Fedor Benevich

One of the most widespread claims combining epistemology and metaphysics in post-Avicennian Islamic philosophy was that every object of thought is real. In Muʿtazilite reading, it was endorsed due to a theory of knowledge which states that knowledge is a connection or relation between the knower and the object known. Avicennists accepted it due to the rule that in a proposition “_s_ is _p_” if _p_ is something positive _s_ has to be positive and real too. Hence, insofar as one can conceptually distinguish between two non-existent items, they have to be real. In this article, the author presents significant consequences of this theory: the acceptance and denial of non-existent yet real extramental objects; the concept of mental existence as an alternative solution; the conceivability of paraconsistent ideas and their reality or reducibility to some real objects.

Perhaps the most well-known feature of Islamic dialectical theology, kalām, is its assumption that created things are atomic ‘substances’ whose properties are called ‘accidents’. Within kalām itself, there were debates as to whether this twofold analysis of created reality was sufficient. For there are not only concrete accidents like ‘this black’, that is, but the features shared by such individual accidents—for instance ‘blackness’. To handle such features was one of the reasons why some mutakallimūn introduced the notion of aḥwāl (modes/states), which in turn met with opposition from other mutakallimūn. This article concentrates on the classical Ashʿari theory of aḥwāl, and investigates arguments for and against the reality of aḥwāl, found mainly in Juwaynī, Anṣārī and Shahrastānī. The aim is to clarify the main developments in the metaphysical thought of the Ashʿari mutakallimūn of the eleventh century, as well as certain epistemological and theological premises that lurk behind the arguments. Along the way, distinctions are also drawn between the ontologies of Ashʿarī and Muʿtazilī aḥwāl proponents.

This article addresses the primary arguments, concepts, and methods associated with the philosophical analysis of mental states in classical kalām. My discussion will be based on the analysis of pleasure and pain, as well as desire and aversion. These two closely related pairs serve as perfect examples of kalām strategies in the philosophy of mind. We will see that scholars of kalām commonly rely on direct, either phenomenal or empirical, observations to identify the reality of mental states. Once the reality of mental states is established, a scholar of kalām typically engages in a discussion of their ontology, enquiring whether there is a certain separate entity (maʿnā) behind the mental phenomenon or the sensible perception in question and whether it gives rise to a non-perceptible state (ḥāl) that belongs to the entire individual. Among the results of this study is a hypothesis that the methods and concepts of kalām philosophy of mind (particularly the Muʿtazilī tradition) influenced post-Avicennan post-classical Islamic philosophy, particularly Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210).

This is the second in a series of sourcebooks charting the reception of Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d.1037) in the Islamic East (from Syria to central Asia) in the 12th-13th centuries CE. Moving on from the metaphysical and theological concerns covered in the first book, this volume looks at issues in logic and epistemology in the reception of Avicenna's thought. Across dozens of authors and hundreds of passages, the translated material covers a wide range of topics including the subject matter of logic, the nature of knowledge and self-knowledge, questions in philosophy of language and syllogistic theory, and paradoxes.

No argument from the Arabic philosophical tradition has received more scholarly attention than Avicenna's ‘flying man’ thought experiment, in which a human is created out of thin air and is able to grasp his existence without grasping that he has a body. This paper offers a new interpretation of the version of this thought experiment found at the end of the first chapter of Avicenna's treatment of soul in theHealing. We argue that it needs to be understood in light of an epistemological theory set out elsewhere by Avicenna, which allows that all the constitutive properties of an essence will be clear to someone who understands and considers that essence. On our reading, this theory is put to work in the ‘flying man’: because the flying man would grasp that his own essence has existence without grasping that he has a body, connection to body cannot be constitutive of the essence.

Many social epistemologists suggest that testimonies may be considered a valid source of knowledge, no less than, for instance, direct observation. In this article, I will focus on the accounts of testimonial knowledge in classical kalām and Islamic law. I will present the arguments for why Islamic philosophers and jurists believe that testimonies convey knowledge. I will address the main disagreement in Islamic philosophy regarding the nature of testimonial knowledge, whether we can apply an internalist model of epistemic justification to testimonial knowledge or not. I will suggest that the best way to understand the traditional view on testimonial knowledge in Islamic philosophy and law is as “weak testimonial reliabilism”: testimonial knowledge typically results from the occurrence of certain external conditions (of which we might be unaware), even though they hold only insofar as our experience of this world tells us so, and may not hold in another possible world.

RésuméDans cet article, je soutiendrai que divers philosophes du kalām s'accordent à dire que la perception sensorielle dépasse les processus physiques dans les organes sensoriels. Il peut se passer quelque chose dans nos yeux lorsque nous voyons une pomme rouge, mais voir une pomme rouge ne s'y réduit pas. Nous verrons que certains philosophes du kalām soutiennent que la perception sensorielle est semblable à une prise de conscience ou à une conscience de l'objet de la perception, et qu'elle est, par conséquent, distincte du processus physique dans les organes sensoriels. Un groupe ira jusqu’à accepter que la perception sensorielle ne dépend même d'aucun processus physique dans le corps. Un autre groupe acceptera que la perception sensorielle présuppose diverses conditions physiques, mais il considérera néanmoins la perception sensorielle comme quelque chose de distinct de l'occurrence de ces conditions. Je suggère que ces théories non réductionnistes de la perception sensorielle sont la raison pour laquelle les philosophes arabo-islamiques, à partir du XIe siècle, rejettent systématiquement la théorie aristotélico-avicennienne de la perception sensorielle.

