Tenth Premise: The Concept of Admissibility (Possibility) According to the Mutakallimun

Opening and Location of the Premise

We are standing at premise… Which number? The seventh premise, no, we already studied the seventh premise. We are at the tenth premise, yes. Tenth premise.

So let’s study, the tenth premise is the longest and most important premise, this is one of the most important premises here, perhaps the longest. So we can read what the Rambam has to say, and then we’ll see what’s happening here.

The Nature of the Premise: Epistemological and Metaphysical

The tenth premise is, this is admissibility. Admissibility is the Rambam’s translation of the word, what do they call it in Arabic? I don’t know. You can know here. Arabic. No, that’s not right. Dashayt. Al-tajwiz. There’s something they call admissibility. And what is admissibility? Admissibility in English is possibility, possibility. And I think Rav Schwarz certainly translates something like possibility or something like that.

The point is this: the tenth premise is a kind of, I call it an epistemological premise, an epistemological premise, or you could also say metaphysical, but not a physical premise. Until now we’ve had physical premises in the sense of premises dealing with the structure of the world and how the world works in a basic way. And the tenth premise is a metaphysical premise, or you could call it epistemological, because it deals more with knowledge, it’s not only epistemological, it’s also, how shall we call it, logical or metaphysical, something more general, dealing with the fact that all things in the world can be in a different form, can be in a different way.

So the Rambam will claim that this is built on their physical worldview, but it’s not equal to it, right? It’s something that comes out of it, or the opposite, because they want to say this, they need to build all this physics. In any case, it’s something separate, and it’s very important. And it seems this serves them greatly in proofs of God’s existence, it’s something that belongs to what we call today modality, right? Modality, the possibility of things.

The Concept of Admissibility: Meaning and Linguistic Origin

The Term and Its Various Translations

So the tenth premise is this admissibility they mentioned, yes, they call it this word that’s translated here, admissibility, I don’t know what this translation is, admissibility, something like, I have no idea why he translates it this way, I need to check, it sounds like a strange translation to me. Why admissibility? I have no idea.

What, does he write something about this? He writes something about this in the foreign words, right? In the explanation of foreign words, Rav Shmuel Ibn Tibbon wrote an entry about this, and it’s written here like this, I simply have the book, so it’s written here like this: Admissibility, which is derived from avar, to pass in Hebrew, right? It is used in this treatise in two senses. The first, concerning the belief of the believers, yes, he means the speakers, the speakers and the believers, there’s such a version here, that every accident passes and can occur in every body, yes.

He explains here this premise that we’re now studying. He writes it in his own words, in a few sentences. He says, they say it was possible that the heavens be flat and torn and be in the middle, and it was possible for the earth to be above and encompass the heavens. And so they say about all matters, they exclude from them only a tiny bit, as you will find in Chapter 73 of the First Part in the tenth premise.

So this is the belief, they called it, they called it the gate of admissibility, so something as we saw, tajwiz or something like that in Arabic, which apparently is translated in Arabic to a word that literally means admissibility, I need to check this. If I had time I would check why it’s called this. And we called it admissibility, so he says, why do we, we, so this is the first meaning of the word admissibility. Admissibility, meaning that every accident can pass to something else, that’s how he translates it. So it’s a bit interesting.

Second Meaning of the Word Admissibility

There’s another meaning to the word admissibility, which is also worth knowing, for whoever reads books, when he translated, that there’s another completely different meaning to the word admissibility, admissibility which is something that will be said or done not with proper precision, but conveys the proper intention in it. Yes, yes, we sometimes find in books that this is called X, so X is called Y, by way of admissibility. Admissibility, the intention is not… This is not the correct word, it’s not the word that clarifies exactly in itself this meaning, but by way of admissibility it conveys the correct intention. I understand what you mean, but it’s not what you said, the word is not the correct word.

Checking the Translation in Schwarz and Pines

Good, and so he writes here about the word admissibility, so we need to check how he arrived from the Arabic word. Maybe Schwarz writes something. How did he arrive at this translation? This interests me, these problems, right?

So I’m checking. Admissibility, it’s written here in the tenth premise, because I, he translates possibility, as I said, that is tajwiz, and he says that its meaning is to think something possible. Pines translated admissibility or something like that, information of admissibility. I didn’t quite understand why it’s admissibility, but in the language of Rav Tibbon. We need to ask.

Is it something hypothetical? Yes, that is, what we call in English counterfactuals, that there are always counterfactuals, there’s always a possibility that you can describe the same thing in a different way, as he brings an extreme example that the Rambam himself is going to say here that the heavens can be below and the earth above and so on. This is what they call admissibility.

