Aristoteles ve İbn Sînâ’da Nefs-Beden İlişkisi Problemi ve Modern Zihin Felsefesindeki Bazı Yansımaları

Year 2004, Issue: 26, - , 23.01.2014

Muhiitin Macit

Abstract

The problem of mind-body relation is an ancient philosophical problem and can be traced back to Aristotle’s theory of soul. According to Aristotle, soul is an entelekheia or actuality
of the first kind of a natural organized body. As a substance in the sense of a composite, the soul is inseparable from its body. But as Aristotle indicated he has no light on the
problem whether the soul may not be the actuality of its body in the sense in which the sailor is the actuality of the ship. In addition to this mainstream approach of mind-body
relation in this article, I am going to deal with Avicenna’s theory of soul and his metaphor of ‘flying man’ by which Avicenna proves the main characteristics of the mind that is consciousness. Although the soul is a separated substance according to Avicenna, Aristotle’s book of De Anima was followed by him and furthermore developed in the commentary of his book which is called Kitâbu’n-Nefs. In accordance with Avicenna’s flying man argumentation, a modern philosopher of mind, John R. Searle uses a trial version of this kind of metaphor and develops a modern theory of consciousness in which he is trying to refute a default position relating to objective realty of mind and consciousness. In other word he is trying to prove an independent relation between consciousness and behavior.
But at the end of this study we notice that Searle creates a new Aristotelian interpretation on the problem of mind-body relation and uses the same kind of metaphor following
Avicenna in this context.

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