When & Where

October 20, November 17, January 19, February 16, March 16, April 20, May 18

All meetings took place on Tuesdays from 9AM to 11AM US Central Time (16-18 Central European Time) using Zoom. Lists of registered attendees for each lecture can be found below.

Oct. 20:

William Dunaway, University of Missouri-St. Louis

“The Epistemology of Theological Predication”

This paper is about epistemological constraints on a theory of theological predications. By theological predications, I mean predications of intrinsic perfections to God. Examples include ‘good’, ‘wise’, ‘omniscient’, etc. The usual debates over theological predication focus on deploying exclusively metaphysical considerations to support whether theological predicates are univocal or analogical or purely negative predications. For example, divine simplicity is often used a premise to support some version of the analogical theory of theological predication. I aim to introduce epistemological considerations into the debate, by asking whether prominent theories of theological predication are consistent with knowledge of claims such as ‘God is good’, ‘God is wise’, etc. I argue that medieval thinkers including Maimonides, al-Razi, and Duns Scotus relied on epistemological considerations. I then close by arguing that many proposals in the contemporary literature, most notably proposals from Daniel Bonevac and William Alston, clearly run afoul of epistemological desiderata on a theory of theological predication.

Announcement (PDF)

About Dr. William Dunaway

List of Attendees:

• William Dunaway

• Jon McGinnis

• Richard C. Taylor

• Nicholas Oschman

• Michael Tofte

• Luis Xavier López-Farjeat

• Abdussamet Özkan

• Vladimir Lasica

• Fehrullah Terkan

• Abdul Bashir Bakhshi

• Mahmut Yildiz

• Kübra Ekin

• Fr. Joseph Loka

• Jeremiah Noonan

• Alfonso Ganem

• Isabelle Moulin

• Hashem Morvarid

• Rosabel Ansari

• Heath Dowers

• Brett Yardley

• Ismail Kurun

• Hadel Jarada

• Samuel Baudinette

• Richard Laibly

• Mark Prihoda

• Almuth Lahmann

• Zita V. Toth

• Qifan Zheng

• Sugin Li

• Natasha Ghazi

• Robert M. Schneider

• Mohsen Saber

• Xianen Yan

• Aaron Segal

• Ivana Alonso

• Pedro Porraz

• Il Kim

• Mario Arevalo Vazquez

• Elaine MacKenzie

• David Bennett

• Rahim Acar

• Katherine Sweet

• Dillon Tyme

• Netaniah Kingston

• Eric Wiland

Nov. 17

Nadja Germann, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

“‘Meanings… can only be attained through language’: Philosophy of Language in Early Islamic Thought”

What is language? How did it originate and how does it work? What is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality? Questions like these have been at the center of lively debate ever since the rise of scholarly activities in the Islamic world during the 8th and 9th centuries. In my talk I will look into a position vis-à-vis issues such as these that has largely been neglected by philosophical research; a position, I tentatively (if not entirely accurately) dubbed ‘linguistic relativism’ elsewhere. This position was developed by leading thinkers of the Arabic linguistic tradition—e.g., Abū ʿUthmān al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868)—and came to present a serious alternative to the Aristotelian theory of language and thought proposed by the falāsifa (Peripatetic thinkers). My focus will be on the 10th century during which this approach was furnished with a strong theoretical basis—e.g., by speculative grammarians like Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUthmān ibn Jinnī (d. 1002)—and powerfully defended against the Aristotelians. It was these developments that ultimately paved the way to the favorable reception and further refinement of this position by pivotal figures such as ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 1078) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210).

