Metaphysics (Jan 2010)
Deliverance from Kant’s Problematic View on Existence in the Light of Avicenna’s Philosophy
Abstract
Kant’s view on existence leads to problems. This paper starts with formulating two of those problems, which were originally discussed by Jerome Shaffer (1962) − the problems that I call “the problem of contradiction” and “the problem of triviality”. According to the first problem, existential propositions while should be synthetic, as Kant believed, become analytic. According to the second problem, Kant’s view implies that in the act of predicating either the subjects cannot have exact objects as their extensions (epistemological idealism) or nothing could be a real predicate (all propositions become tautologous or pseudo-propositions). Then, I will look at very briefly different approaches to these problems. Finally, it will be shown that the abovementioned two problems can find satisfactory solutions if Kant’s views on existence are interpreted, not on the basis of the post-Fregean approaches, but on the basis of the same assumptions of his preceding philosophers; the assumptions whose background can be traced back to Descartes’, Gassendis’, Aquinas’, and before them, Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna) thesis concerning essence, existence and their relation.
