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114-477: The expression al-hikmat al-muta’āliyah comprises two terms: al-hikmat (meaning literally, wisdom ; and technically, philosophy , and by contextual extension theosophy ) and muta’āliyah (meaning exalted or transcendent ). This school of Mulla Sadra in Islamic philosophy is usually called al-hikmat al-muta’āliyah. It is a most appropriate name for his school, not only for historical reasons, but also because

228-475: A god or gods exist, whether numbers and other abstract objects exist, and whether possible worlds exist. Epistemology is concerned with what can be known or inferred as likely and how, whereby in the modern world emphasis is put on reason , empirical evidence and science as sources and methods to determine or investigate reality. A common colloquial usage would have reality mean "perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes toward reality", as in "My reality

342-421: A real sense and analogical reasoning in a metaphorical sense. On the other hand, al-Ghazali (1058–1111; and, in modern times, Abu Muhammad Asem al-Maqdisi ) argued that Qiyas refers to analogical reasoning in a real sense and categorical syllogism in a metaphorical sense. Other Islamic scholars at the time, however, argued that the term Qiyas refers to both analogical reasoning and categorical syllogism in

456-576: A TOE, it would necessarily be a set of equations. He wrote, "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?" On a much broader and more subjective level, private experiences, curiosity, inquiry, and the selectivity involved in personal interpretation of events shapes reality as seen by one and only one person and hence is called phenomenological . While this form of reality might be common to others as well, it could at times also be so unique to oneself as to never be experienced or agreed upon by anyone else. Much of

570-399: A belief or we don't have a belief") with the more permissive, probabilistic notion of credence ("there is an entire spectrum of degrees of belief, not a simple dichotomy between belief and non-belief"). Philosophy addresses two different aspects of the topic of reality: the nature of reality itself, and the relationship between the mind (as well as language and culture) and reality. On

684-531: A central role in the subsequent development of European logic during the Renaissance . According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy : For the Islamic philosophers, logic included not only the study of formal patterns of inference and their validity but also elements of the philosophy of language and even of epistemology and metaphysics . Because of territorial disputes with

798-419: A certain amount. Constructivism and intuitionism are realistic about objects that can be explicitly constructed, but reject the use of the principle of the excluded middle to prove existence by reductio ad absurdum . The traditional debate has focused on whether an abstract (immaterial, intelligible) realm of numbers has existed in addition to the physical (sensible, concrete) world. A recent development

912-478: A different approach in medicine. Ibn Sina contributed inventively to the development of inductive logic , which he used to pioneer the idea of a syndrome . In his medical writings, Avicenna was the first to describe the methods of agreement, difference and concomitant variation which are critical to inductive logic and the scientific method . Ibn Hazm (994–1064) wrote the Scope of Logic , in which he stressed on

1026-415: A distinction between reality and existence. In fact, many analytic philosophers today tend to avoid the term "real" and "reality" in discussing ontological issues. But for those who would treat "is real" the same way they treat "exists", one of the leading questions of analytic philosophy has been whether existence (or reality) is a property of objects. It has been widely held by analytic philosophers that it

1140-703: A firm basis for all human knowledge , including scientific knowledge , and could establish philosophy as a "rigorous science". Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticised and developed by his student and assistant Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), by existentialists like Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), and by other philosophers, such as Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005), Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), and Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889–1977). Skeptical hypotheses in philosophy suggest that reality could be very different from what we think it is; or at least that we cannot prove it

1254-755: A novel approach to logic in Kalam , but this approach was later displaced by ideas from Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy with the rise of the Mu'tazili philosophers, who highly valued Aristotle 's Organon . The works of Hellenistic-influenced Islamic philosophers were crucial in the reception of Aristotelian logic in medieval Europe, along with the commentaries on the Organon by Averroes . The works of al-Farabi , Avicenna , al-Ghazali and other Muslim logicians who often criticized and corrected Aristotelian logic and introduced their own forms of logic, also played

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1368-400: A particular function ( Hilary Putnam ). Some have also attempted to offer significant revisions to our notion of belief, including eliminativists about belief who argue that there is no phenomenon in the natural world which corresponds to our folk psychological concept of belief ( Paul Churchland ) and formal epistemologists who aim to replace our bivalent notion of belief ("either we have

1482-465: A particularly strong influence of Muslim philosophers being felt in natural philosophy , psychology and metaphysics . Islamic philosophy refers to philosophy produced in an Islamic society. As it is not necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor exclusively produced by Muslims , many scholars prefer the term "Arabic philosophy." Islamic philosophy is a generic term that can be defined and used in different ways. In its broadest sense it means

1596-455: A person who if asked about the color of snow would assert "snow is white"). There are various ways that contemporary philosophers have tried to describe beliefs, including as representations of ways that the world could be ( Jerry Fodor ), as dispositions to act as if certain things are true ( Roderick Chisholm ), as interpretive schemes for making sense of someone's actions ( Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson ), or as mental states that fill

