1. INTRODUCTIONFootnote 1
As is well known, conceptualization (taṣawwur) and assent (taṣdīq) are two of the most important topics in the logic and epistemology of Arabo-Islamic philosophy. A pioneering analysis by Wolfson linked both terms to Stoic epistemology and proposed that φαντασία λογική and άξίομα were the origins of taṣawwur and taṣdīq respectively.Footnote 2 Since then, a great many studies have addressed conceptualization and assent in the Arabic commentaries of Aristotle's Organon Footnote 3 and stressed their function of providing an epistemological basis for the understanding of the definition and the syllogism.Footnote 4 In this context, conceptualization and assent have rightly been deemed to be the ‘organizing theme’ of al-Fārābī's interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of science.Footnote 5
Ibn Bājja (d. 1139), the first philosopher of note in al-Andalus, used these concepts profusely in a variety of works, taking al-Fārābī's comments on the terms as his starting point. The present paper will study Ibn Bājja's treatment of taṣdīq and taṣawwur by focusing on his works on logic, consisting of collections of notes (taʿālīq) in which he glossed al-Fārābī's commentaries and epitomes of Aristotle's Organon and Porphyry's Isagoge.Footnote 6 The study of these materials will broaden our knowledge of, on the one hand, the reception of Levantine philosophy in al-Andalus and, on the other, the foundations of Ibn Bājja's epistemology, particularly in the field of the scientific method. Inasmuch as al-Fārābī's logic is Ibn Bājja's main source for his understanding of taṣdīq and taṣawwur, perhaps indeed the only one, we should start with a summary of the issue in the Second Master.
2. AL-FĀRĀBĪ ON TAṢAWWUR AND TAṢDĪQ: A SUMMARY
Lameer coins a comprehensive definition of al-Fārābī's taṣawwur that is worth reproducing here because it also expresses Ibn Bājja's essential understanding of the question:
taṣawwur is equal to the act of understanding (fahima, with the verbal noun fahm) a phrase (qawl) expressing a thing's essence (dhāt), i.e. the act of understanding the definition (ḥadd) that goes with a mental concept (maʿnā) or with the name (ism) designating such a concept.Footnote 7
The kinds of conceptualization alluded to in this definition are: the mere description of a thing (rasm), the comprehension of the word that designates a thing (taṣawwur anqaṣ or mujmal) and the definition of a thing (taṣawwur akmal, mulakhkhaṣ or mufaṣṣal). Conceptualization by a thing's name makes the essence of the thing known in general terms, while conceptualization by definition makes it known precisely and by its essential elements. According to al-Fārābī, true conceptualizations are only possible if we know that the thing exists, inasmuch as conceptualization accounts for an essence and what does not exist has no essence.Footnote 8 Consequently, conceptualization provided by the understanding of a name does not entail certitude, since it spans what exists and what does not exist.
Assent may easily be defined as the belief, via some kind of reasoning, that something is as we have conceptualized it.Footnote 9 If the assented conceptualization is not self-evident, our assent to any conceptualized thing stems from applying a deduction to a previous conceptualization, which entails a judgment of truth and falsehood.Footnote 10 On the one hand, there is something previously known to some extent; on the other, there is a middle term that adds further knowledge to the previous conceptualization. The quality of assent depends, therefore, on the quality of the knowledge that this middle term provides. Thus, assent may be classified according to the epistemic value of the premises into: that which affords only trust in our belief (rhetorical assent), approximate certainty (dialectical assent) and certainty (demonstrative assent). Assent may also be divided into definite (muḥaṣṣal), which leads to certainty through a demonstrative syllogism, and indefinite (ghayr muḥaṣṣal), which cannot attain certainty. So, one may assent either to variable knowledge or to absolute, scientific knowledge. For this reason, ultimate assent giving certainty requires not only that one knows that something cannot be otherwise, but also the awareness of this knowledge,Footnote 11 which is attained once the demonstrative method has been fully implemented. Thus, science leads to complete assent through demonstrative syllogism. As Galston noted, the relationship between conceptualization and assent is complex because the first kind (taṣawwur anqaṣ or mujmal, “imperfect” or “general”) of conceptualization is the “pathway to assent”, and the second kind (taṣawwur akmal or “perfect”), as the most complete kind of cognition, follows assent and represents its completion.Footnote 12
Ibn Bājja's best achieved synthesis of what al-Fārābī says about conceptualization and assent appears in the notes on the latter's K. al-Burhān:Footnote 13
[I] Conceptualization, in sum, is the attainment of the totality of the issue which is outside the soul inasmuch as it is signified by its name, with no judgment about it at all. Assent consists of considering the issue as judged by some judgment. For this reason, assent always exists when which of the two judgments applies to it [the issue] is sought; conceptualization, when what it is and what thing it is are sought. It is clear that, with this question “what it is” and others of the same kind, no assertive or negative judgment about the issue is pretended, as in the case of two contraries; rather, what is sought is the quiddity of the issue, abstracted from any judgment. This meaning is the first and the simpler.
