Masood Mortazavi's Weblog

Thursday December 16, 2004

[ Philosophy ] Incoherence from Baghdad to Cordoba

In a couple of previous notes and comments, I have stated that modern science, despite its glory, is incapable of answering the following, very basic question: Why is there anything at all when there can be absolutely nothing?

Goeff Arnold, in one of his comments on my note, takes issue with (a revised and different version) of my question in this way:

As for "Why is there anything rather than nothing?", I think that the positivists had this right: the question is incoherent.

That is a very interesting way for "positivists" to dismiss a very basic but important question.

Nevertheless, I do not want to harp on that any more right now. I have tasted of the positivist works long enough to know of their methods and limitations, and it would be an easy matter to demolish this particular approach to the basic question I've raised. Rather, I want to turn my attention to something else.

Geoff's use of the word "incoherent" reminds me of a bit of history I cannot help but recite.

Right about the time Europe was in the middle of its dark ages, that's about a thousand years before a Russell or a Popper came into existence, two Muslim scholars, one in Baghdad and one in Cordoba were debating the relevance of analytical philosophy in much the same way as we are today.

The first scholar was Ghazali, and the second, non other than Ibn Rushd. Both of them made great contributions to the scholarly debate of the time. (This is way more than Geoff and I can expect or hope for, I think, but we will continue to try.)

Abu-Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali (450-505 A.H., 1058-1111 A.D.), Dean and Law Professor at Baghdad University, wrote a book called the "The Incoherence of the Philosophers." (For an analysis from Sweden, see Manzoor, where a reference is made to how modern scholars of Maimonides' theosophy have traced his ideas to those of Al-Gazzali's.)

Some have noted that Al-Ghazali's main object of analysis and critique was the philosophical work by Abu Ali Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037). I've only briefly looked at Al-Ghazali's book, and don't remember reading anything on Abu Ali in it.

Of course, Abu'l Walid Muhammad Ibn Rush Al-Qurtubi (Averroes, 1126-1198), wrote back, in response to Al-Ghazali, from Cordoba in a thicker book called the Incoherence of the Incoherence. Al-Gazali had just passed away and could not produce a response but the path chosen by Ibn-Arabi, Ibn-Rushd's most brilliant student, should tell us something. (By the way, I remember reading some place that Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini wrote his dissertaion on Ibn Arabi.)

All of these philosophers, even as they write about the incoherence of each others' works, do indeed concern themselves with questions of existence albeit from opposing and very distinct perspectives. Unfortunately, most universities in the U.S. have no programs or scholars teaching and doing research in their works. I first ran to many of their works while taking breaks from my courses in mathematical logic and analytical philosophy to meander through U.C. Berkeley libraries.

On the other hand, I hear they still teach courses on all these philosophers in Qom and Najaf, not to mention Cairo and some other Western universities.

2004-12-16 22:15:00.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

[ Philosophy ] More on "Truth"

Goeff Arnold has written a short essay on a discussion I seem to have started with my note on Popper, sharing some of his ideas.

I found myself writing a comment in response to his, and decided, because of its length, that it was more practical to just say it here.

In his comments, Geoff asks: When faced with a claim that "proposition X is true", I want to know in what sense the claim is made. Is X a statement in some formal closed system, so that truth is essentially analytical? Are you claiming correspondence truth to some real world? Etcetera.

These are deep questions, the answers to which will require a far longer dialog, and frankly I may not be able to produce any satisfactory answers at the end.

In mathematics, Alfred Tarski answers Geoff's first question. In formal terms, it's also given in Joseph Shoenfield's book on mathematical logic. However, science is a different matter. Although certain parts of mathematics are used in science (and other parts, perhaps, in art, religion or other activities), there's a distinction between science as an activity and mathematics (and logic) as a dicovery of abstract structures of formal languages and models.

Science builds, in a large part, on induction, ultimately based on experiments and conceptual frameworks. To elucidate that such conceptual frameworks are somewhat arbitrary, I recommended Plato's classic dialog Timaeus, in my comment to Geoff's note.

Science (and much of human reasoning for that matter) moves through associations, a la David Hume. The significance of this, of course, is only related to its logical structure. Hume wanted to say that there's no bottom or foundation for the certainty drawn from such associations and inductions. Just because Sun, the star, has risen every day, does not mean it will rise the next (my physicist friend from Sorbonne always hated this example), even if I've deployed Newtonian and other explanatory frameworks and tools to explain how it does rise. Ultimately, in science, all "what" questions end up getting a "how" explanation. That may satisfy some but doesn't satisfy every one of us. Such reasoning may provide assurances but it does not provide certainty either at the micro or macro level. (See my earlier note on Popper to see what I mean by micro and macro levels of uncertainty.)

Hume's discovery was simple enough but Popper can be read to be simply adding that to call a constellation of activities science, and to do so in some honest way, i.e. in a way that distinguishes it from other human activities such as art or religion, must include with it a commitment to accept that science is structurally and inherently refutable. This is not simply about micro-refutability, i.e. falsifiability along the lines of the first clause of the statement Geoff quotes from Bertrand Russell. (The remaining clauses of Russell's statement fit very well, not only with Russell's positivism but also with his utilitarian attitude towards reasoning and choice, but that's a different discussion.)

To repeat what I said in my earlier note, if science needs to remain refutable, it cannot address some important questions, such as: Why is there anything at all when there can be nothing? In fact, it cannot address any question regarding existence. Now, some may argue that such questions have no value (again a utilitarian argument) but the fact remains that for many human beings (not to mention many great philosophers), existential questions remain the most important questions of life.

2004-12-16 11:49:29.0 -- Comments [6] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

[ Personal ] Zinedine Zidane

M. Mortazavi and Zinedine Zidane: November 19, 2004, Rey Juan Carlos Hotel, Barcelona.
I'd written about running into Zinedine Zidane earlier.
By popular demand, I'm now posting the picture we took together.
This is not a cardboard stand-in. It's the real people, in the real places.
(I'm afraid, the picture has much better contrast when viewed on my laptop than when viewed on this large desktop screen I'm using to post it.)