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4. Translation from Barnes 1993. See further Mansion 1981. For the Arabic text, see
Badaw 1949, pp. 3345.
5. On this see Leszl 1972/3.
6. Note however that this objection is dialectical; Aristotle is not arguing that the
principles do need to be universal. The point that knowledge must be of the universal
is, however, said to be the greatest puzzle for Aristotles own view (1087a13);
it is resolved by discussing the dierence between potential and actual knowledge
(1987a1516), on which see further below.
7. With the exception of celestial and immaterial particulars; see further below.
March 15, 2005 Time: 11:59am adamson.tex
13. al-Kind, On the Quantity of Aristotles Books, ed. in al-Kind 1973, p. 372 lines
513, and in Guidi and Walzer 1940, V.1723. I have simplied the nal argument
slightly in my translation.
14. Despite portraying intelligible objects in such a Platonic way, al-Kind conates
them with Aristotelian universals, as is already implicit in the passage just quoted (the
term secondary substances comes from the Categories and refers to species, genera
and dierentiae). Similarly, he writes elsewhere: Perception is actually two things:
sensible perception and intellectual perception, because things are either universal or
particular. By the universal I mean the genera that belong to species, and the species
that belong to individuals. And by particulars I mean the individuals that belong to
species. Particular individuals are material and fall under the senses. On the other
hand genera and species do not fall under the senses, and are not perceived through
sensory perception, but rather fall under one of the powers of the complete, that is
human, soul, which is called the human intellect. Since the senses perceive individuals,
all of the sensibles that are represented in the soul belong to the power that uses
the senses. On the other hand every species concept, and what is above species, is
not represented by the soul using an image, because every image is sensible (On
First Philosophy, ed. in al-Kind 1997, vol. 2, p. 19 lines 1724; see also the English
translation in Ivry 1974. Cf. al-Kinds On Sleep and Dreams, in al-Kind 1973, vol.
1 p. 302 lines 39, and On Intellect, vol. 1, p. 345). Unfortunately he rarely tries
to explain how, if at all, knowing universals allows us to have any understanding
of particular objects. Normally, when he discusses particulars or sensibles in an
epistemic context, it is to emphasize their inaccessibility to the human intellect. (And
in one treatise, On Recollection, he argues explicitly that we cannot know intelligibles
on the basis of our grasp of sensible particulars: see Endress 1994. This tends to
increase our sense that there is an epistemic gap between the two realms.) The only
exception is the opening chapter of a work entitled On Rays, which is preserved only
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in Latin; here al-Kind does claim that all knowledge originates in sensation, and
that universals are abstracted from our experience of particulars. For this text see
DAlverny and Hudry 1974. I will further pursue these issues in a forthcoming book
on al-Kind.
15. On the reception of the Post An in Arabic, see Marmura 1990.
16. Al-Farab 1961, Section 33; Dunlop translation.
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17. Whether this is al-Farabs considered position is another matter, which cannot
be considered at length here. The problem is how to understand the intelligibles
that are, according to al-Farab, received in the human soul from the active intellect.
In a passage such as Attainment of Happiness 27 (see Alfarabi 2001), he contrasts
the single intelligible that we know (the example in this passage is Man) to natural
things in matter (e.g. individual men). But this does not settle the question whether,
to put it crudely, such intelligibles are more like Platonic Forms, separate objects of
knowledge, or more like Aristotelian universals. See further Davidson 1992, Ch. 3. In
fact I suspect that al-Farabs considered position was closer to that of Avicenna than
that of al-Kind; but this may emerge with clarity only from his logical works. In any
case other contemporaries of al-Farab and Avicenna were closer to al-Kinds point
of view, and seem to have maintained a starkly bifurcated epistemology. I argue
for this in a forthcoming paper entitled The Kindian Tradition: the Structure of
Philosophy in Arabic Neoplatonism, in a volume to be edited by Cristina DAncona.
18. It corresponds to haplos at 71a24 and reects the Arabic translation, Badaw
1949, p. 311, which has ala l-it.laq.
19. This part of Avicennas Shifa has not received as much attention as it
deserves. An honourable recent exception is McGinnis 2003, which discusses the
Demonstrations treatment of induction and the extent to which Avicenna allows
experience to serve as a basis for demonstrative knowledge. Marmura 1990 also
includes some helpful remarks on the Demonstration. He briey sketches the
connection between the Post An and Avicennas view on divine knowledge in both
Marmura 1962 and Marmura 1990. And as mentioned the recent Zghal 2004 views
the problem of divine knowledge against the background of the logical works,
including the Demonstration. Unfortunately there is as yet no translation of the
Demonstration to make the work accessible to non-Arabists. (For the Arabic text
see Avicenna 1956, cited by page and line number.) Still, some very good work has
been done on Avicennan epistemology and logic, drawing mostly on his psychological
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treatises but also on the Demonstration to some extent. See especially Gutas 1998,
Gutas 2001, Hasse 2001, and Hasse 2000 which includes brief but incisive remarks
about Avicennas syllogistic theory on pp. 180181. Deborah Black has also explored
Avicennas logic and epistemology in several publications; see especially Black 1990.