3. CONCEPTUALIZATION AND ASSENT ACCORDING TO IBN BĀJJA: A FIRST APPROACH
Just as K. al-Burhān contains a great deal of information on al-Fārābī's understanding of the two terms, Ibn Bājja's glosses to this epitome are also the best source for a survey of his thought. Nonetheless, since Ibn Bājja glossed this book with prior knowledge of al-Fārābī's other logical treatises, there are further influences: he notes at the beginning of his glosses to al-Fārābī's Burhān that the latter “turned to Īsāghūjī for conceptualization and to al-Qiyās and al-Taḥlīl for assent”;Footnote 14 in his glosses to al-Fuṣūl al-Khamsa, he considers the section of this treatise which deals with the anterior and the posterior as an essential tool for the comprehension of both terms.Footnote 15 Because of the relationship between conceptualization and definition, the huge number of glosses to the Farabian treatises devoted to predication (namely epitomes to Isagoge and Categories) contain a wealth of references to conceptualization, though materials on assent are less frequent. In this context, Ibn Bājja's notes on al-Fārābī's introductory works on logic provide us with materials on both concepts which, despite seeming somewhat rough and confused, represent a preliminary step towards better comprehension and exposition of the issue. One of the best examples of these preparatory reflections appears in the gloss of a fragment by al-Fārābī about definition and description borrowed from al-Fuṣūl al-Khamsa, which D. M. Dunlop translated as follows:Footnote 16
[II] The definition is a statement of which the composition is restrictive,Footnote 17 explaining the meaning signified by some name,Footnote 18 by means of the things by which the meaning subsists. The description is a statement of which the composition is restrictive, explaining the meaning signified by a name, by means of the things by which the meaning does not subsist, or rather by its conditions or by the things whose subsisting depends on the meaning.
Ibn Bājja's notes may be translated as follows:Footnote 19
[III] (1) The definition is the statement that explains perfectly the quiddity <established by the subsisting>Footnote 20 of the thing, while the description explains the thing with elements that are external to it. Both have a restrictive composition and are employed in order to convey the conceptualization of the thing to the soul, the definition for its conceptualization with its quiddity and perfectly, and the description without its quiddity and imperfectly. In much the same way as assent can only have a declaratory composition, conceptualization can only have a conditional composition.
(2) His phrase “by some name” might mean that the thing is [signified by] a nameFootnote 21 whose quiddity may correspond with every one of a set of different names. Definition and description coincide in signification to the name, except for the fact that the name signifies [the thing] generally and definition and description in detail. For this reason, he stipulated “by some name” in order not to describe the thing or to define it according to one of the names that could be applied to it, and thus [the thing] could be taken according to another name, both being different. An example of this is “point” and “limit of the line”. The geometers use both as if they were one and the same thing, though a “point” is something that has no parts, therefore described without reference to any relation, and “limit of the line” is something related to a line.
(3) His phrase “by means of the things by which the meaning subsists”, intends the things from which its quiddity [of the meaning] follows necessarily and by which this latter subsists, such as “snub-nosedness” in a nose, or “pair” in number and so on, and these are what are named “essential accidents” in K. al-Burhān.
(4) And “by its conditions” [al-Fārābī] means that which does not subsist by means of its quiddity, and from which its quiddity does not follow necessarily, such as redness and whiteness in dress and other similar separate accidents which are not properties.
(5) Also in the phrase “by means of the things by which the meaning subsists”, he meant by “subsisting” the cause of its being, i.e. that these [things] are the cause of its being. Likewise, he referred to description with the phrase “by means of the things by which the meaning does not subsist”, because the accidents are not the cause of the being of the concept, but quite the opposite.
