Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 151 - Single Minded - Averroes on the Intellect.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the LMU in Munich, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Single-Minded, Averroes on the Intellect. When I was finishing my studies in philosophy and preparing to apply for a job, I got some advice about what to do in the interviews I was hoping to get. Given my area of interest, I should expect to be asked why it is worth studying the history of philosophy at all, instead of just ignoring all of these antiquated ideas and getting on with our own theories. The right answer, I was told, is that we can mine the history of philosophy to discover arguments and positions that would speak to today's concerns. A good example might be the way that Aristotle's ethics have given inspiration to many philosophers working in ethics in the last few decades. So, I prepared myself to say, preferably with a straight face, that contemporary philosophers of the 1990s could learn a thing or two from my PhD dissertation, not the easiest argument to make given that my topic was the Arabic translation of Plotinus. I stood in front of the mirror, practicing lines like, you may think that mental states supervene on states of the brain, but there is a surprisingly good case to be made that we have an undescended soul which never loses its connection to universal intellect. But I never really believed that this is the only, or even the best, rationale for studying the history of philosophy. Certainly historical texts have contributed to contemporary debates, as with Aristotle's ethics. Others seem almost to transcend the time they were written. No one can read Epictetus, for instance, without considering how his teachings might apply to their own lives. But to me, much of the fascination of the historical figures is how far they are from our ways of thinking, rather than how up-to-date we can make them seem. Indeed, I've always been drawn to thinkers whose views seem a bit far out, at least from today's vantage point. I find it fascinating that long-dead philosophers assumed certain things to be obviously true, which now seem obviously false, and that they built elaborate systems on these exotic foundations. To be useful, historical ideas don't always need to fit neatly into our ways of thinking. They can shake us out of those ways of thinking, helping us to see that our assumptions, too, are a product of our time and place. If this is the sort of thing you want from the history of philosophy, then it is hard to beat Averroes's ideas about the human intellect. Here we have the greatest medieval commentator on Aristotle, conducting a sustained inquiry into the meaning of Aristotle's treatise On the Soul, and changing his mind several times, before finally coming to the conclusion that—wait for it—there is only one human mind. All of us share in its activity, and through its thinking humankind is brought to its highest fulfillment. Averroes's proposal was greeted with derision and hostility in Latin Christendom. The doctrine of the unity of the human intellect was officially condemned by church authorities, and no less a writer than Thomas Aquinas composed a detailed attack on Averroes. Not only was his theory self-evidently false in its own right, but it was also wrong as an interpretation of Aristotle. But before we follow Aquinas in heaping scorn on Averroes's doctrine, we should try to understand it. After all, this was no casual notion mentioned only in passing. Averroes developed it in the longest of his three treatments of Aristotle's work On the Soul. As I mentioned last time, he wrote three kinds of interpretations for Aristotle's writings—epitomies, running paraphrases, and the longer proper commentaries which would quote the original Aristotelian text and then meticulously explain it, bit by bit. Averroes wrote all three sorts of exposition for On the Soul, and it was one of only four Aristotelian works to receive the full commentary treatment. This shows how important it was to him and also gives us an opportunity to see Averroes's ideas developing. It is only in the last, full commentary for On the Soul that we find the notorious doctrine that all mankind shares a single intellect. Averroes came to it only after lengthy and careful consideration of both the philosophical and interpretive issues facing him. He must then have had very good reasons for his apparently insane proposal. So what were they? Well firstly, the idea that there is a single intellect involved in all human knowledge was nothing new. We can go back at least as far as Plotinus. As I explained at several unsuccessful job interviews, he postulated an intellect, divine but below the absolute first principle, which is identical with the world of Platonic forms. For Plotinus, human souls come to have knowledge through their relation to this single intellect. This may seem to be the primary inspiration for the theory we find in Al-Farabi and Evasenna, who speak of a so-called agent intellect. Their agent intellect gives forms to matter, to facilitate the generation of things like sunflowers and giraffes, and it's also involved in the process of human knowledge. No doubt their theory did have late ancient roots, but it emerged not so much through reading Plotinus as from interpreting Aristotle. Following the antique commentators on