The existence of imagination and imaginative perceptions in cognitive system of human being is a topic all philosophers agree about it, but they disagree about the explanation the way the individual alquire imaginary forms as well as the nature of imagination and imaginative perceptions. Ibn Sina considers human soul as having various faculties and considers the imaginative faculty as an intermediate stage in the actualization and acquisition of perceptual forms. In his different books he propounds arguments for the material (...) nature of imagination and in consequence of imaginal forms, but apparently such arguments are based on the principles of Islamic tradition, because he ultimately changes his position and in his "Mubahithat" offers a detailed argument on the abstract nature of imagination and imagnitive perceptions, although he finds it difficut to justify such a notion on the basis of prepatetic principles. His saying on the different degrees of intellect, immortality of souls, children's souls and immortal souls on the stage of material intellect is justifiable with belief in the abstract nature of imagination and perceptual forms. Suhravardi refuses to accept the multiple inner faculties of Ibn Sina, and refers all faculties to an entity and regards these faculties as a shadow of what is in the Nur Esphahbad. For the explanation of acquisition of imaginative perception, he resorts to imaginal world and suspended ideas. (shrink)

For al-Urmawī, the soul is an essence that governs the parts of our body to move both naturally and voluntarily. Cognitive actions in the body is also by means of the soul. This essence is the same in each of us. Every one of us necessarily knows he or she is one person. This is what referred as 'I' or 'you'. al-Urmawī argues that the thing that consists of the soul and body must be one single living being. If not, (...) then it would be necessary to talk about two separate substances that do not have any relation between them. According to al-Urmawī, the reasoning soul (al-nasf al-nāṭiqah) continues to exist and reason after the degeneration of the body. According to him, perceptions about sensibles are in three parts; sensory perception, imaginary perception, and intellectual perception. For him, the perceiving faculty perceives either particulars or universals. The faculty that perceives the particulars consists of the external senses. According to al-Urmawī, inner senses either only perceive or both perceive and govern what is perceived together. Sirājuddīn al-Urmawī also asserts that knowledge consists of concepts (tasawwur) and assents (tasdīq). So, knowledge occurs either as in the form of a concept or a judgement (ḥukm). According to al-Urmawī, the imaginative faculty is also active in the formation of knowledge. He mentions intuition as an alternative way of obtaining knowledge. He states that any information that human beings do not possess can be obtained through pre-possessed information. This can only happen by transferring from a ready mind. This mental transfer and leap occur in two directions. The first manifests itself as an effort to reach more information by navigating between meanings using the imaginative faculty. The goal is to reach the middle term. First, what to be reached is determined, and then the mind is directed to the hidden antecedent. He explains that knowledge must be in harmony with the extramental world. According to him, information must be in complete harmony with the perceived object outside. He stipulated that the extramental object must be in a state of complete conformity with its image in the mind to be able to speak of that particular knowledge. He thinks like Ibn Sīnā that knowledge is generated in the mind as a form. He indicates that the shape-giver, Gabriel, who gives the forms clearly, plays an active and dominant role in the production of knowledge in the soul. Sirājuddīn al-Urmawī mentions necessary (ḍarūrī) and acquired (kasbī) knowledge in many passages in his commentary on Ishārāt; and accepted both these types of knowledge. According to him, necessary prime knowledge (awwaliyāt) are the means that lead to acquired knowledge. He shows that the abstraction of mental existence is brought about by reason as a result of complete abstraction and he, following Ibn Sīnā, separates sense perception from the inner perception with precise lines. Since, according to him, external senses cannot perform abstraction. Al-Urmawī thinks that the definition i.e. conception must precede the assent and syllogism and each of these is either necessary or acquired. Acquired knowledge is also derived from the necessary knowledge as a result of intellectual effort. Otherwise, there will be either infinite regression or vicious circle. As Sirājuddīn al-Urmawī’s also holds the idea that, al-‘ārif al-mutanazzih (a knowledgeable purified person) who mature himself with meditation and purification (riyāḍah), can reach knowledge as well through inspiration and unveiling (ilhām and kashf). This particular ‘ārif has a bright rank and higher degree that is unique to them, which also is free and isolated from bodily interests, bonds and situations. Over and above, this happens before the ultimate disconnection between the body and the soul. (shrink)

The division of the soul and its perceptions are of the most important problems that attracted Ibn Sina`s interest. Ibn Sina held that there are three kinds of the soul: vegeterian, animal, and rational soul, among which only the rational one is immaterial. The main reason of its immateriality is its perception of the inteligibles. Other perceptions are somehow immaterial, that is, perception at the stage of the sense is not abstracted from the mater and its appendixes and (...) at the stage of imagination is abstracted from the mater and not from its appendixes and at the stage of intelligence it is abstracted from both mater and itsappendixes. And so this kind of perception is completely abstracted. Among philosophers who have discussed the problem of mind body distinction, there have been few philosophers who have presented certain proofs for the abstraction of the soul. But this issue was treated in Islamic philosophy. Moslim philosophers have extended the proofs of Plato's Phaedo and the best proof theirs proofs was the simplicity of perception that has been mentioned in Ibn Sina`s works. (shrink)

The explanation of the relationship between God and humans, as portrayed in Islam, is often influenced by the images of God and of human beings which theologians, philosophers and mystics have in mind. The early period of Islam disclose a diversity of interpretations of this relationship. Thinkers from the tenth and eleventh century had the privilege of disclosing different facets of the relationship between humans and the divine. God and Humans in Islamic Thought discusses the view of three different scholars (...) of the time: Abd al-Jabbar, Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali. The relationships discussed in this work are: divine assistance, lu³f, according to 'Abd al-Jabbar; human love and attraction to the divine, 'ishq, according to Ibn Sina, and finally the mystical annihilation of the self in the divine unity, fana', of al-Ghazali. They introduce three approaches of looking at this relationship. In order to perceive these concepts, their perception of God and of the human nature will also be examined here. The starting-point of this research was the desire to set forth a variety of possible relationships which are all in accordance with Islamic belief, but nevertheless demonstrate diversity in understanding the relationship between the human and the divine which in turn suggests the concept of plurality within one religion. Examining these three concepts, which build firm connections between God and humans, reveals the importance of rational inquiry in medieval Islamic thought, not only because it was a source of logical arguments for Islam against its opponents but mainly because it built different bridges leading to God. God and Humans in Islamic Thought attempts to shed light on an important side of medieval rational thought in demonstrating its significance in forming the basis of an understanding of the nature of God, the nature of human beings and the construction of different bridges between them. (shrink)

This book provides a framework for thinking about foundational philosophical questions surrounding machine learning as an approach to artificial intelligence. Specifically, it links recent breakthroughs in deep learning to classical empiricist philosophy of mind. In recent assessments of deep learning's current capabilities and future potential, prominent scientists have cited historical figures from the perennial philosophical debate between nativism and empiricism, which primarily concerns the origins of abstract knowledge. These empiricists were generally faculty psychologists; that is, they argued that the active (...) engagement of general psychological faculties-such as perception, memory, imagination, attention, and empathy-enables rational agents to extract abstract knowledge from sensory experience. This book explains a number of recent attempts to model roles attributed to these faculties in deep neural network based artificial agents by appeal to the faculty psychology of philosophers such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), John Locke David Hume, William James, and Sophie de Grouchy. It illustrates the utility of this interdisciplinary connection by showing how it can provide benefits to both philosophy and computer science: computer scientists can continue to mine the history of philosophy for ideas and aspirational targets to hit on the way to more robustly rational artificial agents, and philosophers can see how some of the historical empiricists' most ambitious speculations can be realized in specific computational systems. (shrink)

“To see is to imagine. And to imagine, is to see.”Perception and Imaginary in Merleau-PontyMerleau-Ponty accords such a phenomenological and ontological priority to perception that this privilege might lead him to minimize the importance of theimaginary in our relationship with the world. In fact, in the work published during his life, the theme of the imaginary does not occupy a large place, and its conceptual elaboration remains little visible. A reading of his posthumous publications and of (...) his unpublished papers leads to a more subtle landscape, inwhich the philosopher destabilizes our common oppositions between real and imaginary, as well as those between the imaginary and truth. From themanuscripts from the end of the 1940s on, Merleau-Ponty expands his inquiry into perception in two complementary directions: the intuition of a form of coextensivity between perceptive life and imaginary life, but also between perception and expression. These intuitions, never disavowed, would continueto deepen up through the late unpublished ontological works. They find a guiding thread in the contestation of Sartre’s separation between the real andthe imaginary, and they open out onto the outline of a complex link between truth, imagination, and expression. Merleau-Ponty pretended to approve of thework of The Imaginary all that which is actually moving beyond it, in the direction most opposite to this essay’s own aims: “To see is to imagine. And toimagine is to see.” This split with Sartre finds one of its pivots in the phenomenological characterization of vision as a surpassing of the observable, a surpassing that would touch on an essential dimension of being and of truth.“Vedere è immaginare. E immaginare, è vedere”.Percezione e immaginario in Merleau-PontyMerleau-Ponty accorda alla percezione una tale priorità, fenomenologica e ontologica, che questo privilegio potrebbe condurre a minimizzare l’importanzadell’immaginario nel nostro rapporto al mondo. Di fatto, nell’opera pubblicata in vita, il tema dell’immaginario non occupa un grande spazio, e la suaelaborazione concettuale resta poco visibile. La lettura delle pubblicazioni postume e degli inediti conduce a un disegno più sottile, che vede il filosofo destabilizzare le nostre comuni opposizioni fra reale e immaginario così come quelle fra immaginario e verità. A partire dai manoscritti della fine degli anniQuaranta, Merleau-Ponty allarga la sua indagine sulla percezione in due direzioni complementari: verso l’intuizione di una forma di co-estensività fravita percettiva e vita immaginaria, ma altresì fra percezione e espressione. Mai smentite, queste intuizioni vanno approfondendosi fino ai tardi inediti“ontologici”. Esse trovano un filo conduttore nella messa in causa della separazione operata da Sartre fra reale e immaginario, e sfociano nell’abbozzodi un legame complesso fra verità, immaginario e espressione. Merleau-Ponty finge di “ratificare” il lavoro de L’Immaginario, in realtà sorpassandolo nelladirezione il più possibile opposta allo sforzo compiuto da questo stesso saggio: «edere è immaginare. E immaginare è vedere». Questo distanziarsi da Sartretrova uno dei suoi “cardini” nella caratterizzazione fenomenologica della visione come superamento dell’osservabile, un superamento che riguarderebbeuna dimensione essenziale dell’essere come della verità. (shrink)

The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary , Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, (...) Lennon argues that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world. A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens and Lloyd. This makes I magination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics. Cover Image: Bronze Bowl with Lace , Ursula Von Rydingsvard, 2014. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Lelong and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photo Jonty Wilde. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments WEISKEL'S SUBLIME AND THE IMPASSE OF KNOWLEDGE by Laura Quinney Since the publication of Thomas Weiskel's The Romantic Sublime in 1976, scholars of the sublime, in America at any rate, have taken their cue from the demystifying character ofWeiskel's analysis.1 Before Weiskel the most ambitious twentieth-century account of the sublime was Samuel Monk's largely descriptive work The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories inEighteenth-CenturyEngland.2 With the (...) advent ofsemiotic and psychoanalytic approaches in the late sixties and early seventies, studies of the sublime shifted into a more critical mode. Neil Hertz had taken a skeptical tack in his early essay "A Reading of Longinus," but it was with Weiskel's book that the possibilities of demystifying die sublime were first explored fully.3 Weiskel's treatment is comprehensive, covering all the English Romantic poets as well as Burke and Kant. His thinking is sophisticated, incisive, and often inspired; though The Romantic Sublime was published nearly twenty years ago, it remains an admirable and influential work. In some respects it has never been superseded. Most major American scholars of the sublime—de Man, Knapp, and de Bolla, among others—have adopted the skeptical mode of Weiskel and Hertz.4 But die demystifying approach Weiskel's book helped to pioneer, while it has led to powerful argument, has certain limitations. Weiskel's precocious effort to "desublimate" the sublime shows diese limitations clearly, and it is die purpose of this essay to explore them. In die course of exposing the sublime as a mystified notion, and separating the naive believers from the canny skeptics, Weiskel also Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 309-319 310Philosophy and Literature separates intellectual insight from aesthetic capacity, and thus he uncritically reiterates die old Romantic dialectic of knowledge and power. The figure of Wordsworth plays a central role in establishing these oppositions. Weiskel portrays Wordsworth as the most successful poet of the sublime—the most successful, and tiierefore the most beguiled. In his remarkable concluding chapter, Weiskel locates the source of Wordsworth's powerful "liminal sublime" in a kind of intellectual regression. Wordswortii refuses the whole Symbolic order, the ghastly product of the Oedipus complex, for that order spells die deatii or disappearance of the signified, and die end of an imaginatively fruitful narcissism. Wordswortii retreats from the Symbolic to the Imaginary radier than endure tiiis threat to poetic life. And he is well rewarded for his dodge, since as a consequence the images of his memory thrill with the fascination of the ineffable. The Prelude gains its momentum from the project of memory; but the rich opacity and mysterious beckoning of memory's images are in a sense contrived. They spring out of a sublimation, the images colored widi the intensity of the signification Wordswortii has repudiated. Wordswortii sacrifices insight and intellectual progress for imaginative power. This is a strictly ambivalent exchange, as Weiskel makes clear in his conclusion; Wordsworth's rejection of the Oedipus complex and of the descent into the Symbolic Order, is "purely illusory, a fiction," but "the fiction is a necessary and saving one; it founds die self and secures the possibility—the chance for a self-conviction—of originality" (p. 203). Wordswortii's poetic success arises from his acceptance of an illusion, a "saving fiction" both enviable and degraded. This selfdelusion is essential to the poetic flourishing of the sublime, and only Wordsworth had the odd insensitivity to maintain it. Weiskel contrasts faith in the efficacy and excellence of sublimation with skeptical insight into its origin and end—its origin in mystification, and its end in alienation from the phenomenal world. The faith of Wordswortii's egotistical sublime is that imaginative perception provides die highest and paradoxically truest form of perception. It is easy enough to see how such a faith could provide hope and energy, and tiius could be compromised by wish-fulfillment in its generation, and direatened by extinction in its analysis. But what lies behind Weiskel's opposition of faith and insight is the old dichotomy—or series of interrelated dichotomies—that date back at least to Romanticism. Weiskel admits that his opposition of fruitful illusion and dessicating realism... (shrink)