Announcement (PDF)

About Dr. Nadja Germann

List of Attendees:

• William Dunaway

• Jon McGinnis

• Richard C. Taylor

• Nicholas Oschman

• Nadja Germann

• Michael Tofte

• Isabelle Moulin

• Vladimir Lasica

• Mary Sirridge

• Adam Takahashi

• Almuth Lahmann

• Rosabel Ansari

• Mohsen Saber

• Ismail Kurun

• Eriko Okamoto

• Scott Doolin

• Netaniah Kingston

• Gyula Klima

• Mostafa Najafi

• Elaine MacKenzie

• Fehrullah Terkan

• Brett Yardley

• Sugin Li

• Richard Laibly

• Betül Akdemir

• Abdussamet Özkan

• David Bennett

• Hashem Morvarid

• Rahim Acar

• Alana Wong

• Luke Kallberg

• Luis Xavier López-Farjeat

• Il Kim

• Anselm Ramelow

• Cécile Bonmariage

• Hisashi Obuchi

• Nahyan Fancy

• Shatha Almutawa

• Hakan Özkan

• Samuel Hodgkin

• David Lelyveld

• Felicia Di Palo

• Mariam Al-Attar

• Cristina Cerami

• Charles Burnett

• Thérèse-Anne Druart

• Katherine Sweet

• Jane Mikkelson

• Zia Hasan

• Felicitas Opwis

• Fouad Ben Ahmed

• Matthieu Remacle

• Beatrice Bottomley

Jan. 19:

Cristina Cerami, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

"Galenizing" Aristotle. The impact of Galen's theories on Averroes' philosophy

Galen has always been considered a key-element in the transmission of Greek medicine to the Arabic and Latin Middle-Age. Scholars agree that, although questioned, his medical theories have been at the very heart of the Islamic scientific tradition from the 8th century onwards. His role in the Hellenized philosophical tradition, i.e. the falsafa, has been interpreted differently. Scholarship insisted on the harsh criticism lashed out by the falāsifa against Galen’s epistemology whose ultimate aim was to proclaim medicine’s subordinate status to natural philosophy. As a result, Galen’s influence on the philosophical tradition has been somewhat minimized, if not ignored. Some recent studies have succeeded in challenging this narrative, as they highlighted the impact of Galen’s logical theories on the authors of the falsafa. But another aspect of Galen’s influence has gone almost unnoticed: the impact of the his medical anthropology on the Islamic ontology of the sensible world. In my talk, I will show that one of the essential notions of Galen’s physiology, i.e. the notion of complexion, played a decisive role in Averroes’ physics. By taking into consideration some crucial passages from his philosophical and medical treatises, my aim will be to explain how Averroes adapted this Galenic notion to the Aristotelian hylomorphic model.

Announcement (PDF)

About Dr. Cristina Cerami

List of Attendees:

• Richard Laibly

• Matteo Di Giovanni

• Therese Cory

• Shatha Almutawa

• Jane Mikkelson

• Hashem Morvarid

• Eriko Okamoto

• Mary Sirridge

• Abdussamet Özkan

• Henryk Anzulewicz

• Therese-Anne Druart

• Katherine Sweet

• William Dunaway

• Jon McGinnis

• Richard C. Taylor

• Nicholas Oschman

• Michael Tofte

• Luis Xavier López-Farjeat

• Nadja Germann

• Isabelle Moulin

• Ismail Kurun

• Brett Yardley

• Fehrullah Terkan

• Rosabel Ansari

• Vladimir Lasica

• Andrea Robiglio

• Elaine MacKenzie

• Zia Hasan

• Mark Prihoda

• Rahim Acar

• Ayşe Oktay

• Stephen Ogden

• Esra Işık

• Owen Goldin

• Michael Olson

• Terry Kleven

• Feriel Bouhafa

Feb. 16:

Rahim Acar, Marmara University

"The Importance of Theological Language in the
Making of Medieval Islamic Thought"

The problem of theological language seems to have played an important role in the formation of the medieval Islamic thought (approximately up to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi). Since revelation in the Islamic religion is something spoken (the Qur'an), the major problem before Muslim intellectuals, in the early period of Islamic thought, was to come up with a satisfactory account of the Qur'anic verses. One may explain important debates among different groups (different theological schools as well as theologians and falasifa) by referring to their position on theological language. In their effort to make sense of the statements about God in the Qur'an, the so-called Mujassima or Mushabbiha, thought that a true Muslim must take univocally, whatever is said of God in the Qur'an. Mu'tazilite theologians' emphasis on negative language may be considered as a reaction to this position, i.e., understanding God to be similar to bodily creatures. Similarly, Ash'arite theologians' reaction and rejection of the Mu'tazilite conception of God and his attributes, by distinguishing the essence and various attributes of God, is a reflection of the role played by the problem of theological language in the development of the early Islamic thought.

