Behnam Zolghadr

This article is about Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāī’s theory of aḥwāl (states). According to Abū Hāshim, the attributes of God are His states of being. One of the controversial claims of the theory of states is that states are neither existent nor non-existent. In this paper, I examine this claim in the works of al-Juwaynī, one of the later proponents of the theory of states. Some later Arabic philosophers argued that the theory of states implies that there is a middle between existence and non-existence. In this paper, I demonstrate that this is not the case; nevertheless, the ineffability of states- in-themselves implies a contradiction.

Some scholars have claimed that Avicenna was the first logician to prove the Barcan formula, its converse, and the Buridan formula. However, I will show that this is not the case, and that Avicenna was not particularly concerned with implications between de re and de dicto modality. It is likely that Khūnajī was the first Arabic logician to explicitly endorse some implications between the de re and de dicto modality as well as the so-called Barcan formula, its converse, and the Buridan formula. In this paper, I have examined Khūnajī’s account of these implications.

This paper is a comparative study between Brower’s solution to the problem of divine simplicity and that of Abū Hāšim al-Ǧubbāī (d. 933). First, I argue that the theory of aḥwāl is a semantic theory rather than a metaphysical one. Then, I present a reconstruction of Abū Hāšim al-Ǧubbāī’s theory of aḥwāl, based on Brower’s truthmaker theory of predication. Then, I show how Abū Hāšim would reply to some of the objections that Saenz raised against Brower’s truthmaker theory of divine simplicity. Later on, I discuss Abū Hāšim’s explanation of the similarities between the properties that God and creatures share.

In this article, I present a formal semantics for Abū Hāšim’s theory of states. According to Hāšim al-Ǧubbāī (d. 933), there is a middle between existence and non-existence, and some entities, namely states, are neither existent nor non-existent. Moreover, states, which their objecthood follows from Abū Hāšim’s definition of objects, are not themselves objects. Roughly speaking, states explain the similarities and differences between objects in general and accidents in particular. The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the theory of states in the context of contemporary logic. This has been done by a formal semantics based on LP.

Similar to Meinong, Abū Hāšim al-Ğubbāī held the view that some objects do not exist. This paper is a comparative study between Meinong’s object theory and Abū Hāšim’s theory of nonexistent objects. Our comparative study is mostly done through three topics: the characterization principle, objecthood, and the ontological status of existence. Moreover, Abū Hāšim’s theory of nonexistent objects is based on his theory of states, according to which some things, namely states, which among other things include existence, are neither existent nor nonexistent. In this paper, we have also discussed two arguments on behalf of this claim and then we have examined them from a Meinongian perspective.

Aristotle gave seven arguments for the law of non-contradiction. The first one is against a special case of dialetheism, the view that only some contradictions are true, and other six arguments are mostly against trivialism, the view that everything and consequently every contraction is true. Aristotle never argued that dialetheism entails trivialism. Unlike Aristotle, Avicenna, in his defense of LNC, not only considers trivialism and argues against it, but also argues that dialetheism entails trivialism. The argument that dialetheism entails trivialism is called explosion. It is usually known that the first argument for explosion is given by the twelfth century logician William of Soissons. In this paper, we will meet Avicenna’s different argument for explosion and then I will demonstrate that this argument is a non-sequitur.

The theory of Wahdat al-Wujūd, or as it is called in English the Oneness of Being, is the core idea of Sufism. The founder of this theory is Ibn ‘Arabī. There are contradictions in Ibn ‘Arabī’s theory of the Oneness of Being. The most important one, which is my main concern in this essay, occurs in his explanation of the relation between Being, which is, according to him, the only real being, and other beings. According to Ibn ‘Arabī, Being is identical and also non-identical with beings. Different philosophers, through hundreds of years, tried to dissolve such contradictions, by proposing consistent readings of Ibn ‘Arabī’s theory of the Oneness of Being. I will not follow this path. Instead, I take the theory of the Oneness of Being to be a dialetheic one, that is, according to this theory there are true contradictions. Thus, I claim that one can have a paraconsistent semantics of the theory of the Oneness of Being. To do so, I appeal to Graham Priest’s Gluon theory. Gluon theory concerns the problem of unity, that is, what makes the plurality of an object’s parts into a whole? I give a translation of the theory of the Oneness of Being into Gluon theory, and show how Gluon theory explains the theory of the Oneness of Being.