The Theory of Aḥwāl and Arguments against the Law of Non-Contradiction

Abstract

Following the rise of dialetheism—the view that some contradictions are true—in the 1980s, there was a growing interest in exploring and searching for the possible opponents of the law of non-contradiction throughout the history of philosophy, in both the East and the West. However, between these two—that is, philosophy in Europe and philosophy in India and East Asia—there was a philosophical tradition in the Islamicate world which, as far as I know, has been overlooked from this dialetheic point of view. In this paper, I will discuss some arguments against the law of noncontradiction (henceforth, LNC) set forth by some philosophers in the Islamicate world. The text in which these arguments can be found is Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s magnum opus Muḥaṣṣal afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-l-mutaʾaḫḫirīn (The Compendium of the Thought of the Ancients and the Moderns). It should be noted that Rāzī (d. 1210) himself is not an opponent of the LNC or the law of excluded middle (henceforth, LEM). However, in a review of the ideas of his predecessors, he discusses the opposition to the LNC. The arguments against the LNC appear in the first part of the book in his discussion of assents (taṣdīqāt). According to Rāzī, some assents are based on sense-perception (henceforth, sensible assents), such as “the fire is hot,” and some are self-evident, such as “negation and affirmation do not combine and cannot be denied” (al-nafy wa-l-iṯbāt lā yaǧtamiʿān wa-lā yartafiʿān). As Rāzī explains, some philosophers deny sensible assents altogether and some accept some of them. Similarly, some philosophers deny all self-evident assents and some confirm that there are self-evident assents. Hence, four possibilities emerge, and thus there will be four groups of thinkers. The first is those who accept both sensible and self-evident assents. As Rāzī says, these constitute the majority. The second group contains those who accept self-evident assents, but deny sensible assents. Rāzī names Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen as members of this group and then discusses their arguments for rejecting sensible assents. The third group is made up of those who deny self-evident assents, but accept sensible assents. Rāzī does not explicitly tell us who they are, but he puts forward their arguments against self-evident assents, such as the LNC and the LEM. In fact, these arguments are the main concern of this paper. As we will see, they are based on Abū Hāšim al-Ǧubbāʾī’s theory of aḥwāl.1 Finally, the fourth group is