Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Overview of Athari Metaphysics 2 The correct doctrine ascribes to God everything that He has ascribed to Himself. One must acknowledge it both verbally and in their hearts. When it is said that God has a face that does not mean it is a body part or it is made of flesh. There must be a belief in it without comparing it to any created entity for God is above being like unto creatures. The apparent meaning and wording of His attributes are known but the modality or reality of the attributes are known to God alone and therefore must not be questioned. God is likewise above those who deny his attributes or to make them metaphors such as when God’s hands are mistakenly attributed to mean His power. This is to deny His attribute of possessing hands. God’s hand is responsible for directly creating Adam. Furthermore, God’s attributes are inseparable from His essence and yet not identical to each other and this distinction does not entail composition or causation but rather it is a counterfactua...

The Birth of Nominalism: Ash'ari Impact on Medieval Philosophy “Al-Ghazâlî’s critique of twenty positions of falsafa in his Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahâfut al-falâsifa) is a significant landmark in the history of philosophy as it advances the nominalist critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th century Europe.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Prior to reading this blog post, one should read my other blogs in this order: 1. https://zainphilosophy.blogspot.com/2023/04/universals-and-particulars.html 2. https://zainphilosophy.blogspot.com/2023/06/overview-of-athari-metaphysics.html 3. https://zainphilosophy.blogspot.com/2023/11/ibn-taymiyya-on-universals-and.html Nominalism came to medieval philosophy from Islam, through the works of the Ash’aris who are a school of thought in Sunni Islam. It was the Ash’ari school, in its attack on Aristotelian physics and metaphysics that paved the way for nominalism and empirical science. Without the works of the Ash’a...

Ibn Taymiyya on Universals and Particulars   *Before reading, refer to my previous post on universals and particulars for background information*                      For Ibn Taymiyya there was a distinction between external existence and mental existence. Furthermore, according to him, it is a matter of necessary knowledge that all existents fall into either one of two categories: existing in the external world or only in the mind. He believed that universals or abstract concepts only existed in the mind while particulars existed in the external world. This is contrary to the philosophers who claimed that universals existed outside the mind either existing ontologically independent of the particular as with Plato and his perfect forms or inside the particular as with Aristotle. It is the sharing of the universals that particulars can be part of the same species. Yet, despite the sharin...

Universals and Particulars  "In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are abstract repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things."      The idea of universals and particulars is a long-lasting philosophical debate regarding whether there are certain concepts or properties that exist independently of individual objects/particulars or whether everything is particular and no such universal exists. The former describes Realism while the latter is known as Nominalism. In this blog article, an overview of Plato's, Aristotle's, Ibn Taymiyyah's, and the Nominalist view on the subject.       Plato believed that there were objective and eternal "Forms" that exist independently of the physical world or outside the cave according to his famous analogy. He believed that the physical world is just a mere reflection of...