Abstract
In the course of this paper, I shall argue that an absolute ineffable God of Islam is contradictory beyond the ordinary categories (substantive or insubstantive) of truth. In order to demonstrate my thesis, I shall refer to a metaphysical and epistemological inquiry. In virtue of both of these inquires, I shall establish that the contradictory assumption ‘the God of Islam is absolutely ineffable’ cannot be false in a substantive or an insubstantive sense. The metaphysical inquiry shall comprise of two related phases. The first phase includes logical realism and anti-realism, while the second phase includes ontological realism and ontological deflationism. I demonstrate that the contradictory assumption ‘the God of Islam is absolutely ineffable’ cannot be considered false in virtue of these outlooks for different reasons. The epistemological inquiry refers to epistemicism. I demonstrate that although this particular view infers an indeterminate truth-value of the contradictory assumption ‘the God of Islam is absolutely ineffable’, it is incompatible with the notion of an absolute ineffable God of Islam. In light of both these inquires, it will become apparent that the contradictory assumption of an absolute ineffable God of Islam cannot be false in a substantive or insubstantive sense. This is because an absolute ineffable God of Islam transcends beyond these very categories of falsehood and truth.
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Notes
A common way to represent the given truth-value of an atomic statement in propositional logic is by using truth tables. In each of the rows of a truth table a possible assignment of truth-values to the atomic formulae are expressed; while each column represents the possible truth-values of either the compound statement or its atomic formulae. The following is the truth table for the law of non-contradiction:
P
¬P
P ∧ ¬P
¬(P ∧ ¬P)
T
F
F
T
F
T
F
T
Take a classical case to be a function from the set of atomic sentences to the set {f, t}.
Take an atomic sentence A to be true-in-a-case v (expressed as: v ⊨1 A) when v(A) = true, and take an atomic sentence A to be false-in-a-case v (expressed as: v ⊨0 A) when v(A) = false.
See footnote 1.
Ground is alleged to be a/the relation of metaphysical dependence, explanation, and/or priority. It is that relation the physicalist alleges to hold between the mental and the physical, that the utilitarian claims holds between moral facts and the facts about pleasure and pain, and that many claim to hold between the fact that.
P and the fact that P or Q. In each case, the ground makes the grounded obtain.
The grounded metaphysically depends on is metaphysically explained by, and/or is ontologically posterior to, the ground. Ground should be distinguished from causal dependence. Ground often (and perhaps always) holds synchronically, between two relata at the same time. For example, the physicalist claims that my current pam is grounded in my current brain state. In contrast, causal dependence relates items across time. The dualist can admit that my past brain state caused my current pain, while denying that pain is grounded in the brain. (Rabin 2018, pp. 37–38).
Al-Ash'ari was born at Basrah. Regarding his date of birth there is difference of opinion. Ibn Khallikan, in his discussion of the life of al-Ash'ari, mentions that he was born in 260 or 270/873 or 883 and died at Baghdad in 330/941 or some time after that. According to Shibli Nu'mani and ibn `Asakir (the author of Tabyin Kidhb al-Muftari, on the life and teachings of al-Ash'ari), he was born in 270/873 and died in 330/941. He was buried between Karkh and Bab al-Basrah (the gate of Basrah). He was a descendant of abu Musa al-Ash'ari, one, of the famous Companions of the Prophet. (Sharif 1963, p. 222–223).
See Fadlou Shehadi’s Ghazali's Unique Unknowable God (1964).
It is worth noting that the sort of unknowability that I am ascribing to the Islamic God is not the kind that is manifested in Ismāʿīlī theology. The feature which distinguishes my idea of unknowability from Ismāʿīlī theology is that I don’t think anything is impossible for an absolute transcendent God while they assume it is. The distinction that I am drawing on can be better appreciated in the extract below:
From the beginning of their movement in the mid- third/ ninth century, Ismāʿīlī Shīʿites had developed a cosmology that was heavily influenced by a set of Neoplatonic ideas and that interpreted God’s divine unity (tawḥīd) in a radical way. For Ismāʿīlī philosophers and theologians, tawḥīd meant that God is absolutely transcendent and cannot in any way be part of this world. He is beyond being and beyond knowability. God’s absolute transcendence makes it impossible that He causes anything in His creation, since that would require some immanence on His part. (Griffel 2009, p. 219).
Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that I do not ascribe absolute ineffability to the Islamic God on the grounds that He is devoid of divine attributes or properties. I believe the Islamic God is absolute ineffable in virtue of His essence and all His attributes. Al-Ghazālī has clearly affirmed the existence of God’s attributes in the above excerpt. He insinuates that God’s attributes are different (in-kind as opposed to in-degree) and unlimited as well as perfect. It would follow that God is absolutely ineffable on the grounds that His attributes are unfathomable whereby we are unable to conceive and subsequently express them. More importantly, it would be incorrect to uphold the view that God is absolutely ineffable exclusively on the grounds that He has no attributes altogether which can be predicated to Him. In this case the non-existence of attributes would leave no room for them to be conceptually and semantically ineffable. Consequently, saying nothing about God would still, bizarrely, express all that there is; only because there is nothing. Thus, Kukla (2010) on this matter has expressed that such an understanding has nothing to do with ineffability.
