Impossible Antecedents and Their Consequences: Some Thirteenth-Century Arabic Discussions

History and Philosophy of Logic 30 (3):209-225 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The principle that a necessarily false proposition implies any proposition, and that a necessarily true proposition is implied by any proposition, was apparently first propounded in twelfth century Latin logic, and came to be widely, though not universally, accepted in the fourteenth century. These principles seem never to have been accepted, or even seriously entertained, by Arabic logicians. In the present study, I explore some thirteenth century Arabic discussions of conditionals with impossible antecedents. The Persian-born scholar Afdal al-Dīn al-Kh najī (d.1248) suggested the novel idea that two contradictory propositions may follow from the same impossible antecedent, and closely related to this point, he suggested that if an antecedent implies a consequent, then it will do so no matter how it is strengthened. These ideas led him, and those who followed him, to reject what has come to be known as 'Aristotle's thesis' that no proposition is implied by its own negation. Even these suggestions were widely resisted. Particularly influential were the counter-arguments of Na īr al-Dīn al-T ī (d.1274)

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Tūsī on Avicenna’s Logical Connectives ∗.Tony Street - 1995 - History and Philosophy of Logic 16 (2):257-268.
Chrysippus’s response to Diodorus’s master argument.Harry A. Ide - 1992 - History and Philosophy of Logic 13 (2):133-148.
Über die Entwicklung der Mathematik in Westeuropa zwischen 1100 und 1500.H. L. L. Busard - 1997 - NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 5 (1):211-235.
Reductive theories of modality.Theodore Sider - 2003 - In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. Oxford University Press. pp. 180-208.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-07-27

Downloads
497 (#33,681)

6 months
19 (#103,157)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Citations of this work

Counterpossibles.Alexander W. Kocurek - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (11):e12787.
Connexive logic.Heinrich Wansing - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Arabic and islamic philosophy of language and logic.Tony Street - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

View all 9 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Connexive implication.Storrs Mccall - 1966 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 31 (3):415-433.
William's Machine.Christopher J. Martin - 1986 - Journal of Philosophy 83 (10):564.
The development of Arabic logic.Nicholas Rescher - 1964 - [Pittsburgh]: University of Pittsburgh Press.
William's machine.Christopher J. Martin - 1986 - Journal of Philosophy 83 (10):564-572.
The Logic of Negation in Boethius.Christopher Martin - 1991 - Phronesis 36 (3):277-304.

View all 8 references / Add more references