The 'faculties' in the Quran

Introduction

On Cognitive structures in general

There’s not a work by a philosopher, theorist of mind, cognitive scientist, psychologist, or logician that does not contain some list of the ‘inherent’ functions and faculties of the mind. The number of these cognitive functions is so numerous and fixed that the line defining functions and faculties is blurred. This blur is owing primarily to a general failure to distinguish generalities or principles from those things which fall under them. This, however, is excusable, given the natural difficulty of the task. Our cognition is precise enough to make out details yet vague and lucid enough to see those things which they have in common. It specifies the general and generalizes the specific. It lets us categorize and classify, yet it eludes classification; why shouldn’t it?

The combination of these two facts easily betrays any attempt at a precise system of classification. The Quran does away with this dilemma, offering three main categories (السمع البصر, الفؤاد), which may surprise the logician or the cognitive scientist focused on codifying every known function and operation of the mind. Defining the general, on the other hand, proves much more effective as it’s in having something simple enough to contain or be contained in everything that our best chance lies in figuring out everything else. But how do we account for the myriad of cognitive functions, the dozen principles and patterns that logic, mathematics, and psychology identify from three basic faculties?

And how do we obtain those simple principles which are the basis for everything? This was Abraham’s question before he turned his gaze to the heavens (quote?). What’s the most truthful and self-evident thing that one could think? A truth not self-evident in the same way a ‘sensation’ is, but something for which no more proof is needed than has been obtained. What’s stronger evidence than a sensation, a thing seen, a thing heard, a thing touched? How about something which makes those things possible, and possible not in the sense of having formally created them, though this is often enough, but possible then, as one perceives a sensation? What Abraham was questing after was something more than a proof. He wasn’t looking for something to be seen, though it’s what he started off with, but for the real, the ‘thing in itself’ that Kant deemed impossible to realize. Interestingly, it’s Hegel, among the early modern thinkers, who provides the basic and most reliable formula by which to see what Abraham saw.

“Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction in another self-consciousness.”

Neither the constellation he saw, the luminous moon, nor the beaming sun, which in their dynamic operation symbolize the very mind and consciousness, were the object, since they, as Abraham exclaimed in frustration, are ‘transient’ and ‘ephemeral’; they aren’t always visible to us. Since they tend not to be in our mind all the time, imposing as they can be when we’re made aware of them, Abraham was expressly looking for that which our mind can never not be conscious of, that’s always the object of our attention.

Kant, who influenced Hegel, held that our knowledge is limited to phenomena, which are the objects as they appear to us through our senses and are processed by our mind's categories. By contrast, the noumena (or things in themselves) are the actual objects that exist independently of our perception. Kant’s thing in itself, Hegel’s absolute, Plato’s the Good, Aristotle’s unmoved mover, are all analogous in expressing the same fundamental fact: the existence of transcendental, irreducible ideals reached by reason at the end of a long search is eventually established. But established as noumena, as no more than indexes, as coordinates, i.e., concepts incapable of being known in themselves, but only inferred from the nature of experience, that is,

“They aim at nothing but the conditions of the unity of empirical knowledge in the synthesis of appearances”

Immanuel Kant 'Critique Of Pure Reason' (B223, 224, A181).

Neither the Sun, i.e., the unity of knowledge, the ultimate reality of things, can catch up to the moon, i.e., the faculties by which the unification of knowledge or synthesis of reality is made possible, nor can the night, i.e., reasoning, analysis, thinking, outpace the day, i.e., understanding, apprehension, realization. For if they did, there would be nothing for the understanding to understand, and nothing for the unification of knowledge to unify. Hence it’s by necessity that the truths which our experience disclose to us are relative, and relative, to be exact, to something which could not be fully represented in experience, but gradually, albeit to no ultimate avail, assimilated over time. Or as one scholar put it:

"All progress in conceptual knowledge and pure theory consists precisely in surpassing this first sensory immediacy. The object of knowledge recedes more and more into the distance so that for knowledge critically reflecting upon itself, it comes ultimately to appear as an 'infinitely remote point', an endless task; and yet, in this apparent distance, it achieves its ideal specification."

