Abstract
The main purpose of this work is to provide an English translation of and commentary on a recently published Arabic text dealing with conditional propositions and syllogisms. The text is that of Avicenna (Abū ʿAfī ibn Sīnā, 980-1037); and it appears as part of the Analytics of his major work al-Shifāʾ. 1 This part of al-Shifāʾ has never been translated into any European language before; nor was it studied by modern scholars in the East or in the West. The absence of a translation and a reliable study in addition to other internal difficulties concerning the book’s style and sources confront us with a rather complicated, if not forbidding, task. However, important as it is in understanding Avicenna’s thought in particular and the development of Arabic logic at a crucial stage in general, the student of Arabic philosophy cannot shy away from trying to find his way through this maze. I do not wish to claim an exhaustive study of the text. Apart from the translation I tried, however, to explain Avicenna’s main ideas on conditional propositions and syllogisms. In this introduction I shall first treat the question of the text’s sources; and later give an outline of Avicenna’s theory of conditionals. It goes without saying that Avicenna’s treatment of conditional propositions and syllogisms in al-Shifāʾ represents his views on the subject as they were held throughout his life. The brief account we find in al-Najāt, a book which belongs to the same period as al-Shifāʾ, and in the much later work al-Ishārāt show no change of opinion. The details as well as the general outlook are the same; except that the last two works are much shorter versions of al-Shifāʾ.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Abu ʿAlī ibn Sīnā, al-shifāʾ, al-Qiyās (ed. by S. Zayed), Cairo 1964, pp. 229–425. The lithographed edition of al-Shifāʿ published in Tehran in H. 1303 (A.D. 1886), includes only the Physics and the Metaphysics (in two volumes).
In contrast with al-Shifāʿ, neither al-Najāt nor al-Ishārāt discusses the different views of other philosophers on the subject of conditionals. Nor is there any detailed explanation of the author’s own views on the subject such as the one we find in al-Shifāʿ. For example, the moods of the so-called conjunctive conditional syllogisms are not mentioned in either al-Najāt or al-Ishārāt.These two works neglect also the different kinds of connective and separative propositions to which Avicenna devotes a lengthy discussion in al-Shifāʿ. As a result of this negligence the number of exceptive syllogisms, which goes up to 12 moods in al-shifāʾ, is in these works only four. Neither al-Najāt nor al-Ishārāt refers to what Avicenna calls the divided syllogism. The fragment which has reached us of Avicenna’s The Logic of the Orientals (Manţiq al-Mashriqiyyīn, Cairo 1910), explains in a few pages (pp. 60-63) the two kinds of conditional propositions, and very briefly refers to the four forms of these propositions: the universal affirmative, the universal negative, the particular affirmative and the particular negative. There are also a few lines on p. 80 where he talks of the contradictory of the universal affirmative in connective-conditional propositions. The book is of no importance except for its controversial introduction, in which Avicenna makes it clear that he will depart from what the commentators on Greek works have been occupied with. Cf. Manţiq al-Mashriqiyyīn, pp. 2-4; and al-Madkhal of al-Shifāʿ (ed. by C. Anawati and others), Cairo 1952, p. 10. Avicenna’s claim that the so-called Oriental philosophy represents a departure from Peripatetic teaching has no support either in what is left of the Manţiq al-Mashriqiyyīn, which is in harmony with his other views expressed in al-Shifāʿ, al-Najāt and al-Ishārāt, or in his Notes to Aristotle’s De Anima[cf. Arisţū ʿIndaī-ʿArab (ed. by A. Badawi), Cairo 1947, pp. 75-116]. In these notes Avicenna repeatedly quotes ‘the Orientals’. But the views so quoted are in agreement with those expressed in al-shifāʾ,[See Avicenna’s De Anima (ed. by F. Rahman), London, 1959.] for a recent discussion of Avicenna’s Oriental philosophy in the light of the text published by Badawi in Arisţū ʿInda’-l-ʿArab see S. Pines, ‘La Philosophie orientale d’, Avicenne et sa polémique contre les bag-dadiens’, Archives d’, histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen-âge XIX (1952) 5-37.
