In classical Arabic philosophy, the topic of consciousness is commonly associated with Avicenna's ‘Flying Man’ thought experiment. But Avicenna's explorations of the nature of consciousness are not confined to the Flying Man, and he is by no means the only classical Islamic thinker to deem consciousness an important feature of our experience. Consciousness also plays a important role in the epistemology and moral psychology of Avicenna's intellectual rivals, the theologians (mutakallumūn), who represent important sources for Avicenna's own theorizing about consciousness. (...) And while Avicenna's philosophical successor and critic, Averroes, seems to banish consciousness from the core of his cognitive psychology, in doing so he seems to anticipate contemporary efforts to expand the scope of consciousness through the notion of the ‘extended’ mind. This paper examines the varieties of consciousness recognized by Avicenna and several other classical Islamic thinkers with a view to understanding the extent to which their accounts can be mapped on to some of the concepts of consciousness delineated by contemporary philosophers of mind. (shrink)

One of the chief innovations in medieval adaptations of Aristotelian psychology was the expansion of Aristotle's notion of imagination orphantasiato include a variety of distinct perceptual powers known collectively as the internal senses. Amongst medieval philosophers in the Arabic world, Avicenna offers one of the most complex and sophisticated accounts of the internal senses. Within his list of internal senses, Avicenna includes a faculty known as “estimation”, to which various functions are assigned in a wide variety of contexts. Although many (...) philosophers in the Arabic world as well as in the Latin West accepted Avicenna's positing of an estimative faculty, Avicenna's best-known critics, al-Ghazâlî and Averroes, found Avicenna's arguments in support of a distinct estimative faculty problematic. For different reasons, both Averroes and Ghazâlî raised the basic question of whether one needed to posit a distinct faculty of estimation to supplement the perceptual abilities of the other internal senses, and whether the notion of an estimative power as defined by Avicenna was internally coherent. Such criticisms suggest that the Avicennian conception of estimation is not entirely unambiguous, and that a correct understanding of Avicenna's motivations for delineating an estimative power requires a careful study of the diverse activities assigned to it throughout Avicenna's philosophical writings. (shrink)

It has long been a truism of the history of philosophy that intentionality is an invention of the medieval period, and within this standard narrative, the central place of Arabic philosophy has always been acknowledged. Yet there are many misconceptions surrounding the theories of intentionality advanced by the two main Arabic thinkers whose works were available to the West, Avicenna and Averroes. In the first part of this paper I offer an overview of the general accounts of intentionality and intentional (...) being found in the linguistic, psychological, and metaphysical writings of Avicenna and Averroes, and I trace the terminology of “intentions” to a neglected passage from Avicenna’s logic. In the second part of the paper I examine the way that Avicenna and Averroes apply their general theories of intentionality to the realm of sense perception. I offer an explanation of why Avicenna might have chosen to denominate the objects of the internal sense faculty of estimation as “intentions”, and I explore the implications of Averroes’s decision to attribute intentionality to the external senses and the media of perception. (shrink)

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces the roots of the (...) concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces the roots of the (...) concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

L'A. presenta un'analisi della Lettera sull'anima, in cui Avicenna affronta il tema delle idee di esseri fittizi, come la fenice, ed in particolare la permanenza di tali idee nell'anima dopo la sua separazione dal corpo. Nella parte centrale dello studio l'A. esamina il rapporto fra la risposta avicenniana al problema ed alcuni elementi dottrinali caratterizzanti il pensiero del filosofo: il tema degli universali, della quidditas, o natura comune, e la distinzione fra essenza ed esistenza.

La prima parte dello studio verte sulla critica avanzata da Tommaso contro la dottrina averroista dell'unità dell'intelletto, e nello specifico contro l'idea che l'intelletto materiale funzioni come soggetto degli intelligibili, cioè come «colui che conosce» i pensieri intelligibili. Tale critica è presente sia nel De unitate sia nella Sententia libri De anima. La seconda parte dello studio verte sul pensiero di Averroè relativo all'intellezione, e su diverse posizioni tenute dal filosofo in relazione all'intelletto materiale . L'esame critico del tema dell'intelletto (...) materiale investe anche altre problematiche speculative affrontate dal filosofo, in particolare la famosa tesi del doppio soggetto, che l'A. indaga alla luce dell'analisi ilomorfica degli intellegibili . Infine, l'A. prende in esame il tema del medium invocato da Averroè per la spiegazione razionale del fenomeno della sensazione, e analizza il parallelismo tracciato dallo stesso Averroè fra il ruolo del medium nelle sensazioni e quello dell'intelletto materiale nelle intellezioni, sviluppato soprattutto nel Commento grande al De anima. (shrink)

