Meaning and Definition
Scepticism and Semantics in Twelfth‐Century Arabic Philosophy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20142812 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fedor Benevich (0000-0001-7338-6731, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 88 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 72-108 |
| Publication date | 2022-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/theo.12272 |
| OpenAlex | W3092379748 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 15 |
The theory of essential definitions is a fundamental anti‐sceptic element of the Aristotelian‐Avicennian epistemology. In this theory, when we distinguish the genus and the specific differentia of a given essence we thereby acquire a scientific understanding of it. The aim of this article is to analyse systematically the sceptical reasons, arguments and conclusions against real definitions of three major authorities of twelfth‐century Arabic philosophy: Faḫr al‐Dīn al‐Rāzī, Šihāb al‐Dīn al‐Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt al‐Baġdādī. I focus on showing how their refutation of our capacity to provide essential definitions of things is rooted in their semantic theory: we only know things under certain descriptions which are identical to the meanings of the words that we use to refer to them, yet these descriptions do not capture the essences of things in themselves. The best result one can achieve with Aristotelian‐Avicennian scientific definitions is a “nominal definition”. With this, Rāzī, Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt will put some serious epistemic limitations on our capacity to attain scientific knowledge of things, at least as Aristotle and Avicenna would have it
Element (criminal law) · Epistemology · Focus (optics) · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · Scientific theory · Semantics (computer science) · Skepticism · Computer Science · Families in Therapy and Culture · Islamic Thought and Society Studies · Law · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Philosophy
The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy
Meaning and Reference
Perceiving Things in Themselves
Faḫr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī, Ibn al-Hayṯam and Aristotelian Science
Iʿtibārī Concepts in Suhrawardī
The Essence-Existence Distinction
The Empiricism of Avicenna
Does a Proposition Have Three Parts or Four? A Debate in Later Arabic Logic
Per Se, Inseparability, Containment and Implication. Bridging the Gap between Avicenna’s Theory of Demonstration and Logic of the Predicables
Opera Metaphysica et Mystica
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |