SHAFAQNA | by Muhammad Legenhausen – A number of arguments can be given to show that God does not have a mind, in several senses of that term. The most ancient arguments along these lines would be that since God is immovable and since the operations of mind involve motion or temporal changes, God does not have a mind. Of course, this assumes a traditional view of God as being beyond time, and a view of mind that requires it to be in time. Both of these assumptions have been challenged. In order to defend the position I am merely describing here, these challenges would have to be addressed.
Cartesian dualism has been seen as unsatisfactory to many because it does not adequately explain the relation of mind and body. This has led some philosophers to propose improved versions of dualism and others to deny the existence of mind altogether. Yet others have proposed neo-Aristotelian hylomorphic accounts of the human person. Some atheists have argued against the existence of God on the basis of the denial that there can be a mind without a body, and the presumption that that is what God must be. The view that God is not a mind may be seen in this light as a way to avoid some of the problems that arise when Cartesian dualism is combined with the view that God is mind, and having a mind is taken to include things like thinking, judging, knowing, willing, and feeling compassionate and wrathful, in a manner similar to the way in which these states occur in the human mind.
Denying that God has a mind, however, will not solve the problem of how the material and immaterial are related. Furthermore, in the tradition of Islamic philosophy, although God is not a mind or intellect, there are other non-material intellects that pose just as troublesome difficulties as the belief in a disembodied divine mind. Some have proposed scrapping the theory of the intellects, especially since the theory as developed in Fārābī and Avicenna was tied to a cosmology that appears to have been refuted by modern science.
In Cartesian language, mental is contrasted with physical. The world is divided into physical things with their parts and minds with their contents. Since God is not a physical thing, and is not the content of someone else’s thought, He would have to be mind, or a mind. There is nothing objectionable about this, as long as mind is understood as connoting nothing more than what is non-physical. If, however, mind is taken to be thinking substance, then, Shi‘ite philosophical theology would deny that God is a mind on two counts: God does not think; and God is not a substance. Even if mind is considered merely as the non-physical, however, the division offered by dualism is one with which Mulla Sadra would not be comfortable.
In Mulla Sadra’s view, existence has a continuum of gradations, from the lowest material to the very essence of God, Who is pure existence and is purely immaterial (where immateriality may be understood as independence from material things). The human soul is considered to have a corporeal origin but to emerge and survive as spiritual. This kind of view of the relation between the corporeal and immaterial raises many questions: How do entities at different levels of immateriality interact? What is the nature of immaterial survival? What is the nature of emergence? In an introduction such as this, one can do no more than mention these issues.
If we were to stipulate that whatever can be truly described as having corporeal parts is itself corporeal, then on the basis of scripture, one could say that God is corporeal, for He is described as having hands and a face, and hands and faces are corporeal parts. Likewise, if we were to define as immaterial whatever is independent of material entities, then God could be counted as immaterial. Putting these together would yield the odd result that God could be counted as corporeal but immaterial. So, the general tendency in Shi‘ite theology is to distinguish between metaphorical and non-metaphorical uses of language. Then one could more plausibly stipulate that a thing should be called corporeal only if it can be truly and non-metaphorically described as having corporeal parts. This would yield the result that God is immaterial and non-corporeal.
Sometimes mind is used in such a way that it is nearly synonymous with soul. If soul applies to whatever is living, and God is counted as living, then God could be said to have a soul, and hence a mind. However, in the Aristotelian and Islamic traditions, soul is considered as that which possesses the various powers of living creatures, such as and memory, intellect (not to mention the powers of vegetable life). God, however, does not have powers, where powers are understood to be faculties on which the possessor depends for knowledge of the past and knowledge of universals, for example. So, in this sense, too, Shi‘ite philosophical theology would deny that God is or has a soul or mind.
Sometimes mind is used for that which is conscious. To be conscious is to be aware, or have presentational knowledge. God also has presentational knowledge, and so, in this sense, could be said to have consciousness and mind. However, consciousness is sometimes considered a sort of receptivity by virtue of which experiences are obtained, such as are described as qualia. Some philosophers argue that the experience of qualia is a result of the physical compositions of the central nervous system, or supervenes on states of the central nervous system. Since God does not have a central nervous system, if such theories are correct, then consciousness should not be attributed to God.
Sometimes mind is used for self. Various accounts of the self would then have to be reviewed in order to determine whether God could be said to have a mind in the sense of having a self. For example, one might take it that a self is what has a perspective and speaks in the first person. God speaks in the first person though scripture, and so this could be taken to indicate that God is a self, and a mind. However, in human beings, the first-person perspective is always limited in a manner that would not be appropriate for God. God does not know the world from a given perspective to the exclusion of others. Here, we might draw from far a field (Hegel) and propose that just as the limited first person perspective may expand in the form of various first person plural perspectives, we might take the first-person perspective of divinity to be infinitely wide and unlimited. In this way, one could ascribe selfhood to God and interpret the scriptural use of the divine first person.
Finally, mind and personhood are often ascribed to God because our relationship to God is an “I-Thou” relationship. It is held that this relationship can only be sustained between thinking and feeling persons. Therefore, God must be a thinking and feeling person, and hence, have a mind. To this one may raise doubts about the claim that the “I-Thou” relationship must be between thinking and feeling persons. Certainly, the most intense personal relationships with God have been developed among Christian and Muslim mystics and Sufis, while the theologies that typify these groups, as in Eckhart or Ibn ‘Arabi, are highly abstract and often provoke accusations of pantheism. Thus, it does not seem that a personal loving relationship toward God need rely upon a theology that attributes mind to God or considers Him to be a person.
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