With Aristotle, Ibn Sina stresses the intimate connection of mind and body; but whereas Aristotle's whole trend of thought rejects a two-substance view, Ibn Sina holds a form of radical dualism. How far these two aspects of his doctrine are mutually compatible is a different question: Ibn Sina certainly did not carry his dualism through to develop a parallelistic, occasionalistic account of mind-body relationship. His remarks, nevertheless, on either side are both interesting and profound. We shall first state his arguments for the two-substance view and then discuss their close inter-connection.
To prove that the human soul is a substance capable of existing independently of the body, our philosopher employs two different arguments. One appeals to direct self-consciousness, the other seeks to prove the immateriality of the intellect. We can postpone his teaching on the intellect till we discuss his theory of knowledge; here we shall state and discuss his first argument. Indeed, according to him, this is the more direct way of proving the incorporeal substantiality of the soul acting not as an argument but as an eye-opener (K. al-Shifa', “Psychology,” V 7).
The argument is stated by Ibn Sina in the first chapter of the psychological book of the K. al-Shifa' and then re-stated and discussed in the last but one chapter of the same book. Let us suppose, as he says, that a person is created in an adult state, but in such a condition that he is born in a void where his body cannot touch anything and where he cannot perceive anything of the external world. Let us also suppose that he cannot see his own body and that the organs of his body are prevented from touching one another, so that he has no sense-perception whatsoever.
Such a person will not affirm anything of the external world or even the existence of his own body but will, neverthe¬less, affirm the existence of his self as a purely spiritual entity. Now, that which is affirmed is certainly not the same as that which is not affirmed. The mind is, therefore, a substance independent of the body. Our philosopher is here describing an imaginary case impossible of realization, but his real point, as of Descartes, is that we can think away our bodies and so doubt their existence, but we cannot think away our minds.
The affinity of Ibn Sina's argument with that of Descartes' cogito ergo sum has been justly pointed out by historians of philosophy. Actually, this whole trend of thought is inspired by the argument of Plotinus for the separateness of the mind from the body.6 But there is an important difference between Ibn Sina's and Descartes' formulations. With regard to Descartes, the question can be and has been raised: Is the existence of the self a matter of inference or an immediate datum of consciousness? Whatever the answer to this question may be, there is no doubt that consciousness or “I think” is constitutively and necessarily involved in Descartes' “I am.” This is so much so that “I think” and “I am” have the same meaning in Descartes .7
This being the position, it is obvious that in this case the consciousness of the self and its existence cannot be logically disengaged from each other. In Ibn Sina, however, although the element of consciousness is present since one can “affirm one's own existence,” it is nevertheless present only as a way of locating the self: it is a contingent fact and not a logical necessity. In fact, Ibn Sina presents a medial position between Descartes and Plotinus, for, according to the latter, consciousness, being a relation, signifies not utter self-identity but a kind of otherness; in complete self-identity, consciousness must cease altogether.
This argument, which seeks to establish dualism by doubting or denying the existence of the body, may be called the argument from abstraction in that it abstracts psychical functions from the total functions of the organism. Its fundamental weakness obviously is to insist that by thinking away the body, the body ceases to play a role in one's total consciousness. If the problem could be solved by a simple inspection of the self in this manner, nothing would be easier.
Ibn Sina seems to be aware that the position is liable to objections. He says (“Psychology,” V, 7): (If my self were identical with any bodily members) “say, the heart or the brain or a collection of such members and if it were their separate or total being of which I were conscious as being my self, then it would be necessary that my consciousness of my self should be my very consciousness of these members, for it is not possible that the same thing should be both cognized and uncognized in the same sense.”
He then goes on to say that “in fact I do not know by self-consciousness that I have a heart and a brain but I do so either by sense-perception (experience) or on authority.” “I mean by what I know to be my self that which I mean when I say: `I perceived, I intellected, I acted,' and all these attributes belong to me.” But, Ibn Sina pauses to consider the possible objection: if you are not aware of your self being a bodily member, you are neither directly aware that it is your soul or mind.
Ibn Sina's aswer to this objection is: “Whenever I present bodily attributes to this something which is the source of my mental functions, I find that it cannot accept these attributes,” and thus this incorporeal entity must be the soul.
Here we clearly see that the argument has taken a new turn and the phenomenon of direct consciousness is being supplemented by a further consideration to the effect that the disparateness between the mental and physical qualities is such that both cannot belong to one substance. And this is the perennial argument for the two-substance theory, viz. that the mental and the physical attributes are of qualitatively disparate genre.
