ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Thirty-Four: The Causal Relation among Material Things The Cause of Belief in the Causal Relation among Material Things Sometimes it is said that the knowledge of the causal relation among all existents, including material existents, is an innate ( fiṭrī ) knowledge with which the human intellect has been fashioned, and on the basis of which specific causes and effects are determined.

However, as has been discussed in the lessons on epistemology, no acquired knowledge can be proven to be innate, and assuming that it occurs, there would be no guarantee of its correspondence with reality. However, as has been mentioned in Lesson Twenty-Three, some knowledge is near to being self-evident ( bidāhat ), and in a sense can be considered to be ‘innate’, such as knowledge of the existence of material realities, which really has its source in a hidden or semi-conscious reasoning.

The knowledge of the existence of the causal relation and the dependence of some material existents on others is also of this sort. The closer we get to the beginning of infancy, the more unconscious reasoning becomes, until it becomes similar to the instinctive perceptions of animals. To the extent that man’s consciousness develops, reasoning becomes more manifestly conscious, until it takes the form of logical reasoning.

For example, when a child hears a sound simultaneously with the collision of two objects, he vaguely understands the dependence of the appearance of the noise on the collision. When he witnesses the lighting of a lamp along with the flipping of a switch, he understands there to be another dependence of the same sort. In brief, his soul becomes thus disposed to understand the existence of the causal relation among material phenomena.

However, he is not able to understand this relation in the form of a logical proposition or to express it in exact terms. Eventually he develops sufficient powers of mental analysis to understand this subject in the form of a logical proposition, and to expound the hidden foundational reasoning in the form of a logical proof.

Of course, it is possible that at the beginning of this process one will use a concept which is not sufficiently precise, or one will present an argument which from a logical point of view is fallacious. For example, one might speculate that everything depends upon something else, or that every existent appears in a specific time and place.