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Islamic Mystical Dialetheism: Resolving the Paradox of God’s Unknowability and Ineffability

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Abstract

Dialetheism is the view that some contradictions are true. Resorting to either metaphysical dialetheism or semantic dialetheism may seem like an appropriate resolve to certain theological contradictions. At least for those who concede to theological contradictions, and take dialetheism seriously. However, I demonstrate that neither of these types of dialetheism would serve to be amenable in resolving an Islamic theological contradiction. This is a theological contradiction that I refer to as ‘the paradox of an unknowable and ineffable God’. As a result of this, I propose an alternative type of dialetheism which aims to resolve the paradox of an unknowable and ineffable God. I call this type of dialetheism, ‘mystical dialetheism’.

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Notes

  1. See part three of Kars, A. (2019). Unsaying God: Negative Theology in Medieval Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Also see Heck, P. (2014). Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion. Oxon: Routledge.

  2. Priest, Berto, and Weber (2018) refer to such moves as ‘parameterisation’. “When one is confronted with a seemingly true contradiction, A ∧ ¬A, treat the suspected dialetheia A, or some of its parts, as having different meanings, and hence as ambiguous (maybe just contextually ambiguous). For instance, if one claims that P(a) ∧ ¬P(a), parameterisation holds that one is in effect claiming that P1(a) ∧ ¬P2(a) (e.g. elephants are big and not big, because they are big in the context of land animals on Earth, but not big in the context of stars and planets).” (Priest, Graham, Francesco Berto, and Zach Weber, "Dialetheism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/dialetheism/>.)

  3. I am not aware of any theologians or philosophers who may have adopted this approach.

  4. I have demonstrated this in multiple ways. See: 

    Ahsan, A. (2017). A Realist Approach in Analytic Theology and the Islamic Tradition. Philosophy and Theology, 29(1), pp.101-132. 

    Ahsan, A. (2018). The Classical Correspondence Theory of Truth and the God of Islam. Philosophy and Theology, 30(2), pp.273-294. 

    Ahsan, A. (2019). Quine’s Ontology and the Islamic Tradition. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 36(2), pp.20-63. 

    Ahsan, A. (2019). The Paradox of an Absolute Ineffable God of Islam. Philotheos, 19(2), pp.227-259. 

    Ahsan, A. (2020). God Beyond the Boundary-Stones of Thought. American Journal of Islam and Society, 37 (3-4), pp.50-97. 

    Ahsan, A. (2020). The logical inconsistency in making sense of an ineffable God of Islam. Philotheos, 20(1), pp.68-116. 

    Ahsan, A. (2020) Analytic Theology and its Method. Forthcoming in Philotheos, 20(2). 

    Ahsan, A. (2021). Islamic Contradictory Theology . . . Is there any such thing?. Logica Universalis, 15(2), pp. 297-329. 

    Ahsan, A. (2021). Beyond the Categories of Truth. Axiomathes. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-021-09581-4

    Ahsan, A. (2021). The Possibility of Analytic Philosophy in UK Madrasahs. Forthcoming in Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, 6(2).

  5. See: Anderson, J. (2007). Paradox in Christian Theology: An Analysis of its Presence, Character and Epistemic Status. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. 

    Göcke, B. (2016). The Paraconsistent God. In: H. Von, T. Marschler and T. Schärtl, ed., Rethinking the Concept of a Personal God Classical Theism, Personal Theism, and Alternative Concepts of God. Münster: Münster Aschendorff Verlag, pp.177-199. 

    Cotnoir, A. (2017). Theism and Dialetheism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96(3), pp.592-609. 

    Beall, J. and Cotnoir, A. (2017). God of the gaps: a neglected reply to God’s stone problem. Analysis, 77(4), pp.681–689. 

    Beall, J. (2019). Christ – A Contradiction: A Defense of Contradictory Christology. Journal of Analytic Theology, 7, pp.400-433. 