There are surprisingly few texts in which Avicenna discusses our knowledge of separate substances. The most extensive account occurs in Metaphysics 3.8, a text which was cited by Aquinas in a small number of works from relatively early in his academic career. Aquinas’s attitude to Avicenna’s account, which he dubbed knowledge per impressionem, is by no means uniform, even within a single work. Sometimes Avicenna is an adversary; sometimes he is an ally; still other times he is an innocent bystander. (...) I explore the reasons for Aquinas’s shifting evaluation of Avicenna’s theory and show that Aquinas’s attitude depends in part upon whether the separate substance in question is God or the angels, and whether he is considering the soul as separated or embodied. Ultimately I argue that Aquinas’s abandonment of knowledge per impressionem reflects his general move away from any Avicennian influences that smack of dualism in his eyes. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Logic and language Psychology and metaphysics Political philosophy.

There are surprisingly few texts in which Avicenna discusses our knowledge of separate substances. The most extensive account occurs in Metaphysics 3.8, a text which was cited by Aquinas in a small number of works from relatively early in his academic career. Aquinas’s attitude to Avicenna’s account, which he dubbed knowledge per impressionem, is by no means uniform, even within a single work. Sometimes Avicenna is an adversary; sometimes he is an ally; still other times he is an innocent bystander. (...) I explore the reasons for Aquinas’s shifting evaluation of Avicenna’s theory and show that Aquinas’s attitude depends in part upon whether the separate substance in question is God or the angels, and whether he is considering the soul as separated or embodied. Ultimately I argue that Aquinas’s abandonment of knowledge per impressionem reflects his general move away from any Avicennian influences that smack of dualism in his eyes. (shrink)

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we commemorate its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery? In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs—some never before published—from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born (...) before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration. Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end. Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture. (shrink)

The Remarks and Admonitions is one of the last works written by the Islamic philosopher Avicenna. Like his more familiar works, the Shifa' and the Najah, this work covers the entire scope of theoretical philosophy, with its first three parts being devoted to logic, physics, and metaphysics, respectively. Part Four of this work is unique, however, since it moves outside the confines of philosophy and takes up the topic of mysticism, employing concepts and terms familiar from the tradition of Sufism. (...) Following upon her excellent translation and study of the first part of this work over a decade ago, Shams Inati has here provided students of Islamic philosophy with another fine and readable translation of Part Four, together with an extensive introduction detailing the contents of the work and its parallels with other Avicennian texts. (shrink)

The Remarks and Admonitions is one of the last works written by the Islamic philosopher Avicenna. Like his more familiar works, the Shifa' and the Najah, this work covers the entire scope of theoretical philosophy, with its first three parts being devoted to logic, physics, and metaphysics, respectively. Part Four of this work is unique, however, since it moves outside the confines of philosophy and takes up the topic of mysticism, employing concepts and terms familiar from the tradition of Sufism. (...) Following upon her excellent translation and study of the first part of this work over a decade ago, Shams Inati has here provided students of Islamic philosophy with another fine and readable translation of Part Four, together with an extensive introduction detailing the contents of the work and its parallels with other Avicennian texts. (shrink)

Ralph McInerny's translation of Aquinas's polemical opusculum, De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, is part of a new series of texts whose purpose is, as the cover announces, to "present well-edited basic texts to be used in courses and seminars and for teachers looking for a succinct exposition of the results of recent research." McInerny's volume, with its facing page Latin text and English translation, fulfills the first goal in exemplary fashion; but the interpretive essays fall somewhat short of presenting "up-to-date (...) commentary" on Aquinas's text and the positions it attacks. (shrink)

