The Suspended Person Thought Experiment's Conditions
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Squaring the Circle: The Suspended Person Thought Experiment’s Conditions Approved Apperception as an Onto-Epistemic Basis for Mullā Ṣadrā’s Existentialist Psychology Submitted by Adelbert Finch to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Arab and Islamic Studies in January 2020 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. 1 LIST OF CONTENTS LIST of CONTENTS 1 ABSTRACT 2 CHAPTER I Introduction 3 CHAPTER II The Thinkers, Their Related Ideas and Their Reception 28 CHAPTER III - The Sadrian Psycho-Ontological Tension Between Monism and Dualism 129 CHAPTER IV- The Suspend Person’s Unfurling Trajectory Before Mullā Ṣadrā 196 CHAPTER V: Setting Up the Suspended Person’s Full Accessibility in Mullā Ṣadrā 252 CHAPTER VI: An Excavation of the Suspended Person’s Conditions Approved Perception in Mullā Ṣadrā 321 CHAPTER VII: A Conclusion and A Problem in Mullā Ṣadrā’s Onto-Epistemology 355 BIBLIOGRAPHY 379 2 Abstract This study is a philosophical engagement with historical texts in philosophy, arguing that, with proper application, Abū ʿĀlī Ibn Sīnā’s (d. 415/1037)Suspended Person thought experiment produces a self as existence. However, this existential self lies hidden in its trajectory from its founder to Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ibrahīm b. Yaḥyā Qawāmī Shīrāzī’s (d. 1014/1636). In the latter, we find an existentialist system close enough in pedigree to the Suspended Person’s origins yet sufficiently augmented to support the original conditions-induced existential self. The objective of this analysis is to show how Shīrāzī’s Transcendent Philosophy (al-Ḥikmah al-mutaʿāliyah) manages to excavate an otherwise overlooked apperception in his application of the Suspended Person thought experiment. Here, the existential self’s parallel in Ṣadrā’s onto- epistemology is quickly ascertained. However, as far as the nature of self- consciousness is considered, Ṣadrā’s system is mostly a synthesis of elements of the ideas of Abū ʿĀlī Ibn Sīnā (d. 415/1037), Shihab al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d.569/1191), al- Shaykh al-Akbar (the Greatest Shaikh) Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muhammad Ibn ʿArabī al-Ḥātimī al-Ṭāʾī (d.618/1240). Thus, the idea of the self as existence must be demonstrated through the gradual revelation of the conditions-based apperception via the various contributing philosophical developments provided by the thinkers mentioned above in each mode of the Suspended Person (or onto- epistemically similar situation) over time. These crucial developmental elements gather in Transcendent Philosophy’s knowledge by presence (al-ʿIlm al-ḥuḍūrī). Through it, the latent intuitive knowledge granted through Avicennian epistemology, largely exposed through Suhrawardian turns on the subject, is brought to the foreground on an existential basis, as informed by Akbarian thought, in a way prepared to ascertain the existential field of the Suspended Person’s first-hand experience. Ṣadrā inadvertently excavates the original conditions-approved apperception previously buried under the initial Avicennian oversight, as gradually exhumed through the critique of these thinkers. The results of the Suspended Person’s apperceptive conditions outstrip each of the systems engaging it until it reaches Shīrāzī. However, true to the Suspended Person’s nature, Shīrāzī’s oversights with the thought experiment are also shown to present challenges in his onto-epistemology. 3 Chapter 1: Introduction 4 Here, the statement that the “Flying Man” thought experiment, (henceforth Suspended Person or SP)1, a creation of the Persian thinker Abū ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā’s (hereafter Ibn Sīnā, and his thought Avicennian) (d. 415/1037), “prove(s) that the human soul is an immaterial spiritual substance” (Rahman 1975, 165) is openly critiqued. The reassessment made here suggests that the SP does not “prove” anything as it was designed to serve as an indication, despite the tendency for its interpreters to treat it as a proof. I maintain this position through every application in this study, even when a thinker suggests otherwise. The more important reappraisal, however, is that when its conditions are properly applied, the SP does not indicate the self’s status as an immaterial substance. Rather, with consistent application of its conditions, this study finds that the SP indicates that the self (nafs) is existence (wujūd) and not an existent, in the form of an immaterial substance or any other type of existence. In fact, the SP’s existential field is so absolute that she is incapable of recognizing her ontological individuality. Effectively, I suggest that the SP’s apperception as presented through its conditions transcends the same Avicennian onto-psycho-epistemic structure that 1 I have opted to refer to the "Flying