Ibn Bājja does not aim to simplify what al-Fārābī says, which is clear enough in an example that appears immediately after the text II quoted above. He rather aims to complement it with cross-references to other logical works by al-Fārābī, at the cost of introducing complicated issues that might mislead the reader who is not familiar with logic. When Ibn Bājja specifies in §1 that “assent can only have a declaratory composition” and “conceptualization can only have a conditional composition”, it is implied that the reader knows what al-Fārābī says about composite expressions (alfāẓ murakkaba) some lines above in Fuṣūl and in the epitome of Isagoge. Footnote 22 The reader will thus realize that: on the one hand, conceptualization entails our mental capacity to express syntagmas of the kind “the rational animal”, in which the adjective restricts the sense of the substantive and is moreover a condition for this substantive to express the essential meaning of “man”; and on the other hand, assent is a declaratory phrase which affirms that, actually, a man is a rational animal. In §2, Ibn Bājja takes considerable trouble to explain the expression “bi-ismin mā” – on the implicit grounds of what al-Fārābī mentions in the epitome of Isagoge Footnote 23 –, just to say that several definitions may correspond to a name, yet only one is necessarily true in a concrete situation. Moreover, the reader must also know what “simple expressions” (alfāẓ mufrada) are according to al-Fārābī.Footnote 24 In the whole excerpt, Ibn Bājja expands thoroughly on the key-concept qiwām (subsisting), in order to explain that the most complete conceptualization must gather the essential elements that make up a meaning. Although the author only refers to the section of K. al-Burhān in which al-Fārābī deals with “essential predicates” and “essential accidents”,Footnote 25 he may be bearing in mind K. al-Ḥurūf as well. Footnote 26
4. CONCEPTUALIZATION IN IBN BĀJJA'S TAʿĀLĪQ ʿALĀ K. AL-BURHĀN
Ibn Bājja's most significant and coherent exposés on taṣdīq and taṣawwur appear in his glosses of al-Fārābī's K. al-Burhān. This circumstance may be attributed to the importance that both notions have in the understanding of Aristotle's scientific method, and also to the fact that, according to Ibn Bājja's own intellectual autobiography,Footnote 27 this was probably the last treatise of al-Fārābī's logic that the Saragossan Master discussed.
Of the several excerpts on conceptualization that this treatise contains, there are two which deserve particular attention. One stems from the lost sentence of al-Fārābī's Burhān alluded to above,Footnote 28 which states that the conceptualization that is equal to the thing is more perfect than those conceptualizations that are more general or more particular. Ibn Bājja explains here somewhat didactically the difference between general and detailed conceptualization. Take, for instance, what the concept “peppercorn” signifies. It may be defined as a grain whose form is spherical, its color, black and its surface, rugged. In a general conceptualization, the mind recognizes the unity of the meaning, yet it does not grasp either the “detailed plurality” (kathra mufaṣṣala) of the concept or the fact that this plurality of characteristics entails a further plurality (al-kathra, fīhi, kathra).Footnote 29 In its turn, the detailed conceptualization given by the definition consists of conceptualizing deliberately the thing that is unique with the unity that singles it out from other similar things, but understanding at the same time that the thing is made up of a plurality of characteristics that may be, in turn, grasped individually.
The second excerpt is a long gloss of another sentence of al-Fārābī's Burhān which contains Ibn Bājja's most successful commentary on conceptualization and deals in passing with assent. For this reason, I will translate it fully despite its length:Footnote 30
[IV] (1) “The most imperfect conceptualizations are those that result from the simple expressions that signify the thing and what is similar to them”.Footnote 31 Conceptualization consists of the attainment of the universal thing in the genus, described by some description, in much the same way as the act of imagining consists of apprehending the particular thing described with some description. This description might be either a simple expression that signifies the thing or what follows the condition of being singular; or a proposition that signifies all the parts [or] some part of it [the thing]. It is the compound proposition that has a conditional composition, the proposition whose structure does not contain some parts that are a judgment and others that are judged. [Al-Fārābī] named here the simple expression with which the thing is described “definition” in general. Every one of these [conceptualizations] may be more general, more specific or equivalent [in relation to the conceptualized thing], yet all of them give some knowledge about the thing.Footnote 32
(2) The most imperfect is what the simple expressions give. In this situation he is everyone who learns some science and does not understand the concepts signified by these expressions, but possesses the conceptualization that this expression signifies that meaning. In this case, there is still a more imperfect [state], which consists of not conceptualizing by means of an equivalent expression the meaning that an equivalent expression signifies, but that [this concept] is conceptualized by means of an expression which is more general or more specific. For example: [the case of who] knows of the concept “man” only that it is signified by the expression “animal”, and of the term “animal” knows only that it is signified by the concept “man”.
(3) The most perfect conceptualizations of the expressions […]Footnote 33 and the conceptualization of some meaning which is signified by a simple expression generally. In this case there is also an imperfection, which consists of conceptualizing the meaning more generally or more specifically. The general conceptualization of a meaning is the conceptualization of the thing that the name signifies according to what makes this name well-known (mashhūr), which consists of a conceptualization of the meaning inasmuch as it is one. The mind cannot observe in the thing the characteristics that, if the thing was apprehended together with them, could be in the mind equal to it [the thing] and [the thing] would be specified by them. Undoubtedly, in the act of general conceptualization, there is in the soul some signal (ʿalāma)Footnote 34 by which we distinguish [the thing conceived] generally, but the mind takes no particular consideration of it. When we conceive generally the meaning that the expression “man” designates, there is for it a signal by which we distinguish in the mind the meaning “man” when we hear this expression. In most cases, this signal is made up by the form (shakl) and the model (takhṭīṭ) of a man, and this happens in the person who is sighted, for the blind, when he hears this expression, can only differentiate in his mind the sound of the word. The same occurs in our conceptualization of an animal by what signifies a name, because there is for it a signal in our souls that might be either equal or more particular. As for what it is equal to, this is such as our saying “the meaning of being moved by another is that another moves you”, or such as our abstraction in the mind of a particular animal that occupies the place of the universal. This general conceptualization is the most imperfect of the conceptualizations.