Al-Madkhal p. 2. See also Ibn al-Qifţī, Taʾrīkh al-Ḥukamāʿ (ed. by J. Lippert), Leipzig 1903, pp. 419–20.
Al-Jῡzjânī says that he met Avicenna when the latter was 32 years old (Ibn al-Qifţī, op. cit., pp. 422 and 426) and that a few years later Avicenna started writing al-Shifāʿ and finished it at the age of forty. (See al-Madkhal, pp. 1-3.) Cp. I. Madkour’s view in his introduction to al-Madkhal, p. 4, that the book was written in more than ten years.
Al-Madkhal, p. 9.
Ibid., p. 2.
“There is nothing that is of importance in the works of Ancient (philosophers) which we have not included in this book. If (the ideas) are not found in the place where these books usually deal with them, they will be found in another place which we thought is more appropriate. We also added to these (ideas) what we grasped through our own understanding and gathered by our own thought, especially in the fields of physics, metaphysics and logic.” Al-Madkhal, pp. 9-10.
The question-answer method can be found in Kalām.However, I am convinced that Avicenna was following not the mutakallimīn but Aristotle. See below.
In a letter to Abῡ Jaʿfar al-Kiyā (published in A. Badawi’s Arisţū ʿInda’, l-ʿArab)Avicenna talks of their “weakness and ignorance” (p. 122). See also what he says in p. 120 in the same letter.
Aristotle, Prior Analytics (ed. and trans, by H. Tredennick), the Loeb Classical Library, London and Cambridge, Mass., 1938, 50bl-5. As a matter of fact Aristotle talks about hypothetical rather than conditional syllogisms. See the Commentary below pp. 215–16.
This remark may be simply based on the passage in Aristotle mentioned above. However, the quotation in al-Fārābţs al-Jamʿ bayna Raʾyayy al-Ḥakīmayn (ed. by A. N. Nader), Beyrouth 1960, p. 86, from a book by Aristotle on al-Qiyāsāt al-Sharţiyya (Conditional Syllogisms) at least shows that independently of Aristotle’s remark Muslim philosophers had some evidence to convince them that Aristotle did write such a book. Cp. al-Fârabī’s Sharh Kitāb al-ʿIbāra (ed. by W. Kutsch and S. Marrow), Beyrouth 1960, p. 53, where he speaks of the claim that Aristotle had written “books on conditional syllogisms”.
Al-Qiyās, 397, 4-9.
Ibid.
See pp. 19-20 and the Commentary, pp. 270-75.
See pp. 18-19.
See the Commentary, pp. 218-19.
Avicenna, in his preface to al-shifāʾ, describes the book in general as “more in support of the Peripatetics”. Al-Madkhal, p. 10. See also his criticism of the four Stoic categories [al-Muqūlāt (ed. by M. el-Khodeiri and others), Cairo 1959, pp. 66-69].
Al-Qiyās, 398, 11-12.
A remark to the same effect is attributed to Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Ṭayyib by Ibn al-Şalāḩ, who says that the remark occurs in Ibn al-Şayyib’s commentary on Avicenna’s al-Qiyās; and that the context is Ibn al-Şayyib’s criticism of the so-called fourth Galenian figure. Ibn al-Ṣalâh’s quotation shows that Ibn al-Şayyib mentioned Galen by name. See N. Rescher’s Galen and the Syllogism, Pittsburgh 1966, p. 76.
Al-Qiyās, 107 and 161. In the first reference the context is the fourth figure of the syllogism.
Ibid., 161. Al-Fârâbľ says that Galen’s ideas on this subject are mentioned in the latter’s Apodeictic (now lost); see al-Fārābḹ’s Sharḩ Kitāb al-ʿIbāra, p. 193.
See the Commentary, pp. 223-26; 234; 273-75 and 278.
See note 7.
Al-Qiyās, 356, 11.