Abstract: In The Imaginary Jean-Paul Sartre makes what will strike many as an implausibly strong claim, namely that perception and imagination are incompatible kinds of experience - I call this the exclusion claim. This paper offers a reconstruction of Sartre’s exclusion claim. First, it frames the claim in terms of cross-modal attention distribution, such that it is not possible to simultaneously attend to what one is imagining and what one is perceiving. However, this leaves it open that a (...) subject can simultaneously imagine and perceive on the condition that either the perceived or imagined objects are not attended to. While this is a philosophically plausible position it fails to do justice to Sartre’s intended position, which suggests a more radical exclusion between perception and imagination. In light of this section 3 develops a supplementary argument to remove one of the possible configurations of attention that the ban on divided attention leaves in place by arguing that the objects of imagining must be attended to, which follows from Sartre’s characterisation of imagination as spontaneous. The resulting exclusion is as follows: attentive perception excludes imagination (and vice versa), given that the latter is necessarily attentive, but attentive imagination can co-occur with non-attentive or background perception (in this sense the exclusion is asymmetric in a way that Sartre fails to recognise). In concluding I detail how from this exclusion we get an important consequence – which Sartre wants the exclusion claim to have – namely that it rules out an imagination-based solution to the problem of perceptual presence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetic Experience and Education:Themes and QuestionsDeborah Kerdeman"Being with" music. Attentive responsiveness in teaching. Scholarly learning as engagement with beauty. Three evocative images of aesthetic experience come to light in the essays by Custodero, Hansen, and Neumann. From the musical play of children conducting imaginary orchestras to the vocational aspirations of adults who gaze through telescopes or study paintings at Chicago's Art Institute, aesthetic experience spans a range of (...) activities and ages. No matter the setting or moment, aesthetic experience vitalizes our lives with meaning and joy. Why this is so and what difference this makes for education emerge as overarching concerns in this set of papers. Addressing these issues, the authors articulate a number of commonthemes and reach similar conclusions about the nature and value of aesthetic experience.I want to identify and analyze key ideas that run throughout these essays. Doing so deepens our appreciation of the authors' insights and underscores the importance of the project they undertake. I also want to examine three questions that the essays suggest but do not develop. Exploring these questions, I hope to further enrich our understanding of aesthetic experience and its place in education.First and foremost, aesthetic experience for all three authors integrates multiple ways of knowing and enables individuals to perceive connections that they might otherwise overlook. According to Custodero, aesthetic experience harmonizes imagination, physicality, and "thinking-in-action." [End Page 88] Thinking-in-action, Custodero says, while "critical and consequential," is nonverbal and nonjudgmental — unifying rather than analytic. Synthesizing bodily movement, imagination, and thought, aesthetic experience reveals "surprise relationships between seemingly disparate phenomena." The theme of integration is echoed in Neumann's description of scholarly learning as aesthetic experience. Scholarly learning does not shun feeling or lived experience, Neumann writes. This way of knowing instead is "deeply emotional and personal." Insight fuses with emotion, enabling scholars to "feel the whole picture," as David the astronomer puts it in his interview with Neumann. For Hansen, aesthetic experience connotes heightened perception, a way of being that attends to nuances of gesture that would otherwise remain invisible. "The aesthetic highlights aspects of wonder and of beauty that emerge, spontaneously and unrehearsed," Hansen explains. A form of creativity, aesthetic perception combines with moral and intellectual understanding to fully embrace "the living dynamic gestalt" of teaching and learning.Aesthetic experience thus integrates mind, body, and emotion. Hansen links aesthetic experience to moral judgment as well. Integrating various ways of knowing, aesthetic experience enables individuals to perceive and understand relationships that pulse throughout the social and natural world. Such understanding is pleasurable, the authors agree.Aesthetic experience not only is integrative. It also is interactive. Custodero's musicians interact with instruments, musical scores, and other individuals. Neumann's scholars interact with ideas and scholarly materials. Hansen's preservice teachers interact with works of art, subject matter, students, and one another. Interacting with people and things, individuals become absorbed in what they are doing. "Being with" music is howCustodero puts it. Carmen, the professor of music in Neumann's essay, says that playing music well "is like a complete focus of oneness."Being absorbed in aesthetic interaction does not discount or dissolve the ability to make decisions or direct action. Aesthetic experience rather presumes and promotes "aesthetic agency," to borrow a phrase from Custodero. "To 'be in the moment,'" Custodero writes, "is to encounter the aesthetic — fully engaged in an activity for which one's individual contributions are perceived as vital." Hansen's description of aesthetic perception combines attentiveness and responsiveness in a "dynamic combination of patience, listening, and initiative." Neumann states that scholarly learning is an experience of "deep engrossment." Such engrossment does not extinguish the self, however. In the words of David the astronomer, feeling "the whole picture... is a combination of both what you see, sort of an instinctive or primal thing, and also your knowledge of what, you know, you put together." [End Page 89]The interactive nature of aesthetic experience thus signifies a kind of "agency-in-situ." Aesthetic experience is shaped or directed by the contribution and initiative of individuals. But individuals cannot act in advance of experience or know what to do, unless they are... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics for a Layered SelfLaughter, Reciprocity, Generosity, HomeCynthia WillettI can imagine no better way to respond to these insightful readings than to turn the spotlight on the important books that Ann Murphy and Megan Craig have written on affect and ethics! Craig’s book, Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology, weaves radical empiricism into phenomenology as only a philosopher who is also an artist could. Her evocative queries on (...) prereflective affects, perception, and ethical attunement shed light on the role of moods for unsettling rigid ego boundaries, ethical subjectivity, the feeling of being alive, the audible dimension of ethical encounters, life beyond a struggle to survive, temporality, and ethical ambiguity. These themes are compelling for any postmoral ethics that operates beyond or below the register of modern moral theory’s abstract laws and transparent cogitos. Her work balances an ethical concern for vulnerability with a vital regard for the vibrancy of living creatures and landscapes.Ann Murphy’s Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary illuminates philosophical questions with an abiding lucidity that does not weaken but amplifies the complexity and difficulty of ethics. Murphy’s work exposes how tropes of violence saturate philosophical discourses of both identity formation and of political and historical transformation, and how this violence, embedded in norms, denies sympathetic concern to those outside the limits of cultural intelligibility. Building upon recent work by Judith Butler, Adriana Caverero, and others, Murphy addresses the ambiguities arising from the multiple responses that exposure to vulnerability provokes. These responses can signal care but [End Page 70] they can also manifest violence. Even as she acknowledges the complex underside of cultural intelligibility, Murphy affirms sympathy and generous concern as paradigmatic virtues to be cultivated in response to various forms of violence. She probes the significance of shame and guilt for collective responsibility, ever alert to alterity and difference. With attentive care to the singular contributions of a broad range of philosophers and critical traditions, she argues compellingly for a corporeal ethics grounded on the ontological fact of vulnerability.Through their work, Murphy and Craig pose astute questions for my project, and, in fact, for any endeavor to conceptualize an ethics attentive to an embodied sociality. I describe the multifaceted approach I contribute toward this task as a call and response ethics for a layered self. Craig wonders if the more basic feature before any “call” is contact, touch, or immersion. She notes my concern that “any purported gap or abyss between humans and animals has less to do with unique human capacities than with the rise of urban centers and the loss of contact with other species.” Harm arises from a loss of contact. This is so true. Ethics as contact calls attention to the poetry of proximity, to erotic waves that transmit through the sound or feel of the other’s breath, the heat of the body, and the smell of the skin. This intense proximity serves as a compelling source for ethical sociality, resonating in some respects with what Merleau-Ponty explores as the sense of flesh and touch and, as Murphy suggests, a transcendental eros. This contact is as primal and ordinary as the skin-to-skin contact of caregiver and infant or, perhaps, the skin-to-hair contact of a terrier and her human companion, lost for a moment in inexplicable laughter. From these observations, Craig asks if “call and response” as a locution or central designation adequately captures the intimacy and intensity of these engagements.Craig’s remarks raise the further question of what is at stake in designations or phrasings. An ethics of call and response, designated as such, emerges from phenomenological but also crucially Africana and critical theory traditions. As a relational ethics, this ethics of call and response highlights social relations and expectations, opening a path outside of what Murphy characterizes as the trifecta of virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. It attends to desire (eros) beneath, in between, and above the prescriptive rules of moral reason or the interests of individuals. At its center are social bonds (friendship and companionship, community and domination, love, hate, and other social emotions, belonging and alienation, and the conflicts of groups and reconciliation) rather... (shrink)

Throughout their life Ibn Sînâ and Descartes firmly believed that the soul or mind of a human being was essentially incorporeal. In his ‘On the Soul’ (De anima), the psychological part of his vast...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflections on Raphael PAUL BAROLSKY The essence of all appreciation and analysis of art is the translation of visual perceptions into compelling verbal form. —Ralph Lieberman cultural unity Horace Walpole, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Balzac, Friedrich Hegel, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Renoir, Nathaniel Hawthorne, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Heinrich von Kleist, Franz Grillparzer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, George Eliot, Jean-Auguste (...) Dominique Ingres, Roger Fry, Bernard Berenson, Theodor Hetzer, Roberto Longhi, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Stendhal are among the many essayists, critics, novelists, poets, painters and art historians who have responded to Raphael’s work as painter, architect or archeologist over the centuries. I can well imagine all of those listed above, among many others, united in an imaginary painting similar to the School of Athens—in other words, a vision that reconciles their various views of the world in a harmony analogous to the unity of philosophers in Raphael’s great fresco. Raphael is a towering figure in the history of European culture. The year 2020 was the 500th anniversary of the death of the great painter in Rome at the age of thirty-seven. In the wake of recent exhibitions that commemorated the artist’s achievement, I propose to touch briefly and lightly on a few aspects arion 28.2 fall 2020 100 reflections on raphael of Raphael’s life and works. Please think of these remarks as a series of suggestions, not attempts at definitive interpretation. I think of this essay as a rather experimental piece. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS i should like to begin with a few brief remarks on what must be Raphael’s most famous work of art. I mean his School of Athens (fig. 1), which is, like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Last Supper or like Michelangelo’s David and Creation of Adam, an image widely known and admired. What more is there to say about The School Of Athens, one of the central images in the Stanza della Segnatura? You might spend the rest of your life reading about this great work and never understand it fully. Nevertheless, I want to focus for a moment on a central detail of the work and, on the basis of my description, point to a significant aspect of the fresco that has been universally overlooked. First the description, then the aperçu. Fig. 1. School of Athens. Ca. 1510–1512. Photo Credit : Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. Paul Barolsky 101 At the center of the School of Athens we behold the two great philosophers of classical antiquity: Plato and Aristotle. Plato holds a copy of his Timaeus, a dialogue that concerns the harmony of the heavens; Aristotle holds a copy of his Ethics, a work that pertains to human relations in this world. It was the goal of Renaissance thinkers to create a harmony or concord of the thought of these philosophers: a Concordia Platonis et Aristotelis. Raphael’s fresco, as is well known, presents the visual ideal of such harmony. Whereas Aristotle gestures downward, alluding to this world, in which his Ethics matter, Plato points heavenward, evoking the order of the cosmic realm described in Timaeus. Raphael makes visible the ideal of concordia when he movingly pictures the way in which the two philosophers gaze into each other’s eyes, as if to suggest this harmony. Borrowing from the language of Raphael ’s friend, Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael renders “the joining” of their souls. The monumental architecture of the scene, which echoes Bramante and has taproots in Piero della Francesca and Perugino, consists of three barrel-vaults beyond which we see patches of blue sky and puffs of cloud (fig. 2). The grandiose architecture of the image magnifies Raphael’s philosophers. Within this architectural framework, Plato’s gesture is deeply meaningful, since it prompts the viewer to look up and thus ascend toward the perfection of the celestial realm, beyond the imperfections of the physical world. Above the first barrel vault in the fresco we behold a section of the drum of a dome which is open to the sky. Within this section of drum there are two columns that are lined up directly... (shrink)

