Yasin Ramazan Basaran

The term “God of the philosophers” refers to the concept of God as understood and discussed in philosophical discourse. It is a philosophical concept of God that is often considered distinct from the concept of God found in religious traditions. Throughout history, various philosophers and theologians have used the term to refer to God whose existence and attributes have been the subject of philosophical reasoning and reflection. In this study, I explore Ibn Sīnā’s way of reconciling two concepts of God. I argue that Ibn Sînâ, a philosopher with an Aristotelian and Neoplatonic heritage, sees no contradiction between the God of the philosophers and the God of the scriptures. Ibn Sina’s way is interesting because it is an attempt to bridge the gap between two concepts of God without compromising the classical theistic understanding of divine attributes. First, I will briefly present the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic contexts of Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy to show his way of reconciliation. Second, I will give an account of Ibn Sīnā’s concept of God as it is revealed in his understanding of the divine attribute of immutability. Finally, I will examine his views in which he most explicitly offers the concept of a God who is responsive, who is present, and who is engaged with human beings. His ideas about God’s agency, petitionary prayer, and divine providence provide ample evidence that the God of Ibn Sīnā is the God of the religious traditions known to and worshipped by human beings.

How can an event be extraordinary? What is the metaphysical background necessary to believe that extraordinary events are possible? The possibility of extraordinary events can be approached from metaphysical, epistemic, and scientific perspectives. Metaphysical explanations are extraordinary events that transcend nature or violate the regular structure in nature. Epistemological explanations, on the other hand, are explanations of extraordinary events by referring either to our lack of knowledge about nature or to our inadequacy of knowledge about events. Scientific explanations recognize phenomena that have been observed or experimented on but have not yet been explained by any theory. In this article, I focus on metaphysical and epistemological explanations. We see that three basic assumptions are used for a metaphysical explanation: 1) There must be an orderly operation called Nature. 2) The process in nature can be violated. 3) There is a compatibility between the mind and the world. With the adoption of these three assumptions by different philosophers in various combinations, two kinds of metaphysical explanations arise: extraordinary as supernatural and extraordinary by appealing to the principle of sufficient reason. According to the first type of explanation, extraordinary events are events caused by what is beyond nature, exceeding nature, or violating the workings of nature. In order to explain extraordinary events with the supernatural, there is a need to violate the metaphysical necessities on which nature is based, such as the principle of causality. An approach represented by philosophers such as St. Augustine, al-Ghazālī, Richard Swinburne, and Nazif Muhtaroğlu claims that it is possible for a supernatural event to occur, claiming that the functioning of nature is not necessary. But if there is no metaphysical necessity in nature such as the principle of causality, how can an extraordinary event violate anything? Both Swinburne and St. Augustine answer this question with the argument that the principle of causality is effective in nature and that principle can be violated by God, a supernatural power. Al-Ghazālī and Muhtaroğlu, on the other hand, prefer not to accept the effectiveness of causality in the functioning of nature. Thus, all activity in nature will be attributed to God, and extraordinary events will gain the same status as ordinary events. The point that unites these views is the belief that the operation in nature is not necessary, with or without causality. Philosophers with this belief could not successfully explain extraordinary events because they could not ground their understanding of nature and the supernatural. Moreover, when we analyze their approach to the problem, we see that ordinary and extraordinary events cannot be separated from each other, since no other principle is put forward to replace the principle of causality. The second type of explanation is the explanation of extraordinary events by applying the principle of sufficient reason. The philosophers represented by Ibn Sînâ and Leibniz consider it necessary both metaphysically and epistemologically that everything in nature needs sufficient reason to come to be. According to them, no event can take place without sufficient cause. In this respect, there must be sufficient reason for extraordinary events to occur as well as ordinary ones. Both philosophers argue that extraordinary events are metaphysically possible events in nature, but their occurance does not violate principles such as causality. According to this type of explanation, extraordinary events are not supernatural. Ibn Sînâ, using the concept of nature in its metaphysical sense, argued that forces beyond matter are also effective in nature. Meanwhile, he maintained the necessity of the causality principle. In this way, it is possible to have previously unknown results from known causes. For example, the human soul can affect different bodies through celestial realms, just as it affects its own body. However, this interaction does not violate the necessity of the causality principle, on the contrary, it means the discovery of the necessary structure of nature. In short, the epistemological approaches of Leibniz and Ibn Sînâ, which they developed while preserving the metaphysical necessity of causation, do not require denying extraordinary events without examining them, but also offer a stronger basis for the possibility of extraordinary events, as they expand the limits of our knowledge of nature.