    Beall, J. (2021). The contradictory Christ. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  6. Notice that phrase “the One in truth.” This reflects a terminological shift from the third to the fourth section of On First Philosophy. Whereas previously al-Kindī spoke only of things that were “accidentally one” as opposed to “essentially one,” now he contrasts things that are “one metaphorically [bi-’l-majāz]” to God, who is “One in truth [al-wāḥ id bi-’l-ḥ aqīqa]” or the “true One [al-wāḥ id al-ḥaqq].” The meaning, however, is the same: what is “metaphorically” one is what is both one and many. The “true One” is only one, not at all multiple. In the rest of On First Philosophy, al-Kindī will therefore try to specify the sense of “oneness” that applies to God. However, he does this largely by enumerating the senses of “one” that do not apply to God. For this reason, al-Kindī’s treatment of how we speak of God—what one might call “theological discourse”—is usually thought of as being thoroughly negative. If this is right then in the end all al-Kindī has to say about God is that we can say nothing: He is utterly ineffable, inaccessible to language or thought. I think it would be more accurate to say that al-Kindī, in these final passages, is surveying the senses in which “one” might be understood, and narrowing down to the correct sense by a process of elimination. (Adamson, 2007, p. 53-54) 

    Al-Kindī’s one-page description of the “Eternal” [al-Azalī] contains around forty Arabic negative particles. Simply put, God’s being the cause [ʿilla] of creation makes Her uncaused, ineffable, unknowable, and utterly transcendent. She is the source of all multiplicity; and She is beyond the multiplicity and unity that belongs to creation. As the true One, She cannot be spoken of in the way creation is spoken of. “God, ‘the true One,’ is completely transcendent, in the precise sense that nothing can be said of Him.” (Kars, 2019, p. 78)

    Al-Kindī not only negates discursive proofs of the divine essence, but he also closes the door of any non-discursive access to God, including mysticism. God becomes utterly apophatic, inaccessible, and the unknowable ultimate cause and agent. (Kars, 2019, p. 81)

  7. In this section devoted to “knowledge of the station of the transcendence of divine unity” [maʿrifat manzil tanzīhiyya al-tawḥīd], Ibn al-ʿArabī makes the philosophical argument that God’s transcendence entails Her exemption from all possible human definitions, attributions, and traits, including Her very unity. Hence, “We can say nothing about the word ‘unity’ when applied to God.” God is made free of any description through the word “unity”; in other words, “oneness” cannot qualify God if God is to be One. Divine unity is like a house that has no door, says Ibn al-ʿArabī; no one can enter this house, but some can merely peek inside via divine unveiling. (Kars, 2019, p. 101) 

    Ibn al-ʿArabī on Divine Majesty and Beauty:

    His essence is exalted above all motions and stillnesses, all bewilderment and mindfulness. It is too high to be overtaken by any explanation, express or implied, just as it is too great to be limited and described. (Ibn al-ʿArabī Translated by Tosun Bayrak and Rabia T. Harris in Renard, 2014, p. 182)

  8. For early Ismāʿīlīs, in line with Plotinus (d.270), God was the unknowable absolute One who can be neither comprehended by reason nor accurately described. Their doctrine removed all the attributes, including “being,” from God, and unlike the majority of the Muʿtazilites, they kept Her essence utterly unknowable and ineffable. (Kars, 2019, p. 26) 

    Within this Ismāʿīlī cosmology, Ibn al-Wālid’s God is utterly unknowable, far beyond comprehension, limitation, or definition. Discourse [ʿibāra] cannot reach anything about Her; anything that can be known or spoken of is created. The Originator is not a body, not a substance, not an accident, not a matter, not a form, not in space, not in time, not comparable to anything, not speakable, and so forth. (Kars, 2019, p. 55)

  9. Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī most famously had a distinctly negative approach to language concerning God. In the Highest Aim [al- Maqṣad al-Asnā], al-Ghazālī adopts all the principles of a philosophical apophaticism. The unknowability of the divine essence is strongly emphasized, again and again underlining that the highest knowledge concerning God is one’s own incapacity to know—docta ignorantia. Not only divine essence but even divine attributes cannot be known to us as much as they relate to the divine essence. We can only imagine divine attributes through comparison with their created counterparts, but their reality is beyond human conception, imagination, and intellection. Contrasting negative and positive language concerning the divine essence, al-Ghazālī finds the former superior. Accordingly, negations contain a latent praise of God more powerful and correct than positively describing Her with qualified attributes:

    Since there is no likeness of Him, none knows His essence other than He. So al-Junayd . . . was right when he remarked: “none knows God except God.” For that reason, He gave even His noblest creature a name, with which He veiled Himself, as He said: “Praise the name of your Lord Most High” [Q.87:1]. So, by God, none knows God except God, in this world, or the next.