1710-457: A physically 'real' world". The hypothesis suggests that worlds corresponding to different sets of initial conditions, physical constants, or altogether different equations should be considered real. The theory can be considered a form of Platonism in that it posits the existence of mathematical entities, but can also be considered a mathematical monism in that it denies that anything exists except mathematical objects. The problem of universals

1824-463: A real sense. The first original Arabic writings on logic were produced by al-Kindi (Alkindus) (805–873), who produced a summary on earlier logic up to his time. The first writings on logic with non-Aristotelian elements was produced by al-Farabi (Alfarabi) (873–950), who discussed the topics of future contingents , the number and relation of the categories , the relation between logic and grammar , and non-Aristotelian forms of inference . He

1938-420: A result of conquests, along with pre-Islamic Indian philosophy and Persian philosophy . Many of the early philosophical debates centered around reconciling religion and reason, the latter exemplified by Greek philosophy. In early Islamic thought, which refers to philosophy during the " Islamic Golden Age ", traditionally dated between the 8th and 12th centuries, two main currents may be distinguished. The first

2052-543: A revolution in the metaphysics of being by his thesis that there are no immutable essences, but that each essence is determined and variable according to the degree of intensity of its act of existence. In his view, reality is existence, in a variety of ways, and these different ways look to us like essences. What first affects us are things that exist and we form ideas of essences afterward, so existence precedes essence. This position referred to as primacy of existence ( Arabic : Isalat al-Wujud ). Mulla Sadra's existentialism

2166-524: A single value be produced with certainty). A closely related term is counterfactual definiteness (CFD), used to refer to the claim that one can meaningfully speak of the definiteness of results of measurements that have not been performed (i.e. the ability to assume the existence of objects, and properties of objects, even when they have not been measured). Local realism is a significant feature of classical mechanics, of general relativity , and of classical electrodynamics ; but not quantum mechanics . In

2280-406: A special position. The founders of quantum mechanics debated the role of the observer, and of them, Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg believed that quantum mechanics expressed the observers knowledge and when an experiment was completed the additional knowledge should be incorporated in the wave function, an effect that came to be called state reduction or collapse . This point of view, which

2394-548: A strict rationalism with which to interpret Islamic doctrine. Their attempt was one of the first to pursue a rational theology in Islam. They were however severely criticized by other Islamic philosophers, both Maturidis and Asharites . The great Asharite scholar Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi wrote the work Al-Mutakallimin fi 'Ilm al-Kalam against the Mutazalites. In later times, Kalam was used to mean simply "theology", i.e.

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2508-428: A subconscious set of mental filters formed from their beliefs and experiences, every individual interprets the same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder". His ideas influenced the work of his friend Robert Anton Wilson . The status of abstract entities, particularly numbers, is a topic of discussion in mathematics. In the philosophy of mathematics, the best known form of realism about numbers

2622-540: A systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantitatively compare the interval between (or duration of) events . Although space and time are held to be transcendentally ideal in this sense, they are also empirically real , i.e. not mere illusions. Idealist writers such as J. M. E. McTaggart in The Unreality of Time have argued that time

2736-448: A tendency: in the way that glass objects tend to break, or are disposed to break, even if they do not actually break. Likewise, the mind-independent properties of quantum systems could consist of a tendency to respond to particular measurements with particular values with ascertainable probability. Such an ontology would be metaphysically realistic, without being realistic in the physicist's sense of "local realism" (which would require that

2850-460: A totally different meaning from "reason" in philosophy . The historiography of Islamic philosophy is marked by disputes as to how the subject should be properly interpreted. Some of the key issues involve the comparative importance of eastern intellectuals such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and of western thinkers such as Ibn Rushd, and also whether Islamic philosophy can be read at face value or should be interpreted in an esoteric fashion. Supporters of

2964-696: A work now called the EPR paradox , Einstein relied on local realism to suggest that hidden variables were missing in quantum mechanics. However, John S. Bell subsequently showed that the predictions of quantum mechanics are inconsistent with hidden variables, a result known as Bell's theorem . The predictions of quantum mechanics have been verified: Bell's inequalities are violated, meaning either local realism or counterfactual definiteness must be incorrect. Different interpretations of quantum mechanics violate different parts of local realism and/or counterfactual definiteness . The transition from "possible" to "actual"

3078-508: Is Kalam , which mainly dealt with Islamic theological questions, and the other is Falsafa , which was founded on interpretations of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism . There were attempts by later philosopher-theologians at harmonizing both trends, notably by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) who founded the school of Avicennism , Ibn Rushd (Averroes) who founded the school of Averroism , and others such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) and Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī . ʿIlm al-Kalām ( Arabic : علم الكلام )

3192-399: Is Platonic realism , which grants them abstract, immaterial existence. Other forms of realism identify mathematics with the concrete physical universe. Anti-realist stances include formalism and fictionalism . Some approaches are selectively realistic about some mathematical objects but not others. Finitism rejects infinite quantities. Ultra-finitism accepts finite quantities up to