From the acceptance of the view, that the mind is a substance, the con-clusion that the mind is a unity follows tautologically and Ibn Sina lays great stress on it. Indeed, once again, both doctrines, viz., the reality of faculties and the unitary nature of the soul, are stated with equal emphasis by him. The reality of mental faculties was established by Aristotle but was further pursued by his commentators, notably Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Ibn Sina has devoted a special chapter to the question (“Psychology,” I, 4) where he bases the multiplicity of faculties on the qualitative differences among mental operations. Nevertheless, he repeatedly stresses the necessity of an integrative bond (ribat) for the diverse operations.8 Indeed, he declares that even the vegetative and perceptual functions in man, for example, are specifically different from those in plants and animals, thanks to the rationality present in man which pervades and changes the character of all his functions. This integrative principle is the mind itself.
The soul in its real being is then an independent substance and is our transcendental self. We shall return to its transcendence when we discuss Ibn Sina's theory of knowledge in the next section. Here we shall note only that Ibn Sina's arguments for the immortality of the soul are based on the view that it is a substance and that it is not a form of the body to which it is attached intimately by some kind of mystical relation between the two.
There is in the soul which emerges from the separate substance of the active intelligence simultaneously with the emergence of a body with a definite temperament, a definite inclination to attach itself to this body, to care for it, and direct it to the mutual benefit. Further, the soul, as being incorporeal, is a simple substance and this ensures for it indestructibility and survival, after its origination, even when its body is destroyed.
But if at the transcendental level the soul is a pure spiritual entity and body does not enter into its definition even as a relational concept, at the phenomenal level the body must be included in its definition as a building enters into the definition of a (definite) builder. That is why Ibn Sina says that the study of the phenomenal aspect of the soul is in the field of natural science, while its transcendental being belongs to the study of metaphysics.
Now, since at the phenomenal level there exists between each soul and body a mystique which renders them exclusively appropriate for each other¬ - whether we understand this mystique or not - it follows that the transmigration of souls is impossible. (Transmigration is rejected by Aristotle who does not hold the two-substance view.) Indeed, this mystique is both the cause and the effect of the individuality of the self. Ibn Sina, therefore, totally rejects the idea of the possible identity of two souls or of the ego becoming fused with the Divine Ego, and he emphasizes that the survival must be individual.
It is a primary fact of experience that each individual is conscious of his self-¬identity which cannot be shaken by any kind of argument. Indeed, our philo¬sopher is so keen to affirm the individuality of personality that he says (“Psy¬chology,” V, 3) that even the qualitative nature of the intellectual operations in different individuals may be different - a statement which would have shocked not only the Platonists and Neo-Platonists, but even perhaps Aristotle, since, according to the universal Greek doctrine, the intellect represents, at least, the qualitative identity of mankind, a doctrine which was later pushed to its logical extremes by Ibn Rushd.
The relationship, then, between soul and body is so close that it may affect even the intellect. It goes without saying that all the other psycho-physical acts and states have both aspects - mental and physical. This was emphasized by Aristotle himself. But Aristotle's doctrine, even if it is not outright material¬istic, is quasi-materialistic and, whereas it either emphasizes the double aspect of each state or operation, or tends strongly to point out the influence of the body on the mental phenomena, exactly the reverse is the case with Ibn Sina. Indeed, his insistent stress on the influence of the mind on the body constitutes an outstanding and one of the most original features of his philosophy.
Whereas in Aristotle, life and mind give a new dimension to the material organism, in Ibn Sina, under the inspiration of the Neo-Platonic thought and the influence of his own metaphysically spiritual predilections, this no longer remains a mere dimension. The material side of nature is both pervaded and over¬shadowed by its mental and spiritual side, even though, as a medical man, he is keen to preserve the importance of the physical constitution, especially in the case of the character of the emotions and impulses. Indeed, as we shall see, his medical art helped him to gauge the extent of mental influence on apparently bodily states.
At the most common level, the influence of the mind on the body is visible in voluntary movement: whenever the mind wills to move the body, the body obeys. In his detailed account of animal motion, Ibn Sina has enumerated four stages instead of Aristotle's three. The three stages according to Aristotle are: (1) imagination or reason, (2) desire, and (3) movement of the muscles. Ibn Sina has split up the second into (1) desire and (2) impulsion (ijma') for, he says, not every desire can move to action but only when it is impulsive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
The second, and more important difference between Ibn Sina and the traditional view is that according to the latter the initiation of bodily movement must always lie in a cognitive state, whether it is imagination or reason. Ibn Sina holds that, while in most cases the cognitive act precedes the affective and the conative ones, this is not true of all cases.