Ibid., 356, 11-15.
Ibid., 356, 15-17 and 357, 1.
See, for example, al-Qiyās, 14, 81, 90, 148 and 481.
I. Madkour, L’, Organon d’, Aristote dans le monde arabe, Paris 1934, p. 37.
Al-Qiyās, 356, 11.
Though Avicenna does not say so, it seems that he approves of the book’s approach to conditionals. Part of my discussion below (pp. 8-9) is devoted to the Arabic translations of Greek logical writings. There is more than one difficulty in trying to identify the book. First, the lists of Arabic translations found in the Arabic bio-bibliographies are not complete (cf. R. Walzer, Greek into Arabic, Oxford 1962, pp. 60-113). Secondly, we cannot be sure whether the book is an extract from a Greek commentary or an independent work by a Greek writer.
Al-Madkhal, pp. 77, 80, 96 and 91.
Al-Qiyās, 148, 9.
Ibid., 481, 14-15.
The letter is included in a book by Avicenna called al-Mubāḩathāt published by A. Badawi in Arisţū ʿInda’, l-ʿArab.The reference occurs in p. 122.
See Pine’s article referred to in note 2.
Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist (ed. by C. Flügel), Leipzig 1871, p. 249. Ibn al-Qifţī, Taʿrīkh, p. 36. Both references say that “one of the commentaries is more elaborate than the other”.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249; see Taʾrīkh, p. 37. The same sources say that Yaḩyā ibn ʿAdiyy relied in his commentary on the Topics on Ammonius’ commentary, which includes Books I-IV of the Topics.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾrīikh, p. 35.
Al-Fihrist, p. 253. Taʾrīikh, p. 257.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾrīikh, p. 35.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾrīikh, p. 36.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾrīikh, p. 36.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249.Taʾrīikh, p. 37.
Ibn Abī Uşaybiʿa, Ţabaqāt al-Aţibbāʿ (ed. by August Müller), Cairo 1882, Vol. I, p. 105.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾ, rīkh, p. 35.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾrīikh, p. 36.
Taʾrīkh, p. 35.
Ibn Abi Uşaybiʿa, as Nallino pointed out, relies on Ibn al-Qifţī’s Taʾrīkh.See Carlo Nallino, Arabian Astronomy, Its History During the Medieval Times, Rome 1911, p. 70.
Tabaqāt, Vol. I, p. 101. Cp. Ḩunain Ibn Isḩāq, Über die syrischen und arabischen Galen-Übersetzungen (ed. and trans, into German by C. Bergsträsser), Leipzig 1925, p. 51.
Ḩunain Ibn Ishāq, Über die syrischen und arabischen Galen-Übersetzungen, pp. 47-48 and p. 51. Hunayn lists On Hypothetical Syllogisms, but says that he saw only one book of this work which he did not examine well. He does not refer to any Arabic translations of this part. Cp. Ibn al-Ṣalâḥ’s statement that the only logical works of Galen that he saw are On Demonstration and On the Number of Syllogisms. (N. Rescher, Galen and the Syllogism, p. 76.)
Avicenna tells us that he studied logic with ʿAbd Allāh al-Nâtilī before the age of sixteen. He also says that he read several books and commentaries on physics, medicine, logic and metaphysics by himself after al-Nâtilī had left Bukhārā. He says nothing to identify these works except that he used al-Fārābī’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics to help him understand the book. See Taʾrkh, pp. 414-16. (There is an English translation of Avicenna’s biography in A. J. Arberry’s Avicenna on Theology, London 1951. The relevant passage occurs in pp. 9-12 of Arberry’s translation.)
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾrīikh, pp. 36-37.
Al-Fihrist, p. 264. Taʾrīikh, p. 323.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾrīikh, p. 36.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Ta’, rīkh, p. 36.
Taʾrīikh, p. 36.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Taʾrīikh, p. 36.
Al-Fihrist, p. 263. Taʾrīikh, p. 280.
