Accidents and Existence in Avicenna's Metaphysics of the Healing, III

Avicenna's Metaphysics of the Healing (MotH), as we have seen, gives consideration to the subject, principles, and purpose of the science of metaphysics in the opening book of the treatise. Book two goes on to consider the first of the two divisions of the subject of metaphysics which is the existent/being (ens) inasmuch as it is an existent/being (ens). This first division is substance and he treats it according to his metaphysical principles drawn up in Bk.I. 5-8. We have now arrived at book three where Avicenna begins to treat the other side of the division, namely, accidents.

Book III. 1 is subtitled: "On indicating what ought to be investigated regarding the state of the nine categories and about their accidental [nature]"

He begins book three with a summation of book two's resolutions. "We have clearly [indicated] the quiddity of substance and have shown that it is predicable of the separable, of body, of matter and of form." If we recall Bk I. 5 (esp. (9)-(10)) Avicenna lays out his metaphysical conceptual theses, of which there are initially three 1. existent (ens), 2. thing (res) or quiddity, and 3. necessary. Following this enumeration a fourth arises, namely, 4. existence (esse) which is affirmative aspect of a thing. Here, in book III, we can see Avicenna not only employing these theses but also within the framework of an Aristotelian science. In Book II. ch. 1-2 of the Posterior Analytics Aristotle says that there are four questions we ask of a subject or things. "The kinds of things we inquire about are equal in number to those we know (επιστήμη or scientia), and they are four: (1) a fact, (2) the reason for a fact, (3) if an object exists, (4) what a thing is." (Post. Anal. II. 1. 89b21-25 )

Avicenna is framing his summation in this context and he believes that he has resolved question (4) because he has "clearly indicated the quiddity of substance[...]." He goes on to suggest, with some repetition of earlier comments, that he has also dealt sufficiently with substance and question (3). He says, "regarding body, there is no need to establish [its existence as a substance.] Regarding matter and form, we have already established [the existence of both {in MotH Bk. II}.] As for the separable, we have established its [substantial existence] in the potential [manner] that is close to act, and we will be establishing it [further] hereafter." He also mentions if one remembers what was earlier spoken of soul the existence of separable other than body should be clear.

Hence, he suggests that it is appropriate to move on now to consider and establish the existence of accidents. Remaining in the same framework of the Posterior Analytic Avicenna has two primary questions in mind, is it? and what is it? He begins paragraph (2) answering the latter, "Regarding the ten categories, you have come to understand their quiddities in the introduction to the Logic." So the question "what is it?" of the nine categories or predicamentals has alreadly been resolved in Avicenna's mind with his earlier treatment of them in his Logic. But what about the second question not yet answered, what about their existence?

Avicenna is thinking not simply in the manner of Aristotle here, but is applying his own metaphysical principles, which are similar to Aristotle's, to topics which are also similar to Aristotle's but in numerous and interesting ways they innovations from the Stagirite's own treatments. Considering the existence of accidents Avicenna immediately focuses on "relation."
"Doubtlessly, the relative [...] is something that necessarily occurs [as an accident] to a thing." Relation, he takes as that which is doubtlessly an accident, since it by nature is in another (in alio); it cannot be understood or taken as a relation without another in which its existences depends on. Here, relation is fundamental for Avicenna because establishing the existence of relation as an accident is sufficient to establish all the other categorical accidents that depend on relation, such as action, passion, when, where, position, and possession. That these latter exist as accidents is established by relation's existence as an accident, for what are these latter predicables other than distinct relatives of some kind. (e.g. where is at least a thing relative to place) He concludes accordingly that, "these are states that occur [as accidents] to things in which they inhere as an existent in a subject." (MotH, Bk III. 1 (2))

But there are two accidents that remain, whose existence is not yet established, namely, quantity and quality. With these two the matter is not so simple. This is because some have held various quantities or qualities to be substance or even existent itself, or that all is reducible to one of them. (III. 1. (3)). Avicenna briefly summarizes some of their positions and proposes what must be considered regarding them to show that they are in fact accidents existing in a substance and not substances themselves. This is the focus of chapters 2-9 of book III, first considering the one and quantity and then quality. Finally chapter ten closes book III on the relative.