    On his deathbed, Dhū al-Nūn was asked, “What do you long for?” He replied: “That I knew Him before I die—be it for an instant.” Now, this confuses the hearts of most of the weak, and leads them to the delusion of negation [nafy] and ineffectualism [taʿṭīl]. . . . I say: if someone were to say “I do not know God,” that would be true. And if they were to say “I know God” that would also be true. . . .

    This would be the case were a person to ask another, “Do you know Abū Bakr, the faithful one?” . . . If one replied, “Who does not know Abū Bakr, or is ignorant about him? Given the visibility, fame, and renown of his name, is it conceivable that anyone in the world doesn’t know him? . . .” This reply would be true. . . .

    But if another were asked, “Do you know him [Abū Bakr, the faithful one],” and replied “Who am I to know the faithful one? Alas, far from it! None knows him except himself, or someone who is like him or above him. Who am I to claim to know him or even hope for that? People like me hear his name and attributes, but as for claiming to know him—that is impossible.” This is also true—indeed, this proposition has an aspect, which comes closer to the due glorification and homage.

    In the following discussion, al-Ghazālī gives other examples as well, in order to point out that the negative language is superior to positive language concerning the divine essence. His association of the negative language with praise, and the principle of unknowability, none knows God except God, clearly resonate with al- Baṭalyawsī, Maimonides, and the Arabic Aristotle among others. (Kars, 2019, p. 124-125)

  10. See footnote 2.

  11. How can I meaningfully say about something that it is ineffable? For if it were ineffable, I could not say anything about it, not even that it is ineffable. And vice versa, if I can say about it that it is ineffable, there is at least one thing I can say about it – namely, that it is ineffable – and then it cannot be ineffable. It seems as if any proposition of the form ‘X is ineffable’ (I shall call this the ineffability thesis) is paradoxical or self-defeating. (Gäb, 2017, p. 1)

  12. It is worth noting that the sort of unknowability that I am ascribing to the Islamic God is not the kind that is manifested in Ismāʿīlī theology. The feature which distinguishes my idea of unknowability from Ismāʿīlī theology is that I don‘t think anything is impossible for an absolute transcendent God while they assume it is. The distinction that I am drawing on can be better appreciated in the extract below: 

    From the beginning of their movement in the mid- third/ ninth century, Ismāʿīlī Shīʿites had developed a cosmology that was heavily influenced by a set of Neoplatonic ideas and that interpreted God‘s divine unity (tawḥīd) in a radical way. For Ismāʿīlī philosophers and theologians, tawḥīd meant that God is absolutely transcendent and cannot in any way be part of this world. He is beyond being and beyond knowability. God‘s absolute transcendence makes it impossible that He causes anything in His creation, since that would require some immanence on His part. (Griffel, 2017, p. 219)

  13. God does not inhere in anything, and nothing inheres in Him. He is exalted above being contained by space, and too holy to be bounded by time; on the contrary, He existed before He created time and space. He now has [the attributes] by which He was [previously characterized], and is distinguished from His creatures by His attributes. There is not in His essence what is other than He, nor in what is other than He is there [anything of] His essence. He is exalted above change [of state] and movement. Originated things do not inhere [or subsist] in Him, and accidental [events] do not befall Him. Rather, He does not cease; through the qualities of His majesty He is beyond cessation, and through the attributes of His perfection He is independent of [or does not require] any further increase of perfection. (al-Ghazālī translated by Watt in Renard, 2014, p. 110)

