An Introductory CourseOn Perspectives Of Western And Islamic Philosophy

Agenda

•Initiate session 10:25

•About the lectures10:25 – 10:40

•Western perspectives 10:40 – 11:25

•Break11:25 – 11:40

•Islamic perspectives 11:40 – 12:25

•Questions and answers12:25 – 13:00

Lecture Series

A total of nine lectures are anticipated to be delivered on a monthly basis over

a period of nine consecutive months

Each of the lectures shall provide a rudimentary understanding of various

philosophical concepts

Please refer to the provided handbook for further details and supplementary

readings

Sessions Date and Time Subject Matter Western

Perspectives

Islamic

Perspectives

1 of 924th August 2014

10:15am - 1.00pmIntroduction to philosophy

What is philosophy?

Why study philosophy?

Meaning and definition

2 of 921st September 2014

10:15am - 1.00pm

What can we know?

Knowledge

[Epistemology 1/2]

What is knowing?

What is knowledge?

Belief, truth and evidence

The sources and concepts of knowledge,

reason and experience

3 of 919th October 2014

10:15am - 1.00pm

What is the world like?

Perceiving the World

[Epistemology 2/2]

Realism

Idealism

Our knowledge of the physical world

4 of 923rd November 2014

10:15am - 1.00pm

The way the world works

Scientific Knowledge

[Philosophy of Science]

Laws of nature

Explanation

Theories

Possibility

The problem of induction

5 of 921st December 2014

10:15am - 1.00pm

What is and what must be?

Freedom and Necessity

[Metaphysics]

Causality

Determinism and freedom

6 of 918th January 2015

10:15am - 1.00pm

What am I?

Mind and Body

[Philosophy of Mind]

The physical and the mental,

The relationship between the physical and the mental,

Materialism

7 of 915th February 2015

10:15am - 1.00pm

What else is there?

[Philosophy of Religion 1/2]

Ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence

of God

8 of 922th March 2015

10:15am - 1.00pm

What else is there?

[Philosophy of Religion 2/2]

The concept of God

The problem of evil

Religious concepts

9 of 919th April 2015

10:15am - 1.00pm

The is and the ought

[Problems in Ethics]

Meta-ethics

Theories of goodness

Theories of conduct

The Objective

The primary aim and overall objective, among other subsidiary

benefits, is to assist in familiarising and acquainting its

recipients with the conceptual [and intellectual] perils, predominantly encountered by religion in todays society, which are propelled by [or

in the name of] philosophy.

The Metaphysics of Causation

What is ‘Causation’?

Cause from the Latin causa. A term

correlative to the term “effect”. That which

occasions, determines, produces, or

conditions an effect; or is the necessary

antecedent of an effect.

One of the fundamental topics in

Metaphysics, also called causality.

Causation is the firm and constant relation between events such that if an event of the first kind occurs, an even of the second kind will or must

occur.

Causation is the relation between two events that holds when, given that one occurs, it produces, or brings forth, or determines, or necessitates the second.

The relationship between two events or states of affairs such that the first brings about the second.

Aristotle’s Four Causes

Aristotle held that we know by means of causes, of which there are four sorts:

[1]

Material Cause:

Is the stuff our of which

something is made.

[2]

Formal Cause:

Is that in virtue of which

something is what it is.

[3]

Efficient Cause:

Is that which brings about a

change, e.g. produces an

object.

[4]

Final Cause:

Is the purpose, that for the sake

of which an action, a change of a thing comes

about.

Illustration of Aristotle’s Four Causes

Fo

rmal

Cau

se That which the statue represent-

s, its shape.

Mat

eria

l C

ause The

bronze.

Eff

icie

nt

Cau

se The sculptor.

Fin

al C

ause The

purpose that the statue is to serve.

The classical illustration is that of a bronze statue

Aristotle’s ‘Causes’ are Explanatory Factors

Aristotle’s four causes

• Aristotle’s causes should rather be called ‘explanatory factors’.

