Ibn Sina on General limits of knowledge

Subject Areas : Philosophy

محمد علی  اخگر ¹ (ندارد)
سید صدر الدین  طاهری ² (ندارد)

Received: 2011-10-08 Accepted : 2012-05-14 Published : 2012-03-20

Keywords: Epistemology, limits of knowledge, Ibn sina,

Abstract :

General limits of knowledge is one of the important discussion inepistemological studies. In the matter of human knowledge, weconfront with determining general limits of this knowledge. Mostphilosophers have regarded human knowledge as a limited one, andconsidered different limits for it. Ibn sina takes limited humanknowledge too and excludes some of the affairs from cognitive realmof human. One the one hand, he accepts possibility of knowledge andtherefore opposed skepticism. On other hand, he restricts thisknowledge to the different limits and hence disagrees with absolutedogmatism. He takes into account different limits for humanknowledge such as human limitation in recognizing the essence ofthings, human limitation in knowing God, human limitation inperceiving resurrection, cognitive limitation resulted fromaccompanying with material and body etc. He presents variousarguments for proving these limitations and interesting discussionsabout these. Studying these limitations due to recognizing Ibn sina’sgeneral viewpoint about human knowledge has been very importantand will grant great assistance in understanding his philosophy.