It should be noted that I do not intend to speak for the whole of the Islamic tradition.
Despite this it should be noted that “Al-Ghazālī was convinced that God can be conceived and perceived by humans, albeit only after overcoming much difficulty by education or preparation such as “polishing of the heart.”” (Griffel 2009, p. 263).
See Hick (2000)
The most notable reply to Alston’s arguments comes from John Hick. As a part of his pluralist hypothesis, Hick maintains that the Real, which shows itself in religious or mystic experiences across cultures, is ineffable and can only be grasped in categories shaped by our respective cultures and traditions. So, if a Christian mystic experiences a personal God while Buddhists experience the non-personal state of nirvana, there is no actual contradiction, since the contradictory predicates only apply to the various personae of the Real, not to the Real itself. The Real itself is beyond the categories of human thought and is, therefore, ineffable; our predicates do not apply to it. Hick, being aware of the problems this claim implies, tries to avoid the paradox of ineffability by making a distinction between formal and substantial predicates. Formal predicates tell us nothing about what the Real is like in itself, substantial predicates do. If, e.g. I say about the Real that it is a possible object of reference, then this is just a formal predicate, while saying that it is a person is a substantial predicate. (Gäb 2017, p. 3).
Elsewhere I have referred to this as the paradox of ineffability. A paradox can be understood as an argument which appears to offer true premises on the grounds of correct reasoning that sequentially lead on to a false conclusion (See Olin (2003)). This is how Sainsbury understands a paradox,
... an apparently unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premises. Appearances have to deceive, since the acceptable cannot lead by acceptable steps to the unacceptable. So, generally, we have a choice: either the conclusion is not really unacceptable, or else the starting point, or the reasoning, has some non-obvious flaw. (Sainsbury 2009, p. 1).
This understanding reflects in some way as to why I have chosen to express the claim ‘God is ineffable’ as a paradox. Primarily, it is due to its inherent conflicting nature. The claim attempts to communicate the indescribability of God at the cost of describing Him. Apparently this claim reveals something which, without deeper inspection, seems to say what God cannot be by using a negative prefix, namely, ‘in-effable’. This may appear acceptable on the condition that it has been arrived at by apparently acceptable premises. However, what it eventually implies is unacceptable. The semantic implication of the term ‘ineffability’ infers a direct inconsistency with the claim that is used to communicate it. Therefore, we are left with a claim which fails to assert what it intends simply because it unavoidably does what it says cannot be done.
This particular expression is one that defies the metaphysical version of law of non-contradiction which can be expressed as: ∀x ∀F ¬ ◊(Fx ∧ ¬Fx); meaning ‘for any object x, and any property F, it is not possibly the case that x is both F and not-F’ Or alternatively: ∀x ∀F □¬(Fx ∧ ¬Fx) meaning ‘for any object x, and any property F, it is necessarily not the case that x is both F and not-F’.
Classical constraint for an atomic sentence is as follows: For any atomic sentence A and any case c, either c ⊨1 A or c ⊨0 A, but not both.
Fortunately, the pursuit of an understanding of logical realism does not have to start from scratch. There have recently been a few attempts to define the view. One such attempt comes from Sandra LaPointe (2014). LaPointe, drawing on Michael Resnik (1999), suggests that logical realism in its various forms is committed to the following two theses:
(LF) There are logical facts (or ‘logical structure’), that is, there is a fact of the matter when it comes to the truth-value of claims about logic.
(IND) Logical facts are independent of our cognitive and linguistic make-up and practices. They are objective in the sense that they are mind- and language- independent.
(Tahko 2019, p. 2).
It is important to distinguish anti-realism about logic from epistemic views which ground our knowledge of logic in our psychology, linguistic or inferential practice. Logical realism as I have characterized it is a metaphysical view rather than an epistemological one. Thus one might hold that although a truth’ s being logically true is independent of us, our recognizing something as logically true derives from our internalizing or knowing or reflecting upon our inferential practice or our linguistic conventions or our powers of imagination. (Resnik 1999, p. 181).
Be that as it may, the kernel of any realism, in Dummett’s view, remains a commitment to the thesis that every thought is either true or not true, independently of any capacity on our part to tell which. That is the thesis, of all realist theses, that ‘has the greatest metaphysical resonance’(Dummett 1991b, p. 326). (Weiss 2015, p. 17).
Priest (1999) thinks that the observable word, namely all that is observably the case, is only inconsistent if and only if some contradictory instances α α are both true and observable. However, according to Priest (1999) such inconsistencies are not observable. If any such inconsistencies had been observable then we would have perceived them. Aside from experiencing the odd visual illusion, we do not perceive any such inconsistencies. Therefore, our perceptions of the world are entirely consistent, which in turn, makes the observable world consistent.
See Ahsan (2017).
Hirsch mentions the debate between Platonists and nominalists as an example of a debate that he considers not to be verbal (Tahko 2015, p. 53).
As to whether it rules out Amie Thomasson’s (2009) version of deflationism is an interesting question.
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Ahsan, A. Beyond the Categories of Truth. Axiomathes 32, 1297–1329 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-021-09581-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-021-09581-4