• Only the efficient cause resembles the modern notion of causation.

• And even here there are differences.

The differences

• What Aristotle was distinguishing are different sorts of answers that can be given to the questions “Why?” or “Because of what?”.

• Aristotelian causes are four types of explanatory factors or conditions necessary to account for the existence of a thing.

Modern Usage of the Term ‘Cause’

Is an agent or event exerting

power and effecting a change.

And a cause must do something to bring about an

effect.

If X occurs and Y invariably follows, then X is the cause and Y is its effect, and the

relationship between them is called causation or causality.

Implications of Causal AttributionThe occurrence of the first event, the cause, explains the occurrence of the second event, the effect.

When the bowling ball strikes the skittles, they fall.

An apparently simple causal relationship clearly exists between the two events.

Equally we say that once the first has happened the second must happen or that the second follows on from the first. Thus, the ball in this case is the antecedent and the falling of the skittles, the consequent.

The Principle of CausalityA common and deeply held belief that every

event or state of affairs has a cause.

And that every proposition about the world can be

derived from other propositions about the world in virtue of causal relations

among the items given in the proposition.

If we knew enough relevant facts, we could

either infer any other fact about the world.

This principle is also called the principle of determinism.

The justification for this position is a matter of

dispute.

In other words, every event has

a cause.

The Causal Nexus

Causal Nexus is the bonding link between the cause and its effect, a bit like the cement which bonds the bricks together in a wall.

So What’s all the Fuss About?

THE QUESTION

Do all events have to have an antecedent cause and how, if at

all, can one event necessitate the occurrence of another?

David Hume on Causation

Hume argued that they neither are and nor have to be any truly physical necessities.

The idea, or the pseudo-idea, of causal

necessity is just an empty shadow of our own mind’s throwing.

All there really is out there are regularities of non-necessary constant

conjunction.

Why the Stark Rejection?

The Principles of Association, Governing our Manipulation of Ideas

[1]

Resemblance:

Moving from an impression of a picture,

e.g. of a tree, to the thought of the pictured

object, the tree.

[2]

Contiguity:

In time and space, e.g. moving from the thought

of an event, the Moon landing, to something else that happened at the same

time, the presidency of John F Kennedy.

[3]

Cause and Effect:

Moving from the thought of a wound to thinking of pain.

Cause and Effect

Three Conditions are Crucial to Forming Causal Impressions

Priority in Time:

If I say that event A causes event B, one thing

I mean is that A occurs prior to B. If B were to occur before A, then it

would be absurd to say that A was the cause of B

Proximity in Space:

If I say that A causes B, then I mean that B is in proximity to, or close to

A. For example, if I throw a rock, and at that

moment someone’s window in China breaks, I would not conclude that my rock broke a window on the other side of the

world. The broken window and the rock

must be in proximity with each other.

Necessary Connection:

We also believe that there is a necessary connection between cause A and effect B. When billiard ball A strikes billiard ball B, there is a power that

the one event imparts to the other.

Necessary Connection

What leads us to connect two successive events in a causal manner is a habit or

custom which has developed in us through

experience.

The idea of necessity essential to the concepts of both causation and natural law cannot be drawn from

our observation of the external world, but must

instead be derived from the felt force of our habitual

associations of “perceptions of the mind”.

Religious Implications of a Necessary ConnectionAgents possess

intrinsic potentialities

Empowered to evolve

independently

No need for a God

[or the intervention of

God]

Religious Implications of Causality

Philosophers came to question how divine causal activity is to be understood,

particularly, in relation to the natural causality of creatures.

Metaphysical Models of Causal Relationship

Three classic metaphysical models of the causal relationship between God and his Creation

Conservationism Concurrentism Occasionalism

Conservationism

It holds that God created the world in the beginning, but since that moment

and with the exception of miracles, the world runs causally of its own accord

and on the basis of its own powers and principles, without the need for God to

be continually and perpetually involved.