Edited and translated into Turkish with other works of al-Fârâbī by Mubahat Türker under the title ʿFārābīʾnin Bazi Mantik Eserleriʾ, Revue de la Faculté des Langues, d’, Histoire et de Géographie de l’, Université d’, AnkaraXVI (1958) 165-286; English translation by N. Rescher, Al-Fārābī’s Short Commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, Pittsburgh 1963.
Sharḥ Kitāb al-ʿIbāra (ed. by W. Kutsch and S. Marrow), Beyrouth 1960.
The work is not yet published.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Ta’, rīkh, p. 36.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. Ta’, rīkh, p. 36.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249. His commentary on the Prior Analytics is to the end of I, VII.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249 and p. 299. Ta’, rīkh, p. 36 and p. 273.
Al-Fihrist, p. 249 and p. 262. Ta’, rīkh, p. 36.
Ta¾, rīkh, p. 36 and p. 120.
Al-Fihrist, p. 301-02 and p. 299.
Taʾ, rīkh, pp. 362-63.
Avicenna refers to other forms of conditional propositions, for example, ‘A is not B unless (ḥattā)C is D’ and ‘A is B and (wa)C is not D’. However, these forms, he says, can be reduced to either a connective-or a separative-conditional proposition. See al-Qiyā, 251, 12-17, and 252.
Ibid., 233, 12-17, and 234.
Ibid., 260, 16-17 and 261.
Ibid., 238.
Ibid., 237, 13-16.
This is probably the first time the concept of equivalence is mentioned in the history of logic.
Ibid., 232, 12-16.
Cp. al-Qiyās, 390-91 and 396-97 where it becomes clear that ‘complete connection’ is the same as the equivalence of modern logic.
Sometimes he expresses it in the form ‘If p, then q’, but he always adds that the conditional statement is to be understood as expressing complete connection.
Ibid., 232, 17-18, and 233, 1-4.
Ibid., 242-44.
Ibid., 244.
Ibid., 245, 5.
Ibid., 401, 7-15 to 404.
Galeni Institutio Logica (ed. by Carlos Kalbfleisch), Leipzig 1896, V, 4.
Avicenna realizes that the two conclusions are equivalent when q v r has true parts.
Ibid., III, 5.
J. S. Kieffer, Galen’s Institutio Logica, English translation, Introduction and Commentary, Baltimore 1964, p. 76; and pp. 130-33.
Al-Madkhal, pp. 22-24. See the Commentary to Book V, note 28.
Al-Qiyās, 253-54.
Al-Shifāʾ, al-ʿIbāra, British Museum MS., Or. 7500, fol. 40r, lines 5-42.
See Commentary, pp. 220-21.
Loc. cit.
Al-Qiyās, 235, 12-16; 236; 270, 14-17 and 271, 1-2.
See the Commentary, pp. 242-54.
Al-Qiyās, 272, 13-18, 273; 274 and also 263.
Avicenna, like Alexander of Aphrodisias, regards the conditional (Alexander’s hypothetical) syllogism as one which is compounded of at least one conditional premise. See al-Qiyās, 231, 11-12.
Like Aristotle, Avicenna defines the syllogism as a discourse in which from certain propositions that are laid down something other that what is stated follows necessarily. See al-Qiyās, 54, 6-7.
In many places in al-Qiyās the name ‘conditional syllogism’ is given by Avicenna to the first kind. Sometimes it is called ‘conjunctive syllogism’. The last name is misleading because predicative syllogisms are also called ‘conjunctive’. At one place in the same book Avicenna asserts that “The majority (of logicians) call it [i.e. the exceptive syllogism] conditional. I did not call it conditional because some conditional (syllogisms) are conjunctive.” See al-Qiyās, 106.
Al-Qiyās, 366.
It should be nøted that the antecedents and/or the consequents can be universal affirmative, universal negative, particular affirmative or particular negative.
Al-Qiyās, 371.
Al-Qiyās, 379, 17–18 and380.
Ibid., 381, 3–10.
Ibid., 376, 6–16 and377, 1–9.
