Save

‮غیر المعلوم یمتنع الحکم علیه‬ (Ghayr al-maʿlūm yamtaniʿ al-ḥukm ʿalayhi)

An Exploratory Anthology of a False Paradox in Medieval Islamic Philosophy

In: Oriens
Author:
Joep Lameer Independent Scholar, The Netherlands joeplameer@yahoo.com

Search for other papers by Joep Lameer in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Download Citation Get Permissions

Access options

Get access to the full article by using one of the access options below.

Institutional Login

Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials

Login via Institution

Purchase

Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

$40.00

*In Islamic philosophy, knowledge is divided into ‘conception’ (taṣawwur) and ‘belief’ (taṣdīq). While there is no objection to dividing knowledge in this way, problems arose when belief was described as being ‘composed’ of conceptions. An early objection to belief’s dependence upon conceptions was based on a self-referential reading of the principle that ‘the unknown cannot be a subject of predication,’ which was another way of saying that ‘what is not conceived, cannot be believed.’ This objection was answered in various ways. While Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) may have been the first to know how to solve paradoxes of self-reference, it was Sirāj al-Dīn Urmawī (d. 682/1283) who dominated most of the later discussions.

Content Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 586 59 6
Full Text Views 249 5 2
PDF Views & Downloads 98 14 7