Drawing on the first blog I want to further investigate the hunch I had about the infinite regress in Avicenna’s metaphysics. Avicenna considers “being” an accident of something, meaning it is not essentially included in this something. (∀¬God⊨existence∧essence) Avicenna concludes that Existence is not part of the essence, which allows a theological element into his metaphysics because he can argue that God is not existing as a thing, if he has no essence.
Averroes criticized Avicenna on this point, pointing out the infinite regress, that occurs if “being” is an accident. If an essence has an accident that exists, it must also have an accident of existence and so forth… So, it seems that Avicenna is checkmated, his argument ends in an infinite regress and we know that there is no infinite regress because we can observe existence and without an original existence, so without an infinite regress we couldn’t observe it. That’s why Avicenna argues that the infinite regress ends in God.
I am not quite sure yet, if Avicenna knows of the infinite regress in his work and actively uses it to prove a God or if he thinks that there is no infinite regress.
fjs’ blog 