Aristotle, Alkindi, Al-Farabi, and Evasenna envisioned a superhuman intellect which enables us to think. They themselves were thinking of the infamous fifth chapter of the third book of Aristotle's which speaks of a maker intellect that is like light. Just as light makes seeing possible by rendering things visible, the maker intellect makes thinking possible by rendering things intelligible. It's worth reminding ourselves why this theory seemed so plausible to so many clever philosophers. For one thing, it made good sense of a difficult and important passage in Aristotle, and that's always a bonus, but it also explained how universal knowledge is possible. Remember that, according to Aristotle, we can only count ourselves as having knowledge in the strict and proper sense when we have universal and necessary understanding. It's hard to see how that can emerge from our experience of things in the world around us, since these things are particular and not necessary, they come to be and pass away. Though the details vary from author to author, the single agent intellect was always used to explain how we are able to attain universal understanding on the basis of our encounter with particular things. To this extent, Averroes is doing nothing innovative when he invokes a single intellect to explain human knowledge. The new twist is to identify the single intellect with the human mind itself. Averroes' Muslim predecessors may have accepted the existence of a single universal intellect, but they also believed that each human has their own intellect or rational soul. You have such a power, and so do I. This is why once you have examined enough giraffes, and once the agent intellect lends you a helping hand, you come to understand giraffes, and I don't. In your intellect, the potential knowledge of giraffes has been realized. Well, my intellect remains woefully ignorant of giraffes, because I've been wasting my time watching TV and changing the channel every time a nature documentary comes on. So we can now say more specifically what Averroes' controversial thesis amounts to. He says that there is only one single human capacity for universal knowledge. Using the traditional technical terminology, he puts the point by saying that there is only one human material intellect. Here, the word material doesn't necessarily mean that we are literally dealing with a physical object, just that we are dealing with an intellect that is potential in character. This is the intellect that can take on an object of thought the way that a material, like wood, can take on the form of a table or of a toy giraffe. However, one might be tempted to say that this material intellect is material in a more literal sense, actually connected to a body. This is how Averroes understood the position of his esteemed fellow commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias. A related view was proposed by his esteemed fellow Andalusian philosopher, Ibn Bajja. As we saw when we looked at Ibn Tufel, Ibn Bajja devoted himself to the Baghdad school project of coming to grips with Aristotle but on Spanish soil. Averroes is Ibn Bajja's direct successor in this respect, and, on the more specific issue of the intellect, he also took inspiration from his predecessor. His first attempt to explain Aristotle's psychology appears in his Epitome devoted to Amn the Soul. Here he more or less follows Ibn Bajja's suggestion that the material intellect is markedly inferior to intellect, properly speaking. Since it gives us only the potential to think about universal truths, why not say that it resides in our storehouse of particular experiences? After all, it's thanks to your encounters with various giraffes, like Hiawatha, that you are able to arrive at scientific knowledge about giraffes in general. Following this line of thought, Ibn Bajja associated the material intellect with the imagination, where we keep and manipulate particular images like our remembered image of Hiawatha galloping across the savanna. For Ibn Bajja, these imaginary forms prepare the way for what he called a unification with the universal agent intellect. Once this unification occurs, the human soul is able to think universally, like a good giraffeologist should. In his Epitome of Aristotle's On the Soul, Iverroes expresses his admiration for Ibn Bajja's interpretation and basically adopts it himself. And the view does have its attractions. It makes good sense of the phrase material intellect itself, in that the imaginary forms in the soul serve as matter for actual thinking, like wood that is turned into a table. Upon further reflection, though, Iverroes decided he could not accept Ibn Bajja's teaching. The change of mind, pun as always intended, was the result of Iverroes doing exactly what you'd expect Iverroes to do, read Aristotle more carefully. Upon revisiting the crucial passages in On the Soul, Iverroes was impressed by the argument Aristotle gives to show that the intellect has no bodily organ. We covered that more than a hundred episodes ago, so it's just possible that you may need me to remind you how it went. The idea was that the intellect can take on any form, because all things are thinkable, so it cannot have any form by its own nature, otherwise it wouldn't be able to acquire that form after not having it. For instance, if the intellect were seated in the brain, and if brains are cold, then we would not be able to