  14. Also see Heck, P. (2014). Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion. Oxon: Routledge, pp.119.

  15. Though, I acknowledge that there are contradictions that ensue from specific beliefs related to the Islamic God Himself. These are not contradictions that ensue from the conjunction of certain beliefs in God and observable phenomena in the world. A notable example would be pertaining to God’s essence and attributes, which manifests an unequivocal violation of the law of non-contradiction. This is articulated in Nasafī’s Māturīdī Creed as “God has pre-eternal attributes subsisting in His essence. They are not He and nor other than He.” (Nasafī’s Māturīdī Creed translated by Watt in Reynolds, 2014, p. 114) Focussing on the latter claim of this short excerpt, this article of faith would evidently be deemed false. By standards of classical logic, it would result in a contradiction and thus be ruled out a priori. The logical form of this statement would be represented by way of a double negation as follows: (¬F(a) ∧ ¬(¬F(a)). This would read as: object a does not have property F and nor does it not have property F. This logical notation can equally be represented as (a ∧ ¬a) since according to the equivalence relation any instant of a double negation such as ¬¬a can be replaced by a without altering the truth value. See Ahsan, A. (2021). The Possibility of Analytic Philosophy in UK Madrasahs. Forthcoming in Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, 6(2).

  16. Thanks to Graham Priest who had kindly pointed out to me that “to say that something is ineffable and to say that it is unknowable mean different things. There may be true statements about an object (so it is effable); but one cannot know which ones are true (so it is unknowable)”.

  17. Aside from the paradoxical representation of both unknowability and ineffability, there is a distinction to be made between them. Thomas Hofweber (2016) refers to this distinction in the following manner: “Ineffable facts, if there are any, are completely beyond us, unknowable and beyond what we can consider or entertain. Ineffable facts thus can be more hidden from us than merely unknowable ones or merely incomprehensible ones. All ineffable facts are unknowable and incomprehensible, but not the other way round. We will never know whether the number of grains of sand on earth exactly 500 million years ago was odd or even, but we can represent both options. And we might never comprehend or understand why anything exists at all, even though we can easily represent this fact.” (Hofweber, 2016, p. 251)

  18. Given the fact that ― “God is a being necessarily existing of Himself (al-mawjud al-wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi)” (Maqsad 47, M 342–43), it should be clear that this ― “peculiar divine property belongs only to God and only God knows it.” Moreover ― “it is inconceivable that anyone know it save Him or one who is His like, since He has no like, no other knows it.” On such an account, ― “only God knows God” (ibid.). So the resources of philosophy confirm God‘s uniqueness or tawhid: the utter distinction of the One from all else: ― “everything the exercise of which is possible,” which does in fact exist from that One ― “according to the best ways of order and perfection” (Maqsad 47, M 342). (Burrell, 1987, p. 181) Also see Abrahamov, B. (1993). Al-Ghazali's Supreme Way to Know God. Studia Islamica, (77), pp.141-168.

  19. I believe the above-mentioned authors, in Section 2.1, have made various theoretical concessions to accommodate the contradiction ensued by ineffability. Consequently, they have weakened the ineffability claim.

  20. This is not to deny or overlook the fact that both domains bear an intimate connection, which, for the most part, is difficult to disentangle. See Priest, G. (2019). Metaphysics and Logic: an Observation in Metametaphysics. Giornale di Metaphysica, 41(1), pp.68-77.

  21. See Sider, T. (2011). Writing the book of the world. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.1-6, 197-255.

  22. Wittgenstein, who introduced the phrase to philosophy in the Tractatus, never defines logical space, yet we get a clear and intuitive idea of what it is supposed to be, namely, the space of all possibilities. If that is true, then we are immediately pushed to explain what possibilities are and what it means to say that logical space is the space of all possibilities. Traditionally, it is propositions that are taken as bearers of the modal properties of possibility, necessity, impossibility and contingency, and these modal notions are in turn explained by appeal to truth at a possible world. Logical space, then, is, according to current orthodoxy, a space of possible worlds, and possibilities are propositions true at some possible world, hence, belonging to logical space. Impossibilities will be propositions that are not true at any possible world; hence, they are not in logical space. Contingencies will be propositions that are possible but false at some worlds. Necessities will be propositions that are true at all possible worlds. (Aranyosi, 2013, p. 9)

