Hashem Morvarid

Avicenna’s Letter to the Scholars of Baghdād records a philosophical exchange between Avicenna and Abū al-Qāsim al-Kirmānī, conducted shortly after Avicenna’s arrival in Hamadhān in 405/1015. The Letter addresses some central metaphysical and epistemological questions in Avicenna’s philosophy, namely the existence and unity of shared essences (al-māhīyyāt al-mushtaraka) and the acquisition of intelligible forms (al-ṣuwar al-maʿqūla). Despite its importance, the work has remained relatively understudied. This paper offers a new critical edition of the Arabic text, based on all known manuscript witnesses, together with the first complete English translation of the Letter and a detailed synopsis. Beyond its editorial contributions, the paper examines a key interpretive issue raised by the Letter: the nature of al-Kirmānī’s realism about universals. Against the prevailing view in modern scholarship that characterizes al-Kirmānī as a Platonic realist, I argue that the Letter shows him to be an immanent realist. Finally, the paper explores the impact of the Avicenna–al-Kirmānī debate on Avicenna’s later writings, showing that the Argument from Contrary Properties, which Avicenna consistently raised against immanent realism in his subsequent discussions of universals, was first introduced in the Letter.

As with most medieval philosophers, Avicenna advocated for Divine Simplicity Thesis (henceforth DST), according to which God is absolutely simple, lacking any composition within Him. However, DST raises a puzzling question about the ontological status of divine attributes. According to DST, these attributes cannot be distinct positive intrinsic properties of God, as such properties would bring about a composition within Him. Consequently, proponents of DST must propose alternative accounts of their ontological status. In this paper, I identify and delineate three distinct accounts in Avicenna. According to the first account, divine attributes are positive intrinsic properties of God that exist in a non-composite, unified manner. On the second account, these attributes are either extrinsic or negative properties, which are not real features within God. In the third account, divine attributes are concomitants (_al-lawāzim_) of God, namely, distinct entities proceeding from His essence (_dhāt_). As these concomitants are ontologically posterior to God, their plurality would not constitute a composition within God. I argue that although all three views are suggested by Avicenna’s corpus, his official stance was the negative-extrinsic account. Subsequently, I explore the major philosophical challenges the negative-extrinsic account encounters and examine how Avicenna would meet them.

It is well known that Avicenna vehemently rejected the theory of Forms. However, his interpretation of the theory and his reasons for rejecting it remain understudied. This paper aims to fill this lacuna. It begins by laying out the theses that he associated with the theory of Forms, demonstrating where they diverge from Plato's own formulation of the theory and from two later reformulations of it: those of post-Avicennian Muslim Platonists and contemporary analytic Platonists. Subsequently, it examines Avicenna's arguments against the theory, classifying them into two categories: (1) refutations of Platonic arguments and (2) direct arguments against the theory. Both groups of arguments demonstrate significant originality, going well beyond Aristotle's critiques in his Metaphysics, which was likely the principal source of Avicenna's knowledge of the theory of Forms. The examination of Avicenna's arguments reveals (1) his methodology in responding to ancient views with which he disagreed; (2) some of his innovative logical contributions, including the distinction between two kinds of predication, and the logic of the “min ḥaythu hīya hīya” (inasmuch as it is what it is) operator; and (3) some substantive metaphysical, epistemological, and semantic assumptions that were later embraced by mainstream Islamic philosophy.

A main function of common natures in Avicenna’s metaphysics is supposed to be providing an objective ground for the categories. Thus, it is commonly assumed that in his metaphysics things are objectively divided into the categories into which they are because members of each category share the same common nature. However, common natures cannot perform the function unless they are shared, in a real sense of the word, by the members of the respective categories, and it is not clear at all in what real sense Avicenna took common natures to be shared by them. On the one hand, he rejected Platonic and Aristotelian realisms about common natures, the two standard accounts of how common natures are shared by their instances. On the other hand, it is unclear that his alternative account(s) of common natures renders them genuinely common. The primary goal of this paper is to examine whether Avicenna’s common natures can provide an objective ground for the categories. It considers various interpretations of Avicenna's account and argues that they are either incorrect interpretations of Avicenna or do not render common natures genuinely common. It concludes with proposing to look elsewhere in Avicenna’s system to find the objective ground.