Concurrentism

It holds that both God and finite created causes contribute to the production of

particular effects, namely that God “concurs” or assents to the natural activity

of the cause and thereby contributes his potency to the production of its effects, without which such a cause would be

impotent and incapable of producing its customary effect.

Occasionalism

Occasionalism, by contrast, holds that finite creatures are utterly impotent by

themselves, contribute nothing metaphysically to the production of

any effects to which they may be associated, but instead serve only as

merely nominal indicators or occasions for the one sole cause in the universe.

We’ve found the culprit . Now what?

Break

15 Minutes

IslamicPerspective

Secondary VS Primary Causation

• Is the philosophical proposition that all material and corporeal objects, having been created by God with their own intrinsic potentialities, are subsequently empowered to evolve independently in accordance with natural law.

Secondary Causation

• In stark contrast, the philosophy of Occasionalism is an exceptionally devout insistence on God being the primary and sole cause of everything. Natural law is thus an illusion subject to the vagaries of God‘s instant by instant attention which is necessary to maintain the very existence and smooth flow of nature.

Primary Causation

Secondary Causation of the Mutazalites

The Mutazalites held, in customary rationalist manner, that causes are logically sufficient for the production of their

effects and thus entail their existence in an essentially logical and syllogistic manner. While any particular cause (for

example fire) may not be in-itself sufficient for the production of its effect (namely burning), given the presence of certain

necessary conditions (for example air, and combustible substrate), the effect would follow necessarily from the

presence and existence of the cause. That is to say, for fire and a combustible material to be brought together in the presence

of oxygen, yet fail to produce burning, was regarded as a logical impossibility tantamount to a formal contradiction.

Primary Causation of the Ash’irites

A natural order that operates on the basis of causes that logically

necessitate their effects cannot be reconciled with the existence of

miracles, which, as attested to in Holy Scripture, often depend on such an “impossible” disjunction between

cause and effect.

Imām al-Ash’arī’s [ra] Cosmology

All bodies consist of

atoms. They are by

themselves bare of all

colour, structure,

smell, or taste.

Atoms gain these sensory

attributes only after they are

assembled into bodies

Their attributes are

viewed as “accidents”

that inhere in all the

substances, that is, the atoms of bodies.

Accidents exist only when they

subsist in the atoms of a

body – they cannot exist

without bodies. Bodies

also need accidents in

order to exist.

All accidents together constitute the content of the present reality of any given particular thing.

Imām al-Ash’arī’s [ra] Cosmology

[1]

The Mutakallimūn taught that when a human believes in God’s existence,

the atoms of his heart carry the accident of “belief in God”.

[2]

When an architect has a plan for a building, the atoms of her brain

carry the accident of the plan.

[3]

Both the atoms and the accidents are by themselves devoid of all

power and need to be combined in order to create bodies, be they

animated or lifeless.

[4]

Atoms are empty building blocks, so to speak, and they only

the shape of a body. All other characteristics are formed by the accidents that inhere in the body.

Imām al – Ghazālī [ra]

“The connection between what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary, according

to us. But [with] any two things, where “this” is not “that” and “that” is not “this” and where neither

the affirmation of the one entails the affirmation of the other nor the negation of the one entails the negation of the other, it is not a necessity of the

existence of the one that the other should exist, and it is not a necessity of the nonexistence of the one

that the other should not exist”.

Imām al – Ghazālī [ra]

“For example, the quenching of thirst and drinking, satiety and

eating, burning and contact with fire, light and the appearance of the sun, death and decapitation,

healing and drinking of medicine, and so on.”

Imām al – Ghazālī [ra]

“Their connection is due to the prior decree of God, who creates them side by side, not to its being necessary in itself, incapable of

separation. On the contrary, it is within divine power to create satiety without

eating, to create death without decapitation, to continue life after

decapitation, and so on to all connected things.”

Next LectureThe Physical and the

Mental[Philosophy of Mind]

18th January 201510:15 – 13:00