  23. What I mean is that if principles that are usually considered as ‘logical’, such as LNC, are grounded in metaphysics, then we have good reasons to think that logic in general is grounded in metaphysics. Perhaps there are no such things as ‘logical principles’, as we might be able to ground them all in metaphysics. I wish to suggest that what we usually call ‘logical principles’, such as LNC, are perhaps a sub-category of metaphysical principles. (Tahko, 2009, p. 44)

  24. Definition 1 (Logical Consequence) B is a logical consequence of A1, . . . , An if and only if there is no case in which A1, . . . , An are all true but B is not true. (Beall and Logan, 2017, p. 5)

  25. There are a range of details that need to be specified when proposing a model. First, we need to carefully specify both what object x is being proposed as a model and what object y we will be using x as a model of. We call the thing being modeled the target system of the model, and we call the object x a model of the target system. After specifying these, we still need to specify the exact way in which x is being seen as similar to y. These assumptions – the assumptions that x is similar to y in these particular ways – are called modeling hypotheses. (Beall and Logan, 2017, p. 14)

  26. To do this, of course, we must specify the target system of our models – the parts of natural language whose logical consequence relation we are attempting to model, as well as the modeling hypotheses – the particular aspects of the natural language relation of logical consequence that we are supposing are similar to the relations we highlight in our models. (Beall and Logan, 2017, p. 15)

  27. The modelling hypothesis has limitations as A.J. Cotnoir (2019) has highlighted.

  28. An isomorphism is a homomorphism between two structures that is also bijective. In other words, if there is an isomorphism between two structures, then they have exactly the same formal features. (Cook, 2009, p. 161)

  29. Beall and Logan (2017) provide the following example: let’s look at a well-known example of modeling from the sciences: Watson and Crick’s production of an actual tin-and-cardboard double-helical structure as a model of the DNA molecule. The target system of their model was the DNA molecule. The tin-and-cardboard structure they build was their model of the DNA molecule. And, finally, their modelling hypothesis was that the shape of the two structures were generally similar. Importantly, the tin-and-cardboard structure was different in many ways from an actual DNA molecule. In particular, as Ronald Giere has amusingly observed, Watson and Crick were not proposing that their model was similar to an actual DNA molecule in the sense that both were composed of tin and cardboard. (Beall and Logan, 2017, p. 14-15)

  30. Mary B. Hesse (1966) notes that “ . . . it is not easy to say in general how one would recognize a situation of isomorphism, for example, how much formal manipulation of the theory would be admitted before the identifications were found to be possible? It might even be possible to show that the occurrence of isomorphism is trivial in the sense that any sufficiently rich theory could be made isomorphic with any given accepted statements, especially if these were simple and few in number. You might, of course, be able to evade this objection by tightening up the formal criteria of isomorphism in some way, but even then it is not clear that success in finding an isomorphism would be sufficient in itself to confirm the wider applicability of the theory. (Hesse, 1966, p. 44-45)

  31. A homomorphism between two structures is a function f from one structure to the other (plus a correlation between functions or relations on the first structure and functions and relations on the second structure) such that the function f is structure-preserving. In other words, if f is a homomorphism between two structures, then, for any relation R on the first structure, and the corresponding relation S on the second structure, we have: R(x, y) if and only if S(f(x), f(y)) and, for any binary function g on the first structure and corresponding function h on the second structure, we have: f(g(x, y)) = h(f(x), f(y)). (Cook, 2009, p. 139)

  32. In my correspondence with Graham Priest, he had kindly pointed out that “Let us suppose for the sake of argument that there is an ineffable God. I have no problem about saying that such a God exists. Whether he(?) is in space/time may be moot, but most monotheistic religions take it that he acts in the world, and so is causally efficacious”.

  33. See The Qur’an 42: 12 in Abdel Haleem, M. (2005). The Qur'an. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.312.

  34. A similar point is made by Berto (2007). He acknowledges that if there are different forms of contradictions, and the LNC in essence is a principle that bars contradictions, then their would need to be a correspondence between the barring mechanism and the form of contradiction in question.

  35. Berto (2007 has remarked under this reading of the LNC: “The same object cannot both have and not have the same property” – which is quite close to the first Aristotelian formulation of the Metaphysics: The same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect; we must presuppose, in the face of dialectical objections, any further qualifications which might be added. (1005b 19-22) (Berto, 2007, p. 13). Of course, there are other variations of Aristotle’s characterisation of the LNC. Also see Vasilis Politis (2004) Ch. 5.