According to Ibn Khaldūn, man is a social entity deeply influenced by the geo-economics-politics of the environment in which he lives. The effect is seen as so strong that nearly all of these structures in their relationship to human beings are dominated by it. In this system, we see human beings as a creature who is both able to adapt himself to the environment and able to evolve in this harmony. From the perspective of Ibn Khaldūn, man cannot be evaluated (...) or defined separately from the environmental conditions, the technique and architecture he has developed. Ibn Khaldūn sees the primary source of this change to be the desire to make life both more prosperous and bearable. Therefore, the most natural motivations that affect man’s desire to alter the natural world are the environmental challenges that he encounters. The challenges that are imposed upon man in the natural world are those that have led to human progress. From badāwa (nomadic society) to ḥaḍāra (sedentary society) and so to the ceaseless drive of human progress that has served to make life more endurable, every effort in this sense leads to a physical and moral loosening as the incessant struggle to survive that defines human existence is made more bearable. Physical slack by breaking the resistance of man to resist the environmental conditions; and moral looseness by making man more vulnerable to the temptation of desires, pleasures and welfare that are the cause of moral dilemmas. Ibn Khaldūn’s moral thought with its social, political, and other fields of application are all contexts that enable an understanding of the devaluation of money-hedonist morality in all ways. This article aims to analyze the social, political and economic dilemmas and challenges that the capitalist, consumption-based money-hedonist morality (obesity, social media addiction, consumption, and moral devaluation in the face of financial, virtual and imagined valuations, etc.) from the perspective of Ibn Khaldūn. Summary: Man is endowed with both good and evil. Ibn Khaldūn notes that man tends to misuse these two orientations with a higher inclination towards evil, and that social conditions have an effect on this. He sees another characteristic of man, that they develop habits; accordingly, man is the child of his habits. Habits are second nature to man and affects all of his perceptions, particularly notions concerning truth. At the same time, human beings are under the constant influence of both habits, culture, and climate and geography; and all of these together affect our ethics, psychology and characteristics. Thus, man is a historical, social being that is changed, transformed and determined by adapting to these cultural, social, political and ecological conditions. The concept of Money-Hedonism is one that we have created by combining the terms monetarism, an economic concept, and hedonism, a concept in moral philosophy; the resulting term we seek to produce essentially translates as the adoration of Money. As is well known, hedonism refers to a philosophy of life that has its origins in the ancient Greek world which sees the purpose of life as one in which the pursuit of pleasure is the highest good. Whereas, Monetarism is an American-based economic view developed by Milton Friedman in 1970, linking all the balance in the economy to the supply and demand of money. According to this, the demand for money is operation, precaution and motives of speculation of individuals the amount of money they want to keep in cash on them. The power of an exchange tool increases with the amount and quality of what it is achievable in its utilization. In this respect, money has been an unprecedented source of power in modern society as a means by which change can be achieved. The increase in the power of money as an effective means as manifesting power has led to a socio-cultural and socio-economic superstructure around this power. In the life of an individual that is part of such a culture and is unable to isolate himself from the economy in which he lives, the values that can be expressed with money are consequently formed. In this structure, since the measure of life is money, money determines the quality of human life and human pleasure to a far greater degree than at any time in history. Thus, those living in this age have developed a new moral philosophy of value formed by the combination of these two concepts (monetarism and hedonism), which we have defined as Money-Hedonism. The money-hedonist individual is one that is in love with money, the joy of having it, the pleasure of using it, who desires it with immeasurable passion and ambition and is willing to use all legitimate and illegitimate methods of obtaining it. The most prominent characteristics of this type of individual is egoism, a desire to possess, hatred and mistrust. Ibn Khaldūn argues that the inhabitants of a city that live a settled life and who are living in the city have become economically prosperous and absorbed by consumption and pleasure, and, consequently morally degenerate as a result of the abuse of their evil nature. As can be understood from Ibn Khaldūn’s explanations, the basic element that determines the transition of people from the badāwi way of life to ḥaḍāri (settled) is the change in the livelihoods and related needs. He perceives this change as progressing from necessity to luxury, and, with this change, ethical concern in the nature of people being replaced by aesthetic care. In this way, since aesthetic concern reveals the dissatisfaction of the human self, man always pursues what is perceived to be better and more beautiful, and therefore he easily tends to any malignancy that may disrupt his religious and worldly peace. The ḥaḍāra community of Ibn Khaldūn versus the badāwa represent a modern society with a much more heterogeneous population, with a significant increase in lifestyle diversity along with urbanization. However, the determinative effect of the relationship with nature or the way in which society engage in economic activities have not changed. While modern people are urbanized, they are also heterogeneously shaped by psycho-social necessities demanded by urbanization. Man has created a new socio-psychological condition that not only affects the socio-economic but the way of forming a relationship through the accelerated development of new communication methods, facilitating access to information, and the opening of new methods of communication field between institutions. While man’s connection to nature has become disconnected, he no longer perceives himself as human being in nature but as a human within the city, the individual urban life and the law define this perception. The rupture from nature has created an inevitable result of alienation to nature as well as the estrangement of man with his own nature. The liberal policies adopted with capitalism have encouraged competition and free entrepreneurship. In the time that Ibn Khaldūn lived, man who created himself with his struggle in the nature brings himself / herself into the economic structure of competition in the modern period. Unlike in more traditional societies of the past, the modern way of life not only expresses itself in our new way of life and moral values, but also by statistical values. The exploitative and mathematical world, which forms the current economic science, shapes the socio-economic and socio-psychological structure of modern man. It is understood that the life brought by luxury renders the dynamic, subjective, disciplined sense of morality dysfunctional by destroying the moral values of man, particularly by reducing their feeling of shame. As a result, while the world of value of money-hedonism is solid, materialistic and cold; man in trying to exist in this world of value carries a flexible, spiritual and emotional nature. As such, human beings are pushed into social anomaly situations such as a constant conflict, dilemma, suicide, insecurity and solitude in this world of value. (shrink)

The concept of nature (Gr. phúsis; Ar. ṭabīʿa) lies at the heart of classical physics. Seemingly small differences about nature can blossom into significant disagreements. The present study offers an exposition of certain neglected passages concerning ṭabīʿa in Ibn Sīnā’s al-Samāʿ al-ṭabīʿī(The Physics of the Healing). The pre­dominant view of ṭabīʿa is that it as an active principle, a concep­tion of nature that radically departs from Aristotle’s account of phúsis in Physics I-II. I dispute this interpretation by investigat­ing two neglected (...) texts in the Physics of the Healing. First, these texts indicate that nature should be associated with matter and form (I, 6) and, second, they argue that failing to account for matter and form makes knowledge of nature incomplete (I, 9). (shrink)

This study aims to focus on the eight chapter of first article of Avicenna al-Shifā: Metaphysics. The necessity of the study on the sophists in the aforementioned chapter in terms of metaphysics, the mental background, the method used here and the reasons for this preferred method formed the general scope of the study. In the history of philosophy, leading philosophers such as Plato, Arsitotle and Avicenna had to answer the claims of the sophists by examining them, and especially the last (...) two philosophers' examination of these claims in the most advanced field of philosophy, such as metaphysics, shows the importance given to the subject. I have also made some references to the contact between the views in Aristotle’s Metaphysics book which deal with similar problems with the problems Avicenna examines here. In the article, I tried to highlight the connection that Ibn Sînâ established between the mind and the mind in order to make the analysis and analysis required by the method followed. I aimed to show that the mind is in a contradictory position to the claims of the sophists, by stating that the main determinant in the propositions about existence is not the mind but the external. I aims to explain that outside manifests itself in the mind by actualizing it, and there for, the rules known as basic proportions of the mind or logic are actually and primarily the principle of the existence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature, Imagination, and Human RightsWillie van Peer“the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen”Aristotle: Poetics, 1451aAristotle’s dictum has been of vital importance to the development of literary theory, and its significance can still be felt today. It is the foundation of the distinction we make between journalism and literature, between history and fiction. Literature, Aristotle proposes, is (...) about things that could happen, not about things that have taken place in reality. Literature is thus inscribed in the realm of the imagination. However, imagination does not operate in an epistemological vacuum. A fictional text entertaining no relation with the world would have no meaning. Perhaps giants, dragons and witches do not really exist, and perhaps it is not really possible to cover seven miles with each step of those wonderful boots that Tom Thumb discovered. But we have no difficulty in imagining those things, precisely because they entertain an intimate relationship with forms and things, events and actions that happen in daily life. The details of the relationship between reality and fiction are less important for the present argument than the fact that fiction is embedded in our pragmatic attitudes. 1 Ernst Bloch has given this human tendency a name: The Hope Principle. Our desire for a better world expresses itself in hope, a distinctive feature of the species Homo Sapiens. The importance of the imagination in the project of humanity has received eloquent and systematic treatment in the philosophical work of Hans Vaihinger and Helmuth Plessner. 2 Imagination also gives impetus to history, because it drives us toward the realization of aims and plans that initially lived only in our hearts and minds: “Someone dreaming never remains in the same place.” 3 [End Page 276]Similar things have been asserted about literature, by Horace, Sidney, Matthew Arnold, and others. Reading is supposed to make us better humans, heightening our awareness, increasing our sensibility, and thus indirectly guiding our actions toward the establishment of a better world. Sometimes noble motives are associated with this function. Reading literature, it is then assumed, makes the reader more socially tolerant, more perceptive about other humans, and more politically conscious. This is the so-called Edification Hypothesis. Anthony Savile sums up this view when he submits the thesis that literature has a unique power to make us understand the thoughts and feelings of other human beings. This ethical perspective on literature has been expressed since Greek Antiquity. 4 It will be remembered that Plato condemned literature precisely for this reason: because it diverts our attention from the real world, itself already an imperfect reflection of Pure Ideas. Aristotle rejects this view and develops a theory squarely opposed to that of his teacher. According to him, literature contributes to the elevation of mankind, to paideia. By showing us that which is possible, and by involving us in the inescapable passage of tragic events, readers and spectators are drawn into emotions of fear and compassion, emotions that lead to katharsis, a process that purifies us of megalomania (hubris), safeguarding democratic government and protecting us from unrestrained tyranny. 5The Aristotelian view that literature has an edifying effect had been generally present in Western tradition till about 1800. Until then literature was viewed almost universally as an ethical category. Consider, for instance, the self-evident way in which Richardson prefaces Pamela: “If to divert and entertain, and at the same time to instruct and improve the minds of the YOUTH of both sexes: If to inculcate religion and morality in so easy and agreeable a manner, as shall render them equally delightful and profitable: If to set forth in the most exemplary lights, the parental, the filial, and the social duties....” 6The embarrassment a modern reader may feel when confronted with such overt claims to morality is largely a product of the nineteenth century, when literature came to be seen as a predominantly aesthetic category, eluding all attempts at moral categorization. This movement has resulted in a liberation of literature from moralism. At the same time, it has created nontrivial difficulties in thinking about ethical and political issues, so... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Just ImagineAlisse Waterston (bio)The united states is a flower of harm.—Tongo Eisen-Martin, “Taking a Common Name (after Claudia Rankine’s Just Us)”I never have to go far for evidence of the truth of this line from Tongo Eisen-Martin’s response to Claudia Rankine’s Just Us.On a Friday, Kyoo Lee, coeditor of philoSOPHIA, invited me to offer my own response to Eisen-Martin’s and Fanny Howe’s essays in what she said would be (...) “like a game of exquisite corpse,” a productive way, I think, to build up rather than tear down, the latter of which is too often the case in academia. I had to think about it, to think about Just Us, Claudia Rankine’s powerful, generous, sharp, and profound book. In it, she makes an urgent request for “an American conversation” on whiteness. Rankine teaches us: “Universalized whiteness, that racial imaginary, lives in every moment” (2020, 329).I pace around the house, make some tea, and pick up the New York Times, scanning the headlines. There it is, front-page news this very day: “Sights Set on School Districts as G.O.P. Targets Race Theory” (Saul 2021, A1). Scarlett Johnson, profiled in the article, is a dirty-blond “just a mom” from Mequon-Thiensville, a school district in Wisconsin. Johnson has made it her mission to refuse the conversation; she is buttressed by a set of powerful and wealthy behind-the-scenes interest groups. Rankine writes, “I have only lived as me, a person who regularly has to negotiate dismissal, erasure, disrespect, and abuse” (2020, 23).The news article goes on: “Republicans say critical race theory has invaded classrooms.” Then, Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson implores, “take back our school boards, our county boards, our city councils” (Saul 2021, A12; emphases [End Page 141] mine). Rankine observes, “Among white people, black people... are not allowed to implicate the present company in [their] precariousness. They are not allowed to point out its causes” (2020, 155). She explains “the narrative of white privilege that secures white spaces,” then quotes legal scholar Cheryl Harris on “the set of assumptions, privileges, and benefits that accompany the status of being white... a valuable asset that whites sought [and seek] to protect” (Rankine 2020, 25). Only connect.§§§The spiraling back, the turn of the screw to take it out, to look at what happened, to break apart the cover, to disclose in reverse, recalibrate and recapitulate, to find points of composure and recognition—to view the news as what happened already but left the stain of reportage and evidence of fraud and failure.... The time we live in and the way we make use of our “screws” to construct a new stage to play on.—Fanny Howe, “After Reading Just Us”Here, Fanny Howe offers a beautiful metaphor for Rankine’s gift to the world, if it will take it. Many people, not enough, have joined in turning the screw. Those who have are engaging the process of thinking, without which the catastrophe of universalized whiteness and its human toll will endure. Howe writes of a new stage to play on, which I interpret as an exciting challenge to re-create. Claudia Rankine writes: “what if ” (2020, 3).What if we imagine. The Oxford English Dictionary defines imagine as the process of forming an image of something in the mind, something akin to dreaming, visualizing, thinking, supposing. To imagine is to form a mental image of something, perhaps a goal, an end to which one yearns to arrive, an achievement not yet actualized. On the last pages of Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano dares readers to exercise the right to dream. “Suppose we rave a bit?” he asks, and he offers a long list of possibilities for an alternative world (Galeano 2000, 333–36; see figure 1).In a classroom exercise designed by my former student James Williams, I ask my undergraduates at a public university in New York City to rave a bit, writing out on a slip of paper one thing they would change to make for an alternative world. The world they... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:150 PERCEPTIONS, OBJECTS AND THE NATURE OF MIND In this paper I consider the relation between perceptions and objects for Hume and the bearing which this has on his conception of the mind as composed of perceptions. But first it is necessary to distinguish at least two senses in which he uses the term 'object'. In the first, "perceptions of the human mind" — both impressions and ideas — (...) are referred to as "our objects" (T 1,2). Objects in this sense are intentional objects. Hume almost consistently uses the noun 'perception', rarely the verb 'to perceive'. This serves to emphasize that for him perception is an object, not the perceiving of an object — a departure from the tradition of Locke and Berkeley for whom perceptions are cognitive acts having objects. That perception is not conceived by Hume as a cognitive act or form of awareness but purely as an object of awareness is evident when he says, For since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear. Everything that enters the mind, being in reality a perception, 'tis impossible anything shou'd to feeling appear different. This were to suppose, that even when we are most intimately conscious, we might be mistaken (T 190). 1 Or again, "The only existences, of which we are certain, are perceptions, which being immediately present to us by consciousness, command our strongest assent...." (T 212). In its other sense the term 'object' is used to denote bodies, or that to which we attribute a continued existence "distinct from the mind and perception", or, borrowing Locke's expression "external 151 objects". It is just because we attribute a continued and independent existence to bodies that we distinguish them from perceptions, for "all impressions are internal and perishing existences, and appear as such" (T 194). But while we make this distinction in our everyday role of common man, the difference between a perception and an (external) object is really only a difference between two types of perceptions, on the one hand those that are characterized in their occurrence by constancy and coherence, and on the other those, for example the passions, which exhibit a different type of "regularity" in their occurrence (T 195). The constancy and coherence which some perceptions exhibit, together with a natural tendency of the mind "to bestow on the objects a greater regularity than what is observ'd in our mere perceptions" (T 197) causes us to attribute to these perceptions an uninterrupted and independent existence, an existence which is, of course, fictitious, because all perceptions are really internal and perishing. 'Tis certain, that almost all mankind, and even philosophers themselves, for the greatest part of their lives, take their perceptions to be their only objects, and suppose, that the very being, which is intimately present to the mind, is the real body or material existence (T 206). This is not to say, however, that "what any common man means by a hat, or shoe, or stone" (T 202) he also believes to be a perception. What he does believe is that the hat or the shoe is immediately present to the mind, or directly appears to his consciousness. It is Hume, the philosopher, who is here interposing the philosophical doctrine that "no beings are ever present to the mind but perceptions" (T 212). This is, of course, not an empirical generalization. It is the definition of a perception as "whatever can be present 152 to the mind" (Abstract 647). It is this definition which gives sense to the statement "their perceptions are their only objects", the term "objects" here referring to "external objects". And the common man would, no doubt, be surprised to learn that these hats, shoes, etc., which directly appear to his consciousness, are by that circumstance really only his own perceptions which he has imagined, falsely, to have a continued and independent existence. Only a few experiments, however, are needed for the philosopher to realize that perceptions, i.e., what is present to the mind, do not have a continued and independent existence. Unable to give up his vulgar... (shrink)

