledge to Sarah since her evidence is not conclusive. Or we may instead endorse John's judgements and recommend that he amend his inferences accordingly. And, of course, the inferences, particular judgements, and intuitions at issue may be our own. This essay was written in 1989, but being too long for a journal and too short for a book only circulated informally. There are evident similarities to John Carroll's approach in his Laws of Nature (1994), and we have both been identified as primitivists about laws. I have not attempted a direct comparison between our views as it would not fit into the structure of the paper as originally conceived.

Academia.edu, 2013

The famous argument for the existence of God is analyzed with a survey of the Greek and Arabic influences of Avicenna's system. Turning to the text, The Salvation, ‘’Metaphysics,’’ II. 12, it is stated that ‘’at any one and the same time there cannot be for anything that is possible in itself a cause that is possible ad infinitum’’ (II.12.2). Here he’s saying that a possible being cannot have an infinite amount of causes at the same time. Because if that infinite totality of causes would itself have either an internal cause or an external necessary cause. It can’t be internal, because it would either be (a) necessary, which is not an option because everything internal to that totality is possible; then (b) an internal possible cause – which is not an option because that would make it a part of the totality and a part can’t be a cause of the whole. So if that cause is not internal, then it has to be external. It can’t be possible, because all of the possible causes have been established in that inner totality. Therefore it has to be necessary. He concludes the argument by stating that: Thus, things existing possibly terminate in a cause existing necessarily, in which case not every effect that exists as something possible will have simultaneously with it a cause that exists as something possible, and so an infinite number of causes existing at a single time is impossible. (II.12.2) This argument can be considered as a subsidiary conclusion to Avicenna’s main argument for the proof of God’s existence (McGinnis 166-67). There are considered to be four main categories of arguments: (1) the metaphysical proof from necessity; (2) the proof from movement; (3) the proof from causality; (4) the proof from ontology (Netton 172-73). The themes are similar to the discussions on the problem of infinite causal regress as discussed for example in book two of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Aristotle’s Metaphysics. I think that he is essentially concerned with establishing a logical argument that integrates a hierarchy of ontological causality rather than simply natural causality. In that sense, it could be considered similar to the ‘’a posteriori cosmological arguments’’ of the quinque via of ThomasAquinas (Netton 173).

1. The problem of identii cation and the problem of inference A main issue in the literature on laws is to dee ne criteria which would permit to distinguish genuine lawlike propositions from universally true propositions which describe merely accidental or fortuitous regularities in the world, such as all gold objects have a mass inferior to fty tons, to reformulate a well-known example due to Hans Reichenbach. This is the epistemological problem of identii cation. The challenge here is to formulate criteria, in the sense of suff cient conditions at least, which would justify attributing the title of law to a universally true proposition. If those criteria are satiss ed by the proposition, then we know that it is a law and that it does not just happen to be accidentally true. This is the task that Humean regularists set to themselves. Since, for them, lawlike propositions describe worldly regularities, their aim is to nd criteria which are consistent with their empiricist position and to refrain from introducing ingredients which would go beyond the realm of what is empirically accessible. In other words, serious empiricists are required to shun any kind of metaphysics. As we will see such endeavor is fraught with all sorts of diff culties. On this I agree with van Fraassen who is, in his own words, a " immoderate empiricist " (2000, 1660) and consistently sustains that there are no laws, in the sense that the search for empirically satisfactory criteria which would divide regularities into two distinct classes, lawful and unlawful, is bound to fail. Simply because there is no empirical fact, that is, some empirically detectable special kind of regularities, which would legitimate endowing the propositions which describe them with the title of law. Surely, some regularities are more general than others, but they all are regularities in the rst place and no empirical feature is available which would permit to single out some regularities and endow them with some privileged status. This is why the empiricists who would like to retain the distinction between laws and non-laws, just as scientists do, attempted to devise criteria which are internal to

2009

Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 2010