School
Ash'arism
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Could the constants have been different? Spinoza says no; the Ashʿarites say God could change them tomorrow
I model oil reservoirs. Every model has parameters, and every morning I change some of them to see what would have happened. So the question "could the physical constants have been different?" feels very concrete to me, and I've found two answers…
Started by Abdulrahman Al-Qahtani0 replies66 views -
Did Hume ever read al-Ghazali?
Last month I read al-Ghazālī's account of his crisis of doubt, and then went looking for more. I found the part of The Incoherence of the Philosophers about fire and cotton: we see the cotton burn when it touches the fire, but…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies189 views -
What exactly is kasb (acquisition), and is it just compatibilism with God in it?
I am eighteen and taking a gap year, and I have been reading about free will because it is the question that will not leave me alone. In Indonesia the answer I grew up with is that God creates everything, including my…
Started by Fajar Nugroho5 replies131 views -
Is Wheeler’s “it from bit” a physics proposal or a piece of metaphysics?
John Wheeler's slogan "it from bit" says that every physical thing derives its existence from answers to yes-or-no questions: that reality is informational at the bottom. I'm a physicist and I hear versions of it constantly, usually late in the evening at…
Started by Lars Eriksen5 replies192 views -
When should someone who isn’t an expert simply defer? What did al-Ghazālī say?
As a data analyst I defer to experts all day: to doctors about my health, to engineers about the bridges I drive over, to the people who built the statistical libraries I use. I can't check them. I'd like to understand when…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman4 replies114 views -
Al-Ghazali and Hume make the same argument about fire. Why do they end up so far apart?
I teach history in Fes, and my students love the story that al-Ghazali "anticipated Hume" by six centuries. I tell it too. But the more I read, the less I think "anticipated" is the right word, and I would like help explaining…
Started by Youssef Benali4 replies222 views -
If I can conceive it without contradiction, is it possible? Ash’arites, Hume and Kripke
I started reading the Ash'ari theologians to understand occasionalism, and I noticed how much weight they put on one principle: whatever involves no contradiction is possible, at least for God. Al-Ghazali uses it in the Tahāfut when he says the cotton might…
Started by Abdulrahman Al-Qahtani5 replies167 views -
Analogy, negation, or “without asking how”: how can finite words say anything true of God?
I teach metaphysics at a seminary, and every year a student asks the question that underlies everything else: when we say "God is good" or "God knows", what do the words mean? If they mean what they mean of us, God becomes…
Started by Fr. Ikechukwu Anyanwu4 replies148 views -
Can reason tell right from wrong on its own, or does it need revelation?
I spent thirty-one years on the bench in Lahore. I applied statutes, precedent and, where the law allowed, the principles of Islamic law. Many times a case was decided correctly by every rule and I went home feeling it had been decided…
Started by Khalid Mahmood Awan6 replies240 views