Aristotle and the Science of Metaphysics lect. 3

Because this lecture occurred a number of weeks ago prior to hurricane Ike and I cannot seem to find all my notes from class this reflection will be rather spotty.

Aristotle's Metaphysics: I; II; IV. 1; V. 7-8; VI. 1-2

The scientific ordering and presentation has produced a myriad of interpretations from the traditionalist position influenced by the Medieval commentary tradition who took it for granted that the Metaphysics was Aristotle's presentation of a science that followed the order of a science as presented in his Posterior Analytics. Despite the perspicuous heritage of this tradition the recent Aristotelian progeny are not so confident in the merits or success of Aristotle's project to achieve scientific knowledge in the myriad of subject domains he investigates. Some members of this group go so far as to deny to the texts tradition has called the Metaphysics, any authorial continuity and presentation. They subscribe to a position that the Metaphysics was a unorganized collection of lecture notes "thrown" together by later Greek editors, not knowing what to label this discrete collection of texts, and seeing that it was arranged after the texts on natural philosophy or physics, decided to call it after-physics or meta-physics. H.G. Apostle offers a presentation of this account in the introduction to his translation of the Metaphysics along with his own argument to the contrary. There is a great abundance of literature on this topic but it is outside the concerns of my own class which is on Avicenna's Metaphysics.

Avicenna certainly thought Aristotle presented a unified science within treatise called the Metaphysics and it is incumbent on any interpretor of Avicenna's own Metaphysics of the Healing to take into consideration his perspective on the Aristotelian sciences, and of course especially, metaphysics.

The problem that leads to such great diversity of opinion on the proper assesment of Aristotle's Metaphysics is the seemingly incongruent definitions found within the Metaphyiscs itself, definitions of a subject-genus that lead to different understanding of the underlying intelligible arrangement of the books themselves. In some places we find Aristotle defining the particular science under investigation as a science of being qua being and its proper attributes. (Meta. IV, 1) However in other places he defines his inquiry as a divine science or theology (Meta. VI, 1)

Nearly all of Aristotle's sciences offer an introductory dialectical treatment of past attempts to establish the principles of a particular science. There is a precedence for this in the De Anima and Phyiscs amongst other treatises. If we take this into consideration then there are two possible interpretation suggested for the whole order of the Metaphysics.

What is a Science?

A brief reminder, a science consists in three parts:

1. A Subject-Genus
2. Proper Principles
3. Proper Attributes (Conclusions)
   

What Kind of Science is the Metaphysics?

1. Theology: If we take the science of first philosophy as being a divine science it would suggest that Aristotle is presenting an enduraing dialectical treatment of principles up until Bk. XII where the Science of Theology finally begins.
2. Being qua Being: If we take first philosophy as a science of being as such then the dialectical treatment ends at bk. III because he begins his treatment of being qua being with bk. IV
3. There is a possible synthesis available wherein 2. leads into 1., but this would require a deeper textual explanation, and as we shall see this is in fact what Avicenna does himself, though much more explicitly.

Accordingly a divisio textus of the Metaphysics could be taken as:

• Bk. I-III : Dialectial investigation of principles and proper attributes to be considered in the science.
• Bk. IV and VI : Accounts of the subject and principles of Metaphysics
• Bk. V : Definitions
• Bk. VII-IX : Primary Considerations of the subject of Metaphyisics
• Bk. X-XI : Unifying of the former
• Bk. XII-XIV : Theology

n.b. For the Arab commentators books I (A) and II (a) were inverted.

Aristotle's Theory of Scientific Demonstration: Lect. 2

This second lecture was dedicated to a brief glossing of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and theory of scientific demonstration. It is Aristotle's own solution to a number of problems addressed by Plato regarding metaphysics, epistemology, logic/demonstration, and cognitive states. As a glossing of the text, we only covered the skeleton of this treatise's rather exhaustive inquiry into the nature of scientific demonstration. The Posterior Analytics can take years to get even a handle on its nuances, let alone assimilate its modes into solidified habitus or cognitive propositional dispositions. And it seems rather clear that this was an endevor of fundamental importance for the medievals who wrote a sundry of commentaries on this task for the purpose of apprehending every nuance. Avicenna is amongst the medievals who say the wisdom of this text, and an awareness of this influence will certainly provide an schema by which one can follow the philosophical moves Avicenna is making while attempting to explicate scientifcally on any particular subject genus.