start thinking about cold after not thinking about cold. Rather, coldness would always be present in the intellect. Ponder this, Iverroes was moved to separate even the material intellect more completely from connection to matter. The imagination, as long since established in the medical tradition, is a power seated in part of the brain. Remember that Iverroes, like so many other philosophers of Andalusia, wrote about medicine as well as philosophy. So, no kind of intellect could be so intimately related to imagination as Ibn Bajja claimed. Thus, in this so-called middle commentary, or paraphrase, of Aristotle's On the Soul, Iverroes sets out a second position about the intellect. This time, he adopts something more like the view we find in Al-Farabi and Evicenna. Now, the idea is that each human has their own material intellect, which is a power completely free of connection to the body. It seems rather mysterious where such a power could come from, if it has nothing to do with the body. Iverroes finds the solution in the agent intellect. It actually has to do two things for us. First, it gives each of us our power for a universal understanding, which is the individual material intellect. Then, it activates that power when we unite to it. Of course, as in the earlier theory, this will happen only when we have gone through the necessary empirical investigation, looking at giraffes for instance. But Iverroes isn't done. Pondering the issue yet further, and probably reading On the Soul a few dozen more times just to be on the safe side, leads him to the realization that this theory has one little problem, it makes no sense. At its heart is a confusion about the difference between particular and universal things. That my own particular experiences of giraffes are mine is easy to understand. They are stored in my imagination, and this is seated in my brain. And my brain belongs only to me and not to anyone else, barring the eventuality of grave robbers stealing it for a mad scientist who wants to build a monster capable of hosting a philosophy podcast. But how could my intellect belong just to me if it has no such connection to my brain or to any other bodily organ? And here's another problem. Suppose that, jealous of your expertise, I go off and acquire a knowledge of giraffes equal to yours. Now that both of us are giraffeologists, you and I should be having exactly the same universal understanding of giraffes. But if this knowledge is truly universal, and not particular, then it can't be that you have one knowledge of giraffes and I another. Rather, we should be sharing the same knowledge. As Iverroes puts it, the thing you are understanding and the thing I am understanding must be numerically identical, not two individuals of the same type. Otherwise, understanding giraffes would be like the case of seeing giraffes, where it would be possible for you to look at Hiawatha while I look at her cousin Harold. The point is especially clear when we consider the case of one person teaching another. Obviously, it must be the very same knowledge that is first had by the teacher and then acquired by the student. Here, Iverroes is returning to a fundamental problem that confronts all those who try to follow Aristotle's theory. On the one hand, knowledge is universal. On the other, it belongs to one individual person at a time and on the basis of individual experiences. How can we explain both of these facts? According to Ibn Bajja and the earliest interpretation offered by Iverroes, the material intellect itself is bound up with individual experiences through the imagination. This explains very nicely why you understand and I don't, but it violates the nature of intellect itself, which is supposed to be unmixed with the body. The second interpretation of Iverroes solves this problem. Despite its name, even material intellect is completely free of connection to matter. But that leaves unexplained how the intellect belongs to one person rather than another. What we need then is to accept the universality of all intellect, even material intellect, while still explaining the obvious fact that different people have the experience of thinking about different things. And so, we finally reach Iverroes' notorious doctrine of the unity of the intellect. The material intellect will be a single, shared capacity for having universal and scientific understanding. It will not be some separate superhuman thing, but rather the highest power that belongs to humans. It's just that there is only one such power and it belongs simultaneously to all humans. Less notorious, but equally vital to Iverroes' theory is the part where he explains how it can be that you seem to be thinking about giraffes while I am not, given that we share the same intellect. Since this experience is particular to you, it must somehow be linked to your body, since it is your body that gives you your particularity. Iverroes' answer is ingenious. When the particular thought processes happening in your brain are being used as a basis for universal knowledge, then you have the experience of universal knowing. These thought processes could include not only the imagining and remembering of things you have seen, but also a lower kind of thinking, which Iverroes calls cogitation. This is not proper universal understanding, but more like the active consideration of particular things we have seen or otherwise