In-Depth Explanation of Ibn Tibbon’s Translation Method

Admissibility as Borrowing from Arabic

So admissibility is simply the name, I’m just connecting here to why he calls it admissibility, he says it’s from the language of avar, as if avar in the sense of I pass from place to place, right? Like every thing can be transferred in thought, right? I can, as if, I see a person he’s large in such a size and small in such a size, I can transfer this to that, something, maybe he’s thinking about something like this, right? Admissibility in the sense of this accident, this attribute can pass from place to place, from thing to thing. But this, okay, so far.

He says that tajwiz is something like permitted in Arabic perhaps. Good, we need to check. I don’t know. Yes, no, not correct. So he’s right, Ibn Tibbon is right. That is, this root in Arabic, it, yes, every root has, every philosophical root always has a concrete meaning, right?

The General Problem of Philosophical Translation

And we, when we translate from Greek or Arabic to Hebrew, so we, one of the good ways to translate, there’s a debate, right? Yes, that’s why I’m interested in translation here, because to translate is almost to understand, right, we want to understand. This example is not such a good example, because it’s quite clear what he means by admissibility, but generally this is something very important, right, I had a lesson on Sunday about this with Antonio, how to translate things.

And one of the ways, yes, one of the problems in philosophical translation is that philosophers always already steal words from normal language. They say, for example, the word form, the Rambam himself explained or hinted at the beginning of the book, that the word form, both in Greek and in Hebrew, as it’s used in philosophical Hebrew language, in the sense of Form, even Form in English is like this, in the sense of what the definition is, what makes the thing what it is, it’s admissibility, it’s borrowing, the Rambam calls it by way of borrowing in the First Part.

The borrowing of the simple word, form, which is simply the shape of something, how something looks, to the philosophical sense of what the something is, exactly not what it looks like. The philosophical meaning of the word and the simple meaning of the word are almost opposites.

Example: “To Walk in His Ways”

But when we translate, then many times it will work if we translate the same, for example, we have an expression in Hebrew, in biblical language, to walk in his ways, whose meaning is to behave after him, to behave in ways that he thinks are proper or that he shows us are proper and so on. But here, yes, so when you translate it to English, to walk in his ways, which doesn’t exactly help us, right? It’s a literal translation, correct, but doesn’t exactly convey the meaning of the expression.

Return to Admissibility: Borrowing from Arabic

And sometimes we do such things because it allows us to speak with the same inflections and so on, right? So in some sense what Ibn Tibbon does here is not translation but more borrowing from Arabic, right? That is, he translates the same concrete word that in Arabic they stole, in the past it’s to pass from place to place or to pass through something like this, and then the sages, the philosophers, the Arab Mutakallimun used this word for this thing which is actually possibility, right?

It’s not so much, admissibility is only a poor metaphor for this, right? Yes, it’s that something passes over something else, yes, it’s that we can imagine every attribute of every thing passing to something else, and they call this admissibility, so Ibn Tibbon also calls it admissibility. So this we gain, at least from his translation, the connection to the concrete expression in Arabic.

Additional Note: “To Overlook His Attributes”

Claude tells me that you can think that also in the language of the Sages there’s something like to overlook his attributes, right? That’s not exactly correct. I think there the intention is to pass from the language of transgression, right? Transgression is not the same root, right, it’s not the same, it’s the same root perhaps.

The Term “Admissibility” and Its Translation

Here we’re actually talking about to pass, right? To pass, to transfer you could say, to pass from place to place, the one who passes from place to place, right? Passersby, not transgressors. Transgressors, I don’t know why they’re really called transgressors. What do they pass over, from where do they pass, they don’t pass. They pass over, right? As if, to pass… Usually you pass over the fence or over the… yes, but they say, why do you transgress the word of God, yes, something like this? Transgressing the. It’s written transgressing the, right? It’s something like to cross, to go against, yes, maybe that’s the point. It’s not exactly the same thing. To go opposite. To go opposite, something like this, instead of walking in the way. To go against, yes.

So if I translate here gate of transgression, then it would be more charming, because surely he thinks this is really transgression to think this way. Good, so that’s the point of admissibility, okay, as far as what we have. He does things, this style of translation is something I’ve studied a lot. He translates words this way with the same literal word, and he conveys, yes, he conveys the philosophical meaning also from the original word, and you can think, good, good, sometimes you need to think how they would say this in the language of the Sages or in the original language of Torah. Here I don’t think there’s a parallel, because it’s not certain, we need to think if they even thought about this question.

The Gate of Admissibility as a Pillar of the Wisdom of the Mutakallimun

Okay, so up to here. And this is the admissibility they mentioned, yes, they always mention this, they call it the gate of admissibility. Gate is also another word I need to understand what it means. Here the Rambam doesn’t write gate, at the end of the passage he speaks about the gate of admissibility. Why is it a gate? Gate of admissibility. I don’t know, I need to check.

Okay, so they always mention this, and it is a pillar, I don’t know, here it’s written will stand, I think that’s a mistake. A pillar of the wisdom of the Mutakallimun, the Rambam claims, this premise is the pillar of all their wisdom, right? If we remember, the essence of their wisdom is the proof of the four sought things which are God’s existence, His unity, His incorporeality and the creation of the world, which is actually the matter, the wisdom of the Mutakallimun. Because the wisdom of the Mutakallimun is the wisdom of proving principles of faith, that’s basically what they mainly intend.

And this premise of possibility of admissibility is something that stands at the basis of almost all their arguments, as we will see later regarding their arguments for the creation of the world and so on, they’re all based on this, and then the Rambam is going to describe to us, what is this gate, what does it mean, and afterwards he’s going to, something like what he does in all these premises, derive the absurd conclusions from this, and in the end he’s going to hint to us that there’s something deeper here, not so simple to understand, so we’ll see what happens.

The Principle of Admissibility: Everything Imaginable Is Admissible to the Intellect

He says like this, and hear its matter, first of all I’ll explain the meaning of this. Know, they will see, they will think, yes, they will see some, good, I don’t have here the… They think, yes, that’s surely, they think, yes, they hold, you could say. For everything that is imaginable, yes, so this is what the Rambam says, everything that is imaginable, is admissible to the intellect. They claim that every thing that can be imagined, the intellect also says it can be. This is the translation of the words, admissible to the intellect, right? Admissible means possible, right? Possible, admissible, according to the intellect. You can transfer this attribute that I imagine actually according to the intellect.

First Example: Reversing the Earth-Sphere and the Celestial Sphere

Like, for example, and he gives an example, like and he gives the most extreme example, the strangest, most opposite to the order of the world. As if the earth-sphere would become a revolving sphere, and the celestial sphere would become the earth-sphere. I can imagine this, right, surely you can imagine this. Not sure how you can imagine this, but you can imagine it, you need to work out the details what it means that the sphere would be the earth-sphere and the earth-sphere would be a sphere, I don’t know, the same matter, good, once we work this out then we get into some problems, but you can imagine it. So therefore he says, and it is possible from the perspective of the intellect. They claim that exactly this way it’s possible from the perspective of the intellect. So that’s one example.

Second Example: Reversing the Motion of the Elements

Another example, another example from the basic structure of the four elements, which the Rambam presents to us in Chapter 72 here, mainly so that he can tell us these things and we’ll see immediately why this is very strange. And as if the sphere of fire would move toward the center point and the sphere of earth would move toward the encompassing, we remember that according to Aristotle there are four spheres each of which has a place, the earth, the dust, what we call the earth-sphere literally, it tends, its place is in the middle, in the middle of the universe, in the middle of everything, and that’s its place, and therefore it has motion toward its place, if you lift a piece of dust then it falls down, down meaning to the middle, there is no down except to the middle, and so there are things that tend to be above, we call this above, and it’s above, toward the encompassing, like fire that rises up, which is, because the sphere of fire has motion toward the encompassing, toward the outer, yes, the surrounding, the outside of the world in its entirety, and therefore fire generally rises up.

So we but, according to intellectual admissibility, what they call intellectual admissibility, now transfer this attribute to that attribute, say the opposite, say fire descends down and earth rises up, there’s seemingly nothing basically problematic here and therefore it’s possible. And this place is not more proper for this body than the other place according to intellectual admissibility. You claim, this is not correct, there’s no proper, there’s no reason that this thing should be in this place more than in the other place.

The Debate Between the Senses and the Intellect

Rather the intellect, yes, they claim as if there’s a debate what they call intellect. The Rambam will later enter into the question what intellect means, what imagination means, but let’s start here from what he writes here. They claim that there’s as if a debate between the senses and the intellect, what they call intellect, and the Rambam claims this is the imagination. We always see that fire rises up and water and earth descend down, but they say, okay, you see this and you’re really very accustomed to seeing this, but think for a moment and imagine to yourself, think about fire that descends down and dust that rises up. There’s no contradiction here, there’s no problem thinking, imagining this. You can’t imagine a contradiction, as far as I know, but such a thing, it’s very easy to imagine this.