  36. (LNC1) ¬ (α ∧ ¬α) [Syntactic version]

    (LNC2a) ¬ (T (⌈α˥) ∧ F (⌈α˥)) [Semantic version*]

    (LNC2b) ¬ (T (⌈α˥) ∧ T (⌈¬α˥)) [Semantic version**]

    (LNC2c) ¬ (T (⌈α˥) ∧ ¬T (⌈α˥)) [Semantic version***]

    (LNC4a) ¬ (⊢𝓍α ∧ ⊢𝓍 ¬α) [Pragmatic version*]

    (LNC4b) ¬ (⊢𝓍α ∧ ⊣𝓍 α) [Pragmatic version**]

    (Berto, 2007, p. 11-15)

  37. These positions are not to be confused with types of logical realism and logical anti-realism. Logical realism being “the belief that logical facts are independent of anything human: that the facts would have been as they are regardless of whether or not humans comprehended them, or even had existed at all” (Rush, 2014, p. 13-14). While logical anti-realism is the negation of logical realism.

  38. I take the term ‘relational property’ in its most generic sense and not specifically from a set theory perspective. In this case we can say that a given view of reality a bears an internal relation, R, to the LNC b on the condition that a’s standing in R to b is an intrinsic property of a. If this condition fails to be met then a shall bear an external relation to b.

  39. That is if the condition is not met. As a result of which, a shall bear an external relation to b.

  40. See Priest (1999) and Beall (2000).

  41. I should clarify that although Tuomas E. Tahko (2009) has argued that the LNC is a metaphysical principle, which concerns a mind-independent reality, he does not make the subtle distinction that I have between the LNC being an intrinsic feature of both a mind-independent and mind-dependent reality.

  42. Proponents of this view, such as Priest (1999) and Beall (2000), have discounted optical illusions in thinking that they are representations of true contradictions in the world. According to them the observable world is consistent. Though later Beall and Colyvan (2001) make the case for possible observable contradictions by referring to paraconsistent accounts of vagueness.

  43. According to the standard reading of the distinction, epistemic realism is the position that asserts the existence of mind-independent epistemic facts and reasons for belief. The nature of mind-independent epistemic facts and reasons for belief may be understood either in broadly naturalist (e.g. consequentialist) or non-naturalist ways, depending on the type of epistemic realism one adopts. (Kyriacou and McKenna, 2018, p. 1-2)

  44. For empiricists/nonconceptualists, as noted, perception is more basic than conception, given that perceptual states are a significant source of information about the world . . . (Bueno, 2013, p. 329)

  45. Epistemic anti-realism is the denial of epistemic realism. It is the position that denies the existence of mind-independent epistemic facts and reasons for belief and proposes instead that epistemic facts and reasons for belief are mind-dependent, that is, they are up to us in some sense (e.g. relativism, expressivism). (Kyriacou and McKenna, 2018, p. 2)

  46. Rationalists/conceptualists tend to assign a more prominent role to the conceptual components that shape experience. The mind becomes, on these views, a particular group of dispositions that shape experience rather than the other way around. Mental content and mental states emerge from the dispositions the mind has to respond to whatever it is exposed to. (Bueno, 2013, p. 330)

  47. The strategy pursued so far was: find a true contradictory state of affairs and look at it. If we were to succeed in this enterprise, the content of our visual experience would, by definition, be veridical. But the contents of our visual experiences are not always so: we experience many kinds of visual illusions. These are not necessarily of contradictory situations. (Priest, 1999, p. 439-440)

  48. Interestingly enough, Graham Priest brought to my attention that “Though as a matter of fact, I have now come round to agreeing with JC that contradictions may be observable, though we may not know that what we see is contradictory”. He kindly asked me to refer to his following chapter: Priest, G. (2017). Things Are Not What They Seem. In: M. Silva, ed., How Colours Matter to Philosophy. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp.225-236. In this chapter, Priest concedes that, “In Doubt Truth to Be a Liar, I argued that the observable world is consistent. The argument is to the effect that if the observable world were inconsistent we would be able to see it, which we do not. The preceding considerations clearly undercut not only this argument, but its conclusion itself. The observable world is inconsistent, and we can see it – though we may not realise what, exactly, it is that we see”. (Priest, 2017, p. 231)

  49. This is on the grounds where logical consequence is agreed (as it almost always is) to be metaphysically necessary.

  50. See footnote 47.

  51. Keefe, R. and Smith, P. (1997). Introduction: theories of vagueness. In: R. Keefe and P. Smith, ed., Vaguness: A Reader. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, pp.1-57.