(4) The detailed conceptualization of a thing consists of conceiving it by the signals that single it out and by its existence. Abū Naṣr [al-Fārābī] applied the term definition to this in his treatise. This kind of conceptualization has more imperfect and more perfect modalities. The more perfect ones consist of the conceptualization of a thing by the causes of its existence that are equal to it. The most perfect of these conceptualizations occurs when the causes are in the thing, such as the conceptualization of the thing regarding its form in its matter, as in the case of our conceptualization of the man as corporeal, “self-nourishing”, sensitive and rational, and this is what is named definition absolutely. More imperfect than this is our conceptualization of the thing by the causes that are external to it, such as our conceptualization of the thing by its agent and its finality, as happens in conceiving the thing “chair” as the thing that the carpenter crafts and in which one sits for ritual ablution. Even more imperfect than this is that we conceive the thing by the things which are external to its essence, though equal to it.Footnote 35
(5) In this question of conceptualization and assent, the thing becomes what is sought (maṭlūb),Footnote 36 and this is the cognition in which ignorance preceded the search of its knowledge; for we do not seek the knowledge of a thing until we know it imperfectly and [then] we search for perfect knowledge of it.
Although the Saragossan Master departs little from the essential notions of the Second Master, he specifies further the latter's positions. Ibn Bājja broadens the focus by including interesting psychological nuances which contribute, on the one hand, to define more precisely the classes of conceptualization, particularly for the case of the conceptualization of some notion together with its causes; and, on the other, to explain better the characteristics of these classes and their interrelations. Taṣawwur is divided into, on the one hand, less perfect and more perfect and, on the other, general and detailed. The first category is qualitative inasmuch as it corresponds to the precision of the meaning that is grasped; the second is quantitative because it depends on a number of characteristics with which the meaning is grasped. The combination of the two categorizations gives the following table:
The preceding classification is one of the foundations, and not the least of them, of Ibn Bājja's future approaches to epistemology. It is not difficult to recognize it as the skeleton of the three-tier division of intelligibles and people that appears in a well-known passage of Ibn Bājja's Ittiṣāl al-ʿaql bi-al-insān,Footnote 37 in which the author deals with Plato's allegory of the cave.Footnote 38 Humankind might be divided into the following three classes according to their capacity of knowing, which parallel three sorts of universals:
1. The level of common people that attains a sort of preliminary, undifferentiated, universal which most resembles the percepts of the imagination, whereby the corresponding intelligibles are considerably embedded in matter.Footnote 39 These basic universals correspond to the general conceptualization furnished by the name (1) or to a detailed conceptualization provided by a description (2), which is said elsewhere to correspond to the definitions employed in dialectic.Footnote 40 Actually, this latter class seems to be a bridge of sorts between this level and the next.
2. The level of the men of science, which, according to Ittiṣāl is similar to the first level, insofar as one who speculates in things “related to learning” deals with “imperfect intelligibles”. The reason of their imperfection is that they are still embedded in matter, they do not exist as we conceive them, and their images and intelligibles might be false because we either ignore some elements of their being or because we only know some of them through sensations that replace the object to which the intelligible refers. This is the case of any knowledge acquired by learning, particularly in the case of geometry, because it deals with universals which do not exist in the real world.Footnote 41 Ibn Bājja keeps on saying that the intelligibles of physics partake of the same condition of those of the mathematics, and the only difference lies in the ontological superiority of physical objects, which exist in reality. The universals spanned in this category may correspond to several classes of conceptualizations described above: the abstract notions poorly known by means of a name (1.1.2.),Footnote 42 the rough descriptions and the perfect conceptualizations given by a definition that does not contain a full explanation.
3. The level of the “happy few who see the thing in itself”,Footnote 43 in which Ibn Bājja places people like Hermes and Aristotle. This level is attained by the physicist (philosopher) who is able to abstract completely from matter the ideas embedded in the thing. This universal that expresses the thing “seen in itself” is obviously the meaning conveyed by the most perfect definition, and thus perfectly conceptualized.
A similar argument would hold for other short tracts on psychology and noetic attributed to Ibn Bājja, such as Kalām fī irtiyāḍ fī taṣawwur al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila wa-al-nāṭiqa, al-fiṭar al-fāʾiqa wa-tarātub al-maʿrīfī or Kalām [fī al-maʿrifa al-naẓariyya wa-al-kamāl al-insānī] aw fī al-ittiṣāl bi-al-ʿaql al-faʿʿāl. However, since his authorship of these treatises has been questioned on reasonably good grounds,Footnote 44 I will not go into this question. The most interesting points for our present purposes are: first, that Ibn Bājja's understanding of conceptualization is embedded in Aristotle's theory of scientific method, as understood by al-Fārābī; second, that Ibn Bājja is well aware that al-Fārābī noticed that a strict interpretation of scientific method would entail the paradox that scientific demonstration could only apply to eternal and immaterial beings,Footnote 45 and thus the physical, mutable world could not be the object of science; and third, that scientific activity is a gradual process of refining and redefining knowledge. All these issues will be further discussed immediately below.
