Chance and Determinism in Avicenna and Averroes * by Catarina Belo

The book is a revised version of the author's doctoral thesis (Oxford, 2004). It not only deals with two giants of classical Islamic philosophy but also with a very difficult issue, namely the problem of determinism. Especially on Ibn Sīnā, modern scholarship shows a wide range of opinions, as carefully presented by the author (pp. 14–16). In elaborating her own view, she concentrates on three major topics: chance; matter; and celestial causation and providence. All three issues are examined in great detail, based on an analysis of a wide range of texts of both authors, and, when necessary, with reference also to the most relevant secondary studies. Especially innovative is the explicit attention paid to chance, since this is, to my knowledge, the very first time that the issue has been the subject of systematic investigation in relation to Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd. But analysis of the two other topics is also interesting and certainly worthy of attention. Thus, when she concludes that both Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd are determinists, although the former—in that he puts such particular emphasis on efficient causality—is much more explicitly so than the latter, she does not do so in a frivolous manner, but only after thorough and considered argument. In her view, Ibn Sīnā explicitly defends a strong form of determinism, comparable to that of the Stoics and Spinoza. Ibn Rushd, even if less explicit in his precise wording, in the final analysis defends a determinist view very similar to Ibn Sīnā's. The author's conclusion seems more convincing the more one accepts the implication of a great coherency in the systems of both Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd. But are they really coherent? I doubt this, especially in the case of Ibn Sīnā. As I understand him, several serious tensions come to the fore in his thought, mainly on account of his willingness to include Islamic materials in an Aristotelian framework, which however includes Neoplatonic elements. This is best shown, in my view, in Ibn Sīnā's theory of emanation/creation. In the conclusion of my study on this topic (see Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 8 (1997): 476–7), I remark two such tensions: the identification in God between thinking and creating versus His absolute freedom; and the being necessary of the contingent beings by their cause versus their maintaining their possibility in themselves. When one takes seriously all of Ibn Sīnā' s affirmations, one is bound to accept that they offer no way out of these tensions. The author of this book is clearly not unaware of similar tensions, something best illustrated with respect to the conception of chance. In the author's own words: ‘Ibn Sīnā provides different and, it would seem, contradictory definitions of chance, sometimes accepting the statistical model, sometimes rejecting it’ (p. 31). But in the long run she simply dismisses the statistically oriented sayings, on the basis of what she qualifies as Ibn Sīnā' s determinist agenda. But is this not distorting the argument? Even if there is no doubt that some of Ibn Sīnā' s sayings favour determinism, one may only reasonably speak of a determinist agenda when everything exclusively points in that direction. To be sure, Ibn Sīnā defends a strict determinism regarding efficient causality, insofar as an effect necessarily results from its efficient cause. Moreover, God is for Ibn Sīnā the efficient cause of the universe. The author is completely right to emphasize that these ideas are peculiar to Ibn Sīnā, and that they deviate from Aristotle. However, she seems to overlook the fact that Ibn Sīnā characterizes God also as a final cause, which he declares to be the ‘cause of the rest of the causes being causes’. This clearly evokes the characterization of God as the musabbib al-asbāb, the ‘causator of the causes’, i.e., the One who allows the secondary causes their causal efficacy. Ibn Sīnā appears thereby to present a teleological cosmology, one most appealing to Christian scholastics—see R. Pasnau, ‘Intentionality and Final Causes’ in D. Perler (ed.), Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 301–23—who evidently were not determinists. For Ibn Sīnā, God is both the Efficient Cause and the Final Cause, in other words He is the Alpha and Omega of the universe. But this does not automatically imply that He determines everything. If that were so, why should Ibn Sīnā have expended such great efforts to resolve the problem of God's knowledge of particulars? If all sublunary events are strictly determined by influences from the celestial world, how can one explain a phenomenon such as the excess of matter in the existence of, for instance, a sixth finger? There is according to Ibn Sīnā a determinate cause for the origination of such a sixth finger, i.e., the excess of matter in combination with the Aristotelian principle that nothing in nature is vain, but as far as I can see he does not offer a determinist explanation for this excess itself. In the treatise entitled Ten Questions, he clearly states that the effect only necessarily follows in the case of efficient causality, but not with regard to the other three causes (see F. Lucchetta, ‘Le Dieci Questioni di Avicenna’ in Quaderni di studi arabi, 19 (2001): 101–34 at 130). I am aware that these few observations do not necessarily invalidate the author's conclusion, but perhaps they may prompt further examination of this delicate question

Argument (complex analysis · Causality (physics · Causation · Determinism · Epistemology · Islam · Islamic Philosophy · Physics · Political science · Relation (database · Scholarship · Subject (documents · Subject matter · Theology · Computer Science · Islamic Studies and History · Islamic Thought and Society Studies · Medicine · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Law · Philosophy