We read (“Psychology,” IV, 4): “All (the appetitive and conative) faculties also follow imaginative faculties.... But sometimes it happens, e.g., in cases of physical pain, that our natural impulse tries to remove the cause of pain and thus initiates the process of stirring up imagina-tion. In this case, it is these (appetitive) faculties which drive the imagination to their own purpose, just as, in most cases, it is the imaginative faculty which drives the (appetitive and conative) faculties towards the object of imagination.”
Thus, according to Ibn Sina, the initiation of the animal motion can lie in the affections as well as in the cognitive states. Psychologically, this is of great significance and marks an advance over the purely and one--sidedly intellectual accounts of traditional philosophy.
Here we reach the second level of the influence of the mind on the body, viz., that of emotions and of the will. Ibn Sina tells us from his medical experience that actually physically sick men, through sheer will-power, can become well and, equally, healthy men can become really ill under the in¬fluence of sickness-obsession. Similarly, he says, if a plank of wood is put across a well-trodden path, one can walk on it quite well, but if it is put as a bridge and down below is a chasm, one can hardly creep over it without an actual fall. “This is because he pictures to himself a (possible) fall so vividly that the natural power of his limbs accords with it” (“Psychology,” IV, 4).
Indeed, strong emotions like fear can actually destroy the temperament of the organism and result in death, through influencing the vegetative func¬tions: “This happens when a judgment takes place in the soul; the judgment, being pure belief, does not influence the body, but rather when this belief is followed by joy or grief” (“Psychology,” I, 3). Joy and grief too are mental states, Ibn Sina goes on, but they affect the vegetative functions.
Again, “We do not regard it as impossible that something should occur to the soul, in so far as it is embodied, and be then followed by affections peculiar to the body itself. Imagination, inasmuch as it is knowledge, is not in itself a physical affection, but it may happen that, as a result, certain bodily organs, sexual for example, should expand.... Indeed, when an idea becomes firmly estab¬lished in the imagination, it necessitates a change in the temperament....” (ibid., IV, 4). Just as, we are told, the ideas of health present in the doctor's mind produce actual health in a patient, so the soul acts on the body; only the doctor produces cure through media and instruments, but the soul does it without any instruments.
If, indeed, the soul were strong enough, it could produce cure and illness even in another body without instruments. And here Ibn Sina produces evidence from the phenomena of hypnosis and suggestion (al-wahm al-'amil). He uses these considerations in order to show the possibility of miracles which are a part of the discussion of the question of prophethood.
Here we will recall what we said before that, according to Ibn Sina, a soul becomes exclusively attached to one body. Our newer consideration shows that it can transcend its own body to affect others. This would become possible only when the soul becomes akin to the universal soul, as it were.
It is on these grounds that Ibn Sina accepts the reality of such phenomena as the “evil eye” and magic in general. We may note that the influence of the emotions on the body was known and discussed in later Hellenism. Especially since the Stoic conception of the principle of “Sympathy” in nature and Plotinus' elaboration of that principle, the mind-body interaction was explained on these lines. What is scientifically new in Ibn Sina is that he also explains phenomena like magic, suggestion, and hypnosis, and, in general, the influence of one mind on other bodies and minds on these lines, i, e., by referring them to the properties of the influencing mind.
In Hellenism, these phenomena were accepted, but were regarded as exceptionally occult. And in the mystery-mongering superstition of later Hellenism, “Sympathy” was given an occult twist. Magical properties were assigned to special objects: metals, animals, etc., through which the magician or the hypnotizer worked or pretended to work on the gods or spirits to intervene in the realm of nature and to produce occult effects.
But the only principle which Ibn Sina will accept - and here he strikes a very modern note - is to refer efficacy to the special constitution of the mind itself. This rests on the premise that it is of the nature of mind to influence matter and it belongs to matter to obey the mind, and Ibn Sina will have no theurgic magic: “This is because the soul is (derived from) certain (higher) principles which clothe matter with forms contained in them, such that these forms actually constitute matter.... If these principles can bestow upon matter forms constitutive of natural species... it is not improbable that they can also bestow qualities, without there being any need of physical contact, action, or affection.... The form existing in the soul is the cause of what occurs in matter” (“Psychology,” IV, 4).
The reason for this great change is that in later Hellenism the human soul had lost its dignity and people relied more and more for the explanation of the “para-natural” phenomena on the intervention of the gods.
Senin, 21 Oktober 2024