Abstract. Scholars have long debated the possibility of a mystical or illuminationist strain of thought in Ibn Sīnā 's body of writing. This debate has often focused on the meaning and contents of his partly lost work al-Mashriqiyyūn (The Easterners), also known as al-Ḥikma al-Mashriqiyya (EasternWisdom), mentioned by Ibn Sīnā himself as well as by numerous Western writers including Ibn Rushd and Ibn Ṭufayl. A handful of references to what is called Ibn Sīnā 's “Oriental Philosophy” are also found in (...) the Castilian and Hebrew works of the Castilian Jew Abner of Burgos (ca. 1270-ca.1347), known after his conversion to Christianity as Alfonso of Valladolid. Although the content of these citations has not been identified, it has been proposed that they may preserve otherwise unknown passages from Ibn Sīnā's lost work. This study considers the references to Ibn Sīnā 's so-called “Oriental Philosophy” within Abner's writings and concludes that rather than preserving lost passages from Ibn Sīnā's writing, Abner's references were drawn primarily from Ibn Ṭufayl and offer no support for the argument of a possible mystical or illuminationist strain in Ibn Sīnā 's thinking. -/- Résumé. Depuis longtemps, on a discuté de la possible présence d'une orientation mystique ou “illuminative” dans l'oeuvre d'Ibn Sīnā . Le sens et le contenu de son ouvrage (partiellement perdu) al-Mashriqiyyūn (Les Orientaux), également connu comme al-Ḥikma al-Mashriqiyya (La Sagesse orientale), mentionné par Ibn Sīnā lui-même et par des écrivains occidentaux comme Ibn Rushd et Ibn Ṭufayl, ont souvent été au centre de ce débat. On trouve aussi quelques références à ce qui est appelé la “philosophie orientale” d'Ibn Sīnā dans l'oeuvre du juif castillan Abner de Burgos (ca. 1270-ca. 1347) connu après sa conversion au christianisme sous le nom d'Alphonse de Valladolid. Sans avoir au préalable identifié le contenu de ces citations, on a fait l'hypothèse qu'elles auraient permis de conserver des passages, inconnus par ailleurs, de l'ouvrage perdu d'Ibn Sīnā. Cette étude porte sur les références à la “philosophie orientale” d'Ibn Sīnā dans l'oeuvre d'Abner de Burgos. Elle montre que les références d'Abner semblent avoir été essentiellement tirées d'Ibn Ṭufayl et ne renvoient donc pas aux passages perdus de l'ouvrage d'Ibn Sīnā. En conséquence elles ne peuvent servir d'argument pour confirmer la présence d'une orientation mystique ou “illuminative” dans l'oeuvre d'Ibn Sīnā. (shrink)

In this study, the rational criticism directed by Ibn Tayymiyya (d. 1338) to the philosophical evidence used to prove the unity of the necessary existent in the book Kitāb al-Is̲h̲ārāt wa al-tanbīhāt, which is accepted as a constitutive text in the history of Islamic philosophy, is examined. Author of the aforementioned book Avicenna (d. 1037) tries to prove the unity of the necessary existent from different ways in his books. Kitāb al-Is̲h̲ārāt wa al-tanbīhāt is a book that includes one of (...) these ways. The evidence that Avicenna uses in that book comprises of two preliminaries. The first preliminary is made up of specifying the relation between the thing that the different perceptible particular entities are common and are different. The second one is based on proving the existence not to be the cause of essence by centering the difference of existence and essence. Ibn Taymiyya, who criticizes philosophers in many ways, criticizes this evidence used by Avicenna in his work Mes’eletün fî tevḥîdi’l-felâsife. Rejecting the logic of Mashshaiyyun as science, Ibn Taymiyya also tried to refute the philosophical and logical rules that philosophers accept and use. In this context, Ibn Taymiyya argues that not only the preliminary presuppositions of the philosopher's argument to prove the unity of the necessary being, but also that the logical principles and rules previously accepted by the philosopher are false. One of the most important issues criticized by the thinker in relation to the subject is the reality of concepts, the existence of universals, how universals are moved to particulars, and the state of quiddity. According to him, concepts are mental and universals do not have a reality in the external world. Again, he thinks that universals like humanity are attributed to particulars as attributes, and therefore, in a way, he denies the universal being universal. Because, according to Ibn Taymiyya, a certain attribute of a being that is particular cannot be universal unlike itself. According to the thinker, the commonality in the concepts that logicians call universal consists only of a linguistic partnership. Undoubtedly, it can be said that Ibn Taymiyya's thought on the issue of concepts is close to nominalistic approach in a way. But he does not directly deny the reality of the concepts. For, according to him, the concepts that are universally formed in the minds are actually realized particularly. That is to say, the universal humanity has been realized particularly in individuals such as Ahmet and Mehmet. In other words, because the humanity in individuals is particular, Ahmet's humanity is different from Mehmet's humanity. For this reason, there can be no real partnership among the examples given. In this context, the unity distinction made by Ibn Taymiyya in understanding his thoughts is helpful. According to him, unity is of two types, real and qualitative. Real unity is the unity that exists in the essence of the individual. The qualitative unity is the unity that exists between the things under the concept of the universal. However, the qualitative unity is not considered as a unity since it does not occur in the external world. In fact, this is what distinguishes Ibn Taymiyya from nominalist thinkers. If we turn back to the evidence of Avicenna, based on the objections that Ibn Taymiyya made to the logic and philosophical principles of Mashshaiyyun in general, we can say that the thinker criticized the precedents of this argument by emphasizing the knowledge that universal concepts are intellectual entities. He emphasizes the examples that Avicenna uses to show the affiliation among the things are only made up of universal notions and alleges them not to have perceptible entity. Thus, he says that there is not a real affiliation among different particular entities that have perceptible existence. As to the second preliminary, Ibn Taymiyya says that this preliminary is also inaccurate for the reason that it is, like the first preliminary, based on the knowledge that the intellectual entities had come true in the physical world. According to him, the essence is made up of intellectual conceptualization. Therefore, it has not physical reality. After criticizing the preliminaries in this manner, Ibn Taymiyya says that the analogy that consists of these preliminaries is also erroneous. Because the analogy that is based on erroneous preliminaries does not give a correct result. (shrink)

Canlı varlığın iç duyularından biri olarak kabul edilen mütehayyile gücü duyum ve akletme arasına yerleştirilir. Genel olarak bu güç Aristoteles’in fantazya olarak ifade ettiği güce karşılık gelirken İslam felsefesi içerisinde “musavvire”, “vehim”, “muhayyile”, “mütehayyile” ve “ortak duyu” olarak ifade edilmiştir. Bu çalışmada İslam düşünce tarihinin iki büyük filozofu Fârâbî ile İbn Sînâ’nın bu güce dair görüşlerini incelenmeye çalışılacağım. Her iki filozofun da nefsin güçlerine dair şemalarında yer alan ve “mütehayyile” olarak ifade edilen bu güce Fârâbî’nin atfettiği eylemlerle İbn Sînâ’nın atfettiği (...) eylemler önemli ölçüde değişmektedir. Çalışmada bu farklılıkların öne çıkarılması, bunların nedenleri ve sonuçlarının ele alınması ve bu gücün geçirdiği dönüşümün ortaya konulması amaçlanmaktadır. (shrink)

