Avicennian Conflict about Self-evidence of the Principle of Causality; Evaluating the Commentators' Views

The principle of causality is one of the most fundamental principles in philosophical systems, although there are differences of opinion regarding its formulation and obviousness. The statement “every possible being needs a cause” is Ibn Sina’s formulation of it. From the perspective of most commentators of Ibn Sina, he believes in the self evidence of this principle. In his works, there are both interpretable evidences in favour of the self evidence of this principle and interpretable evidences against it, which may lead to illusion of contradiction among his statements. Some commentators have considered the existence of this conflict to be insoluble, while others have tried to resolve this conflict in favor of the self-evidence of the principle of causality. This research, which is organized by citing printed and manuscript sources and has introduced the views of some of these commentators for the first time, seeks to describe and analyze their views and evaluate them. The results of the evaluation show that, contrary to their views, the aforementioned conflict can be resolved in favor of the non-self-evidence of the principle of causality.