Jon McGinnis

This chapter on creation and eternity in medieval philosophy focuses on arguments for the world's age drawn from the nature of time. To this end, there are four main sections. The first covers proofs for the eternity of the world taken from the nature of time, with an emphasis on Aristotle's original argument for that thesis and then Avicenna's modal version of the proof. The second deals with rejoinders, based upon non‐Aristotelian conceptions of time, to proofs for the eternity of the world with a focus on Augustine's idealist conception of time. The third section takes up positive arguments for the temporal finitude of the cosmos and the difficulties surrounding the idea of infinite past time. The final section canvasses the “agnostic position” of Ibn Tufayl, Moses Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas concerning the question of the cosmos's age.

This study provides the historical background to, and analysis and translations of, two seminal texts from the medieval Islamic world concerning the univocity of being/existence and a theory of “ambiguous predication” (tashkīk), which is similar to the Thomistic theory of analogy. The disputants are Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1149–1210), who defended a theory of the univocity of being, and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201–1274), who defended the theory of ambiguous predication. While the purported issue is whether a quiddity can cause its own existence, the debate extends further. Rāzī draws on several arguments that “existence” must be predicated univocally of God and creature and then concludes that, given the univocity of “existence,” God cannot be simple, but is a composite of the divine quiddity and distinct attributes. In contrast, Ṭūsī denies that “existence” is said univocally of God and creature and rather is predicated ambiguously/analogously, and then defends divine simplicity.

This study provides the historical background to, and analysis and translations of, two seminal texts from the medieval Islamic world concerning the univocity of being/existence and a theory of “ambiguous predication” (tashkīk), which is similar to the Thomistic theory of analogy. The disputants are Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1149–1210), who defended a theory of the univocity of being, and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201–1274), who defended the theory of ambiguous predication. While the purported issue is whether a quiddity can cause its own existence, the debate extends further. Rāzī draws on several arguments that “existence” must be predicated univocally of God and creature and then concludes that, given the univocity of “existence,” God cannot be simple, but is a composite of the divine quiddity and distinct attributes. In contrast, Ṭūsī denies that “existence” is said univocally of God and creature and rather is predicated ambiguously/analogously, and then defends divine simplicity.

Avicenna scholars know well that Avicenna aspired to present his metaphysics in the form of an Aristotelian science. The mélange of topics that make up Avicenna’s Metaphysics often appears disjointed and rambling, making it difficult to see how successful he was in this aspiration. Daniel D. De Haan’s book provides an aerial view of Avicenna’s Metaphysics, which argues that Avicenna succeeded. More specifically, De Haan suggests how Avicenna’s conception of the “necessary” links the general subject of metaphysics to its ultimate goal. In this respect, De Haan’s work is less of a commentary on Avicenna’s Metaphysics than a metacommentary. Thus...

while it should go without saying, it bears mentioning: the history of atomism in the medieval Islamic East is not the same as that of the medieval Christian West. One simply cannot assume that what is true of the conception of the atom in the West also need be true of the conception of the atom in the East, or even that the two traditions are drawing upon and responding to the same set of literature. In fact, the question is open as to whether these two histories even share a common origin. While there certainly is a presumption that the history of Islamic atomism is a continuation of Greek atomism, this remains very much a presumption. Indeed, Shlomo Pines, in his groundbreaking Beiträge zur islamischen...

Volume 2 covers one of the richest eras for the philosophical study of religion. Covering the period from the 6th century to the Renaissance, this volume shows how Christian, Islamic and Jewish thinkers explicated and defended their religious faith in light of the philosophical traditions they inherited from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The enterprise of 'faith seeking understanding', as it was dubbed by the medievals themselves, emerges as a vibrant encounter between - and a complex synthesis of - the Platonic, Aristotelian and Hellenistic traditions of antiquity on the one hand, and the scholastic and monastic religious schools of the medieval West, on the other

Avicenna's discussion of space is found in his comments on Aristotle's account of place. Aristotle identified four candidates for place: a body's matter, form, the occupied space, or the limits of the containing body, and opted for the last. Neoplatonic commentators argued contra Aristotle that a thing's place is the space it occupied. Space for these Neoplatonists is something possessing dimensions and distinct from any body that occupies it, even if never devoid of body. Avicenna argues that this Neoplatonic notion of space is untenable on the basis of three arguments. In general he maintains that bodies' impenetrability is explained by reference to dimensionality. Consequently, if it is dimensionality that explains impenetrability, and yet as the Neoplatonists hold space inherently possesses dimensions, material bodies could never interpenetrate space and so occupy it and thus bodies could never have a place. The conclusion is patently false. In additions Avicenna argues that the method used to arrive at the possibility of space is illicit, and so Neoplatonist cannot show that space is even possible. Thus, concludes Avicenna, Aristotle's initial account must be correct. The paper outlines the historical context of this debate and then treats Avicenna's arguments against space in detail.

The study begins with the language employed in and the psychological basis of thought experiments as understood by certain medieval Arabic philosophers. It then provides a taxonomy of different kinds of thoughts experiments used in the medieval Islamic world. These include purely fictional thought experiments, idealizations and finally thought experiments using ingenious machines. The study concludes by suggesting that thought experiments provided a halfway house during this period between a staunch rationalism and an emerging empiricism.