Yaşadığımız çağ bize emsalsiz miktarda bilgi, bir o kadar da karmaşa getiriyor. Düşüncelerimizi sağlıklı biçimde kurmak, safsatalara düşmekten kaçınmak hiç olmadığı kadar zor. Eleştirel düşünce başlı başına bir disipline dönüşmüş durumda. Yasin Ramazan, tüm bu keşmekeş içinde yolunu kaybetmeden tutarlı düşünceler üretmeye çalışan okura rehberlik etmeyi hedefliyor. Düşünmenin Alfabesi nasıl mantıklı düşüneceğinizi öğretmeyi hedeflese de bir mantık kitabı değil. Teorikten ziyade pratik, anlayarak yola koyulmayı teşvik eden bir metin. Sadece başkalarının düşüncelerini kritik etmeyi değil, kendi öğrenme ve düşünme serüvenimizi de takip etmeyi ve gerekli iyileştirmeleri yaparak zenginleştirmeyi salık veriyor. Tutarlı düşüncelerin yanı sıra sağlam inançlar elde etmemizin de yolu yine eleştirel düşünceden geçiyor. “Bu kitap, size eleştirel düşünmeyi sevdirmeyi hedeflemiyor. Zaten, kitabı elinize alıp karıştırdığınıza veya internet kitapçısında sepete eklediğinize göre sistematik ve disiplinli düşünme eksikliğini hissediyor veya bildiğiniz halde bu alandaki gelişmeleri merak ediyorsunuz demektir. Buradaki amacımız, günlük hayatta alışkanlıkla yaptığımız ve zaman zaman başarılı olduğumuz düşünme faaliyetini, profesyonel veya akademik hayata nasıl taşıyabileceğimizi görmekten ibaret. Bu kitabı bir rehberden çok bir tecrübe aktarımı gibi düşünürseniz, kendi düşünme serüveninizde size eşlik etmesine izin verebilirsiniz.”

In his article on the foundations of Ficino’s ideas on magic, James Hankins observes that, where Ficino justifies non-material causation in the universe, he is heavily indebted to Avicenna. As Hankins also points out, this Avicennan idea clearly violates the Aristotelian maxim that ‘physical causation requires contact’. Because Avicenna holds the view that the soul is neither a physical entity nor simply the form of body, Avicenna’s consent to the soul to manipulate material objects means assignment of the soul to perform actions upon physical nature. According to Hankins, this consent resorts to a vertical connectivity between physical objects and the human soul. However, we do not see in Hankins’s argument how this connection can occur according to Avicenna and on what grounds Avicenna lets the soul cause changes on material objects. How does this non-material causation take place?

The theistic doctrine of creation highlights the significance of the world's dependence on God. For this doctrine, a variety of justifications have been offered based on the ontological and epistemological commitments of a philosopher or theologian. In this dissertation, I defend the thesis that the theistic doctrine of creation is strongly justified when on the one hand the integrity of nature is established by affirming causal necessity while on the other hand the sovereignty of God is maintained by affirming divine simplicity, eternity, and immutability. To construct my argument, in the first chapter, I examine the Aristotelian roots of causal necessity and its development by Avicenna. I also consider objections to causal necessity raised by Hume and al-Ghazālī and some contemporary objections by David Lewis. In the second chapter, I identify three competing theses to explain the integrity of nature, namely, the regularism, the extrinsic necessitarianism, and the intrinsic necessitarianism. I conclude that the intrinsic necessitarianism is the strongest among them. In the third chapter, I make a case for the sovereignty of God by exploring the limits of the concept of the theistic God and claim that sovereignty is conditional on immutability, simplicity, and eternity, which qualify the divine attributes of knowledge, power, and goodness. In the last chapter, after analyzing strengths and weaknesses of theistic accounts of creation, I propose an account of ontological dependence by extending Avicenna's account of creation, which consists in God's conferral of existence, to His sustaining activity at all times during which an object endures.

Al-Māturīdī is seemingly the first medieval theologian who gives precedence to his theory of knowledge over other theological issues. 4 He opens his discourse with a chapter of invalidity of taqlid and continues with a discussion of means of knowledge. In that chapter, Al-Māturīdī offers two ways of knowing the divine will: reason (‘aql) and tradition (sam’). For him, tradition, as a source of knowledge, refers to knowledge of past events, names of things, distant countries, benefits and harms of a thing. They are not self-evident nor are we able to witness their reality for ourselves by way of senses. In principle, Al-Māturīdī says, we acquire all our knowledge about external world by way of hearing. However, this kind of knowledge is not valid unless it is transmitted by uninterrupted chains of authority (mutawātir) or unless its validity is determined by sensual or rational channels of knowledge. 5 Thus, the reliable knowledge originated by tradition is of two kinds; one is that mutawātir, the other is that which can be validated by reason. Al-Māturīdī asserts that due to the rational signs demonstrating the truth of the message of prophets, their message richly deserves to be admitted as truth.