In Averroes’s epistemology, knowledge is universal, but it is always singular in terms of the known. Averroes believes that there is no need for an activity, even in the sense that used by those who have the idea of "kumūn" rational forms being formed by other rational forms of the same kind, or for a power such as in the example of polishing a mirror to reflect an image. Similarly, he argues that there are no discrete abstract forms of existing (...) things because otherwise, everyone would have to know everything. Although there are different degrees and levels, the existence of absolute metaphysical forms is subject to change and increases with the multiplication of their subjects. There are three means of knowledge: sensation, imagination, and intellect. Unlike the sensation and perception modes in animals, humans perceive the outer appearance of objects as well as their unique meanings and distinctions. Like animals, the function of sensation in humans is to mediate the self. While perception is abstract and spiritual in one sense, it is material and concrete in another. Averroes does not find it correct to link the knowledge of the contingents of the world to the eternal knowledge of God. Beacuse this implies that there is a difference in God's knowledge between the state of the world's existence and non-existence. In addition, human knowledge about contingents is deficient and changeable, whereas God's knowledge is the cause of the existence of contingents and is unchanging. Ultimately, it does not seem possible for humans to comprehend the nature of God's knowledge. It is agreed with Alexander of Aphrodisias that there should be a distinction between the active and imaginative intellects, but he differs from him in the point that the imaginative intellect disappears. According to Averroes, the active intellect in action is eternal, unlike Themistius’ view. According to Averroes, the intellect is neither a pure potentiality nor a distinct substance. That is to say, if the imaginative intellect were an actual thing, it could not perceive other things. If the intellect were absolute, everyone would know the same things. Similarly, if the intellect were absolute plurality, there would be no unity and connection between intellects. If the intellect were merely an accepting capacity, it could not perceive absence. According to Averroes, the active intellect is not a distinct intellect that gives form or governs the spheres, but rather the form and purpose of the imaginative intellect. There are two powers of this intellect: to abstract the concepts in their potential state from their matter and to make them actual and accepting them. In conclusion, it can be said that Averroes made a substance-centered philosophy regarding the possibility and reality of knowledge, and while he did not deviate from the Aristotelian line, he had to make new openings. Paradoxically, he tries to explain both the actual/abstract and potential/material aspects of the intellect that are postulated by introducing an original soul theory with the imaginative intellect. Therefore, he places importance on both a priori knowledge and sensation and imagination. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma tradução da hermenêutica sobre a unicidade de Deus de um capítulo (sura) do Alcorão, de acordo com o pensamento de Avicena (Ibn Sῑnā). É o capítulo denominado capítulo do Monoteísmo, cujo número é 112 no Alcorão. Antes, porém, há uma introdução sobre o que representou o Alcorão nos primórdios do Islã e a sua influência no desenvolvimento da filosofia e da teologia em terras do Islã. Nesse texto, pode ser constatado que, na doutrina islâmica, o primeiro (...) fundamento e o mais rigoroso é a unicidade de Deus. É sobre isso que este artigo discorre. This paper presents a translation of the hermeneutics of the oneness of God from chapter (sura) 112 of the Qur'an (the Chapter on Monotheism), according to the thought of Avicenna (Ibn Sῑnā). First, however, there is an introduction which presents the Qur'an in the early days of Islam, as well as its influence on the development of philosophy and theology in Islamic lands. It may be noted in this text that the first and most rigorous foundation is Islamic doctrine is the oneness of God. (shrink)

This article begins with an examination of Ibn Sīnā’s conception of emanation and its origin within the Greek and Islamic philosophical traditions. Secondly, I present his view of the multiplicity of the universe from a single unitary First Cause, followed by a discussion of the function of the Active Intellect in giving rise to the existence of the sublunary world and its contents. In the second part of the article, I consider Cartesian cosmology, without, however, going into detail about what (...) Descartes calls the ‘imaginary new world,’ the problems arising from the mechanical worldview. Note is made of the conflict between Descartes and the Scholastic and Orthodox Christian concept of cosmos. This article provides an account and comparison of Ibn Sīnā’s and Descartes’ portrayal of the origins and structure of the universe of both philosophers. (shrink)

If we cannot define science using only analysis or description, then we must rely on imagination to provide us with suitable objects of philosophical inquiry. This process ties our intellectual findings to the particular ways in which we philosophers think about scientific practice and carve out a cognitive space between real world practice and conceptual abstraction. As an example, I consider Heather Douglas’s work on the responsibilities of scientists and document her implicit ideal of science, defined primarily as an epistemic (...) practice. I then contrast her idealization of science with an alternative: “technoscience,” a heuristic concept used to describe nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and similar “Mode 2” forms of research. This comparison reveals that one’s preferred imaginary of science, even when inspired by real practices, has significant implications for the distribution of responsibility. Douglas’s account attributes moral obligations to scientists, while the imaginaries associated with “technoscience” and “Mode 2 science” spread responsibility across the network of practice. This dynamic between mind and social order, I argue, demands an ethics of imagination in which philosophers of science hold themselves accountable for their imaginaries. Extending analogous challenges from feminist philosophy and Mills’s. “Ideal Theory’ as Ideology,” I conclude that we ought to reflect on the idiosyncrasy of the philosophical imagination and consider how our idealizations of science, if widely held, would affect our communities and broader society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Aphantasia is a spectrum disorder, affecting the ability of otherwise healthy individuals to form voluntary or conscious mental images, and in some cases also any form of sensory representation. Although only discovered in 2010, it is now estimated that 2–3% of the population may have aphantasia – otherwise termed, the absence of a ‘mind’s eye,’ that aspect of conscious experience which so many people take for granted as part of their general way of experiencing the world. Aphantasia, although it (...) does not imply the absence of all forms of imagination, such as perspective taking and narrative construction, is quite literally a disorder affecting the individual’s capacity to form and work with images, and thus the absence of a certain way in which consciousness engages with the image-object, distinct both from perception and thought. This paper examines how phenomenological accounts of imagination can help us to better understand aphantasia, and also the ways in which aphantasia calls into question some aspects of an existential account of self. (shrink)

Recent neuro-psychoanalytic literature has emphasized the view that our subjective identity rests on ancient subcortical neuro-psychic processes expressing unthinking forms of experience, which are “affectively intense without being known” (Solms and Panksepp, 2012). Devoid of internal representations, the emotional states of our “core-Self” (Panksepp, 1998b) are entirely “projected” towards the external world and tend to be discharged through instinctual action-patterns. However, due to the close connections between the subcortical and the cortical midline brain, the emotional drives may also find a (...) way to be reflected within an intrinsic self-referential processing, evident when the organism is not actively engaged with the external world. Thanks to such endogenous functioning, the core-Self emotional dispositions are not overtly executed, but they are organized within coherent dynamic mental structures, called “feeling-toned complexes” by C.G. Jung and “unconscious phantasies” by Melanie Klein. The intrinsic self-referential dynamism of the ‘brainmind’ originated from REM sleep arousal and then evolved in the resting-state activity of a complex of cortico-limbic midline brain structures (CMS), also called Default Mode Network (DMN). From our neuro-ethological perspective, it is sustained by an “introverted” SEEKING activity leading to the subjective exploration of internally constructed virtual scenarios. This “mind wandering” function, implicated in dreaming, fantasy processing, remembering and thinking, is the essence of the imaginative function and constitutes the first form of reflection, where intentions and drives gain a primordial form of conscious (but not self-conscious) representation. During postnatal development, this original (“archetypal”) imaginative function is slowly attuned in a relational “transitional” space and may be expressed first in non-verbal and eventually in abstract-verbal social communicative patterns. Our view has noticeable implications for psychotherapy. Instead of trying to directly modify interpersonal, extrinsic relationships (a top-down approach), dysfunctional emotional-relational patterns may be modified by a process in which the patient is helped to let-go of the perceived feeling-objects in favor of an immersion, via the actual feeling, from the superficial level of perception towards a void feeling-state, empty of images. Only starting from this “anoetic” feeling-state, the deep imaginal creative and re-structuring self-referential activity may be reactivated by a process of spontaneous imagination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Memory and the Instituting Social ImaginaryNancy Nyquist Potter*, PhD (bio)Emily Walsh's Article on the way that colonialism is perpetuated in psychiatry through dominant collective memory is simultaneously exciting and challenging, and merits active engagement toward making changes (Walsh, 2022). This presents a challenge to clinicians to address entrenched, often subconscious, ways of being with and helping racialized people with historical memories and current experiences.Such changes are necessary in that (...) dominant collective memory is contributory to mental illness, as Walsh writes. It also contributes to what Walsh calls a traumatic loop, whichinvolves feeling unwell due to racist abuse or the effects racialization has on the psyche, then being unable to voice these concerns to the practitioners who desire to help you. Not having the opportunity to voice these concerns can make patients feel as though these memories are not important, thereby invalidating their own negative experiences of racialization.(Walsh, 2022, p. 232)For these reasons, it is crucial that psychiatrists fully understand the harm they can do by reproducing dominant collective memories and work to change this in themselves and in the institutional systems in which they see patients/service users.I focus on one question briefly and then turn to the heart of active engagement.The question concerns what the content of dominant collective memory is and how it might play out in a particular interaction in psychiatry. This is important for clinicians who want to learn what sorts of changes need to be made in order not to continue to enact colonialism and to avoid doing harm. Walsh does a fine job setting out forms of memory and how Fanon (and she) suggest that clinicians can assist patients toward liberation from dominant collective memory. Yet I am left with uncertainty about what sorts of dominant memory serve to deny the violence in the colonized. A bit of filling out on this idea would help the motivated to move toward change.A pressing question is how to facilitate such changes. Both the limitations and the possibilities of the social imaginary can help us understand why change is so difficult and yet how it nevertheless is possible and, in fact, necessary. The social imaginary, as Code explains it, "refers to implicit but effective systems" of values, meanings, interpretations of reality, norms for living, what counts as knowing and who can be knowers, that are found in a social-political order in ways that shape our sense of self, our ways of relating to others, our responsibilities, and a sense of place (Code, 2008, pp. 31–32). The instituted social imaginary, then, tells us what sorts of persons we should be and [End Page 241] how we should see and treat others. It shapes memories and limits which memories—and whose memories—get acknowledged and which ones and whose memories are erased or ignored. It is difficult to see for what it is because it is implicit and assumed to be fixed and natural. However, this is the instituted social imaginary, where the content of the imaginary is taken as given and is naturalized. It trades in stereotypes of Black and Indigenous and other people of color as well as stereotypes of queers, people living with disabilities, the homeless, and others. It is harmful in that it perpetuates those stereotypes, controls patients/ service users, negates their own personal and community identities, and erases episodic memory. It is difficult to change because it is entrenched and often not questioned. Nevertheless, the instituted social imaginary is not totalizing. There is hope, and energy, and excitement to be found in active engagement with an instituting social imaginary. Here, we find people and communities working to critique the given, the naturalized, and even ourselves: "Imaginatively initiated counterpossibilities interrogate the social structure to destabilize its pretensions to naturalness and wholeness, to initiate a new making" (Code, 2008, pp. 34–35). In the final section, I begin to fill out these moves in relation to Walsh's work on memory and psychiatry.Clinicians are trained to be good listeners, and many of them already practice good listening skills in interacting with their patients/service users. However, many patients' experiences... (shrink)

Ce traité de philosophie arabo-musulmane se propose d'extirper dans la philosophie d'Ibn Sina (Avicenne) toute substance de pensée qui fonde le retour prochain de l'âme vers son créateur. Ibn Sina est un pivot essentiel de la philosophie arabo-musulmane dont le jeu fécond de la raison dans le cours de l'histoire de la foi a permis de mieux faire saisir le divin. Par voie, j'entends l'acte de présence au moyen duquel le pèlerin aurait la possibilité de grandir et d'amplifier son être (...) pour accéder au monde imaginal. Cette voie du retour qui s'éclaire sous la phénoménologie entendue comme dévoilement est, en réalité, le chemin princier qui ramène l'âme à la source de son jaillissement. Et, tel est l'un des aspects les plus marquants de l'indéniable originalité d'Ibn Sina. Son adhésion au Coran est donc une adhésion rationnelle. Ibn Sina est d'abord philosophe avant d'être religieux. Alors, il reste un aristotélicien et un néoplatonicien qui se sert de l'Islam comme credo religieux. C'est pourquoi il est souvent dit que son système se construit sur deux axes: le monothéisme de l'Islam et la pensée grecque. (shrink)

This reflection on the topic of emancipation stems from an ongoing project in tune with a wider development in pragmatic philosophy. Specifically, the project aims to piece together some of the consequences of pragmatism’s reconstruction of the tradition of philosophical inquiry, from the angle of human imagination. More recently this project has taken a different direction, in light of our critical situation under intensifying anti-democratic forces in the US, but also in many parliamentary democracies. Emancipation from forces that undermine democratic (...) transformation is arguably a goal that anyone gathering under the banner of pragmatism shares. The use of the pronoun ‘our’ in modifying ‘critical situation’ above is intended. It points to the scope of the problem. The problematic situation of ‘intensifying anti-democratic forces’ that sets the agenda for pragmatic inquiry is most aptly termed ‘neoliberal global hegemony’. Neoliberalism is a much-used technical term and its meaning is hotly contested. For the purposes of this paper, then, I would like to lift out several features common to almost all parties in the contest to provide a definition. This description will then be employed for the purposes of determining the character of the contemporary social context in which emancipatory practices take place. Second, by tying this description of the ‘background’ of our practices to the primacy of practical reason thesis, and specifically the role of imagination in practical reason, the pragmatic conception of agency comes into relief. A pragmatic conception of this social context of agency, the contemporary neoliberal imaginary, contributes to articulating prospects for emancipatory practice in a non-abstract sense. An example of experimentalist democratic practices of emancipation responding to crises generated by neoliberal practices is provided by recent efforts in worker co-operatives in Argentina. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature, Imagination, and Human RightsWillie van Peer“the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen”Aristotle: Poetics, 1451aAristotle’s dictum has been of vital importance to the development of literary theory, and its significance can still be felt today. It is the foundation of the distinction we make between journalism and literature, between history and fiction. Literature, Aristotle proposes, is (...) about things that could happen, not about things that have taken place in reality. Literature is thus inscribed in the realm of the imagination. However, imagination does not operate in an epistemological vacuum. A fictional text entertaining no relation with the world would have no meaning. Perhaps giants, dragons and witches do not really exist, and perhaps it is not really possible to cover seven miles with each step of those wonderful boots that Tom Thumb discovered. But we have no difficulty in imagining those things, precisely because they entertain an intimate relationship with forms and things, events and actions that happen in daily life. The details of the relationship between reality and fiction are less important for the present argument than the fact that fiction is embedded in our pragmatic attitudes. 1 Ernst Bloch has given this human tendency a name: The Hope Principle. Our desire for a better world expresses itself in hope, a distinctive feature of the species Homo Sapiens. The importance of the imagination in the project of humanity has received eloquent and systematic treatment in the philosophical work of Hans Vaihinger and Helmuth Plessner. 2 Imagination also gives impetus to history, because it drives us toward the realization of aims and plans that initially lived only in our hearts and minds: “Someone dreaming never remains in the same place.” 3 [End Page 276]Similar things have been asserted about literature, by Horace, Sidney, Matthew Arnold, and others. Reading is supposed to make us better humans, heightening our awareness, increasing our sensibility, and thus indirectly guiding our actions toward the establishment of a better world. Sometimes noble motives are associated with this function. Reading literature, it is then assumed, makes the reader more socially tolerant, more perceptive about other humans, and more politically conscious. This is the so-called Edification Hypothesis. Anthony Savile sums up this view when he submits the thesis that literature has a unique power to make us understand the thoughts and feelings of other human beings. This ethical perspective on literature has been expressed since Greek Antiquity. 4 It will be remembered that Plato condemned literature precisely for this reason: because it diverts our attention from the real world, itself already an imperfect reflection of Pure Ideas. Aristotle rejects this view and develops a theory squarely opposed to that of his teacher. According to him, literature contributes to the elevation of mankind, to paideia. By showing us that which is possible, and by involving us in the inescapable passage of tragic events, readers and spectators are drawn into emotions of fear and compassion, emotions that lead to katharsis, a process that purifies us of megalomania (hubris), safeguarding democratic government and protecting us from unrestrained tyranny. 5The Aristotelian view that literature has an edifying effect had been generally present in Western tradition till about 1800. Until then literature was viewed almost universally as an ethical category. Consider, for instance, the self-evident way in which Richardson prefaces Pamela: “If to divert and entertain, and at the same time to instruct and improve the minds of the YOUTH of both sexes: If to inculcate religion and morality in so easy and agreeable a manner, as shall render them equally delightful and profitable: If to set forth in the most exemplary lights, the parental, the filial, and the social duties....” 6The embarrassment a modern reader may feel when confronted with such overt claims to morality is largely a product of the nineteenth century, when literature came to be seen as a predominantly aesthetic category, eluding all attempts at moral categorization. This movement has resulted in a liberation of literature from moralism. At the same time, it has created nontrivial difficulties in thinking about ethical and political issues, so... (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma comparação conceitual entre a obra De anima, de Aristóteles, e a concepção das faculdades da alma no Kitáb al-Nafs – edição árabe – (Livro da Alma, De anima), de Ibn Sina (Avicena), com o intuito de mostrar similitudes e in#uências de Aristóteles sobre o pensamento de Ibn Sina, nessa temática. Destaca, ainda, como e a época em que o estagirita foi recebido em terras do Islã, indicando o seu primeiro receptor, o &lósofo Al-Kindi, assim como, de (...) modo pormenorizado, uma comparação sobre a de&nição de alma dada pelos dois &lósofos, e as três espécies de alma, com ênfase para o conceito de alma racional. Apresenta, também, a estrutura de cada uma das obras. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Paradox of Kandinsky's Abstract RepresentationKenneth BerryThere is a paradox in the relationship between Kandinsky's use of the terms, "abstract" and "concrete," which is presented in the expression, "Kandinsky's abstract representation." Thisexpression, while being apparently contradictory, may point to a feature underpinning Kandinsky's art, which is pivotal to a proper experience of his work, just as, in Christopher Middleton's view, a poetic language may be pivotal to the formation (...) of cultures.1 Art and cultural artifacts are vital to aesthetic experience and aesthetic education, and both the language of art and other languages are instrumental to this end. However, how may Kandinsky's mature abstraction, being in essence objectless, have any claim to representation, and consequently the higher cultural goals of aesthetic expression and the aesthetic enrichment of society?According to Thomas M. Messer, the position of centrality that Kandinsky has assumed in our understanding of modern art is largely due to his having brought to bear on his art, an instinctive awareness of what constituted the central aesthetic issues of his era.2 Kandinsky's writings in Concerning the Spiritual in Art elaborate on his aesthetic theories, and, in particular, [End Page 99] present the view that paintings should be looked at as a graphic representation of a mood rather than as a representation of objects. Messer observes that, for Kandinsky, abstraction, defined as a mode of painting extending beyond the depiction of recognizable objects, having gradually stripped itself of mimetic vestiges, thus becomes paramount. Michael Carter has similarly pointed out that with the pure forms of absolute abstraction, the non-objective colors and shapes of Kandinsky's paintings were regarded as distillations of the aesthetic properties of the artistic sign3 — separable from any referential aspect of art.4 This aesthetic aspect of Kandinsky's work, which became known as nonfigurative, nonobjective, or nonrepresentational,goes along with the cultural — and, as sculptor Anish Kapoor has remarked, "in the deepest, deepest depths of human history the cultural has always been a motivator of people," and has the power to transform society through finding visual equivalents for an emotional language.5Much has been written about Kandinsky's use of color, but perhaps the primary innovation that he made, as in the case of Barnett Newman, was in the field of drawing. Kandinsky was influenced by Gauguin's idea that drawing was an abstraction from memory after nature, just as Gauguin had been affected by the simplified contours and flattened forms of Puvis de Chavannes. Drawing did not come so easily to Kandinsky as color — he had to work harder at drawing, but in his early improvisations, forms and their outlines as graphic symbols came welling up from the unconscious, and eidetic motifs only had to be copied — almost as the art of calligraphy. Kandinsky's "organic" drawing developed as an urge to nonnaturalistic impulses, and during the period of Point and Line to Plane became almost a grammar of form, saved from mere pedantry by the living forces or visual tensions that made various kinds of line operate not just as contours but as dynamic or restful elements within themselves. In 1913, Kandinsky wrote in his "Reminiscences" that, "painting is a thundering collision of different worlds, intended to create a new world in, and from, their struggles with one another, a new world which is the work of art."6 It is clear from this that the Modernist work of art was intended to be a "new world" operating according to its own universal aesthetic laws.Kandinsky is not just a painter; he is also a visual poet. Poetry, according to Tony Curtis, involves the expression of the intensification of experience — the elevation of banal facts of life into something beyond the merely prosaic — something unique and perceptively heightened.7 It involves both imagination and poetic license to explore both ambiguity and paradox. As Scottish poet Norman MacCaig observed, poetry renders the ordinary extraordinary, seeing the unfamiliar in the familiar.8 Creative analogical thinking such as evinced in Kandinsky's art, often involves breaking free of a clichéd representation.Malcolm Budd has remarked that, in its most exclusive sense, a work... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 73-84 [Access article in PDF] Music-Picture:One Form of Synthetic Art Education"Music-picture (a picture drawn through musical perception)" has been widely accepted by art educators in Japan. The purpose of this essay is to propose the making of music-pictures as art education and to put it on afirm theoretical base. I first investigate three gestalt rules: adjacency, continuance, and resemblance, all of (...) which are applicable to the senses of both seeing and hearing. Next I present research on color hearing as one version ofsynaesthesia, which is the comprehensive faculty that binds the five senses in various ways. The well-organized music-picture program by Kaoru Sasaki 1 is introduced as an example. 2 The synthetic art-educational value of music-picture will become clearer through these examinations. The Interrelations between Visual Arts and Music It is exciting that the visual arts meet music in an art class, even if these subjects are entirely different in regard to media, expressive form, the category of perception, and mastery of techniques. Put simply, Picasso's works are visible, whereas Stravinsky's pieces are invisible. Nevertheless, both powerfully convey imaginative and often narrative messages. Relying on intuition alone, I firmly believe both are interchangeable.My research on common methods of organizing both recorded music and painting was my first observation of the mutual relationship between music and visual arts. 3 But what I considered then would not be applied to art class directly because the research was based on my practical experience. It did not have any educational goals. Now I recognize that instructive approaches are necessary to lay the foundation for art classes dealing with interaction between two distinct modalities.In Japan, the Ministry of Education and Science provides the government curriculum guidelines nearly every ten years. It contains descriptions on two subjects: The visual arts and music taught in these classes are at an elementary school level and a junior high school level, both located within a compulsory education system. The new version has been in force since April 2002 (the new school term starts in April in Japan). Objectives in the two educational fields are similar and ideas of what art and music education ought to be are almost the same. The aim common to both in the government curriculum guidelines: "Through expression and appreciation, we [End Page 73] cultivate students' sentiments" invites the linking of music and the visual arts across the curriculum.Many art educators in Japan are interested in this sort of idea and have actually put it into practice. 4 They are engaged in interrelating or even unifying music and the visual arts. Additionally I know other teachers who have designed and proposed many ideas toward this crossover. Listed below are general ideas that seek to combine visual arts with music in an art class.1) Music-picture: to make a pictorial description of impressions received from music.2) Sound map: to make a map of sounds heard at a given location. Each sound is visualized by simple marks like - - -, <<<, ~~~, ooo, and xxx.3) Graphic notation: to write a score which directs the details, whole form, and progression of music by graphics instead of staff notation. Using onomatopoeias or instructions by words are common. It can be improvised, based on intuitively translating visual impacts into sounds.4) Sound toy: to make an original musical instrument of familiar easil obtained materials. For instance, a corrugated cardboard ukulele whose strings are rubber bands, a pair of maracas made of empty cans and soybeans, and so forth.5) Sound sculpture: to make sculpture producing interesting sounds (sometimes noises like creak or clatter). Extensive genres: wood sculpture, metal construction, assemblage (junk arts), kinetic arts, and so on.6) Sound installation: to make a place where participants experience sounds generated by objects or equipment.7) Multimedia: in the broad sense, to mix visuals with music; noises like jingle, tap, and bang! in daily life, or natural environmental sounds like a pit-a-pat of falling rain, a whisper of leaves, or... (shrink)