Ibid., 378, 7–9.
Ibid., 382, 5–12.
It is not clear why the word ‘conjunctive’ is used to refer to this kind of conditional syllogisms, unless the word is meant to refer to the conjunctive ‘and’ which connects the premisses in all conjunctive-conditional syllogisms. Note that the predicative syllogisms, whose premisses are connected in the same way, are also called ‘conjunctive’. Cp. note 110.
Avicenna puts the minor premiss before the major.
Al-Qiyās, 295–348.
Al-Qiyās, 389. The Arabic word istithnā’ī means literally ‘exceptive’. Avicenna, however, explains istithnā as meaning the assertion that something exists (see al-Qiyās, 269, 11-12). This use of the word is certainly odd, and the only possible explanation in our view is that this syllogism gets its name from the word ‘but’ which precedes the major premiss in the istithnâʾī syllogism. As we said before (cf. note 107) the iqtirānī syllogism also seems to have got its name from the conjunctive ‘and’ which precedes its major premiss. In al-Qiyās, 389 and 390. Avicenna distinguishes between the conjunctive and the exceptive syllogism saying that in the first the premisses potentially contain either the affirmation or the negation of the quaesitum; while in the second the premisses actually contain them. J.S.Kieffer (Galen’s Institutio Logica, p. 129) says that Alexander of Aphrodisias distinguishes between the terms metalêpsis and proslêpsis.The first, term is “used by Aristotle and the Peripatetics for the minor (Avicenna’s major) premiss of a hypothetical syllogism, called by the Stoics… proslêpsis”.Alexander, Kieffer continues, understands the distinction to be that a metalêpsis repeats a clause contained in the hypothetical major premiss, but only stating it as an assertion instead of as a hypothesis. While the Aristotlian usage of proslêpsis denotes a premiss that is not contained actually in the major. (See Commentary to Book V, note 68.) The original meaning of σρὀσληψις and μξταληψις is nearly the same: the first means ‘taking in addition’, ‘additional assumption’,; and the second ‘participation’, ‘concurrence’, ‘taking something instead of another’. (See Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon.)It is plausible to assume that the Arabic translator desired to distinguish between these terms for logical and historical reasons, and that the particles “and” and “but” used in the second premiss of the conjunctive and exceptive syllogisms respectively made him opt for iqtirānī and istithnāοī.Cp. Tadhārī’s translation of the Prior Analytics in Manţiq Arisţū, ed. by A. Badawi, vol. 1, Cairo 1948, where μξταλαμ βανόμενον (άξιωμα) (An. Pr.4\ a., 40) is rendered al-muqaddama al-muhawwala, and έν δέ τοĩς ἂλλοιἂ συλλοψισμοĩς τοĩς έξ ύμοθέσεως, οīον οĩσσι κατα μετάληΨιν is rendered wa ammā fī sāʾir al-maqāyīs al-sharṭiyya mithl al-laī takūnu bitaḥwil al-qawl (An. Pr.45b, 17). See also Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn’s translation of the De Interpretatione where προστíθημι is rendered yastathnī in16a 15, 17a 12, and 17a 35. [I. Pollak, (ed.), Die Hermeneutik des Aristoteles in der arabischen Übersetzung des Ishāk Ibn Honain, Leipzig 1913.]
Al-Qiyās, 349-56, 1-6.
There is another combination (e) where the major premiss is a separative proposition. There are two figures here the second of which is not clear at all to me. I will give the first figure only: Either C is D or H is D D is either B or A Either C is D or H is B or A For the second figure, see al-Qiyās, 355, 5-7.
Al-Madkhal, p.11.
Fārābʾnin Bazi Mantik Eserlerʾ, pp. 256–60.
See the Commentary below.
See above and the Commentary.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1973 D. Reidel Publishing Company Dordrecht, Holland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shehaby, N. (1973). Introduction. In: The Propositional Logic of Avicenna. Synthese Historical Library, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2624-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2624-6_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-2626-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-2624-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive