Lesson 1 · What logic is for, and what knowledge is

Source: Book pp. 2–4.

1. Why we need logic

Allah made us speakers by nature, yet we still need grammar (naḥw and ṣarf) to speak correctly. In the same way He made us thinkers by nature, yet we still need logic to think correctly. Logic does not teach you to think. It gives you a way to correct your thinking.

The errors it guards against: taking something for a cause when it is not one, taking something for a conclusion when it does not follow, taking something for a proof when it proves nothing, believing a falsehood, or believing a truth on false premises.

Definition. Logic is "a canonical tool (āla qānūniyya) which, when heeded, protects the mind from error in thought."

• Tool (āla). Logic is a means, not an end. It serves other sciences, the way algebra serves the mathematician. Here it serves ʿaqīda.
• Canonical (qānūniyya). It is a set of general rules that apply to any subject matter.
• When heeded (murāʿāt). Knowing the rules is not enough; you must apply them. So "people study logic and still make mistakes" is no objection, just as grammarians still slip in speech.

2. The four stages of perception

1. Sense (ḥiss). The five senses. Animals share this.
2. Imagination (khayāl). Storing images and recombining them, such as picturing a town you have only heard about. Animals share this.
3. Estimation (wahm). Grasping particular meanings that have no matter: love for this parent, fear of this wolf. Animals share this (the sheep fears the wolf).
4. Intellect (ʿaql). Abstracting universal meanings from particulars, comparing them, inferring, judging true and false. This is unique to humans and is knowledge in the full sense. Logic exists to keep this faculty from being pulled off course by imagination and wahm.

Note: the book uses wahm in two senses. Here it is a faculty. In Lesson 2 it will mean a weak belief (leaning towards a statement being false). The translator warns about this (p. 4, footnote 2).

3. What knowledge is

Look at something, then close your eyes: its image is still "there" in you. Knowledge is "the presence of a thing's image in the intellect" (ḥuḍūr ṣūrat al-shayʾ ʿinda al-ʿaql), like an image in a mirror. For the logician, "perception", "conception" and "knowledge" name the same thing.

4. Taṣawwur and taṣdīq

• Taṣawwur (conception): an image in the mind with no judgment attached. "Triangle", "its two base angles", even "the equality of the two angles" while you are still unsure whether they are equal.
• Taṣdīq (assent): once you grasp that a relation matches reality (or does not), a judgment (ḥukm) follows and the soul accepts it: "the two angles are equal", once proven. Judging a statement false is also a taṣdīq.

A taṣdīq is itself a kind of taṣawwur, one that a judgment follows. The bare kind keeps the plain name taṣawwur.

Four things that stay mere taṣawwur:

1. A single term: a noun, a verb or a particle ("Allah", "created", "in").
2. A predicative relation you are unsure about: hearing "Mars is not moving" without knowing whether it is so.
3. Non-predicative sentences: commands, prohibitions, questions. There is nothing outside them to match, so there is nothing to assent to.
4. Incomplete compounds: a possessive ("the blessings of Allah"), a noun with its adjective ("the Merciful Lord"), and each half of a conditional sentence.

Worked example (al-Naḥl 16:18): "If you were to count the blessings of Allah, you could never number them."

• "If you were to count the blessings of Allah": taṣawwur (the condition).
• "you could never number them": taṣawwur (the consequent, inside the conditional).
• "the blessings of Allah": taṣawwur (possessive).
• The whole sentence: taṣdīq.

Why this matters for ʿaqīda

Every creedal statement ("Allah is One", "the Qurʾān is the speech of Allah") is a taṣdīq. A sound taṣdīq needs a clear taṣawwur of its parts first. Many disputes in kalām are at heart disputes over taṣawwur: what exactly is meant by "speech", "eternal", "body". So logic offers two tools: definition (taʿrīf), which reaches a new taṣawwur, and proof (ḥujja), which reaches a new taṣdīq. (More in Lesson 2.)

Watch out: book p. 4 says "absolute assent (taṣdīq muṭlaq)" covers both kinds. Read it as "absolute conception (taṣawwur muṭlaq)".

Quiz 1

1. Logic is to thought as ______ is to speech. Which word in the definition explains why studying logic does not make you error-free?
2. Put these in order: imagination, intellect, sense, estimation. Which of them do animals share?
3. Taṣawwur or taṣdīq?
   • a) The word "Allah" on its own
   • b) "Muḥammad ﷺ is the last messenger", when you judge it true
   • c) "Is the Qurʾān created?"
   • d) "The mercy of Allah"
   • e) Hearing "the moon is larger than Mars" when you have no idea
   • f) "This hadith is fabricated", when you have judged it false
4. In your own words: what is knowledge, according to al-Muẓaffar?
5. Why can a command like "Pray!" never be a taṣdīq?
6. Someone says: "If taṣdīq is a kind of taṣawwur, the distinction is pointless." Answer them.