Infinite regress
idea · 2 works · 3 mentions · 4 anchored passages
al-tasalsul · infinite regress · التسلسل · al-tasalsul ilā ghayr al-nihāyah · ilā mā lā nihāyata lahu · we transfer the argument · الى ما لا نهاية له · تتسلسل الى غير النهاية · ننقل الكلام
in the texts
Risālat al-Wāridāt
Tasalsul, the infinite regress: ʻAbduh conspicuously refuses to rest anything on its impossibility, dismissing the usual refutations as imaginative excess, and when he does deploy a regress he explains that its force here lies not in its intrinsic impossibility but in the absence of any distinguisher it would entail.
so do not occupy your thought with refuting the infinite regress (*tasalsul*), for that requires imaginings enough to fill the worlds.
or there is a distinction between them, and then it is either by an existence other than the two of them — in which case we transfer the argument to that and demand what distinguishes it from them, and so on, giving an infinite regress (*tasalsul*), which is impossible — or it is by a non-existence, in which case existence would have to be distinguished by non-existence, and non-existence has no d …
(And again) their creation requires the will, which depends upon knowledge, so He would be knowing of those forms too before creating them, and that would be by other forms, and we transfer the argument to those, and an infinite regress follows.
Mukhtaṣar fī ʻilm al-nafs al-insānīyah
The impossibility of an endless chain of mediating organs, used three times as the lever that forces the conclusion of unmediated apprehension.
And if it observed that particular through the mediation of the body, it would have to observe it through the mediation of another body, and so on without end, which is impossible.
The first is impossible, for if it apprehended its instrument through the mediation of another instrument, it would follow (4) that it stands in need of an instrument by which to apprehend [53] the first instrument, and this would run on in a chain without end, which is impossible.
So if it knew the eye's apprehending through the mediation of the eye, it would have to apprehend [52] this eye here mentioned through the mediation of another eye, and so on without end, which is impossible.