The unity of the Posterior Analytics lies in that the question of the first chapter is dealt with again with a new solution in the last chapter of the text. The mode of knowing of the higher cognitive states as found in Plato's "Divided Line" has reached a level of maturity and precision in Aristotle.

Major contrasts in Aristotle from Plato is the diversity of sciences. For Plato there is one universal science towards the Good. All knowledge is a process on the way to knowing the Good, and to know the Good is then to have episteme. For Aristotle there are a diversity of sciences, as many as their are subject genus. This allows Aristotle to hold that one can have episteme and know nothing about the Good.

Posterior Analytics: Book I. Ch. 1

Thesis: New knowledge is acquired from/by prior knowledge

Prior Knowledge is of three kinds:

1) Of a Principle: that it is - quia est
2) Of a Proper Attribute: What it is - quid est
3) Of a Subject: Both That it is & What it is - et quia est, et quid est

Posterior Analytics: Book I. Ch. 2

Thesis: To know scientifically is to (A) know the cause of the thing and (B) know that it cannot be other wise than what it is.

There is another way of knowing, but the first topic treated is of knowing through a demonstration. Demonstration is obtained by a scientific syllogism, and the latter is that that in virtue of which, by possessing, we know something.

Demonstrated knowledge must necessarily proceed from appropriate principles that are
1) True
2) Primary
3) Immediate
4) More known than
5) Prior to, and
6) The causes of the conclusion

Note: There can be a syllogism without these requirements for principles, but such a syllogism will not be a demonstration, for it will not produce knowledge.
Digest of the Requirements of a Demonstrative Syllogism’s Principles

1) True: Principles should be true because non-being (falsity) cannot be known
2) Primary: Demonstrated knowledge must be acquired from primary principles which are indemonstrable. Primary also means appropriate to the thing known.
3) Immediate: not mediated for that would require another demonstration. Immediate means there is no other premise before it.
a) Thesis: is any immediate syllogistic principle that cannot be proved and it not
necessary for a learner to have in order to learn something.
i) Hypothesis: is a thesis that states something is the case or not.
ii) Definition: is a thesis that does not, such as “a unit is that which is
indivisible with respect to quantity.”
b) Axiom: is a principle a learner must possess to learn anything
4) More known than (and to a higher degree): not simply understood but knowing that. Also Prior and More Know without qualification, that is, as most universal.
a) To a higher degree: “for that because of which a thing exists always exists to a
higher degree” (Note: this is an aspect of the Principle of Causality)
5) Prior to: Principles must be prior by nature to the conclusion if they are the cause of it.
6) The cause: Because we know a thing only when we know the causes of it.

Posterior Analytics: Book I. Ch. 10

Principles in a demonstration are of two kinds.

Some are Proper principles and some are common to many sciences.(common by analogy: since they are used as far as the genus of things under each science extends)

Proper Principles are also those whose existence is posited and whose essential attributes are investigated by a given science.

A science posits that each of these exists and is so-and-so.
The definition of essential attributes is posited. But that each essential attribute exists is proved though the common principles or axioms and from what has been demonstrated.

Every Demonstrative Science is concerned with three things:
1) those which it posits to exist (and these are things under the genus whose essential attributes it investigates.
2) The so-called “common axioms” from which it demonstrates as from first principles,
3) The attributes, the meaning of whose corresponding terms it posits.


Principles are of three kinds:

1) the genus concerning which something is proved
2) the attributes which are proved of the genus
3) the common axioms from which something is proved.

Posterior Analytics: Book II. Ch. 1

The things we know about and the things we inquiry about:

1) a fact
2) the reason for a fact
3) if an object exists
4) what a thing is.

Posterior Analytics: Book II. Ch. 2

When we inquire 1) whether something is or is not a fact or 3) whether an object simply exists or not, we inquire whether it has a middle or not.

Following knowledge of a fact or that a thing exists we sometimes inquiry further. We inquiry the 2) why of the fact or 4) the whatness of it, in this case we ask “what is its middle?”

In all inquiries we therefore inquire either a) whether there is a middle or b) what the middle is; for the cause is a middle and in all cases it is what is sought.