5. ASSENT, DEMONSTRATION AND SCIENCE
5.1. Assent and dialectic
Ibn Bājja's most successful thinking on assent is found in the notes on K. al-Burhān when he discusses al-Fārābī's definition of conceptualization and assent.Footnote 46 Actually, there are two series of notes on the same purposeFootnote 47 that may be read complementarily.Footnote 48 Though Ibn Bājja mentions the various kinds of assent surveyed above, he focuses in both cases on perfect assent, influenced by, at least, three treatises by al-Fārābī. Two are mentioned explicitly by Ibn Bājja at the beginning of the two series of notes:Footnote 49K. al-Taḥlīl Footnote 50 and al-Qiyās;Footnote 51 the third is K. al-Jadal. Footnote 52 The most enlightening excerpt on assent in the whole work appears in the first series of notes:Footnote 53
[V] 1. [Al-Fārābī] said: “perfect assent is the certainty and perfect conceptualization is the conceptualization of a thing, together with that which explains its essence and characterizes it”, and so forth.Footnote 54 In summary, assent that is like summum genus consists of considering that an issue is outside the mind while it is in the mind, according to what is said in K. al-Burhān. The statement to which assent is applied cannot be but a judgment (qaḍiya), because assent cannot be applied to something designated by a statement that has no declaratory composition.
2. Any judgment to which assent cannot be applied is a problem,Footnote 55 and as long as it remains thus, it would be the extreme of an opposition (tanāquḍ), like our sentences “pleasure is a perfection or it is not”, or “justice is better than love or is not better than love”. One cannot establish in the soul one of the extremes of these statements and rule out the other unless [one of these extremes] is submitted to the inquiry of a syllogismFootnote 56 – and hence it [the problem] is called waḍʿ, either in the sense given in K. al-Taḥlīl Footnote 57 or in the sense of defining.Footnote 58 In short, it [the establishment] is a voluntary actionFootnote 59 – <and there is no name common to all these “establishments” (iqrārāt)> –, which means thatFootnote 60 one of these two extremes is established on the grounds of “something external” (wārid min khārij), which makes it follow in the soul. This “establishment” (iqrār)Footnote 61 is named the assent.
In §1, Ibn Bājja follows a line of interpretation similar to what we have seen above in his notes on al-Fārābī's introductory works on logic (cf. above texts II-III). In §2, Ibn Bājja expresses the crux of his argument based on Aristotle's Topics II. 1–2: assent is construed as the establishment with certainty of something that, being imperfectly conceptualized, is considered a “problem” (maṭlūb; cf. above text IV §5). The solution of this problem stems from applying a judgment of truth and falsity to the possible characteristics of the thing. The essential element of this judgment, the middle term that binds together a subject and a predicate, is called by Ibn Bājja the wārid min khārij, the “something external”, according to an expression borrowed from al-Fārābī's epitome of Topics (K. al-Jadal), on the purpose of the premises and syllogisms of dialectics. To al-Fārābī, the dialectical premises are “what is commonly accepted” or “notorious” (mashhūr) among people, namely the people whose opinion is particularly respected, like scientists and philosophers; in K. al-Jadal,Footnote 62 al-Fārābī says that “the notoriety that appears in the soul” (al-shuhra al-wārida fī al-nafs) connects the subject and the predicate of a dialectical premise, producing thereby the soul's assent to what is affirmed.Footnote 63 Thus, for Ibn Bājja, the wārid min khārij is knowledge exterior to the dilemma that appears in the soul as a middle term that allows a syllogism to be set. This syllogism will definitely establish whether a or b hold true for the subject and the inquirer will assent to that conclusion, by means of which he will reach a better conceptualization of the subject.