I have tried to build on these studies in Adamson 2004a. For Avicennas syllogistic
logic as he developed it on the basis of the Prior Analytics, see now Thom 2003 and
Street 2004.
20. Stephen Menn has suggested to me that the requirement that certain knowledge
be of unchanging things makes more sense if certainty is understood as a stable
disposition rather than a momentary, occurrent state.
March 15, 2005 Time: 11:59am adamson.tex
21. See also Demonstration 220.17221.10, which argues that sensation does not
perceive the intelligible human when it grasps a human.
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22. On this see Druart 2000, Wisnovsky 2003, and Adamson 2004b. The canonical
presentation of his argument is in the psychological section of The Healing, paralleled
in the shorter Salvation: see Avicenna 1959 and 1912, respectively.
23. Having said this, it is important to bear in mind that once sensation has grasped,
say, that Zayd is human, the rational soul can entertain and accept the proposition
that Zayd is human. This is already clear from the process described above, in which
the rational soul subsumes a particular under a universal and thus knows it in a
universal way. Furthermore, as we will see below, the human intellect is capable of
kinds of rational thought that do not attain the rank of knowledge, such as opinion.
God, by contrast, engages in no form of intellection other than knowledge; and
this is, I take it, also true of the pure intellects lower than God, such as the Active
Intellect.
24. To some extent this echoes a contrast Avicenna makes between dierent grades
of human intellection: see Adamson 2004a.
March 15, 2005 Time: 11:59am adamson.tex
27. As mentioned in the previous note, even this is rather misleading: the intellect
has no knowledge of the particular sun as such (cf. Aristotles discussion of dening
the sun at Metaphysics VII.15, 1040a27b4). Rather it knows everything there is
to know about the sun by knowing its species, because the sun has no accidental
characteristics. In any case, Avicennas chief example is not the sun or moon, but
the eclipse. And he emphasizes both here and in the Demonstration that an eclipse is
not the only member of its species: there are many lunar eclipses, and knowledge of a
single universal covers all of them. For an in-depth discussion of the eclipse example
see Zghal 2004, pp. 704.
28. Cf. the Arabic version, Badaw 1949, p. 403; it contrasts opinion (z.ann) to aql
and ilm, corresponding to nous and episteme.
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29. As pointed out by Barnes 1993 in his commentary (p. 198). He incidentally
suggests that the instability of opinions could also be because those who hold mere
opinions rather than having knowledge are liable to change their minds.
30. Note again that this does not mean that the propositions in question cannot
concern things that are only contingently existent. As Marmura 1990, pp. 945,
points out, the necessity in question attaches to the truth of the proposition, not the
objects the proposition concerns. For example it is necessarily true that all men are
animals, even though there are no necessarily existing men.
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34. In passages such as the following: Because He is the Creator of all existence, by
His essence He intellects that which is created by Him. He is the Creator of perfect
existents [sc. things in the heavens] in themselves, but [is the Creator] of generated
and corrupted existents through their species, in the rst instance (awwalan), and as
individuals through the intermediary of [the species] (359.12); Nothing exists that
has not somehow come to be necessary through its cause; we have already shown
this. So these causes, through the impacts they have, give rise to particular things
existing from them. And the First knows the causes and what conforms to them,
so He knows necessarily what they give rise to. . . For it is impossible that He know
those [sc. the causes] but not these [sc. the eects] (359.16360.2). The question of
how God even knows universals, never mind particulars, would presumably also be
answered with reference to knowing the universals in Himself as cause.
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35. A question arises here with respect to common accidents, i.e. accidents belonging
to all members of a species. Would God know, for instance, that Zayd is able to
laugh, since all humans can laugh, even though this does not belong to our essence?
Jon McGinnis has pointed out to me a passage in the Demonstration (I.8, pp. 8586)
where Avicenna says that the ability to laugh is an eect of our rationality, though
one could still coherently imagine a human who is unable to laugh. It seems to me
that if such a common accident is a consequence of essential features in this way,
God could know that every species member has that accident.
36. Except, that is, generically: for example even though the paleness of my
skin is accidental, and unknown to intellect as such, one could have intellectual,
demonstrative knowledge of paleness in general. For instance one could know that
paleness is a skin colour, or that paleness results from not being out in the sun.
37. Thus, when Avicenna speaks of Gods attribute of knowledge, he means not (for
instance) that for every true proposition P, God knows that P. Rather he means
that for every proposition P such that P can be known, God knows that P.
March 15, 2005 Time: 11:59am adamson.tex
Department of Philosophy
Kings College London
Strand
London WC2R 2LS
peter.adamson@kcl.ac.uk
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