Announcement (PDF)

About Dr. Rahim Acar

List of Attendees:

• William Dunaway

• Jon McGinnis

• Richard C. Taylor

• Nicholas Oschman

• Michael Tofte

• Rahim Acar

• Beatrice Bottomley

• Zeynep Baktemur

• Tariq A. Mir

• Fehrullah Terkan

• Ramy Mahmoud

• David Bennett

• Jasmile De-Jesus

• Esra Işık

• Ismail Kurun

• Scott Doolin

• Hadel Jarada

• Brett Yardley

• Shatha Almutawa

• Eriko Okamoto

• Mary Sirridge

• Nahyan Fancy

• Hashem Morvarid

• Isabelle Moulin

• Amanda Tapp

• Elaine MacKenzie

• Vladimir Lasica

• Luis Xavier López Farjeat

• Melhem Bader

• Sercan Çamlı

• Abdussamet Özkan

• R. E. Houser

• Therese-Anne Druart

• Zehra Kubilay

• Ayse Oktay

• Alperen Saz

• Egemen Doğu Yusufoğlu

• Charie Payne

• Mark Schulz

• Wai Lok (Ray) Cheung

• Nadja Germann

Mar. 16:

Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado – Boulder

“A Tale of Two Determinisms”

A familiar theme of later medieval philosophy is the ongoing dispute between intellectualists and voluntarists, and it’s a familiar scholarly task to police the boundaries of these camps and adjudicate the dispute. Taking that as my background, I consider the way in which these two camps are connected with two rival sorts of determinism, a metaphysical determinism that runs back to Ibn Sīnā, and a theological determinism that culminates in Martin Luther. Superficially, these two determinisms might seem to be allies, but in fact they are as distinct as the intellectualism and voluntarism from which they spring.

Announcement (PDF)

About Dr. Robert Pasnau

List of Attendees:

• William Dunaway

• Jon McGinnis

• Richard C. Taylor

• Nicholas Oschman

• Michael Tofte

• Anselm Ramelow

• Janne Mattila

• Roy Chamorro

• Zia Hasan

• Xianen Yan

• Trenton Ferro

• Rory O'Donnell

• Abdussamet Özkan

• Nadja Germann

• Brett Yardley

• Deborah Nash

• Esra Işık

• Elaine MacKenzie

• Rahim Acar

• Abigail Whalen

• Colleen McCluskey

• Robin Weiss

• Georgios Steiris

• Joseph Novak

• Domenic D'Ettore

• Kamal Ahmed

• Therese-Anne Druart

• Ayse Sıdıka Oktay

• Andrew Ashenden

• Il Kim

• Ismail Kurun

• Fehrullah Terkan

• Jane Mikkelson

• Stephen Ogden

• Eriko Okamoto

• Josep Puig Montada

• Andrew Arlig

• Isabelle Moulin

• William Courtenay

Apr. 20:

Aaron Segal, Hebrew University

“Maimonides on the Perils, Promises, and Propriety of Metaphysical Inquiry”

In this lecture I argue that, according to Maimonides, engaging in metaphysical inquiry is improper—not religiously improper, but intellectually improper—for everyone, everywhere. On the other hand, I argue, Maimonides thinks that one can successfully pull off such an inquiry, and that one who pulls it off enjoys the greatest blessing that a human being can experience: metaphysical knowledge. Seeing how these can be reconciled (a) requires attending to the difference between norms that govern inquiry (what some have recently called ‘zetetic norms’) and those that govern belief, and (b) allows us in turn to reconcile the apparently conflicting evidence as to whether Maimonides was a metaphysical skeptic.