The exterior middle term appears in four ways, which Ibn Bājja specifies further in the second series of notes.Footnote 64 It may be either knowledge furnished by sense perception, by what an unqualified person says, by a syllogism that connects two propositions by means of what is “notorious” or by primary intelligibles. Ibn Bājja reproduces the Aristotelian/Farabian scheme of four classes of syllogistic premises: knowledge given by the tradition (maqbūlāt), sense perceptions (maḥsūsāt), commonly accepted knowledge (mashhūrāt) and primary intelligibles (ma ʿ qūlāt uwal). Most obviously, perfect assent, the assent that provides certainty, is brought about by the last two premises,Footnote 65 whereas approximate assent follows from the other premises. Because of its essential role in the process of reaching perfect conceptualization and assent, Ibn Bājja expands considerably on primary intelligibles in this section, which is an essential and yet not the sole reference to his thought on the question. However, the question of Ibn Bājja's treatment of the indisputable premises of scientific demonstration lies outside the scope of the present paper.Footnote 66
Concerning taṣdīq, the gist of excerpt V under analysis is Ibn Bājja's clear formulation of al-Fārābī's contention that dialectic is an essential prerequisite for attaining any kind of knowledge and most particularly scientific knowledge,Footnote 67 in the sense that it furnishes the contradictory propositions which are the very starting point of scientific investigation,Footnote 68 at least in disciplines whose object of study is embedded in materiality and so it has contradictory characteristics.Footnote 69
5.2. Assent and demonstration
It is worth stressing that the text V above seem explains that Ibn Bājja espouses the essential features of al-Fārābī's construal of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics:Footnote 70 science is a process that starts as a dialectical controversy about some subject; continues as an inquiry into the subject under study which is essentially empiric; then, it furnishes middle terms that are the causes by which some predicate applies to the subject;Footnote 71 finally, it culminates in a demonstrative syllogism, preferably of the Barbara type, which formalizes the research done for the purposes of sound exposition, teaching and, first and foremost, proving that the reasoning has provided us with certainty. The essential elements of this understanding of scientific method are well summarized in a paragraph of Ibn Bājja's al-Qawl fī al-quwwa al-nāṭiqa (“Discourse on the rational faculty”):Footnote 72
[VI] By the same token, we must study why primary and certain assent (al-taṣdīq al-yaqīnī al-awwal) is not perfected in the rational faculty except by scrutinizing (bi-al-taṣaffuḥ) [the particular instances], whether we notice it or not, from which the primary premises exist; and how we may judge what is endless by a small number of elements. Likewise, [we must study] that demonstrative certainty and, in general, any assent that is not primary stem from syllogism and that the most perfect form of the instruments of reasoning is the first mode of the first figure [of the syllogism], and why this is so.
Following Aristotle, the demonstrations admitted by al-Fārābī in scientific knowledge are of three kinds:Footnote 73 that which affords knowledge a) of the existence of a thing under study (demonstratio quia); b) of its cause (demonstratio propter quid); c) of both existence and cause, which is called burhān muṭlaq, “absolute demonstration” (demonstratio simpliciter). Though a thorough study of the problems of demonstration is outside the scope of the present paper, it is worth mentioning that Ibn Bājja states explicitly the relationship of these three demonstrations with conceptualization and assent.Footnote 74 In addition, Ibn Bājja's Ta ʿ ālīq contain several examples and reflections that connect taṣdīq understood as a solution of a problem and the demonstratio quia, whose main purpose is to prove the existence of something which is prior in being to its effects, posterior in being yet prior in knowledge.Footnote 75 In this context, the solution of the problem stems from an induction which is formalized in an inductive syllogism,Footnote 76 for not in vain al-Fārābī says about induction that it is “the investigation of things included within some matter in order to show the truth of some judgment about this matter by denial or affirmation”;Footnote 77 and in K. al-Taḥlīl, he speaks of the method of “division” (taqsīm) for solving problems, which is actually an inductive process.Footnote 78 In dealing with this method, Ibn Bājja explains, with an example relevant for scientific knowledge, how we can solve one of these problems which are the starting point for a better conceptualization of some issue known in general terms and for our assent to it. The question is whether fever is an unnatural heat or not.Footnote 79 The problem is solved through the investigation of the existence of unnatural heat in any kind of fever known to us. Once it is found in all the particular instances, we can conclude and explain in terms of a deductive syllogism that fever is an unnatural heat, obtaining thereby a definition of fever as “unnatural heat”. In spite of being a partial definition inasmuch as it lacks the majority of causes, it yields a genus and a differentia and says something significant for science about the essence of fever, which opens the scope of a previous and general conceptualization of the term as an unqualified heat. Our conceptualization is problematic as not only is it incomplete, but it depends on a middle term whose universality is by no means unquestionable.Footnote 80 Indeed, a demonstration of this kind does not deserve the name demonstration but rather that of “proof” (dalīl, lit. a guidance towards something),Footnote 81 but it is nevertheless the unavoidable starting point of good science and it would furnish universal knowledge provided that the empiric inquiry that it synthesizes moves from simple induction to the Aristotelian epogôgê of Posterior Analytics II.19, rendered as tajriba by al-Fārābī.Footnote 82 By this token, Ibn Bājja says that the most complete demonstration is that which gives as a conclusion a perfect definition;Footnote 83 and that, if it is true that the method of division, as such, does not provide the essential causes on whose basis these demonstrations and definitions are built, it is likewise true that these essential causes are known to us when one applies division,Footnote 84 intending that one has to look at the multifarious instances that are synthesized by a universal to find something relevant about it. In any case, Ibn Bājja understands certainty as knowing together with the causes. Conceptualization and assent and its various kinds, expounded in some detail above, explain the gradual task of scientific research to move towards better comprehension, in which the last degrees of certainty are a virtually unattainable goal, at least in sciences other than arithmetic and geometry. Ibn Bājja painstakingly states that, for the natural sciences – and likewise for the more physical branches of mathematical disciplines, such as astronomy –, “absolute demonstrations” are extremely rare.Footnote 85 Therefore, true and perfect conceptualizations and assents are, too.