In recent discussions on the meaning of derogatory terms, most theorists base their investigations on the assumption that slurring terms could in principle have some neutral, i.e. purely descriptive, counterpart. Lauren Ashwell has recently shown that this assumption does not generalize to gendered slurs. This paper aims to challenge the point and benefit of approaching the meaning of derogatory terms in contrast to their allegedly purely descriptive counterparts. I argue that different discursive practices among different communities of practice sometimes change (...) the semantics of a term. By the example of the term ‘black,’ I show in what ways these different practices may amount to semantic contestations which complicate the assessment of whether a specific politically significant term is purely descriptive. My discussion of politically significant terms provides insights into further phenomena such as the appropriation of derogatory terms by the target group or meaning change more generally. Moreover, it not only accounts for the political aspects of a linguistic phenomenon, but equally highlights and explains the oft-neglected but crucial role that language plays in social and political struggles. It thus contributes to ongoing discussions both in philosophy of language and in social and political philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Five Poems DEBORAH WARREN Bugonia hic vero subitum dictu mirabile monstrum aspiciunt, liquefacta boum per viscera toto stridere apes utero et ruptis effervere costis. —Vergil, Georgics IV The covert’s dark, but Aristaeus sees —beyond it, in the oleandered meadow, walking to her wedding with her maids— Eurydice, as sweet as early windfall apples to the gods of the bitter dead. She runs, from shifting shade to sun (...) to shade until, in a shock of sudden sun, she sways, blinded, blundering into an adder’s kiss, and while the bridegroom waits by the bridal bed, she waits to be undressed by worms instead. But Aristaeus pays for the assault. The mead-gods visit on his apiaries wax-moth, mites, foulbrood and chalk-disease until an oracle orders a hekatomb: after nine days the myrtle-nymphs perform a miracle, and out of the carcases crawl fat new sun-furred drones to work the comb, a gift of the mead-gods who, with the poet, praise the teams of bright collaborating bees as little Romans—parvos Quirites. arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 And what about Eurydice? The swarm goes humming on, a small Rome in a hive. The story’s not about Eurydice’s second chance, or whether she’ll survive. Eurydice’s a minor character; she’s only one girl, sui generis. Besides, no cattle-trick exists for her. The gods can let the apiaries thrive and armies—even empires—endure; one girl’s more complicated to replace. 44 five poems The Tithonus Club We can begin our visit with the Day Room where, in wheelchairs, some with canes or walkers, members sit: a fraternity so ancient that the confrères mostly ignore each other (club tradition). The dues are paid in decades; no one has an outstanding balance—Sir? Whoa, steady, there! Sit down... yes. Here’s your blanket. The badge of membership—the club regalia? Laminated ceremonial bracelets bear the motto Do Not Resuscitate (legend which, in practice, is seldom honored). Eleven-thirty, gentlemen; lunch is served, and now a little toast while the television mesmerizes the aides: Messieurs, your health! Deborah Warren 45 Aphrodite at the Old-Age Home —for Aphrodite Kalogeris “Honey,” the night nurse said to Aphrodite, “let me fix your bib. Look, Aphrodite! Here’s your juice and crackers, Aphrodite! “She doesn’t speak a blessed word of English,” the night nurse told us, “but she understands as good as if we spoke to her in Greek.” Aphrodite’s ears were as grotesque as the pore-coarse nose that bloomed across her face, but she heard her name: When Aphrodite rose and, beatific, dreamed across the room, traversing a happiness none of us could hear, she spoke a language older than herself but still her own—a dialect of beauty able to translate the fetid air. 46 five poems Climbing Etna We’d see the lava, nights, from the town square, as if the sun—an egg of fire—broke at dusk, threading its incandescent yolk down a mountain hanging in black air. Every night we’d scan the dark horizon looking for those streaks, and every night they took a while to find, however bright: Etna, it seemed, had spent the evening rising off the earth, to hover even higher, as if the mountain meant not to be found. And then, today, we ran the flows to ground, climbing up to the rolling burns of fire— closer, into the shimmering air and hiss that glanced up from the thick and red-flecked river —until our soles were smoking. But the lava sang, inside the mountain: Come, discover the fire’s origin and genesis; more—the heart of the world, in its enceinte of blind white heat. Seeing the lava course wasn’t enough, or watching the rock decant the sun; what brought us up here was the force— the hot loins—of a lightning god as dark as thunder; and, like Eve, like Semele, we wanted to approach. But there’s a spark, a jewel older than geology: stop shy of it—of finding the fire’s source, of closing in on what you shouldn’t see. Deborah Warren 47 Human Sucking strength... (shrink)