In this article, I will attempt to provide a historical case study, I suggest that the demarcation between perception and how a figure is ‘seen’ is the process of perpetual filtering between the levels of sensation and perception. I argue that this filtering operates through the basic visual principles, which may vary and have divergent functions in different paradigms. This historical case study will focus on the fifty-six plates featured in the influential work of the London surgeon William (...) Cheselden, to reveal the paradigm-based filtering in these prints by arguing that the sense data is organized in the simplest manner to view figures in their unity. Thus, I will focus on the visual principle of simplicity, which features the patterns of similarity, contrast and symmetry. An analysis of Cheselden’s usage of these patterns will demonstrate that he aims to show that every bone in human body is united to one another, which forms an organizing structure. I will conclude that these visual principles were used by Chelselden to achieve perfection by conveying right proportions and the correct number of scales of human body since his observations was laden with Newtonian paradigm. Finally, I will compare this usage to that of Ibn Sina’s, to disclose the paradigm-ladenness of scientific observations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary AnthropologyPeter J. RabinowitzThe Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology, by Wolfgang Iser; xix & 347 pp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, $55.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.Iser’s book argues that “the special character of literature is its production through a fusion” (p. xiii) of the fictive (“an act of boundary-crossing which, nonetheless, keeps in view what has been overstepped”) (...) (pp. xiv-xv) and the imaginary (“a featureless and inactive potential”) (p. xvii). As a consequence, he anchors his “different form of heuristics” (p. xiii) in two dense meditations on the history of these terms. The first, chapter 3, teases out the way “fiction” has been “thematized” in philosophical writings—with detailed explications, in particular, of the works of Bacon (who views fiction as an idol), Bentham (“who stands for a paradigm switch” [p. 112] in which fiction becomes “a mode of bridge-building” [p. 123]), Vaihinger (“fiction as a transparent posit” [p. 130]), and Nelson Goodman (who sees fictions in terms of worldmaking). The second, chapter 4, deliberates on the nature of the imaginary, with particular attention to Coleridge (who made “the last significant attempt” to treat imagination as a faculty [p. 186]), Sartre (for whom the imaginary is an act), and Cornelius Castoriadis (who has developed the notion of the “radical imaginary”).But while the book deals exhaustively with the twin terms of its main title, its relation to its subtitle is more vexed. Certainly, this book is not about anthropology in any conventional sense. Although Iser pays lip service to “culture-bound patternings” (p. 297), in fact his inquiry almost entirely ignores the pressures of particular cultural contexts; and to the extent that he deals with “the human condition,” he does so by universalizing from a narrow slice of the Western intellectual tradition. Nor, more surprisingly, is the book really very much concerned with literature. True, the second chapter—the most compelling—offers revealing insights into the literary fictionality of some specific instances of Renaissance pastoral; but it is significant that this analysis precedes, rather than follows from, Iser’s philosophical explorations. And while he returns, in his last chapters, to literature—specifically, to a notion of literature as play—this discussion is almost completely divorced from any engagement with actual literary texts. Glancing references to Tristram Shandy and Finnegans Wake, a slightly longer mention of Beckett’s Imaginary Dead Imagine: these serve as the springboards from which Iser makes sweeping transhistorical, crosscultural pronouncements about “the” text.The Fictive and the Imaginary makes heavy demands on its readers. Although Iser lashes out against “unwieldy structuralist terminology” (p. x), his own style is dense and abstract, and his basic terminology is muddled. For instance, he insists on the term “imaginary,” in contrast to such familiar terms as “imagination,” because it is “comparatively neutral” and “has not yet been permeated by [End Page 188] traditional associations” (p. 305)—yet his analysis often depends pivotally on treating “the imaginary” and “the imagination” as equivalents. Matters are made more difficult yet by Iser’s tendency to conflate two different tasks: elucidating the history of the discourse around the terms and finding the “true” nature of the fictive and the imaginary themselves.Then, too, as the summary above may suggest, the book has organizational quirks. Iser begins by insisting vigorously on a triad, replacing the distinction between fiction and reality with the three-pronged distinction of “the real, the fictive, and... the imaginary” (p. 1). But the definition of the real, oddly exiled to a footnote, is internally inconsistent (it refers simultaneously to “the empirical world” and to “the variety of discourses relevant to the author’s approach to the world”) (p. 305), and in any case, it is soon demoted to a minor character in the argument. Indeed, in the “Epilogue”—on mimesis and literary staging—the notions of the fictive and imaginary have vanished as well. One is left, then, with a clump of chapters that do not cohere into a single book, much less a unified argument. For all its scattered insights, The Fictive and the Imaginary does not meet the high standards set by... (shrink)

I argue for a transformative revival or actualization of the very core of an integrative, methodologically secured form of intellect‑mystical asceticism. This approach draws on traditional sources that are re‑examined from a systematic—synthetic and transcultural—philosophical perspective and in light of the multi‑civilizational global environment of the 21st century. The main traditional points of reference in this paper are provided by Nicolaus de Cusa and Ibn Sīnā, and I refer toa few others, such as Attar of Nishapur, in passing. I begin (...) by developing a basic concept of intellect‑mystical asceticism. It is distinguished from mystification, science, scientism, and modes of everyday communication and cognition. Then, I make the case for an updated, transcultural approach to intellect‑mysticism that can foster the internal (social) and external (environmental) reintegration of the human noosphere and technosphere in future planetary development. In this context, a modern intellect‑mystical philosophical notion of “knowing non‑knowing” (wissendes Nichtwissen, docta ignorantia) is developed. It is inspired by Nicolaus de Cusa and contextualized from a systematic transcultural angle at the same time. Finally, I discuss the problem of the practical, or rather ascetic, realization of the related possibilities of intellect‑mystical self‑enfolding. Here, the preceding steps of the reflection are mapped onto an outline regarding distinct developmental stages of such a transformative intellect‑mystical practice in Ibn Sīnā’s Remarks and Admonitions (al‑Ishārāt wat‑Tanbīhāt). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Avicenna’s Metaphysics in ContextTaneli KukkonenRobert Wisnovsky. Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 305. Cloth, $65.00.The challenges facing the contemporary writer on Arabic philosophy are many, but none more daunting than that of striking a satisfying balance between faithfully reproducing what is there in the text (alongside a lineage of likely sources, perhaps), and actively engaging the materials philosophically. From among the (...) current crop of scholars, the more cautious will argue that as long as we lack critical editions of even basic works, and as long as ambiguities remain concerning who was reading what, where, and when, any ambitious statements regarding the substance of Arabic thought, its development, and (especially) what its distinctive contributions might be, must remain hopelessly premature. The counterargument goes that by refusing the philosophically impatient the licence to speculate, at least, about the relevance of the materials at hand—however rough and ready—one will end up stifling just those endeavours the philologist hopes to promote. For without the promise of philosophical rewards, what incentive remains for the thankless and endless task of textual refinement and identification of sources? Strides made in late ancient and Latin medieval scholarship seem to indicate that philosophical curiosity serves to feed historical acuity, rather than hinder it. Yet with the study of Arabic philosophy the perceived opposition between philosophy and philology has led to a precious few works escaping charges of being found lacking either in textual or philosophical sophistication, or indeed both.To this select company one may now add Robert Wisnovsky's aptly titled Avicenna's Metaphysics in Context. The author pursues a particularly deft course of action: honing in on themes for whose evaluation sufficient materials are available, then infusing his exposition at every turn with philosophical insight and a scholar's eye for detail, Wisnovsky demonstrates by example what a resourceful scholar can accomplish in this day and age. Wisnovsky takes it as his task to situate the very doctrines Abû 'Alî Ibn Sînâ (980-1037) is most famous for—the essence-existence distinction, the distinction between contingent and necessary existence, and the created and embodied yet ultimately separable perfection of the human soul—in a continuous line of discussion stretching from Alexander of Aphrodisias to the kalâm theologians of Avicenna's own age.The resulting narrative threads together a dizzying array of thinkers and discussions, showing just how fertile the scholarship ranging from late antiquity to Arabic thought was, both considered in its original setting and in terms of the contemporary scholarly imagination. Among other things, Wisnovsky's book constitutes the fullest study to date of the [End Page 112] evolution of the concepts of final and efficient causality in the increasingly Neoplatonising interpretations of Aristotle. The cosmological and metaphysical motifs behind these developments are rightly pointed out by Wisnovsky, and their impact on Avicenna's metaphysics of the soul and his views on process and return receive thorough attention.In the midst of all this, sight may be lost of Avicenna's original achievement, and it has to be said that Wisnovsky does not play this aspect up by much. But this, the reader suspects, is part of the point. In order to appreciate a thinker's intellectual prowess it is not necessary to insist that he or she be conjuring up concepts out of thin air. A great mind may instead be a synthetic one, one that is able to negotiate between various conceptual schemes and commitments, and this is the picture Wisnovsky paints of Avicenna. Avicenna's deep engagement with the Peripatetic tradition is evident to any scholar, yet it is often difficult to determine exactly whose opinions he references, as contending viewpoints are typically introduced by enigmatic preambles such as "if it is said... " or, "some contend." Wisnovsky's attention to how terminological shifts reflect philosophical ones succeeds in demonstrating Avicenna's reliance in general not only on ancient sources, but on al-Fârâbi and the kalâm as well. His subtle analysis of the development of key Avicennian doctrines simultaneously serves to lend credence to the picture that is currently emerging concerning the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Judith Butler’s “New Humanism”A Thing or Not a Thing, and So What?Sina KramerA few thinkers in the last few years, such as Stefan Dolgert and Miriam Leonard, but especially political theorist Bonnie Honig, have argued that Judith Butler’s most recent work (Antigone’s Claim, 2000; Undoing Gender, 2004; Precarious Life, 2005; Frames of War, 2009) institutes a new form of humanism, based on the universality of grief, mourning, vulnerability, and (...) precariousness that Butler describes in these texts. These critiques call into question an incipient foundationalism in the feminist political theory Butler produces in these texts, one seemingly at odds with her previous antifoundationalist commitments. In this article I will argue that, while these critiques oversimplify the relationship between politics and ethics or politics and ontology in their critique of Butler’s new mortalist humanism, the problem of the relation of politics to ethics or ontology—or, more exactly, the problem of the relation of politics to its outside, or to its conditions—remains nevertheless a real problem in Butler’s work. This is because, without a clear account of a method of rendering foundations contingent, or of rendering ontologies provisional, we tend to repeat the political move to establish an apolitical ground on which we can found a politic. This foundationalist move thus shields that ground from political critique and transformation—a move that Butler herself has done so much work to expose and displace.In this article, I ask whether feminist theory must repeat a recourse to foundations by examining the charge that Butler does so her in most recent work. The article will proceed as follows: in the first section, I examine the [End Page 25] charge that Butler is instituting a new humanism. In the second section, I look at some of Butler’s discussion of humanism, and look more closely at the relation between ethics and politics the question of humanism opens up in her work. In the third, I explore whether or not the charge that Butler is instituting a new humanism is correct. And in the fourth, I question what is at stake in this charge. Essentially, the article asks of this new humanist charge: Is this a thing or not a thing, and so what? I argue that, while the charge is somewhat overdetermined, it does point to a larger problem in Butler’s work, and that is the recourse to foundations, or to gesturing to an outside of or beyond of politics as the condition for altering political conditions. I will conclude by arguing that a greater attention to method can help to avoid the reification of the distinction between politics and its conditions that leads to the recourse of foundations.Butler’s New Mortalist HumanismIn her 2010 article “Antigone’s Two Laws: Tragedy and the Politics of Humanism”—as well as in her 2013 book Antigone, Interrupted—Bonnie Honig argues that Butler’s ethical turn institutes a new mortalist humanism, predicated on the “ontological fact of mortality, not the capacity to reason but the vulnerability to suffering” (Honig 2010, 1). She differentiates this new mortalist humanism, which she also diagnoses in the work of Nicole Loraux and Stephen White, from earlier rationalist forms of humanism that are based on the universal principle of human rationality, and from forms of antihumanism based on the “signs of a monstrous, dehumanizing animality” (Honig 2010, 3). Either form is problematic, Honig argues, insofar as they both seek to settle essentially political questions by recourse to a position beyond politics: through a stable and recognizably human figure who either secures its belonging to the polity by means of its rationality, or an exclusion rendered through the dehumanization of otherwise ostensibly human figures.This new mortalist humanism Honig diagnoses in Butler’s recent work falls into the same problem: in this version, Butler settles political questions by recourse to a principle of mortality, or the universal experience of mourning. This would seem to be contrary to Butler’s earlier commitments to a radical critique of foundationalism, especially in her famous critique of the naturalization of sex as the grounds for a political understanding of gender. This is... (shrink)

In this essay, I study the departure performed in The Imaginary from the Husserlian position spanning from the Logical Investigations and the 1904/1905 lectures on the imagination. In Sartre’s conception, the imagination in its two forms is never intuitive. Moreover, in an act of imagination we can never find immanent sensible contents. In Husserl, the imagination in its two forms, is a sensible intuition, like perception. Furthermore, every act of imagination apprehends immanent sensible contents.