    Keil, G. (2013). Introduction: Vagueness and Ontology. Metaphysica, 14(2), pp.149-164. 

    Sorensen, R. (2001). Vagueness and Contradiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  52. For some of these issues presented from al-Ghazālī’s theological perspective, see part three ‘Metaphysical Considerations’ in Malik, S. (2021). Islam and Evolution Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm. Oxon: Routledge.

  53. Though, I acknowledge that there are contradictions that ensue from specific beliefs related to the Islamic God Himself. These are not contradictions that ensue from the conjunction of certain beliefs in God and observable phenomena in the world. A notable example would be pertaining to God’s essence and attributes, which manifests an unequivocal violation of the law of non-contradiction. This is articulated in Nasafī’s Māturīdī Creed as “God has pre-eternal attributes subsisting in His essence. They are not He and nor other than He.” (Nasafī’s Māturīdī Creed translated by Watt in Reynolds, 2014, p. 114) Focussing on the latter claim of this short excerpt, this article of faith would evidently be deemed false. By standards of classical logic, it would result in a contradiction and thus be ruled out a priori. The logical form of this statement would be represented by way of a double negation as follows: (¬F(a) ∧ ¬(¬F(a)). This would read as: object a does not have property F and nor does it not have property F. This logical notation can equally be represented as (a ∧ ¬a) since according to the equivalence relation any instant of a double negation such as ¬¬a can be replaced by a without altering the truth value.

  54. It should be noted that I do not think metaphysical (or a realist) dialetheism collapses into trivialism as Kroon (2004) and Tahko (2009) have argued in different ways. For a response to both their arguments see Estrada-González (2014).

  55. Considering this Martin (2014) states in footnote 7: See Priest (2004, p. 29). Priest (2006b, p. 4), when explaining the etymology of ‘dialetheia’, gives a conditional with a true contradiction, p ∧ ~p, as the antecedent, and the simultaneous truth and falsity of p as the consequent, which could suggest that the truth of contradictions is primary for Priest. Similarly, if we conceive of a contradiction as the conjunction of a proposition and its negation, then Priest’s (2004, p. 33 & 2006a, p. 1) use of ‘false’ to mean simply ‘has a true negation’ implies that the truth of contradictions is primary for Priest. (Martin, 2014, p. 16)

  56. Dialetheists believe that they have good enough reason to hold this position. This would be exclusive to specific contradictions that satisfy certain conditions. Priest (2002) specifies these conditions under what he calls the ‘Inclosure Schema’. For more on the Inclosure Schema see: 

    Abad, J. (2006). The inclosure scheme and the solution to the paradoxes of self-reference. Synthese, 160(2), pp.183-202. 

    Badici, E. (2008). The Liar Paradox and the Inclosure Schema. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 86(4), pp.583-596. 

    J. J. Smith, N. (2000). The principle of uniform solution (of the paradoxes of self-reference). Mind, 109(433), pp.117-122. 

    Joseph Lewis Martin, B. (2014). The Logical and Philosophical Foundations for the Possibility of True Contradictions. Ph.D. University College London.