3306-552: Is not a property at all, though this view has lost some ground in recent decades. On the other hand, particularly in discussions of objectivity that have feet in both metaphysics and epistemology, philosophical discussions of "reality" often concern the ways in which reality is, or is not, in some way dependent upon (or, to use fashionable jargon , "constructed" out of) mental and cultural factors such as perceptions, beliefs, and other mental states, as well as cultural artifacts, such as religions and political movements , on up to

3420-543: Is "based on the premise that everything in the order of nature, including celestial spheres , undergoes substantial change and transformation as a result of the self- flow ( fayd ) and penetration of being ( sarayan al-wujud ) which gives every concrete individual entity its share of being. In contrast to Aristotle and Ibn Sina who had accepted change only in four categories , i.e., quantity ( kamm ), quality ( kayf ), position ( wad’ ) and place ( ‘ayn ), Sadra defines change as an all-pervasive reality running through

3534-401: Is a major topic of quantum physics , with related theories including quantum darwinism . The quantum mind –body problem refers to the philosophical discussions of the mind–body problem in the context of quantum mechanics. Since quantum mechanics involves quantum superpositions , which are not perceived by observers , some interpretations of quantum mechanics place conscious observers in

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3648-460: Is a perennial topic in metaphysics. For instance, Parmenides taught that reality was a single unchanging Being, whereas Heraclitus wrote that all things flow. The 20th-century philosopher Heidegger thought previous philosophers have lost sight of the question of Being (qua Being) in favour of the questions of beings (existing things), so he believed that a return to the Parmenidean approach

3762-517: Is a spiritual substance separate from the body, it uses the body as a tool. The famous example given by Ibn Sina to show that the soul is a spiritual substance separate from the material body and to show one's self-awareness, is known as "insan-i tair" (flying person) and was used throughout the West in the Middle Ages. In this example, he asks his readers to imagine themselves suspended in the sky (in

3876-410: Is a subjective attitude that a proposition is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance , take, or opinion about something. In epistemology , philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false . To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow

3990-458: Is also credited for categorizing logic into two separate groups, the first being "idea" and the second being " proof ". Averroes (1126–1198), author of the most elaborate commentaries on Aristotelian logic, was the last major logician from al-Andalus . Avicenna (980–1037) developed his own system of logic known as "Avicennian logic" as an alternative to Aristotelian logic. By the 12th century, Avicennian logic had replaced Aristotelian logic as

4104-482: Is an accident of accidents" and also anticipated Alexius Meinong 's "view about nonexistent objects ." He also provided early arguments for "a " necessary being" as cause of all other existents ." The idea of "essence preced[ing] existence" is a concept which dates back to Avicenna and his school as well as Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi and his Illuminationist philosophy . " Existence preced[ing] essence ",

4218-421: Is an ancient problem in metaphysics about whether universals exist. Universals are general or abstract qualities, characteristics, properties , kinds or relations , such as being male/female, solid/liquid/gas or a certain colour, that can be predicated of individuals or particulars or that individuals or particulars can be regarded as sharing or participating in. For example, Scott, Pat, and Chris have in common

4332-521: Is an illusion. As well as differing about the reality of time as a whole, metaphysical theories of time can differ in their ascriptions of reality to the past , present and future separately. Time, and the related concepts of process and evolution are central to the system-building metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne . The term " possible world " goes back to Leibniz's theory of possible worlds, used to analyse necessity, possibility , and similar modal notions . Modal realism

4446-457: Is known as direct realism when developed to counter indirect or representative realism, also known as epistemological dualism , the philosophical position that our conscious experience is not of the real world itself but of an internal representation, a miniature virtual-reality replica of the world. Timothy Leary coined the influential term Reality Tunnel , by which he means a kind of representative realism . The theory states that, with

4560-437: Is matter eternal, but form is potentially inherent in matter; otherwise, it were a creation ex nihilo " (Munk, "Mélanges," p. 444). According to this theory, therefore, the existence of this world is not only a possibility, as Avicenna declared, but also a necessity. In early Islamic philosophy, logic played an important role. Sharia (Islamic law) placed importance on formulating standards of argument, which gave rise to

4674-523: Is no mind or soul over and above such mental events . Finally, anti-realism became a fashionable term for any view which held that the existence of some object depends upon the mind or cultural artifacts. The view that the so-called external world is really merely a social, or cultural, artifact, called social constructionism , is one variety of anti-realism. Cultural relativism is the view that social issues such as morality are not absolute, but at least partially cultural artifact . The nature of being

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4788-470: Is not your reality." This is often used just as a colloquialism indicating that the parties to a conversation agree, or should agree, not to quibble over deeply different conceptions of what is real. For example, in a religious discussion between friends, one might say (attempting humor), "You might disagree, but in my reality, everyone goes to heaven." Reality can be defined in a way that links it to worldviews or parts of them (conceptual frameworks): Reality

4902-405: Is not. Examples include: Jain philosophy postulates that seven tattva (truths or fundamental principles) constitute reality. These seven tattva are: Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world (the universe) described by science (perhaps ideal science) is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science , it

