Al-Ghazālī was right: much of what philosophers call demonstration is only probable reasoning
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Faith & reasonIslamicAsh'arismFalsafaAl-GhazaliIbn Khaldun#aql-and-naql#demonstration#epistemic-modesty#tahafut
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- My mother forwards health rumours to the family group. Is correcting her a duty or a disrespect?
It is in the introduction of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, before the first book begins, in the short chapter warning against relating everything one hears. The Arabic begins kafā bil-mar'i kadhiban. Any printed…
- My mother forwards health rumours to the family group. Is correcting her a duty or a disrespect?
From our own tradition there is something better than Clifford, because your mother will hear it as hers. There is a well-known saying of the Prophet that it is enough of a lie for a person to relate…
- How can I know nothing is red and green all over, when I’ve never checked every red thing?
Fajar, al-Ghazālī's own answer is worth knowing, because he does not claim to have proved his way out. He says the doubt lasted about two months and was cured not by an argument but by a light th…
- Al-Ghazali says some knowledge has to be tasted. Is that an argument, or a way out of one?
Arvind, I don't think the drunkenness line is about reliability at all. Al-Ghazali's point is the gap between knowing that and knowing what it is like: you can know all the propositions abou…
- Reading group: al-Ghazālī’s Deliverance from Error, the chapters on doubt
Fajar, that is the right question, and al-Ghazālī would not dodge it. His answer is not that the light proves itself. It is that without some such restoration, nobody could reason at all, the sceptic…