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In this paper, I offer a reconstruction of Ghazālī's encounter with scepticism in the Deliverance from Error. For Ghazālī, I argue, radical scepticism about the possibility of knowledge ensues from intellectualist assumptions about the nature of justification. On the reading that I will propose, Ghazālī holds that foundational knowledge can only be justified via actions that lead to transformative...
Newly accessible source material calls for a revision of our picture of the more technical transmission of sceptical epistemologies in the intellectual landscape of early Islam. Abū al‐Qāsim al‐Balkhīʼs (ninth/tenth century) Book of Doctrines shows that naẓar as the basic argumentative method of kalām is defined by the encounter with a broad spectrum of sceptical strategies. By the beginning of the...
In middle to late Byzantium, one finds dogmatic‐style sceptical arguments employed against human reason in relation to divine revelation, where revelation becomes the sole criterion of certain truth in contrast to reason. This argumentative strategy originates in early Christian authors, especially Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215 CE) and Gregory Nazianzen (c. 329–390 CE), who maintain that revelation...
This study deals with the sceptical arguments by one of the most important figures in the philosophical Sufi tradition (the Akbarian school) and the foremost disciple of Ibn ʿArabī, Ṣadr al‐Dīn al‐Qūnawī. Though not a sceptic in the strict sense, Qūnawī employs sceptical arguments from relativity of rational knowledge and disagreement among philosophers to prove inefficacy of reason and rational procedures...
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...
It has often been said that the knowability of substances became a problem in the early modern period, when anti‐Aristotelians doubted that we could know anything more than the sensory qualities that are present to us. This article argues that the late scholastic Aristotelian Francisco Suárez was already aware of this sceptical problem. On his view, substances are really (and not just modally) distinct...
This paper shall look briefly into the treatment of some topics related to scepticism in general in works by Barhebraeus, the famous Syrian Orthodox polymath and theologian (1226–1286). He addresses scepticism both directly by a discussion of sensory and intellectual fallacies or sceptical scenarios as well as indirectly by the definition of knowledge and the role of intuitive knowledge regarding...
This article examines the role of scepticism in the Islamic philosophical tradition. It begins with a treatment of the origins and purpose of these discussions in classical kalām (c. 800–1100 CE). Then it moves on to the more mature discussions treating five forms of scepticism in the post‐classical period (c.1200–1800 CE), with the aim of demonstrating how they construed scepticism, the arguments...
Jacob Anatoli (c. 1181–c. 1247 CE) would seem an unlikely skeptic. As the Hebrew translator responsible for bringing a complete program of Aristotelian logic to European Jewry, he is an unlikely skeptic of science. As author of one of the most influential medieval commentaries on the Bible, he is an unlikely skeptic of religious belief. Still, he advances arguments against the possibility of certain...
In virtue of what are particular individuals or objects thought about? I call this the grounding question. A consensus answer is bifurcationism: objects can be thought about in virtue of both satisfactional grounds—roughly, in virtue of their unique satisfaction of conditions that figure in a subject's thought—and non‐satisfactional grounds. Bifurcationism is a consensus view, but it comes in different...
Kripke's arguments in Naming and Necessity that there are necessary truths that are knowable only a posteriori are convincing, but his examples that purport to be cases of contingent truths that can be known a priori are more problematic. These examples bring out something important about reference and meaning, but this paper argues that the knowledge of speakers who fix the reference of a name or...
Saul Kripke states in Naming and Necessity that he presents a better picture of the reference of names than the traditional description theory. I answer the question why his picture is better than the traditional description theory.
This paper is about the Causal Theory of Names, as outlined by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. The paper argues that causal chains which connect users in command of a name N with those present at the baptismal event in which N was introduced are branches of networks of ‘N‐labelled’ entity representations in the minds of past and present users of N. These networks of N‐labelled entity representations...
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