To understand the whatness of a thing is to understand the why of it


Posterior Analytics: Book II. Ch. 19

First must be acquired but not by demonstration (which would entail circularity or infinite regress cf. P.A. I. 3). Aristotle, contra the Platonic thesis, thinks that principles are not grasped by intellectual apprehension of Forms separate from the things themselves. Rather Aristotle thinks that forms can be grasped in the things themselves.

Aristotle (100a4)

• Sense perception
  
• Memory } Out these three cognitive operations arises the arts and sciences
  
• Experience
  

To illustrate the latter cognitive transition Aristotle uses the famous metaphor of the army in a rout that suddenly makes a stand, becoming stronger and more secure as the ranks increase. A locus where this metaphor is enforced is within Aristotle's account of "incidental sensation" (cf. De Anima II. 6 418a7-418a26) Our sense-perception is of the particular but the particular itself is an instantiated form - which is universal as known, and is perceived as a particular instantiation of the universal in incidental sensation (as later commentators bring to light, e.g. Avicenna, Aquinas, etc.)



Dialectic: For Plato is a comparing and motion up a genus-species tree. However, Aristotle's account of dialectic takes on an expanded inductive inference from what we see in the Divided Line. It includes also particulars to generalization, as well as Plato's account of the motion from species to genus. Aristotle expands induction because he does not think we start with the forms but must first acquire them from the particulars which bear them in re. The particularized universal instantiations are "gathered" together prior to grasping a "real universal. The scheme of Aristotle looks something like this:

Individual -> Universals (specific) -> Universals (generic to most generic)

Induction is capped or culiminates in nous- intellectual insight. Nous should be taken here as a unified dyadic act of apprehension (concept-formation) and judgement (proposition-formation) as the Medievals will come to identify them. This account is verified in a number of Aristotelian passages; earlier in the PA I. 2 and 10 he explains propositions as divided into two species 1) definitions and 2) hypothesis. The latter has for its constituents the former. This account of the unity of the first two acts of intellect will receive a must fuller treatment in the later commentators, in particular, I will later be addressing Avicenna's treatment in his Metaphysics of the Healing Bk. I ch. 5-7.

Veracity of the Intellect in Aristotle:
In PA II. 19 we get the completed epistemic account that not only Scientia (episteme) but also intellectus (nous) are unfailingly true. Opinions, justified true beliefs, and inductions as found in sense-perception, memory, and experience are generalized or universal in a sense, in Aristotle and Plato, but they are not necessarily true as they are in nous.

We have here different intellectual habitus:

• Scientia - as discursive and mediative
• Intellectus - as insight and immediate

N.b. - A question is often raised in this context and I wish to provide the brief response given by my professor to this question. Due to the high epistemic status Aristotle grants this intellectual insight (nous) many question the frequency of the occasion of nous. How often do humans have insight into the essence of things? There is no unequivocal and strait forward answer to this question. One must keep in my the complexity of things man knows and the gradient of intelligibilities in things that must be actualized through human cognition and its correlative habitus. Since nous is a habitus, those who are more active in their pursuit of insight will have a greater frequency in the apprehension of natures. However, and perhaps more important, is not the frequency of apprehension but the clarity and understanding of the natures grasped, which is certainly cultivated by a habitus. In this way one can admit with Aristotle in the Ethics that there is insight (nous) occurring at the most abstract and most preliminary cognitive interfaces with real things. The most preliminary insights are no less true, just perhaps less clear and lacking in penetration to the depths of the reality they apprehend.

The Platonic Background to Avicenna: Lecture 1

It was taken for granted by the Medieval Scholastics and neo-Scholastics alike that Aristotle developed this idea of episteme or scientia as the paradigm of knowledge, and then employed it by its proper mode of discursive reasoning, namely, scientific demonstration, in all his sciences, practical and theoretical. It was for this reason that the majority of medieval Aristotelians found it more than appropriate to comprehend and apply this infinitely subtle but foundational work on the highest order of knowledge. For this reason do we find such a large body of fastidious medieval "commentaries" on the Posterior Analytics.

However, recent scholarship has attempted to develop a counter thesis to this traditional understanding of the Posterior Analytics by showing that it was not the case that many medievalists were developing foundationalist epistemologies rooted in Aristotle's theory of scientific demonstration. Or if they were, they rarely held to it in their own theoretical treatments and explications. This thesis finds various representations for 20th century commentators of Aquinas, most notably, in Eleanore Stump's Aquinas and John Jenkins Faith and Reason in Thomas Aquinas.