experienced. In this way, Iverroes manages to have his cake and eat it too. The involvement of faculties seated in the brain takes care of the particular experiences of thinking had by different people, while the single intellect guarantees universality and the fact that different people can know exactly the same thing. There is admittedly a cost to be paid. If all the lower faculties that provide the universal intellect with a basis for its thinking are in the brain, then they will perish along with the body. This means that any immortality humans might have will be rather attenuated. I cannot have any afterlife that is particular to me, rather the only sense in which I will exist after death is that the universal intellect is my highest form, just like it is your highest form and the highest form of everyone who has ever lived. And that intellect isn't going anywhere, it is eternal. In fact, it is continuously thinking about all possible objects of thought. In order to make sure that this happens, Iverroes goes so far as to say that at every single moment in the history of the world, somebody, somewhere, is using his or her brain to enjoy a universal grasp of each of the objects of thought. Otherwise, the universal intellect would be idle, at least concerning whichever objects no one is thinking about. The failure of Iverroes' theory to provide for personal immortality was one of the main reasons Aquinas found it totally unacceptable. But of course, that's not an argument against the theory, just a possibly unwelcome consequence. Realizing this, Aquinas mounted a detailed response to Iverroes, fighting fire with fire by providing a careful exposition of Aristotle to show that the Iverroist reading was misconceived. But let's leave aside the questions of Aristotle interpretation and think about the position in philosophical terms. Aquinas repeatedly accuses Iverroes of being unable to explain the individual experience of thinking. As he says several times, we must explain how it is that this man understands, in Latin, hic homo intelligit. But, as I've now said several times, Iverroes does have an explanation for that. When the universal intellect draws on the images and particular thoughts in my brain to have understanding, then it is I who experience the understanding. A better objection, I think, would be that Iverroes is confusing different sorts of universality. We should distinguish between two ways in which a thought could be universal. On the one hand, it might be a universal act of thinking, one shared by everyone. On the other hand, the content of the thought might be universal. Consider a parallel case where I utter a sentence like, all giraffes are mammals. My utterance is obviously particular. It was said at a given time, in a given place, using my particular mouth. But the sentence is about a universal fact, one that applies not just to Hiawatha or Harold, but to all giraffes. Similarly, I should be able to have a particular thought about a universal fact. This may seem fairly obvious, but actually, it's difficult to make sense of what I've just said within an Aristotelian theory of mind. Part of the problem, as we've seen, is that matter, or body, is meant to be the so-called principle of individuation. In other words, it is what explains particularity. So, if intellect is not realized physically, it's hard to see how it could have a particular thought, whatever the content of that thought. A further problem is that in the Aristotelian tradition, the intellect is supposed to be identical with its object. The material intellect is nothing but a capacity to take on, and indeed to become, certain forms. If those forms are universal, then of course the capacity too should be universal. It seems to me that with his apparently crazy doctrine, Ivaroides was simply following certain Aristotelian ideas through to their logical conclusion. That isn't to say that his position is a correct interpretation of Aristotle, but it is a reasonable response to problems that had emerged after many centuries of attempts to understand Aristotle. This is worth emphasizing because Ivaroides's view might be taken as a lurch in the direction of Neoplatonism. This would be a natural enough thought, given that Neoplatonism, Plotinus, likewise had a universal intellect in his philosophy. But it would be a complete misunderstanding of what led Ivaroides to his position. To accept the different point of view I was just urging, where we have particular thoughts with universal content, Ivaroides would have had to abandon not anything Neoplatonic, but fundamental parts of the Aristotelian theory of mind. And that just wasn't going to happen. He was stuck to Aristotelianism like spots are stuck on a giraffe. Indeed, he was probably a more committed Aristotelian than any other thinker of the Islamic world. To understand better the consequences of his staunch loyalty to Aristotle, I want to spend one more episode on The Commentator. We'll be doing it in the company of one of The Commentator's most outstanding commentators, Richard Taylor. In this episode, I've drawn extensively on Taylor's account of Ivaroides' views on the intellect. But now, we've prepared our brains for unification with the source of this understanding. So let's all join together to think some more about Ivaroides, along with Richard Taylor, next time on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.