And if what we seek through art and philosophy – namely, a sense of immortality amidst what is essentially a transient existence – stems from a thought or a series of thoughts, we must then inquire into the nature of thought itself. As Aristotle argued, thought is essentially a process or a movement which occurs within the individual. This movement can be dubbed as a “recollection” of sorts, and as a result, this recollection is a movement which occurs through memory. In turn, memory is where consciousness places and orders both scientific knowledge and sensory experience in an orderly fashion based on the placement of scientific knowledge and sensory experience through the course of time. Thus, when we consider the order of scientific knowledge and sensory experience within one’s memory, the ordering is essentially done by time itself. In short, thought requires both recollection and memory, with recollection as a movement that occurs within the individual and with memory as the place upon which this movement occurs.
Moreover, this internal movement that we call thought has a “first cause” which Al-Farabi describes in the following manner: “Because the First is not in matter and has itself no matter in any way whatsoever, it is in its substance actual intellect; for what prevents the form from being intellect and from actually thinking (intelligizing) is the matter in which a thing exists. And when a thing exists without being in need of matter, that very thing will in its substance be actual intellect; and that is the status of the First. It is, then, actual intellect.”
It follows that the mind is the “adequate” or “formal” cause of knowledge and experience and thus the adequate or formal cause of thought as Spinoza suggested, given that the first cause of the mind’s acquisition of knowledge and experience precedes or even supersedes the human mind itself. Then there is the issue of whether the mind even believes in a first cause and whether it believes that it is merely a formality placed upon the surface of a deeper first cause. As John Dewey wrote: “Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought.” In turn, reflective thought leads to the first cause of the mind and thus leads to God as well as knowledge of God.
Whereas thought in general is the accumulation and passage of all the different contents and ideas and voices and thoughts which occur in the mind, reflective thought directs our focus and our attention towards our core beliefs. In turn, our core beliefs serve as the foundation or the grounds for our behavior and for our discourse in general. Furthermore, our core beliefs can lead us to either distinguish or fail to distinguish between the formal cause of thought on one hand and the first cause of thought on the other hand. As a result, we need to reflect in order to determine whether our core beliefs are correct and sound. If the core beliefs are correct and sound, then everything is sound. If not, everything turns into a disaster. It is no wonder then, that the Arabic word for belief (aqidah) literally translates into “base” or “foundation.”
But more often than not, the beliefs of a subject are either questionable or the subject does not believe at all. Rarely does one come across a subject whose beliefs are correct and sound. There are various beliefs about the mind itself, one of which stems from the philosophy of Heidegger, who according to Arendt, argued that “the mind of man, claimed by Being in order to transpose into language the truth of Being, is subject to a History of being (Seinsgeschichte), and this History determines whether men respond to Being in terms of willing or in terms of thinking.” Arendt added: “It is the History of Being, at work behind the backs of acting men, that, like Hegel’s World Spirit, determines human destinies and reveals itself to the thinking ego if the latter can overcome willing and actualize the letting-be.”
It follow that language is “an extra-human object” to borrow from Chomsky, the aim of which is to convey a truth about being which is presented to the human mind by a first cause. In turn, of the two basic “principles of mental functioning” which Freud had purported – one of which is the “pleasure principle” and the other being the “reality principle” – the “reality principle” supersedes the “pleasure principle” given that the role of thinking means that the primary focus or function of the mind is to determine whether our core beliefs correspond to reality. Education serves as an aid for the thinking mind in order to determine whether one’s beliefs correspond to reality. As a result, belief really is everything when it comes to the study of human behavior and cognition and perhaps even social reality as a whole.
Adam A. Azim 