5016-557: Is often framed as an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" The debate over what the success of science involves centers primarily on the status of entities that are not directly observable discussed by scientific theories . Generally, those who are scientific realists state that one can make reliable claims about these entities (viz., that they have the same ontological status) as directly observable entities, as opposed to instrumentalism . The most used and studied scientific theories today state more or less

5130-454: Is pure existence ... is therefore a Necessary Being." For Mulla Sadra, "existence precedes the essence and is thus principle since something has to exist first and then have an essence." This is primarily the argument that lies at the heart of Mulla Sadra's philosophy. Mulla Sadra substituted a metaphysics of existence for the traditional metaphysics of essences, and giving priority Ab initio to existence over quiddity . Mulla Sadra effected

5244-498: Is related to alethic logic : a proposition is necessary if it is true in all possible worlds, and possible if it is true in at least one. The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is a similar idea in science. The philosophical implications of a physical TOE are frequently debated. For example, if philosophical physicalism is true, a physical TOE will coincide with a philosophical theory of everything. The "system building" style of metaphysics attempts to answer all

5358-405: Is said not to depend on perceptions, beliefs, language, or any other human artifact, one can speak of "realism about " that object. A correspondence theory of knowledge about what exists claims that "true" knowledge of reality represents accurate correspondence of statements about and images of reality with the actual reality that the statements or images are attempting to represent. For example,

5472-510: Is taken up with arguing that contingent existents cannot stand alone and must end up in a Necessary Existent." Theologians, particularly among the Muʿtazilites , agreed with Aristotelian metaphysics that non-existence is a thing ( s̲h̲ayʾ ) and an entity ( d̲h̲āt ). According to Aristotelian philosophy, non-existence has to be distinguished by absolute non-existence, that is absolute nothingness, and relative non-existence. The latter can refer to

5586-448: Is that there simply and literally is no reality beyond the perceptions or beliefs we each have about reality. Such attitudes are summarized in popular statements, such as "Perception is reality" or "Life is how you perceive reality" or "reality is what you can get away with" ( Robert Anton Wilson ), and they indicate anti-realism  – that is, the view that there is no objective reality, whether acknowledged explicitly or not. Many of

5700-525: Is the mathematical universe hypothesis , the theory that only a mathematical world exists, with the finite, physical world being an illusion within it. An extreme form of realism about mathematics is the mathematical multiverse hypothesis advanced by Max Tegmark . Tegmark's sole postulate is: All structures that exist mathematically also exist physically . That is, in the sense that "in those [worlds] complex enough to contain self-aware substructures [they] will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in

5814-561: Is the philosophy that seeks Islamic theological principles through dialectic . In Arabic , the word literally means "speech". One of the first debates was that between partisans of the Qadar ( قدر meaning "Fate"), who affirmed free will ; and the Jabarites ( جبر meaning "force", "constraint"), who believed in fatalism . At the 2nd century of the Hijra , a new movement arose in

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5928-424: Is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within the universe , as opposed to that which is only imaginary , nonexistent or nonactual. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence . In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown. Philosophical questions about the nature of reality or existence or being are considered under

6042-404: Is the totality of all things, structures (actual and conceptual), events (past and present) and phenomena, whether observable or not. It is what a world view (whether it be based on individual or shared human experience) ultimately attempts to describe or map. Certain ideas from physics, philosophy, sociology, literary criticism , and other fields shape various theories of reality. One such theory

6156-495: Is the view, notably propounded by David Kellogg Lewis , that all possible worlds are as real as the actual world. In short: the actual world is regarded as merely one among an infinite set of logically possible worlds, some "nearer" to the actual world and some more remote. Other theorists may use the Possible World framework to express and explore problems without committing to it ontologically. Possible world theory

6270-457: Is therefore fundamentally different from Western existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre . Sartre said that human beings have no essence before their existence because, there is no Creator, no God. This is the meaning of "existence precedes essence" in Sartre's existentialism. Another central concept of Mulla Sadra's philosophy is the theory of "substantial motion" ( al-harakat al-jawhariyyah ), which

6384-405: Is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection . For example, few individuals carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent (e.g. a person actively thinking "snow is white"), but can instead be dispositional (e.g.

6498-520: Is without description or definition and, in particular, without quiddity or essence ( la mahiyya lahu ). Consequently, Avicenna's ontology is ' existentialist ' when accounting for being– qua –existence in terms of necessity ( wujub ), while it is essentialist in terms of thinking about being– qua –existence in terms of "contingency– qua –possibility" ( imkan or mumkin al-wujud , meaning "contingent being"). Some argue that Avicenna anticipated Frege and Bertrand Russell in "holding that existence

6612-588: The Greek phainómenon , meaning "that which appears", and lógos , meaning "study". In Husserl's conception, phenomenology is primarily concerned with making the structures of consciousness, and the phenomena which appear in acts of consciousness, objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Such reflection was to take place from a highly modified " first person " viewpoint, studying phenomena not as they appear to "my" consciousness, but to any consciousness whatsoever. Husserl believed that phenomenology could thus provide

6726-537: The Illuminationist school , founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155–1191), who developed the idea of "decisive necessity", an important innovation in the history of logical philosophical speculation, and in favour of inductive reasoning . Avicenna 's proof for the existence of God was the first ontological argument , which he proposed in the Metaphysics section of The Book of Healing . This

6840-460: The absolute a positive one. The question of direct or "naïve" realism , as opposed to indirect or "representational" realism , arises in the philosophy of perception and of mind out of the debate over the nature of conscious experience ; the epistemological question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by neural processes in our brain. Naïve realism

6954-465: The active intellect , which he believed to be the hypostasis by which God communicates truth to the human mind and imparts order and intelligibility to nature . His "Floating Man" thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations , which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness . He thus concludes that

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7068-702: The duties of the heart as opposed to (or in conjunction with) fiqh (jurisprudence), the duties of the body . Falsafa is a Greek loanword meaning "philosophy" (the Greek pronunciation philosophia became falsafa ). From the 9th century onward, due to Caliph al-Ma'mun and his successor, ancient Greek philosophy was introduced among the Arabs and the Peripatetic School began to find able representatives. Among them were Al-Kindi , Al-Farabi , Avicenna and Averroes . Another trend, represented by

7182-439: The immortality of the human soul, using both demonstrative reasoning and material from the hadith corpus as forms of evidence . Later Islamic scholars viewed this work as a response to Avicenna 's metaphysical argument on spiritual resurrection (as opposed to bodily resurrection), which was earlier criticized by al-Ghazali . The Muslim physician -philosophers, Avicenna and Ibn al-Nafis , developed their own theories on

7296-578: The rubric of ontology , which is a major branch of metaphysics in the Western philosophical tradition. Ontological questions also feature in diverse branches of philosophy , including the philosophy of science , of religion , of mathematics , and philosophical logic . These include questions about whether only physical objects are real (i.e., physicalism ), whether reality is fundamentally immaterial (e.g. idealism ), whether hypothetical unobservable entities posited by scientific theories exist, whether

7410-510: The scientific method can verify that a statement is true based on the observable evidence that a thing exists. Many humans can point to the Rocky Mountains and say that this mountain range exists, and continues to exist even if no one is observing it or making statements about it. One can also speak of anti -realism about the same objects. Anti-realism is the latest in a long series of terms for views opposed to realism. Perhaps

7524-461: The "impossibility of the existence of an actual infinite" and of the "impossibility of completing an actual infinite by successive addition". In metaphysics , Avicenna (Ibn Sina) defined truth as: What corresponds in the mind to what is outside it. Avicenna elaborated on his definition of truth in his Metaphysics : The truth of a thing is the property of the being of each thing which has been established in it. Reality Reality

7638-414: The 20th century, views similar to Berkeley's were called phenomenalism . Phenomenalism differs from Berkeleyan idealism primarily in that Berkeley believed that minds, or souls, are not merely ideas nor made up of ideas, whereas varieties of phenomenalism, such as that advocated by Russell , tended to go farther to say that the mind itself is merely a collection of perceptions, memories, etc., and that there

7752-1194: The 2nd century of the Islamic calendar (early 9th century CE) and ended with Ibn-Rushd (Averroes) in the 6th century AH (late 12th century CE), broadly coinciding with the period known as the Golden Age of Islam . The death of Averroes effectively marked the end of a particular discipline of Islamic philosophy usually called the Peripatetic Islamic school, and philosophical activity declined significantly in Western Islamic countries such as Islamic Iberia and North Africa . Islamic philosophy persisted for much longer in Muslim Eastern countries, in particular Safavid Persia, Ottoman , and Mughal Empires, where several schools of philosophy continued to flourish: Avicennism , Averroism , Illuminationist philosophy, Mystical philosophy, Transcendent theosophy , and Isfahan philosophy. Ibn Khaldun , in his Muqaddimah , made important contributions to

7866-650: The 7th century with the process of Qiyas , before the Arabic translations of Aristotle's works. Later, during the Islamic Golden Age , there was debate among Islamic philosophers, logicians and theologians over whether the term Qiyas refers to analogical reasoning, inductive reasoning or categorical syllogism. Some Islamic scholars argued that Qiyas refers to inductive reasoning. Ibn Hazm (994–1064) disagreed, arguing that Qiyas does not refer to inductive reasoning but to categorical syllogistic reasoning in

7980-508: The Arabic grammarians, Islamic philosophers were very interested in working out the relationship between logic and language, and they devoted much discussion to the question of the subject matter and aims of logic in relation to reasoning and speech. In the area of formal logical analysis, they elaborated upon the theory of terms , propositions and syllogisms as formulated in Aristotle's Categories, De interpretatione and Prior Analytics. In

8094-747: The Brethren of Purity, used Aristotelian language to expound a fundamentally Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean world view. During the Abbasid caliphate , a number of thinkers and scientists, some of them heterodox Muslims or non-Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West . Three speculative thinkers, Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Al-Kindi , combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. Ahmad Sirhindi , 17th century Indian Islamic scholar, has viewed that