Against this view, among others, is the late Dominican Father James Weisheipl (Aristotelian Methodology), Scott MacDonald (who has an excellent essay in the Cambridge Companion to Aquinas), and my professor R.E. Houser.

But in order to understand the roots of Aristotle's own theory of scientific demonstration and its influence upon Avicenna and the Scholastic Aristotelians like Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus one must first look back into Plato. Most especially the Meno (80d - 86d) and the Republic books 6-7, in particular the "Divided Line." Only in light of these problems can one truly understand and appreciate Aristotle's own solution to these Platonic problems. Solutions he is at pains to produce in his Posterior Analytics.

Because of time constraints in the semester we were only able to spend one lecture on Plato. For this reason the following reflections will be rather brief, as well as the following posts on Aristotle. The primary focus was "The Divided Line." Of the images of this that I could find online, the following was the best.( http://www.psichi.org/images/site_pages/1_2_analogy.jpg)

The "Divided Line" comes at the very end of The Republic book 6, 509d-511e. Various aspects of it are mentioned in passim at 476c, 517c, 524d, and 534a. It also offers interesting correlations in to the famous "Allegory of the Cave" in book 7. As the diagram on the left shows there are two columns dividing objects and their correlative cognitive/mental states. Unfortunately this diagram is missing one very essential element. There are supposed to be two more lines! Below "Forms" and above "Mathematical Objects" there should be a line. And likewise below "Visible Things" and above "Images".

What is especially interesting is the manner in which Plato describes how we come to have these various kinds of "mental states" or degrees of knowledge. "[I]n [the lower] part of [the intelligible half of the divided line] a soul, using as images the things that were previously imitated, is compelled to investigate on the basis of hypotheses and makes its way not to a beginning [or principle] but to an end [or conclusion]; while in the other [higher] part it makes its way to a beginning [principle] that is free from hypotheses; starting out from hypothesis and without the images used in the other part, by means of forms themselves it makes its inquiry through them." (trans. Bloom, 510b) A similar discussion is held by Socrates at 511b where the former part is referred to as "dialectic." What is also of note is Plato's use of induction and then deduction in these accounts on the degrees of knowledge ordered like "steppingstones and springboards" towards that highest of ends, knowledge of the Good. The highest part in the latter account no longer reasons by images but by the "forms themselves" grasped in light of dialectic. This account will be re-formulated and ordered within Aristotle's Posterior Analytics with his own nuances and greater clarity than is given to us in Plato's own presentation.

Finally, the most important overall position held by Plato is his understanding of a universal science. This will be contrasted strongly to Aristotle's division of the sciences into a multitude of subject-genus determined by their specific object. For Plato there is one science towards the Good. All the orders of cognition are intellectual steps taking the soul closer and closer to the knowledge of the Good. It is only one episteme after one has seen the Good. The Good is the highest object for Plato, the order of intelligence may be knowing deductively, "form by form" without the use of hypothesis, but it still much reach the highest form, which is the cause of all the forms. The Good is "even beyond Being" for Plato, and it is for this reason that knowledge of the Good, illuminates all. Like its parallel, the Sun, in the "Allegory of the Cave" to see the Good-in-itself, is to have episteme of all that it is the source of, which is everything. All other cognitive orders are simply stages towards the Good.

A great deal more could be said, but the foregoing is a sufficient indication of the problems to be taken up by Aristotle. I'll end this post with a quote from the Republic book 7 that is distantly related to the topic at hand, but provincial to the popular obsessions of my peers. The Presidential election of 2008, a matter that I know less about than Parmenides short little metaphysical poem.

Socrates responds to an objection about the injustice done to the Guardians by having them return from intellectual sublimity to order the lives of the masses.
"My friend, you have again forgotten," I said, "that it's not the concern of the law that any one class fare exceptionally well, but it contrives to bring about in the city as a whole, harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another the benefit that each is able to bring to the commonwealth. And it produces such men in the city not in order to let them turn whichever way each wants, but in order that it may use them in binding the city together." (52oa)

Such sacrifice to the common good, is essential to the flourishing of mankind, and Christ calls us to no less.