6. CONCEPTUALIZATION AND ASSENT WITHIN A PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK
Ibn Bājja understands, in much the same way as al-Fārābī and thanks to him, that conceptualization and assent are the “organizing theme” for understanding Aristotle's theory of science. For this reason, he will analyze thoroughly the couplet in his notes on al-Fārābī's books and commentaries on logic and scientific method and will enrich them with notes that are often psychological in character; then he will employ them consistently in several works on scientific matters when he will deem it necessary to discuss method, mainly with regard to premises. As for the mathematical disciplines such as arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, the main references to assent and conceptualization are found in Kalām fī al-hayʾa (“Discourse on astronomy”), K. al-Ḥayawān (commentary on Aristotle's De Animalibus), and the epistle addressed to Ibn al-Imām;Footnote 86 regarding the natural sciences, K. al-Kawn wa-al-fasād (commentary on Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption),Footnote 87Sharḥ al-āthār al-ʿulwiyya Footnote 88 (commentary on Aristole's Meteorology), Kalām fī al-mizāj (commentary on Galen's On Mixtures)Footnote 89 and Taʿālīq al-adwiya al-mufrada (notes about Galen's On Simple Drugs). Moreover, the couplet is likewise a key concept in works which, though not devoted to science, deal with the problem of acquiring primary premises such as Fī al-Waḥda wa-al-wāḥid Footnote 90 (“On the one and the unity”) and al-Qawl fī al-quwwa al-nāṭiqa (“Discourse on the rational faculty”).Footnote 91 To a large extent, though the reflections on conceptualization and assent constitute a solid base for one of the major projects of Ibn Bājja's intellectual life, namely the Aristotelization of scientific practice, learning and research, yet the role of the famous couplet exceeds the limits of scientific method.
As is well known, the commitment to good science and complete knowledge is an essential aspect of Ibn Bājja's thought on psychology and ethics, which focuses on the ideal of theoretical life as the path towards perfection and transcendence. Hence, it is hardly surprising that conceptualization and assent are also key concepts in two of the favorite subjects of the author: the psychology of rational thought and the inextricable connection between rational thought and human nature. Some sections of Fī al-Waḥda wa-al-wāḥid and al-Kawn wa-al-fasād are good examples of the employment of the couplet for analyzing the close interrelation of scientific method, psychology and ethics, though this appears more distinctly than anywhere else in his notes on K. al-Burhān. This work contains a long section that has also come down to us as an independent short tract entitled Kalām fī māhiya al-shawq al-ṭabīʿī (“Discourse on what is natural desire”),Footnote 92 although it is difficult to discern whether it has been extracted from the glosses of K. al-Burhān or added to them.Footnote 93 The text expands some lines of al-Fārābī's Burhān so as to give a full theory of the human desire to understand, which starts in human possession of primary intelligibles in a fashion that Ibn Bājja, according to al-Fārābī, calls “natural”, strongly suggesting its inborn character. Although the discussion about the “natural character” of these cognitions exceeds the scope of the present paper,Footnote 94 Ibn Bājja takes it for granted. Basing his argument on Aristotle's maxim “natura nihil facit frustra”, he says that, since these intelligibles actually do exist, human thirst for knowledge is as natural as them. This necessity for knowledge expresses itself in several “rational and natural desires” (al-tashawwuqāt al-naẓariyya al-ṭabī ʿ iyya),Footnote 95 the first of which is the search for “what is” (mā huwa), defined as the “desire for that by which this thing subsists” (mā bihi qiwām dhālika al-shayʾ), i.e. the perfect conceptualization of a thing which entails the grasping of its formal cause. Now, this knowledge may be given with or without matterFootnote 96 and in this latter case three further desires rise up: the knowledge of “from what it is (ʿammādha huwa, encompassing the search of matter and agent) and the knowledge of “for what” (li-mā, the final cause). There is however a desire which is prior to these four, which Ibn Bājja expresses with the interrogative particle hal, “does it exist?”, connecting thereby rational desire with the dialectic approach to assent seen above.