The theory of essential definitions is a fundamental anti‐sceptic element of the Aristotelian‐Avicennian epistemology. In this theory, when we distinguish the genus and the specific differentia of a given essence we thereby acquire a scientific understanding of it. The aim of this article is to analyse systematically the sceptical reasons, arguments and conclusions against real definitions of three major authorities of twelfth‐century Arabic philosophy: Faḫr al‐Dīn al‐Rāzī, Šihāb al‐Dīn al‐Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt al‐Baġdādī. I focus on showing how their refutation of our capacity to provide essential definitions of things is rooted in their semantic theory: we only know things under certain descriptions which are identical to the meanings of the words that we use to refer to them, yet these descriptions do not capture the essences of things in themselves. The best result one can achieve with Aristotelian‐Avicennian scientific definitions is a “nominal definition”. With this, Rāzī, Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt will put some serious epistemic limitations on our capacity to attain scientific knowledge of things, at least as Aristotle and Avicenna would have it.

What are the proper objects of perception? Two famous responses to this question hold that they are either the images of extramental objects, that is, the way in which they appear to us (representationalism), or they are the objects themselves (direct realism). In this paper, I present an analysis of this issue by Abū l-Barakāt al-Baġdādī (d. 1164/65), a post-Avicennian scholar whose impact on the history of Islamic philosophy has been largely neglected. Abū l-Barakāt argued against the traditional Aristotelian-Avicennian epistemological dualism, which distinguishes between the sense-perception of material particulars and the conception of immaterial universals in terms of the perceiver and/or the structure of perception. In Abū l-Barakāt's own theory, all epistemic acts have the unified structure of direct relation between one and the same perceiver (immaterial soul) and the objects themselves – both material and immaterial. His main thesis is that having corporeal organs is not necessary for sense-perception. In the final section of the paper, I show that Abū l-Barakāt's critique of the Aristotelian-Avicennian tradition was received as a breakthrough in epistemology. It may have also determined the epistemological theories of two of the most important post-Avicennian Islamic philosophers: Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) and Šihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 1191).

One of the most widespread claims combining epistemology and metaphysics in post-Avicennian Islamic philosophy was that every object of thought is real. In Muʿtazilite reading, it was endorsed due to a theory of knowledge which states that knowledge is a connection or relation between the knower and the object known. Avicennists accepted it due to the rule that in a proposition “s is p” if p is something positive s has to be positive and real too. Hence, insofar as one can conceptually distinguish between two non-existent items, they have to be real. In this article, the author presents significant consequences of this theory: the acceptance and denial of non-existent yet real extramental objects; the concept of mental existence as an alternative solution; the conceivability of paraconsistent ideas and their reality or reducibility to some real objects.

A central question in the history of metaphysics concerns the ontological status of such notions as 'redness,' 'humanity,' or 'animality,' which one calls 'universals.' Since one uses these notions to describe objects in the real world, it may seem intuitive that they exist in extramental reality: one says that universals are 'real'. Famously, though, several problems arise from this view. A central problem known both to medieval and contemporary scholars goes as follows: I look at a red rose and recognize that there is 'redness' in it. Then, I look at a red apple and recognize that there is 'redness' in it, too. Does this mean that one and the same 'redness' appears in both the rose and the...

In _Essentialität und Notwendigkeit: Avicenna und die Aristotelische Tradition_ stellt Fedor Benevich Avicennas Theorie der Essenz und der wissenschaftlichen Bestimmung essentieller und notwendiger Attribute in einem historischen Kontext der aristotelischen Tradition. In _Essentialität und Notwendigkeit: Avicenna und die Aristotelische Tradition_ Fedor Benevich presents Avicenna’s theory of essence and the scientific determination of essential and necessary attributes in its historical context of the Aristotelian tradition.

Avicenna's analysis of the definition of substance and accident repeatedly emphasizes two points: one and the same essence cannot be substance in one instance and accident in another; whetherxis extrinsic or intrinsic for an underlying subject,ydoes not tell us anything as to whetherxis substance or not. Both points are development in an argument against certain unnamed people who claimed the opposite. In this article I will show that Avicenna's opponents are to be identified with the mainstream Baghdad Peripatetic School which based itself on the Late Antique rule that “parts of substances are substances”. As for Avicenna's own position, it was developed on the basis of the heterodox position of Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, who anticipated Avicenna's first point. This is a further piece of evidence for something that has only recently begun to be appreciated: the influence of Ibn ʿAdī on Avicenna.RésuméL’analyse d’Avicenne portant sur les définitions de la substance et de l’accident met en exergue les deux propositions suivantes: 1) la même essence ne peut être à la fois une substance dans un cas et un accident dans un autre; 2) le fait quexsoit extrinsèque ou intrinsèque à unysous-jacent ne nous permet pas de conclure quexest une substance. Ces deux propositions sont articulées dans un débat avec d’autres personnes ayant un point de vue opposé dont on ne connaît pas l’identité. Dans cet article, nous verrons que ces adversaires font partie de l’école péripatétique de Bagdad, qui elle-même s’appuie sur une proposition datant de l’Antiquité tardive et selon laquelle les parties de substances sont elles-mêmes des substances. La position d’Avicenne fut développée à partir de celle de Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī. Cet article apporte ainsi un argument nouveau qui met en évidence l’influence, remarquée seulement depuis peu, d’Ibn ʿAdī sur Avicenne.