Announcement (PDF)

About Dr. Aaron Segal

List of Attendees:

• Rosabel Ansari

• Brett Yardley

• Ismail Kurun

• Hashem Morvarid

• Nathaniel Taylor

• Therese-Anne Druart

• Rahim Acar

• Lenn Goodman

• Abigail Whalen

• Saira Khwaja

• Philip-Neri Reese

• David Tovmasyan

May 18:

Fouad Ben Ahmed,

Al-Qarawiyine University

“Optics in Kalām: From Visual Perception to the Vision of God”

Today, the Muslim world, like the Christian, is witnessing a heated debate about the nature of the intellectual content conveyed by religious texts (the Qur'an and the Prophetic Tradition). In other words, is the Qur'an a book of devotional and spiritual guidance, or is it a book that contains scientific truths that may benefit present day scientific laboratories and scientists? The core of this debate, very briefly, is to assess the value of the prophetic message in apprehending the existence of God.  It appears that the parties to this discussion have made the sciences, and even the exact sciences, such as mathematics and physical astronomy as well as the cognitive sciences central to the affirmation of the existence of God.  The discoveries and results of the latter are considered to confirm that God exists, resulting in a call to believe over against new waves of atheism. This debate, which I have presented here in stark brevity, is not unlike the dispute that has gone on for centuries among Muslim theologians (Mutakallimūn), who perhaps may have inherited it from Christian theologians inclined to use scientific ideas in debates on theological issues. This is well represented by the work of William Lane Craig who has famously brought Kalam theological debates about the natural world and God into modern discussions of scientific proof of the existence of God.  

In this presentation I discuss a part of the various uses of science of optics in the Islamic theological discussion of beatific vision of God on the day of resurrection. I examine how Muslim theologians integrated scientific data drawn from an autonomous science, namely optics, or at least the theory of visual perception, into their debate on the vision of God. Of course, this discussion was not limited to theologians. Philosophers also participated in it, especially Ibn Rushd, who in his al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla aimed to evaluate the scientific and methodological value of the theologians' claims concerning the vision of God on the day of resurrection based on the findings of the theory of visual perception. The aim of this paper is to shed light on scientific aspects of religious controversies on this issue (a) in order to assess the ways theologians used optical data to refute or to affirm various theological positions and (b) to assess the way some falāsifa regarded such uses.

Announcement (PDF)

About Dr. Fouad Ben Ahmed

List of Attendees:

• William Dunaway

• Jon McGinnis

• Richard C. Taylor

• Nicholas Oschman

• Michael Tofte

• Hannah Erlwein

• Zulfiqar Ali Shah

• Mohamed Lamallam

• Hassan Gherbi

• Ayşe S. Oktay

• Mary Sirridge

• Imane El Baouch

• Mohammed Essadki

• Luis Xavier López-Farjeat

• Elaine MacKenzie

• Chafik Graiguer

• Isabelle Moulin

• Eriko Okamoto

• Youssef Ben Addi

• Kübra Ekin

• Brett Yardley

• Mohammed Mourchid

• Robert Pasnau

• Amanda Tapp

• Hashem Morvarid

• Therese-Anne Druart

• David Bennett

• Nadira Fedouache

• Abdussamet Özkan

• Carolina Duran

• Majda Badaoui

• Josep Puig Montada

• Claire Gallien

• Khadija Elidrissi

• Wladyslaw Peksa

• Matteo Di Giovanni

• Ismail Kurun

• Jane Mikkelson

• Absoumi Ayoub

• Rahim Acar

• Joseph Novak

• Francisco López Cedeño

• Jon Hoover

• Mounir Younes

• Hicham Bouhadi

• Michael Toppel

• Bahaa Ronda