•  240
    Avicenna on common natures and the ground of the categories
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 1-32. forthcoming.
    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 …Read more
  •  380
    One common objection against the Principle of Sufficient Reason is that it leads to a highly counterintuitive position, namely, necessitarianism. In this paper, drawing on Avicenna’s modal theory, I differentiate between two versions of necessitarianism: strong necessitarianism and weak necessitarianism. I argue that the modal intuition driving this objection pertains to strong necessitarianism, while the Principle of Sufficient Reason, at most, leads to weak necessitarianism.
  •  76
    The muʿtazila's arguments against divine command theory
    Religious Studies 58 (3): 610-627. 2022.
    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 …Read more
  • Semantic Externalism: A Way of Refuting the Incommensurability Thesis
    پژوهشنامه فلسفه دین 1 (7): 91-106. 2009.
  •  156
    Essence and logical properties
    Philosophical Studies 176 (11): 2897-2917. 2019.
    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 a…Read more
  •  26
    Carnap’s and Sellars’ Theories on Universals
    Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 9 (35): 89-105. 2008.
    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 …Read more
  •  137
    Finean essence, local necessity, and pure logical properties
    Synthese 195 (11): 4997-5005. 2018.
    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 ar…Read more
  •  111
    Hale on the Absoluteness of Logical Necessity
    Acta Analytica 32 (1): 1-11. 2017.
    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 n…Read more