It might not be striking that writers expressing the same idea, or a similar reaction to an idea, would use a similar set of words if they were writing in the same language.In the examples to follow, I remain unsure as to whether I should be struck by the similarity or not; it was a nice coincidence at first, a mere "interesting observation" rather than a "striking similarity," from which I could begin an article comparing the poetics of Ibn Sīnā (...) with the aesthetics of Kant. The observation was that three different writers, in reacting to a similarity they observed between Ibn Sīnā and other thinkers in domains related to poetics and/or imagination, used the two words "striking" and "similarity," or at least their... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 211-232 [Access article in PDF] Aristotelianism and the Soul in the Arabic Plotinus Peter Adamson It is common for historians of medieval thought to note that the influence of Aristotle on Islamic philosophy was tinged with Neoplatonism, thanks to a text known as the "Theology of Aristotle." It is now known that the "Theology" is in fact not a work of (...) Aristotle's but rather a paraphrase of parts of Plotinus's Enneads. Certainly, the misattribution of this work to Aristotle facilitated the spread of Neoplatonism as an aspect of Islamic peripateticism, as represented by such authors as al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Some efforts have been made to assess its influence on particular philosophers, most notably Ibn Sina whose notes on the "Theology" have come down to us and who may have doubted its authenticity. 1 Until recently the attention paid to the "Theology" itself has tended more towards philological than philosophical analysis, focusing in particular on possible sources of the text. 2 Yet the differences between the original writings of Plotinus and its Arabic paraphrase are of considerable philosophic interest. In recent years research into the "Theology" has begun to pay more attention to the philosophical issues raised by the paraphrase. 3 Here I hope to further this trend by suggesting that, although the author [End Page 211] of this paraphrase was not Aristotle, his own thought was suffused with Aristotelianism.First, we should note that the so-called "Theology of Aristotle" is itself only a part of an original, larger paraphrase of the Enneads. It is now usually thought that this paraphrase was authored by a member of al-Kindi's circle in ninth- century Baghdad. 4 The original Arabic Plotinus has been preserved in three separate texts. The first is the "Theology" (hereafter Th.A) which is itself subdivided into a prologue, a series of "headings" (ru'us), and ten chapters, each called a mimar, meaning "chapter" in Syriac. 5 This is by far the longest of the three texts. We also have the so-called Letter on Divine Science, formerly attributed to al-Farabibut shown by Kraus to belong to the Arabic Plotinus materials. 6 Finally, there are the Sayings of the Greek Sage, a set of fragments collected from various sources by Rosenthal and Lewis which also paraphrases Plotinus in Arabic. 7 As argued by F. W. Zimmermann, these three sources all derive originally from a lost, perhaps much more extensive, paraphrase of Plotinus. 8 They are united both by writing style and philosophical content. I will call them, collectively, AP; and since I cannot here provide conclusive arguments as to the identity of their author, I will call him the Adaptor.One of the major goals of al-Kindi and his circle seems to have been the synthesis of available Greek texts into a coherent philosophy. Thus al-Kindi himself produced doxographical works (for example, his Discourse on the Soul) and a survey of the Aristotelian corpus. 9 If the Adaptor worked in such a milieu, he may well have been influenced by other philosophical sources in making a paraphrase of Plotinus. Zimmermann has suggested that such an influence is at [End Page 212] work in mimar III, where the Adaptor may have drawn on Aristotle's De Anima in order to "reconcile" Plotinus with an Aristotelian theory of the soul as the entelechia of the body. 10 Here I will examine the relationship of soul and body in AP and expand on Zimmermann's thesis in an effort to show that the Adaptor was, in this respect at least, an Aristotelian interpreter of Plotinus. I will close by examining the relationship between AP and a contemporaneous work, the paraphrase of the De Anima produced in al-Kindi's circle. Mimar III and the Question of entelechiaStudents of Aristotle are familiar with his thesis that soul is the form of the body. In the De Anima Aristotle explains this further by claiming that the soul is the "perfection" or entelechia of... (shrink)

In the form of few notes around an anthropology of the imagination, the article questions the complex relationships between imagination and perception, by carrying out a synthesis of the great traditions which concern the image. Between perceptual consciousness and imaging consciousness, the line of demarcation remains problematic, depending on whether the imagination draws from the senses the material of its images or produces new representations giving substance to an unreal, or even a surreal. Impoverished derivation and misleading revival of (...) perception in the empiricist tradition, it precedes experience for Kant. Imagination has at least three functions: replacement, amplification and revelation of reality, each corresponding to differentiated intentions: to image, imagine, “imaginalise”. The imaginal, as a correlate of creative imagination, actualizes epiphanic images, allowing itself to be reduced neither ton reproduction nor to fiction. These are primordial images with a universal scope, not depending on the subjective conditions of the perceiver. (shrink)

Distinction of ‘awām- khawāṣ (the ordinary and the elite) is a general distinction in philosophical literature that shows the difference of people in their level of understanding the truth. It is possible to take this distinction back to Plato in Ancient Greek philosophy. Plato's hesitation in expressing his philosophical thoughts in written form, and Aristotle's use of obscure expressions and symbols in his works against the possibility of reaching those who are not competent, is a result of the distinction between (...) ‘awām-khawāṣ. This distinction was covered in Islamic thought by associating it with the three addressing styles mentioned in the Quran and the fact that the prophet was proclaiming the message according to these addressing styles. The purpose of this study is to reveal how the truth should be conveyed to people of all levels through the evaluations of the Islamic philosophers and thinkers on the distinction between ‘awām and khawāṣ. In the study it will be attempted to find answers to the questions of what are the reasons leading the Islamic philosophers and thinkers to make the distinction between ‘awām and khawāṣ, what arguments they used to explained the necessity of this distinction and why is the distinction between ‘awām and khawāṣ so important. Firstly, the lexical and terminological meanings of the concepts of ‘awām and khawāṣ are introduced. The ‘awām, which is used to express the public, ordinary people, and the lower layer of the society, is a term that qualifies the ignorant society, who has adopted a system of imitation-based life and belief cannot understand the truth of life. Khawāṣ, who are defined as the elite, the prominent, who represents the intellectual group and strives to grasp the truth, base their life and belief on knowledge and attain a higher level of awareness. After the literal and terminological meanings, it has been proceeded to the historical background of this distinction. Then the views of Islamic philosophers and thinkers who directly point to this distinction in this regard have been examined by referring to their main works. These are al-Fārābī, Ikhvān-Ṣafāʾ, Ibn Sinā, Rāghıb al-Iṣfahānī, Ghazālī, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rūshd, Ibn'ūn-Nefīs. For instance, al-Fārābī makes a clear distinction between ‘awām and khawāṣ in his works on political philosophy. He addresses this distinction by stating that the virtuous city is divided into two groups, the difference is in the methods used by these group to grasp the truth, and that they can achieve happiness in different ways. Stating that people are made up of different groups, Ikhvān-Ṣafāʾ goes to the distinction of ‘awām- khawāṣ and classifies the sciences accordingly. In addition, Ikhvān-Ṣafāʾ say that the prophets pay attention to the mentioned distinction while communicating the message of Allah to people. Ikhvān-Ṣafāʾ have related this distinction to the distinction between exoteric and esoteric. The understanding of prophethood and eschatology of Ibn Sinā shows ‘awām-khawāṣ distinction very clearly, too. According to him the truth should be conveyed gradually. Ghazālī claims that the ‘awām should not demand the sciences that are not suitable for their cognitive level and that they should leave them to competent people. In Islamic thought the dominant idea is that both wisdom and religion are presented in exo-teric and esoteric knowledge and that the learning of the esoteric way is only necessary for the khawāṣ. The aim of the ‘awām-khawāṣ distinction is to prevent misunderstanding that would arise when the knowledge would be conveyed to wrong people and thus to prevent the loss of truth by those who are not competent. The majority of Islamic thinkers call ‘awām as people of imagination, and khawāṣ as people of thought. They think that the methods of thinking and imagining should be taken into account when explaining the religious and philosophical truths. They have also emphasized the perfection of the prophetic style of addressing society. The symbols and metaphors that the prophets used to express religious truths or the metaphors and symbolic stories that are preferred by philosophers to tell some truths can be seen as a product of the distinction between ‘awām and khawāṣ. As it can be seen in the example of Ḥay bin Ya-qẓān, explaining the truth clearly to ‘awām may cause them to deviate from the right way. For this reason, it is necessary to tell the truth to people according to their level of understanding. It is possible to say that the ideas of Islamic thinkers about this distinction still remain important to-day, due to the fact that people have different dispositions and their level of understanding is not the same despite a change in time and place. Therefore, the disadvantage as pointed out by the Islamic thinkers is that the attempt to convey the truth to people may not be able to reach its exact purpose by ignoring this distinction. (shrink)

Computational imagination (CI) conceives imagination as an agent’s simulated sensorimotor interaction with the environment in the absence of sensory feedback, predicting consequences based on this interaction (Marques and Holland in Neurocomputing 72:743–759, 2009). Its bedrock is the simulation hypothesis whereby imagination resembles seeing or doing something in reality as both involve similar neural structures in the brain (Hesslow in Trends Cogn Sci 6(6):242–247, 2002). This paper raises two-forked doubts: (1) neural-level equivalence is escalated to make phenomenological equivalence. Even at an (...) abstract level, many imagined and real actions turn out to be dissimilar. More so, some imagined actions have no corresponding real actions and vice versa, even though neural regions involved in imaginings and real action-perception are the same (Sect. 1). (2) At the implementation level, the hypothesis presents a mutually exclusive view of imagination and perception whereby imagination functions in the absence of the sensory feedback and is action based. Both these issues are contested here: Neither imagination functions in the absence of perception nor all forms of imaginings are action based; it is, rather, about conceiving possibilities which emerge during the perceptual stage itself (Sect. 2). For the modal aspect to arise, it is submitted that an integrative framework is required which Kant can provide for whom imagination is an indispensable part of perception. Kant’s views on concept-formation are presented here to illustrate this aspect (Sect. 3). The Paper is concluded with emphasizing the relevance of Kant’s views to the problems identified in the two sections. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a novel account of the phenomenality of language by focusing on characteristics of perceived speech. I explore the extent to which the spoken word can be said to have a horizonal structure similar to that of spatiotemporal objects: our perception of each is informed by habitual associations and expectations formed through past experiences of the object or word and other associated objects and experiences. Specifically, the horizonal structure of speech in use can fruitfully be (...) compared to that of a tool in use. The comparison suggests an account of our linguistic faculty as continuous with more foundational faculties of perception and action. I provide empirical corroboration of this account by drawing on recent neuroimaging studies of the multimodal, sensorimotor bases of speech comprehension. I then discuss how such an understanding of our linguistic ability helps advocates of embodied, non-representationalist accounts of cognition respond to a common objection. Critics grant that embodied approaches may be adequate to account for lower-level, online modes of cognition, such as perception and action, which directly engage their object. But they question whether such approaches can “scale up” to higher modes of cognition, such as imagination, memory, thought, and language, which can entertain absent, non-existent, or abstract objects. By providing a plausible account of the continuity of lower cognition and language-involving cognition, my approach responds to this objection, at least where language is concerned. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that Ibn Sīnā’s theory of experience (taǧriba) requires a cross-reference between logic and psychology. Following the Basran linguistic tradition, he paraphrases derived names (ism muštaqq) into the li-x y formula: for example, ʿālim (“knowing”) is paraphrased into lahu ʿilm (“an act of knowing belongs to him”). His theory of experience employs this formula for arranging observed phenomena into a certain form of a syllogism and describing functions of the brain’s inner senses. Ibn Sīnā arranges observed phenomenon into (...) the li-x y formula or the proposition of which a predicate is a derived name of y. Meanwhile, he holds that the sense of recollection is involved in the process of experience. Recollection is an inner sense of the brain, which preserves maʿnā perceived by the sense of estimation. Estimation means to perceive maʿnā (y) that inheres in a subject (x), and to make a judgment about x based on y. Thus, in this process, the analysis of derived names arranges observed phenomena into a rational order, and the inner sense establishes the causation between apprehension and logical assertion. The article concludes by discussing the relation of this philosophy to medicine. (shrink)

In this dissertation we observe the diachronic development of certain vocabulary items which form the basis of discourse in Islamic philosophy in the Arabic language. Using a set of philosophical terms from al-Kindi, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina we analyze the use of each term, first individually and then comparatively. To examine philosophical terms in their natural setting, we will look at the philosophers' own definitions of these terms. Thus, we observe how definitions and their use change over two centuries, both (...) in the references made in definitions and in the words selected for their definientia. This development and the enduring effect of the philosophers' definitions in Islamic philosophy will form the focus of our study. ;This dissertation deals with the development of a technical philosophical vocabulary in the Arabic language; it is not primarily a hunt for the Hellenistic origin of the words or ideas. Prior to the translation of Greek philosophical texts into the Arabic language, Arabic lacked the vocabulary to speculate on these ideas. This was not an unusual state of affairs, as philosophy was not a discipline developed by the Arabic language writers prior to the translations of Greek philosophical texts. To speculate about metaphysics, philosophers need words for the objects of metaphysics: substance, cause and matter--terms which form the center of our study. ;An Arabic vocabulary was the tool the philosophers needed to discuss the concepts, ideas and premises brought to them by philosophy, an imported science, without a pre-existing vocabulary in Arabic. For purposes of this study we will focus on language as the tool of philosophy. (shrink)

This article wants to describe the science of ḥuḍūrī according to three great philosophers from Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, to Mullā Ṣadrā. Even though they both adopt ḥuḍūrī science, the three of them are different in terms of paradigm and also their implementation. This research uses general hermeneutic methods on the main books of Suhrawardī, Ibn Sīnā, and Mullā Ṣadrā as well as experts in the field. Ibn Sīnā accepted the science of ḥuḍūrī only as a science of the self because (...) he adopted the plurality paradigm of wujūd. Suhrawardī and Mullā Ṣadrā focus more on ḥuḍūrī knowledge, not only self-knowledge but also developing other forms of wujūd. Even for Suhrawardī and Mullā Ṣadrā the only true knowledge is ḥuḍūrī knowledge. Mullā Ṣadrā with his ḥuḍūrī theory of science succeeded in building unity between epistemology and ontology because he defined science with the presence of non-material in non-material. The soul is a non-material entity still weak because it is tied to the body and must undergo substantial transformation with knowledge and charity. The source of knowledge is the non-material, active mind which bestows knowledge on the subject who has carried out catharsis and then there is unity between the two. External objects are not sources of knowledge, but stimulants. Science in general and the science of ḥuḍūrī, in particular, were also later developed further into the science of God. (shrink)