Abstract
The word, tropos, translated in Arabic as jiha, is understood in the field of logic as mode. Though investigations of modals in the medieval Arabo-Islamic logical tradition trace their lineage back to Aristotle, the Greek word designating this concept was never used in this manner by the Stagirite. The closest word that the Arabic jiha translates from Greek is tropos, which was a technical term that gradually developed with Aristotle’s commentators. The word came to be understood as part of a dichotomy, tropos-hûlç, which was inherited by the Arabs as jiha-mādda This dichotomy seems to have become a determining factor for conversion rules of modal propositions and thus for modal syllogistic. After an investigation outlining the evolution of the term tropos and the development of the dichotomy tropos-hûlç in the Commentary tradition of modal logic, the article presents philological evidence for their influence on Avicenna. It then briefly discuss the ramifications of this influence for his modal conversion rules and syllogistic. In sum, the article argues that the jiha-mādda (tropos-hûlç) division was part of a larger dichotomy that allowed Avicenna to construe propositions in various ways. How he understood a given proposition determined the validity of its conversion and so of its place in his modal syllogistic.
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Ahmed, A.Q. (2008). Jiha/Tropos-Mādda/Hūlē Distinction in Arabic Logic and its Significance for Avicenna’s Modals. In: Rahman, S., Street, T., Tahiri, H. (eds) The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition. Logic, Epistemology, and The Unity of Science, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8405-8_8
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