8208-514: The Greek philosophy about creations are incompatible with Islamic teaching by quoting several chapters of Quran . Furthermore, Sirhindi criticize the method of interpretating the meaning of Quran with philosophy. By the 12th century, Kalam , attacked by both the philosophers and the orthodox, perished for lack of champions. At the same time, however, Falsafa came under serious critical scrutiny. The most devastating attack came from Al-Ghazali , whose work Tahafut al-Falasifa ( The Incoherence of

8322-420: The Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—falsafa ( lit.   ' philosophy ' ), which refers to philosophy as well as logic , mathematics , and physics ; and Kalam ( lit.   ' speech ' ), which refers to a rationalist form of Scholastic Islamic theology which includes the schools of Maturidiyah , Ashaira and Mu'tazila . Early Islamic philosophy began with Al-Kindi in

8436-703: The Philosophers ) attacked the main arguments of the Peripatetic School. Averroes, Maimonides ' contemporary, was one of the last of the Islamic Peripatetics and set out to defend the views of the Falsafa against al-Ghazali's criticism. The theories of Ibn Rushd do not differ fundamentally from those of Ibn Bajjah and Ibn Tufail , who only follow the teachings of Avicenna and Al-Farabi. Like all Islamic Peripatetics, Averroes admits

8550-435: The absence of a quality or the potentiality of something. Muʿtazilite thinkers such as al-Fārābī and ibn Sīnā hold the position that things had a relative existence prior to creation. God knew what he was going to create and God gave them the accident of existence. Contrarily, Asharites regard existence as essence. Islamic philosophy, imbued as it is with Islamic theology , distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism

8664-404: The air), without any sensory contact, isolated from all sensations: The person in this state is still realizing himself even though there is no material contact. In that case, the idea that the soul (person) is dependent on matter, that is, any physical object, does not make sense, and the soul is a substance on its own. (Here, the concept of “I exist even though I am not in the dense-rough matter of

8778-487: The comprehension of reality. Out of all the realities, the reality of everyday life is the most important one since our consciousness requires us to be completely aware and attentive to the experience of everyday life. In philosophy , potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion , causality , ethics , and physiology in his Physics , Metaphysics , Nicomachean Ethics , and De Anima . A belief

8892-400: The concepts of science and philosophy are often defined culturally and socially . This idea was elaborated by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). The Social Construction of Reality , a book about the sociology of knowledge written by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann , was published in 1966. It explained how knowledge is acquired and used for

9006-459: The difference between essence and existence . Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. This was first described by Avicenna 's works on metaphysics , who was himself influenced by al-Farabi . Some orientalists (or those particularly influenced by Thomist scholarship) argued that Avicenna was the first to view existence ( wujud ) as an accident that happens to

9120-482: The doctrines of Mulla Sadra are both hikmah or theosophy in its original sense and an intellectual vision of the transcendent which leads to the Transcendent Itself. So Mulla Sadra’s school is transcendent for both historical and metaphysical reasons . When Mulla Sadra talked about hikmah or theosophy in his words, he usually meant the transcendent philosophy. He gave many definitions to the term hikmah,

9234-688: The dominant system of logic in the Islamic world. The first criticisms of Aristotelian logic were written by Avicenna (980–1037), who produced independent treatises on logic rather than commentaries. He criticized the logical school of Baghdad for their devotion to Aristotle at the time. He investigated the theory of definition and classification and the quantification of the predicates of categorical propositions , and developed an original theory on " temporal modal " syllogism. Its premises included modifiers such as "at all times", "at most times", and "at some time". While Avicenna (980–1037) often relied on deductive reasoning in philosophy, he used

9348-495: The early modern period include the Leibniz 's Monadology , Descartes 's Dualism , Spinoza 's Monism . Hegel 's Absolute idealism and Whitehead 's Process philosophy were later systems. Other philosophers do not believe its techniques can aim so high. Some scientists think a more mathematical approach than philosophy is needed for a TOE, for instance Stephen Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time that even if we had

9462-427: The entire cosmos including the category of substance ( jawhar )." Heraclitus described a similar concept centuries earlier ( Πάντα ῥεῖ - panta rhei - "everything is in a state of flux"), while Gottfried Leibniz described a similar concept a century after Mulla Sadra's work. Islamic metaphysics Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in

9576-419: The entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that soul" and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human indicates by saying ‘ I ’." While he was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan , Avicenna wrote his "Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul. He referred to the living human intelligence , particularly

9690-463: The essence ( mahiyya ). However, this aspect of ontology is not the most central to the distinction that Avicenna established between essence and existence. One cannot therefore make the claim that Avicenna was the proponent of the concept of essentialism per se , given that existence ( al-wujud ) when thought of in terms of necessity would ontologically translate into a notion of the "Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself" ( wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi ), which