  57. This issue is hardly new. D. Z. Phillips (2005) explicates this matter as follows: If “Being” is thought as the inclusive, metaphysical category that includes all things, do those things include God? It may be said that there are degrees of being, as though being were a property of things (Rhees 1997d). But if the difference between God and other beings is one of degree, and one says, for example, that God is more powerful than the devil, what measure of comparison would one be using (Rhees 1997b)? Such a comparison leads to the anthropomorphic God of Cleanthes in Hume's Dialogues, a conception all too common in contemporary philosophy of religion. Advocates of Radical Orthodoxy argue that the confusion of treating “God” as a being among beings can be traced to Duns Scotus, who departed from Aquinas's insight that God is not a substance, not a member of any species or genus (Blond 1998). (Phillips, 2005, p. 456)

  58. I don’t think situating God within or making Him identical with what may be referred to as an “ultimate reality” actually manages to avoid the issue at hand. Adopting such an option would come with its own set of (four logical) objections (see Phillips, 2005, p. 456-457). For Phillips (2005), “These four logical objections cannot be evaded by saying that God is beyond human categories. The word “God” is in our midst and awaits analysis like any other word. What the objections show is that the metaphysical realm in which God is said to dwell is an intellectual aberration.” (Phillips, 2005, p. 458)

  59. See Ahsan, A. (2017). A Realist Approach in Analytic Theology and the Islamic Tradition. Philosophy and Theology, 29(1), pp.101-132.

  60. See Ahsan, A. (2019). Quine’s Ontology and the Islamic Tradition. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 36(2), pp.20-63.

  61. Berto (2012) refers to this as ‘the Argument from Italics’. Simply because it focuses on questioning the italic terms used to express a distinction in meaning between non-being and existence. Moreover, as Berto notes, the ‘the Argument from Italics’ seems to be a more pressing concern for Meinongian quantification, which precedes the charge of immediate self-contradiction. Considering this, I need not focus on the secondary issue, namely, the charge of immediate self-contradiction in virtue of an unknowable and ineffable God. This is because Meinongianism seems to fail as an appropriate candidate to postulate the utterly unique existence of an unknowable and ineffable God in virtue of the first issue, namely, ‘the Argument from Italics’.

  62. Non-commitment Meinongians appear to have gained significant popularity. Some of the proponents of this this type include: Routley (1980); Priest (2005); Berto (2012), and Crane (2013).

  63. See Berto (2012) and Crane (2013).

  64. For more on this, see my previous and forthcoming works enlisted in footnote 4 (and in the references section).

  65. Morris and Dodd (2007) offer a similar interpretation in which they say that “The crucial difference is that while philosophy aims to produce thoughts and propositions—things that can be assessed for truth—mysticism involves having a certain kind of experience: a ‘feeling’. In ordinary talk, we might express this in terms of a difference between different kinds of grammatical construction involving the concept of knowledge: we might say that, whereas philosophy is concerned to provide knowledge that, mysticism provides us with knowledge of an object, acquaintance-knowledge (Morris and Dodd, 2007, p. 263).

  66. For Wittgenstein’s thoughts on God and the meaning of life see his Notebooks 1914—1916.

  67. Atkinson’s mystical interpretation of Wittgenstein appears to bear a resemblance, in very specific instances, with al-Ghazālī’s view on the matter. See Heck, P. (2014). Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion. Oxon: Routledge, pp.113-148.

  68. The way in which man ought to seek God and attain His recognition is through the way of the mystic as opposed to contemplation. “According to al-Ghazali, the mystics hold that man must subdue his passions, eliminate his blameworthy qualities, practice ascetism and turn himself absolutely towards God. If he performs all these actions, his heart (= intellect) becomes pure and ready to receive directly the highest knowledge from God. Now he only expects God's mercy, that is that God will reveal to him the secret of the everlasting spiritual world. (Abrahamov, 1993, p. 150-151)

  69. See footnote 2.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Yujin Nagasawa for reading through an initial draft and for offering helpful suggestions. I am also indebted to Graham Priest for sparing the time to read a later draft and for bringing some notable points to my attention. My correspondence with Graham has been invaluable in many ways. It has played an essential role in shaping my ideas for this paper. Furthermore, I am overly thankful to M.K. who offered unconditional support and has been an immense source of encouragement, without which the paper would not have taken the form it has. My constant exchange of thoughts and ideas with M.K. has been pivotal throughout the entire process of developing this paper. Lastly, I wish to thank the anonymous referee for all the recommendations that have certainly helped improve the paper.

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Ahsan, A. Islamic Mystical Dialetheism: Resolving the Paradox of God’s Unknowability and Ineffability. Philosophia 50, 925–964 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00452-1

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