Robert Black argues against quidditism on the grounds that the quidditist is either committed to proper-class many possible worlds and proper-class many possible fundamental properties or must adopt an unacceptably arbitrary restriction on the number of possible fundamental properties. In this paper, I examine Black’s cardinality argument against quidditism and argue that quidditists and non-quidditists alike have reason to reject a key premise of that argument. While it may be the case that the quidditist is committed to nomically (...) indiscernible possible worlds that mark distinctions that make no difference to the physicist, it does not appear that the cardinality of the class of possible worlds or the class of possible fundamental properties postulated by the quidditist is any more problematic than that postulated by the non-quidditist. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper sets out a framework for understanding how the scientific community constructs computer simulation as an epistemically and pragmatically useful methodology. The framework is based on comparisons between simulation and the loosely-defined categories of “theoretical work” and “experimental work.” Within that framework, the epistemological adequacy of simulation arises from its role as a mathematical manipulation of a complex, abstract theoretical model. To establish that adequacy demands a detailed “theoretical” grasp of the internal structure of the computer program. Simultaneously, (...) the pragmatic usefulness of simulation arises from its role as a “virtual laboratory.” That role is made possible by black-boxing the internal structure of the program, such that the scientist can interact with the computer in an intuitive, “experimental” manner. Thus simulation is rendered authoritative, opening up encoded theories to a novel, “experimental” type of manipulation. (shrink)

One of the most striking features of the South African polity, as the 20th anniversary of democratization draws closer, is the intensity of public arguments about race that show no signs of abating any time soon. In the midst of worsening socio-economic inequality, it’s the economic question – of the terms of access to wealth, status and economic power, and of how to erase the residues of apartheid’s economic dispossession – that dominates these arguments. In recent years, the ANC Youth (...) League – a renewal of the Youth League originally created in 1944 and then banned in 1960 – effectively positioned itself at the forefront of this politicization of race. I argue in this essay that from 1994 to early 2012, the contemporary Youth League retained its predecessor’s political persona of precocious provocateur, particularly on matters of race – but differently styled, and deployed to different political ends in the new conjuncture. The repertoire of the Youth League during this period was shaped by a clientelist politics, informed by a version of freedom as a freedom to consume, and the concomitant spectacles of conspicuous consumption that infused the iconography of the ‘new’ South Africa. These tendencies were most dramatically illustrated during Julius Malema’s controversial tenure as Youth League president. Largely disconnected from discursive, deliberative notions of the political, the Youth League’s version of politics became an amalgamation of angry street protest, patronage, and lavish partying, which produced a racialized iconography of being well-heeled and down-trodden in a seamless narrative of black solidarity. (shrink)

This article explores female religious interaction in racially divided ‘colonial’ South Africa through the lives of five unmarried Anglican women missionaries who worked in and around Johannesburg between 1907 and 1960. It particularly analyses the quality of their personal relationships with African women converts, colleagues and students. Deaconess Julia Gilpin, in the imperial, anglicizing post-Boer War years, encouraged devout, respectable wifehood on the mine compounds, contributing to the corporate solidarity of praying mothers as a deeply entrenched feature of most (...) class='Hi'>black churches. Dora Earthy interacted in a warmer, more egalitarian way with black churchwomen. Her transfer to Mozambique led not only to evangelistic building on African cultural traditions and pioneering anthropological research but also to the protection and validation of Christian widows’ autonomy against coerced remarriage. Frances Chilton and Dorothy Maud, despite sharply contrasting class origins, struggled to connect with more assertive networks of married women in the segregationist 1920s and 1930s, devoting their energies rather to guiding and enhancing African girlhood and youth. Hannah Stanton, in the more politically fraught 1950s, recognized the necessary independence of African actors and the limitations of outdated white liberal advocacy. Her training of African women promised new theological and organizational maturity, a potential collegiality, cut short by her detention in the 1960 State of Emergency and subsequent expulsion. The historical sweep of this survey suggests which personal and political conjunctures opened up or closed down meaningful interaction between colonized and colonizing women. It also offers a more positive evaluation of the intersection of race and religion as not invariably a ‘fatal combination’. The politics of the personal in women's joint educational, mission and social welfare ventures across the racial divide helped keep alive the idea of a single society and thus aided the surprisingly peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa in 1994. (shrink)

Central to the ethical concerns raised by the prospect of increasingly autonomous military robots are issues of responsibility. In this paper we examine different conceptions of autonomy within the discourse on these robots to bring into focus what is at stake when it comes to the autonomous nature of military robots. We argue that due to the metaphorical use of the concept of autonomy, the autonomy of robots is often treated as a black box in discussions about autonomous military (...) robots. When the black box is opened up and we see how autonomy is understood and ‘made’ by those involved in the design and development of robots, the responsibility questions change significantly. (shrink)