The Muʿtazilī theologians, particularly the later Imāmī ones, developed numerous interesting arguments against divine command theory. The arguments, however, have not received the attention they deserve. Some of the arguments have been discussed in passing, and some have not been discussed at all. In this article, I aim to present and analyse the arguments. To that end, I first distinguish between different semantic, ontological, epistemological, and theological theses that were often conflated in the debate, and examine the logical relation among them. Then I go over the Muʿtazila's arguments determining, among other things, which of the theses was targeted by each argument. In presenting the arguments, I focus mainly on the late kalām period, the period falling roughly between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries of the common era, as the arguments were at their most sophisticated level by this time.

Since Kit Fine presented his counter-examples to the standard versions of the modal view, many have been convinced that the standard versions of the modal view are not adequate. However, the scope of Fine's argument has not been fully appreciated. In this paper, I aim to carry Fine’s argument to its logical conclusion and argue that once we embrace the intuition underlying his counter-examples, we have to hold that properties obtained, totally or partially, by application of logical operations are not essential to non-logical entities. I also demonstrate that most of the post-Finean versions of the modal view, which were developed to accommodate Fine’s counter-examples, entail that such properties are essential to the entities, and so fail to capture the notion of essence at issue in Fine's counter-examples. Additionally, I explore the consequence of my argument for Fine’s proposed logic of essence. The logic turns out to be inadequate in its present shape as it represents such properties to be essential to the entities. I conclude by developing a modification to the logic to overcome the shortcoming.

One of the arguments of the realists to prove the existence of universals in the external world is “abstract reference”. According to this argument, there are many true sentences in a language which apparently relates to universals. In the realists’ view, truth of these sentences can be explicated only when universals exist in the external world. On the basis of his “degree of language” theory, Carnap has criticized the above-mentioned argument and demonstrated that delusion of the existence of universals has resulted from the confusion in regard to different degrees of language. In his view, those sentences concerning to universals are in fact second-order sentences which assert properties with regard to some first-order sentences. But Carnap’s theory suffers from two main objections: firstly, his theory is not successful in the elimination of reference to universals, because on the basis of his theory, only reference to non-linguistic universals would be eliminated but reference to linguistic universals continue to survive. Secondly, supposing that Carnap’s theory is true, translation of the sentences in question would be extremely difficult and complicate. So Wilfred Sellars attempts to response the two objections, and thus, to present a reformed version of Carnap’s theory. In the present article, the author first explains Carnap’s theory; then, it presents the relevant objections; and finally, it offers Sellars’ reformed version of Carnap’s theory.

Since Kit Fine published his famous counter-examples to the modal account of essence, numerous modalists have proposed to avoid the counter-examples by revising the modal account. A sophisticated revision has been put forward by Fabrice Correia. Drawing on themes from Prior’s modality, Correia has introduced a nonstandard conception of metaphysical modality and has proposed to analyze essence in its terms. He has claimed that the analysis is immune to Fine’s counter-examples. In this paper, I argue that there are counter-examples supported by the very intuition underlying Fine’s counter-examples, which are not accommodated by Correia’s account. If my argument is sound, then Correia has not been successful in his defense of modalism. An important corollary of my argument will be that Fine’s consequential conception of essence needs to be modified if it is to capture his own intuitive notion of essence.

Hale has argued that logical necessities are absolute in the sense that there is no competing kind of modality under which they may be false. In this paper, I argue that there are competing kinds of modality, which I call “essentialist modalities,” under which logical necessities may be false. Since it is counter-intuitive to say that logical necessities are not absolute, my argument, if correct, shows that Hale’s characterization of absolute necessity does not adequately capture the intuitive notion of absolute necessity. Then, a qualified version of Hale’s characterization of absolute necessity is proposed. On the qualified version, the absoluteness of logical necessities is no longer defeated by essentialist possibilities.