It is possible to recognize in Kalām fī māhiya al-shawq al-ṭabīʿī (therefore, in T. K. al-Burhān) a sketch of a substantial part of the above-mentioned al-Qawl fī al-quwwa al-nāṭiqa, a short tract that complements Ibn Bājja's commentary to Aristotle's On the Soul. Footnote 97 In al-Qawl,Footnote 98 Ibn Bājja speaks of two functions in the human mind, which correspond with what it is said in Kalām fī māhiya al-shawq al-ṭabīʿī about the “two relations”:Footnote 99 the first is the action of coining “singular meanings” (maʿānī mufrada), and the second is the action of composing these meanings so as to express a judgment. Put another way, Ibn Bājja speaks in both places about a “conceptualizing function” and an “assenting function”. Both functions are described in Qawl in much the same way as Kalām fī māhiya al-shawq al-ṭabīʿī (the first is as the matter for the second and prior in nature to it), yet al-Qawl specifies that the second function correlates with the reflective faculty (quwwa mufakkira), something which is only said indirectly in Kalām. In much the same way as in this latter treatise, al-Qawl says that certainty amounts to knowing, together with the causes, specifying that the attainment of certainty is a faculty of the rational intellect.Footnote 100 Moreover, al-Qawl coincides with Kalām in explaining this “rational desire” that characterizes the human condition.Footnote 101 On the other hand, al-Qawl Footnote 102 expands on the subject matter and pure intelligibles that appear in Kalām. According to Qawl, pure intelligibles may be interpreted as follows: the general conceptualizations grasped without causes correspond with material intelligibles still connected to particular instances; their causes are in a first stage of thought outside the mind, therefore outside the concept which is generally grasped. This part of the process is natural in the mind, because it has stored since birth enough knowledge so as to conceive a general idea about almost any existing being found in common experience without noticing that it is performing a cognitive action. Now, if the meaning corresponds to an existing being, the mind will be able to reflect about it, finding the causes with which it is possible to conceptualize the very essence of the thing. At this stage of the process, the mind moves to a higher degree of comprehension, that of certainty, which would correlate with the formulation of a universal concept abstracted from matter. This universal corresponds with a definition that, at least, provides the causes and should ideally be a demonstration of existence and cause. This second part of the process is not as natural as the first because it entails a deliberate judgment which is voluntary action. Notice moreover that, in Kalām, Ibn Bājja speaks of the faculty of formulating judgments in terms of “acquired capacity” (quwwa mustafāda), which belongs to the vocabulary of noetic. Ibn Bājja's reflections about conceptualization and assent are also a preliminary step towards the works of his maturity such as Tadbīr al-mutawaḥḥid or Ittiṣāl al-ʿaql bi-al-Insān, where he will expound his most fully achieved thoughts on ethics and noetic.
7. CONCLUSIONS
In the process of understanding the Organon via al-Fārābī's epitomes and commentaries, Ibn Bājja became aware of the epistemological relevance of tasdīq and taṣṣawur. For this reason, he devoted several sections of his notes on al-Fārābī's works on logic to the issue. In his study of taṣdīq and taṣawwur, Ibn Bājja tried to complement and clarify what al-Fārābī had said with notions borrowed from the latter's works on logic, namely the ones which dealt particularly with the definition and the syllogism. Aware of the important role played by taṣdīq and taṣawwur in al-Fārābī's construal of the scientific method, he paid particular attention to the perfect modalities of these notions, which emerge via the implementation of scientific demonstration.
In spite of the sketchy, confused style of his “notes”, Ibn Bājja wrote significant sections where he could offer himself and his disciples useful insights into this famous dyad. Using several of al-Fārābī's works to gloss a few lines that the latter had written of the issue, Ibn Bājja's notes gave a more thorough account. His construal did not differ substantially from al-Fārābī's conclusions, but on occasion he added some personal remarks that improved on his source: the description of the several modalities of conceptualization is more precise in Ibn Bājja than in al-Fārābī (cf. text IV); equally, Ibn Bājja presents a clearer explanation of how assent appears, ultimately, as a result of a reasoning that starts in a dialectical controversy (cf. text V).
However, Ibn Bājja's importance with regard to taṣdīq and taṣawwur lies less in what he said about them than in the use he made of them. His commentaries on these two concepts reveal how he gained acquaintance with Aristotle's scientific method via al-Fārābī. Understanding that the goal of science was the attainment of perfect conceptualization and assent, Ibn Bājja used both terms recurrently in his commentaries on physics, astronomy and medicine; as a scientist he undertook to find the most perfect conceptualization and assent that he could in each discipline he addressed. In this way, he gave birth to an Aristotelizing approach to science that fostered the appearance of unusual and highly interesting treatises such as Ibn Rushd's K. al-Kulliyyāt fī al-ṭibb or al-Biṭrūjī's K. fī al-Hayʾa.
Taṣdīq and taṣawwur were also “organizing themes” for Ibn Bājja when he addressed the subject that most concerned him. In his works on noetics and psychology, the Farabian notions about the dyad appear recurrently and form the basis for the study of human processes of thought. Our reading of the works that Ibn Bājja wrote in his maturity would be poorer without a previous awareness of his youthful writings on taṣdīq and taṣawwur.
I wish to thank the anonymous referees of ASP for their helpful remarks that have improved this article; and Prof. Joaquín Lomba for providing me with a copy of MS Escorial 612.