9804-570: The first was idealism , so called because reality was said to be in the mind, or a product of our ideas . Berkeleyan idealism is the view, propounded by the Irish empiricist George Berkeley , that the objects of perception are actually ideas in the mind. In this view, one might be tempted to say that reality is a "mental construct"; this is not quite accurate, however, since, in Berkeley's view, perceptual ideas are created and coordinated by God. By

9918-609: The hypothesis of the intelligence of the spheres and the hypothesis of universal emanation, through which motion is communicated from place to place to all parts of the universe as far as the supreme world—hypotheses which, in the mind of the Arabic philosophers, did away with the dualism involved in Aristotle's doctrine of pure energy and eternal matter. But while Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and other Persian and Muslim philosophers hurried, so to speak, over subjects that trenched on traditional beliefs, Ibn Rushd delighted in dwelling upon them with full particularity and stress. Thus he says, "Not only

10032-444: The idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing , and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms , but as a primary given, a substance . This argument was later refined and simplified by René Descartes in epistemic terms when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness." While ancient Greek philosophers believed that

10146-465: The importance of sense perception as a source of knowledge. Al-Ghazali (Algazel) (1058–1111) had an important influence on the use of logic in theology, making use of Avicennian logic in Kalam . Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (b. 1149) criticised Aristotle's " first figure " and developed a form of inductive logic , foreshadowing the system of inductive logic developed by John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Systematic refutations of Greek logic were written by

10260-424: The important questions in a coherent way, providing a complete picture of the world. Plato and Aristotle could be said to be early examples of comprehensive systems. In the early modern period (17th and 18th centuries), the system-building scope of philosophy is often linked to the rationalist method of philosophy, that is the technique of deducing the nature of the world by pure a priori reason. Examples from

10374-449: The influence of Greek systems of philosophy such as Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism . Some schools of thought within Islam deny the usefulness or legitimacy of philosophical inquiry. Some argue that there is no indication that the limited knowledge and experience of humans can lead to truth. It is also important to observe that, while "reason" ( 'aql ) is sometimes recognised as a source of Islamic law, it has been claimed that this has

10488-664: The kind of experience deemed spiritual occurs on this level of reality. Phenomenology is a philosophical method developed in the early years of the twentieth century by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and a circle of followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany. Subsequently, phenomenological themes were taken up by philosophers in France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's work. The word phenomenology comes from

10602-471: The latter thesis, like Leo Strauss , maintain that Islamic philosophers wrote so as to conceal their true meaning in order to avoid religious persecution , but scholars such as Oliver Leaman disagree. The main sources of classical or early Islamic philosophy are the religion of Islam itself (especially ideas derived and interpreted from the Quran ) and Greek philosophy which the early Muslims inherited as

10716-558: The mind. Some anti-realists whose ontological position is that objects outside the mind do exist, nevertheless doubt the independent existence of time and space. Kant , in the Critique of Pure Reason , described time as an a priori notion that, together with other a priori notions such as space , allows us to comprehend sense experience . Kant denies that either space or time are substance , entities in themselves, or learned by experience; he holds rather that both are elements of

10830-435: The most famous one defining hikmah as a vehicle through which “man becomes an intelligible world resembling the objective world and similar to the order of universal existence”. Mulla Sadra's philosophy and ontology is considered to be just as important to Islamic philosophy as Martin Heidegger 's philosophy later was to Western philosophy in the 20th century. Mulla Sadra brought "a new philosophical insight in dealing with

10944-644: The nature of reality " and created "a major transition from essentialism to existentialism " in Islamic philosophy. A concept that lies at the heart of Mulla Sadra's philosophy is the idea of " existence precedes essence ", a key foundational concept of existentialism . This was the opposite of the idea of " essence precedes existence " previously supported by Avicenna and his school of Avicennism as well as Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi and his school of Illuminationism . Sayyid Jalal Ashtiyani later summarized Mulla Sadra's concept as follows: "The existent being that has an essence must then be caused and existence that

11058-430: The one hand, ontology is the study of being, and the central topic of the field is couched, variously, in terms of being, existence, "what is", and reality. The task in ontology is to describe the most general categories of reality and how they are interrelated. If a philosopher wanted to proffer a positive definition of the concept "reality", it would be done under this heading. As explained above, some philosophers draw

11172-552: The opposite (existentialist) notion, was developed in the works of Averroes and Mulla Sadra 's transcendent theosophy . Ibn al-Nafis wrote the Theologus Autodidactus as a defense of "the system of Islam and the Muslims' doctrines on the missions of Prophets, the religious laws, the resurrection of the body, and the transitoriness of the world." The book presents rational arguments for bodily resurrection and

11286-399: The other hand, is the view that universals are real entities, but their existence is dependent on the particulars that exemplify them. Nominalism and conceptualism are the main forms of anti-realism about universals. A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists deny or doubt the existence of objects independent of

11400-529: The philosophy of history. Interest in Islamic philosophy revived during the Nahda ("Awakening") movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and continues to the present day. Islamic philosophy had a major impact in Christian Europe , where translation of Arabic philosophical texts into Latin "led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world", with