— Ernest Cassirer, *Philosophy of Symbolic Forms* (Vol. 1, p. 182)

This is the scheme which Abraham followed, and in a sense, to have stumbled upon a paradox, or to have identified an intellectual impasse or tautology somewhere, should not be considered problematic, as this only tells us that we have truly reached the kernel of our method and have thereby defined a faculty of the mind, and this is the job of the logician.

They are things which give reality its form but tend to be formless, i.e., their role is simply that of guiding and helping the mind navigate perceptions and ideas, yet they tend to be the very things that the mind is trying to grasp. But the impossibility of so doing, stemming from the contradictory nature of such a task, is what makes the attempt possible and by extension movement and everything that can be called a process, which is everything. First, we encounter them as modalities of reason or categories of logic, i.e., tools for shaping our immediate reality, identifying them first in the purest of all systems of reason, in statements like ‘the limit of a series is never itself a member of that series, but outside it.’

Paradoxes As Solutions

In the case of mathematics, as opposed to philosophy, those principles are like keys or solutions. Absolute values, logarithms, transfinite numbers, rationals, irrationals, and infinity are tools which are necessary for the construction of objects in general. They allow us to most accurately and reliably analyze and predict phenomena, and their value rests entirely in being descriptions of the behavior of signs. But once we turn around and make them our very objects of analysis, they throw us into all sorts of paradoxes, loops, and aporia, e.g., Zeno’s paradoxes, Achilles’ inability to overtake the tortoise due to the infinitely divisible distance between them, or the flying arrow as an immovable object for the same reason. The Epimenides paradox, which goes: "All Cretans are liars. If Epimenides, a Cretan, is telling the truth, then he must be lying since he is a Cretan. If he is lying, then not all Cretans are liars, which would mean that he might be telling the truth." The ship of Theseus: if we took a ship and kept replacing its parts, is it still the same ship?

This installment of classical paradoxes is foundational to western philosophy and has proved instrumental for the development of science. To have been instrumental, they couldn’t have been solvable. They continued to resurface, though, like the ship of Theseus, not in the form in which they first appeared. Next is Russell’s paradox:

Imagine a town with a male barber who shaves all and only those men in town who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself? Suppose he does, a contradiction arises where he should not shave himself (because he only shaves those men who do not shave themselves). Suppose he doesn’t shave himself, according to the rule he must shave himself (because he shaves all men who do not shave themselves).

This paradox, introduced in the context of Frege’s logic, was fatal to Frege’s system at the time, but proved useful in hindsight, showing where the latter's work needed improvement.

The theory of types was thus introduced by Russell and elaborated in the *Principia Mathematica*, which he co-wrote with A.N. Whitehead. It’s against this backdrop that Gödel’s incompleteness theorem emerged, and what Russell’s paradox did to Frege’s system was now being done to it by the incompleteness theorem. The theory of types, designed to prevent self-reference where a set could only contain sets of the lower type and not themselves, such that the barber’s rules could not apply to himself, was now subject to the very paradox which it purported to solve. *Principia Mathematica*, a work tailored to provide a comprehensive foundation for all of mathematics using a formal system based on logic, could not prove its own consistency.

It’s not a surprise that Gödel was friends with Einstein, author of the 1905 paper ‘On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’ where the theory of special relativity was first introduced. It’s here where the concept of reference frames as various simultaneous interpretive frameworks that describe the movement of one and the same object was postulated. Here, no priority, rather, no ‘formality’ was ascribed to any particular axiomatic system that would make it susceptible to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. As special relativity deals with multiple simultaneous systems of reference, any of which elucidates the other, it forms a perfect compendium wherein the logical shortcomings of one system are another’s solution and vice versa. In this context, Russell’s and Whitehead's theory of types would simply be one of many perspectives or reference frames, a special case in a much more inclusive analytic scheme, and Godel’s would be another, as well as Zeno’s and Epiminides would be another and so on. 

Check out Part 2