Man" as the Suspended Person for two main reasons. The primary reason is that the term al-Insān al-muʿallaq, as is found in the some of the Arabic texts that refer to it means "the Hanging/Dangling Man" or "the Suspended Man" as opposed to al-Insān al-ṭāʾir i.e. the Flying Man. To refer to the SP as a "Suspended Man" approaches the subject with a presumptuous auto-gender assignment far surpassing the capacity of its sphere of consciousness. I opt out of referring to her as a "he" or "him" because assuming a male pronoun, as seems to be the convention in theoretical situations, both unnecessary and arbitrary. I refer to the SP as "her" or "she" in this study because the pronoun "it" seems to subtract from her personhood. Her personhood lies at the crux of the import of the study, at least in my estimation. Thus, to reduce her to a conscious object seems antithetical to our project. 5 produced it. However, as with all thought experiments, with the SP’s purely speculative nature coupled with the transcending force of her conditions-approved apperception we may look into another comparable thought system to uncover the aforementioned apperception outside of a purely Avicennian presentation. This study looks for another onto-epistemic system symbiotic enough with Ibn Sīnā to share in the SP’s conditions- approved application. Simultaneously, it must be distant enough from the same Avicennian suppositions the thought experiment transcends to consider it in a more existentially onto-epistemic capacity. By doing so my reading of the SP may be verified by the Avicennian tradition. At the same time, my reading helps develops more insight into the nature of the SP’s existential apperception as Ibn Sīnā’s system is prevented from doing so. Research Question - What is the Proposal? At the far end of the trajectory of Avicennian thought lies Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ibrahīm b. Yaḥyā Qawāmī Shīrāzī’s (d.1014/1636) (hereafter Mullā Ṣadrā or Ṣadrā), Transcendent Philosophy (al-Ḥikmah al-mutaʿāliyah), a synthesis of Ṣadrā’s original thought, including the primacy of Existence (aṣālat al-wujūd), the unity of the subject and object of cognition (itttiḥād al-ʿāqil wa al-maʿqūl) , and substantial motion (al- ḥarakah al-jawhariyyah) as well as select ideas from thinkers of the past, including Ibn Sīnā, Shīhāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d.569/1191) al-Shaykh al-Akbar (the Greatest Savant) Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muhammad Ibn ʿArabī al-Ḥātimī al-Ṭāʾī, (d.618/1240) (his school hereafter referred to as Akbarian) and others.2 As indicated, 2 The melding of these various concepts into a single unified system is not free from its apparent contradictions. An example of these opposing elements is that while his ontologically is suggestively 6 Ṣadrā’s Transcendent Philosophy takes a different path toward understanding the nature of things. Instead of basing itself solely in discursive demonstration, as the Peripatetics before them would prefer, our new system takes Suhrawardī’s cue for a transcendence of Avicennian rationalism with a more experiential path. Instead of merely demonstrating proofs indicating a correct conception of reality, Suhrawardī suggests we be the reality that we hope to understand through direct experience. (Faruque 2016, 6) On this paradigmatic shift in Ṣadrā, Muhammad Faruque explains: Put briefly, for Ṣadrā, as for Suhrawardī, philosophy is a ‘graded’ concept in the sense that it allows one to move from one stage (of philosophy) to another. Thus, transcendent philosophy makes room for discursive philosophy, but at the same time, it ‘transcends’ the latter by other higher modes of ‘intellection’ such as unveiling (kashf), illumination (ishrāq), and direct witnessing (shuhūd). Moreover, Ṣadrā’s philosophizing should be understood in the light of what Hadot calls ‘philosophy as a way of life’, because it involves a set of ‘spiritual exercises’ that goes hand in hand with conceptual understanding and mastering philosophical principles (that is, spiritual practices and epistemology are intertwined). In addition, since Ṣadrā operates in the context of the Islamic religion, the realities of ‘prophecy’ and ‘sainthood’ (wilāya) play a notable role in his act of philosophizing, and in fact, he claims that one can actually ‘harmonize’ all these diverse modes of approaching truth (Faruque 2016, 6) The most poignant aspect of this explanation, for our purposes, is the emphasis made on both gradation and harmony. In order to access the unique Sadrian treatment of the self, one must grasp the positioning of any one psychological issue in terms of the way he graduates and harmonizes it in his thought. That is to say, one must be able to appreciate how Ṣadrā both transcends the ideas of those who came before him, in an monist, thanks to contributions by Ibn ʿArabī his psychology is often times discussed in standard dualist Avicennian parlance.