While the little-known thinker Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mas'ūdī may have had doubts concerning the Ishārāt of the great Persian philosopher Avicenna, no one should have doubts concerning Ayman Shihadeh's brilliant Doubts on Avicenna: A Study and Edition of Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mas'ūdī's Commentary on the Ishārāt. Professor Shihadeh's volume is a rich study of Mas'ūdī's alMabāḥith wa-l-shukūk 'alā Kitāb al-Ishārāt, which additionally offers the first critical edition of that work. Doubts on Avicenna affords the reader a snapshot of the middle period of medieval Arabic philosophy and Islamic theology (ca. eleventh to fourteenth...

The dissertation examines the temporal theories of Aristotle and the Muslim Aristotelian, Ibn Sina . After considering Aristotelian science and sketching Aristotle's theory of physics, the dissertation picks up a series of puzzles concerning the reality of time. The central puzzle is a dilemma, which seemingly shows that the now can neither change nor remain the same. The dilemma is important, since one's solution to it affects the way one envisions time. Aristotle's solution, I argue, is to show how the now remains the same. Thus he adopts a "static" theory of time, i.e., time is a magnitude marked off in motion by an unchanging now, and although time is a magnitude of motion, it itself does not flow or change. In contrast, Ibn Sina, who employs much of the same vocabulary as Aristotle, develops a "dynamic" theory of time, which envisions time as the "flow" of an ever changing now, and thus he attempts to explain how the now changes. The dissertation concludes with an application of Aristotle and Ibn Sina's accounts of time to McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time and Sydney Shoemaker's contention that conceptually time does not require change. In the end I argue that time must be static and cannot "flow."

A debated topic in Avicennan psychology is whether for Avicenna abstraction is a metaphor for emanation or to be taken literally. This issue stems from the deeper philosophical question of whether humans acquire intelligibles externally from an emanation by the Active Intellect, which is a separate substance, or internally from an inherently human cognitive process, which prepares us for an emanation from the Active Intellect. I argue that the tension between thesedoctrines is only apparent. In his logical works Avicenna limns an account where through the internal human process of abstraction accidents accruing to an essence existing in matter are extracted, thus preparing the essence for new accidents emanating externally from the Active Intellect, which make the essence something conceptualized in the intellect. This study, then, outlines the epistemological and metaphysical framework presented in the logical works that underpins Avicenna’s theory of abstraction presented in his psychological works

Avicenna's discussion of space is found in his comments on Aristotle's account of place. Aristotle identified four candidates for place: a body's matter, form, the occupied space, or the limits of the containing body, and opted for the last. Neoplatonic commentators argued contra Aristotle that a thing's place is the space it occupied. Space for these Neoplatonists is something possessing dimensions and distinct from any body that occupies it, even if never devoid of body. Avicenna argues that this Neoplatonic notion of space is untenable on the basis of three arguments. In general he maintains that bodies' impenetrability is explained by reference to dimensionality. Consequently, if it is dimensionality that explains impenetrability, and yet as the Neoplatonists hold space inherently possesses dimensions, material bodies could never interpenetrate space and so occupy it and thus bodies could never have a place. The conclusion is patently false. In additions Avicenna argues that the method used to arrive at the possibility of space is illicit, and so Neoplatonist cannot show that space is even possible. Thus, concludes Avicenna, Aristotle's initial account must be correct. The paper outlines the historical context of this debate and then treats Avicenna's arguments against space in detail.

The paper treats Avicenna’s ’metaphysical’ argument for the existence of God and the modal metaphysics that underpins it. Earlier analyses of modalities attempted to reduce necessity, possibility and impossibility to nonmodal elements, which was done most commonly by appealing to a temporal frequency model of modalities. In contrast, Avicenna believed that modalities were an inherent feature of existence, and so just as there is nothing more basic than existence, so likewise there is nothing more basic in term of which modalities can be explained. The article concludes by considering how Avicenna’s modal metaphysics in turn provides him the means to show the absolute and nonconditional necessity of God, as opposed to the conditional necessity of earlier ’physical’ arguments

The forma fluens/fluxus formae debate concerns the question as to whether motion is something distinct from the body in motion, the flow of a distinct form identified with motion , or nothing more than the successive states of the body in motion, the flow of some form found in one of Aristotle's ten categories . Although Albertus Magnus introduced this debate to the Latin West he drew his inspiration from Avicenna. This study argues that Albertus misclassified Avicenna's position, since Albertus could not conceptualize motion at an instant, whereas it is claimed here this was the very position Avicenna adopted. The paper includes an overview of Albertus's discussion and a brief survey of the Avicennan sources upon which Albertus drew. The heart of the paper treats Avicenna's analysis of motion at an instant. Avicenna's general argument was that since spatial points have no extremities, nothing in principle prevents a moving object from being at a spatial point for more than an instant, understood as a limit. It is then argued that Avicenna had the philosophical machinery to make sense of a limit, albeit not in mathematical terms, but in terms of an Aristotelian potential infinite

Avicenna’s _Physics_ is the very first volume that he wrote when he began his monumental encyclopedia of science and philosophy, _The_ _Healing_. Avicenna’s reasons for beginning with _Physics_ are numerous: it offers up the principles needed to understand such special natural sciences as psychology; it sets up many of the problems that take center stage in his _Metaphysics_; and it provides concrete examples of many of the abstract analytical tools that he would develop later in _Logic_. While Avicenna’s _Physics _roughly follows the thought of Aristotle’s _Physics_, with its emphasis on natural causes, the nature of motion, and the conditions necessary for motion, the work is hardly derivative. It represents arguably the most brilliant mind of late antiquity grappling with and rethinking the entire tradition of natural philosophy inherited from the Greeks as well as the physical thought of Muslim speculative theologians. As such, _Physics_ is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding Avicenna’s complete philosophical system, the history of science, or the history of ideas