11514-434: The soul originating from the heart , whereas Ibn al-Nafis on the other hand rejected this idea and instead argued that the soul "is related to the entirety and not to one or a few organs ." He further criticized Aristotle's idea that every unique soul requires the existence of a unique source, in this case the heart. Ibn al-Nafis concluded that "the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but rather to

11628-526: The soul. They both made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, and in particular, the Avicennian doctrine on the nature of the soul was influential among the Scholastics . Some of Avicenna's views on the soul included the idea that the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not a purpose for it to fulfill. In his theory of "The Ten Intellects", he viewed the human soul as

11742-464: The spirit of Aristotle, they considered the syllogism to be the form to which all rational argumentation could be reduced, and they regarded syllogistic theory as the focal point of logic. Even poetics was considered as a syllogistic art in some fashion by most of the major Islamic Aristotelians. Important developments made by Muslim logicians included the development of "Avicennian logic" as a replacement of Aristotelian logic. Avicenna 's system of logic

11856-466: The tenth and final intellect . Avicenna and Ibn al-Nafis (Ibn al-Nafis), Islamic philosophers and physicians who followed Aristotle, put forward a different theory about the soul than Aristotle's, and made a distinction between soul (In. spirit) and soul (In. soul). [32] Especially Avicenna's teaching on the nature of the soul had a great influence on the Scholastics. According to Ibn Sina, the soul

11970-496: The theological school of Basra , Iraq . A pupil of Hasan of Basra , Wasil ibn Ata , left the group when he disagreed with his teacher on whether a Muslim who has committed a major sin invalidates his faith. He systematized the radical opinions of preceding sects, particularly those of the Qadarites and Jabarites. This new school was called Mu'tazilite (from i'tazala , to separate oneself). The Mu'tazilites looked in towards

12084-505: The truth. Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics. The latter is the claim that the world is mind-independent: that even if the results of a measurement do not pre-exist the act of measurement, that does not require that they are the creation of the observer. Furthermore, a mind-independent property does not have to be the value of some physical variable such as position or momentum . A property can be dispositional (or potential), i.e. it can be

12198-424: The universal quality of being human or humanity . The realist school claims that universals are real – they exist and are distinct from the particulars that instantiate them. There are various forms of realism. Two major forms are Platonic realism and Aristotelian realism . Platonic realism is the view that universals are real entities and they exist independent of particulars. Aristotelian realism , on

12312-573: The universe had an infinite past with no beginning, early medieval philosophers and theologians developed the concept of the universe having a finite past with a beginning. This view was inspired by the creationism shared by Judaism , Christianity and Islam . The Christian philosopher John Philoponus presented a detailed argument against the ancient Greek notion of an infinite past. Muslim and Arab Jewish philosophers like Al-Kindi , Saadia Gaon , and Al-Ghazali developed further arguments, with most falling into two broad categories: assertions of

12426-450: The vague notion of a common cultural world view , or Weltanschauung . The view that there is a reality independent of any beliefs, perceptions, etc., is called realism . More specifically, philosophers are given to speaking about "realism about " this and that, such as realism about universals or realism about the external world. Generally, where one can identify any class of object, the existence or essential characteristics of which

12540-534: The world view of Islam, as derived from the Islamic texts concerning the creation of the universe and the will of the Creator. In another sense it refers to any of the schools of thought that flourished under the Islamic empire or in the shadow of the Arab-Islamic culture and Islamic civilization. In its narrowest sense it is a translation of Falsafa , meaning those particular schools of thought that most reflect

12654-444: The world” is treated.) This "proving by reflection" study by Ibn Sina was later simplified by René Descartes and expressed in epistemological terms as follows: “I can isolate myself from all supposed things outside of me. , but I can never (abstract) from my own consciousness.”. According to Ibn Sina, immortality of the soul is not a goal, but a necessity and consequence of its nature. Avicenna generally supported Aristotle 's idea of

12768-625: Was needed. An ontological catalogue is an attempt to list the fundamental constituents of reality. The question of whether or not existence is a predicate has been discussed since the Early Modern period, not least in relation to the ontological argument for the existence of God . Existence, that something is, has been contrasted with essence , the question of what something is. Since existence without essence seems blank, it associated with nothingness by philosophers such as Hegel. Nihilism represents an extremely negative view of being,

12882-615: Was responsible for the introduction of hypothetical syllogism , temporal modal logic and inductive logic . Other important developments in early Islamic philosophy include the development of a strict science of citation , the isnad or "backing", and the development of a method to disprove claims, the ijtihad , which was generally applied to many types of questions. Early forms of analogical reasoning , inductive reasoning and categorical syllogism were introduced in Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), Sharia and Kalam (Islamic theology) from

12996-420: Was the first attempt at using the method of a priori proof , which utilizes intuition and reason alone. Avicenna's proof of God's existence is unique in that it can be classified as both a cosmological argument and an ontological argument. "It is ontological insofar as ‘necessary existence’ in intellect is the first basis for arguing for a Necessary Existent". The proof is also "cosmological insofar as most of it

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