And therefore they say, okay, so you see that the world is not as it is. In the world fire always rises up and earth descends down, but actually it’s possible that everything be opposite.

The Aristotelian Theory of Place

And what you see, as if, he mentions here the opposite theory, the Aristotelian theory is that this is not correct, every thing has a place, the place of water, and this needs to be explained, why this is more than just saying that every thing is in a place, Aristotle claims that this is a cause, the place of fire is above and the place of water of earth is below, this is something that follows necessarily from the definition of what it is to be fire and what it is to be earth, and this cannot be opposite, right?

We, I cannot today, and don’t remember today to explain exactly how this works, but it depends on his theory of place, when it’s not empty place, right? It all depends on this, and it’s not that there’s empty place that every thing can be in every thing, rather place is an attribute of things according to Aristotle, and we already mentioned in the lesson on empty place, why this is actually a logical way to think, and therefore this is the Aristotelian theory, and they deny this, because they feel this because they claim it’s possible, or at least that’s the conclusion, we’ll get to this.

Generalizing the Principle of Admissibility to All Existents

So they said, so here he gives us two examples of very basic things in nature, in the world, that they claim can be opposite, and they said that not only this, but now make a generalization that this is true about everything. They said, and so every thing from the visible existents, every thing that we can see, that a thing from them be larger than something, or smaller, or different from what it is found upon in attribute and place, right? Every thing, you can imagine it as large as you want, as small as you want, or just opposite from something in all kinds of ways, as if a human person would be the size of the great mountain, for example, and he begins to give us imaginations, imagine for yourself a person who has a size like the great mountain,

The Sixth Premise of the Mutakallimun: Everything Is Intellectually Possible

The Central Claim: Intellectual Admissibility Versus Reality

All these things, all this they said is admissible to it, that all this is possible from an intellectual perspective. And upon this step of admissibility the entire world will be drawn, right? That is, in this way, yes, upon this step, in this way of admissibility, it’s true in the entire world, right?

Every thing you see in the world, you can imagine it, it’s possible from an intellectual perspective, to be opposite, different, every thing is possible, everything is possible.

Extending the Principle to the Entire World

So this is the claim and what a thing, that yes, every thing they will necessitate from this species, every thing, yes, he continues to explain how they transfer, how they continue with the same logic in the entire world.

Every thing we say, from this species, every thing of this type that they say, of this type he apparently means, I need to check exactly, but apparently he simply means, they say the same type of thing, the same species of thing about every thing.

Continuation of the Sixth Premise: Possibility and Actuality

So they say about everything, they said, that it is fitting that it should be thus and possible that it should be thus, and the existence of a particular matter in this way is not more fitting than that way. And they do not look, and without looking at the equivalence of existence to what they posit.

The Distinction Between Intellectual Possibility and Actuality

What is “Possible”?

When they look at what is possible, this is the important point, they claim, in order to know what is possible, and there is actually a logical argument here, they claim, in order to know what exists, we know what exists, what, as he will show in a moment, what the custom is, what generally exists.

But in order to say what is possible, this is true, it is not sufficient to say what exists. We need to say what is possible, and it is very easy for the intellect, what they call intellect at least, to imagine things opposite to this manner.

So the fact that it is in a certain way does not mean that it is also fitting to be in a certain way. Yes, fitting is, yes, I love this word, we will use this word a lot, fitting. But fitting, fitting here means necessary, yes? Not fitting that this is beautiful, as we say, fitting for every God-fearing person to be thus, yes?

Fitting is simply a word that means it has a cause, it has a cause to be thus, yes?

The Negation of Causality

They say that there is no cause for all things in the world to be in their manner and not in opposite manners or in another manner, and they do not look at reality when they discuss it thus.

They do look at intellectual possibilities, as we shall see. They think that if I cannot imagine it, then perhaps it cannot be. But they do not look at reality at all when they discuss something possible, yes?

The Theological Implication: The World as a Riddle

And this is essentially what enables them to say that the fact that the world is as it is is a riddle, yes? It is something that requires a solution and their solution is God. And they have a very fundamental argument for the existence of God and for the creation of the world ex nihilo and so forth, which begins from the fact that there is nothing that necessitates, that gives any cause at all, for a particular thing to be in a particular way.

Example: The White Sand

Today they say, our proof for the existence of God is that there is white sand in the world. You look at it and say, why? He says, yes, look at this sand, can you imagine it red? Yes, there can be red sand. So what makes the sand white?

Yes, and they deny all the answers that Aristotle would give, yes, that they belong to nature, as we shall see, that all this is not correct according to atomism. And then they conclude, okay, so God Himself makes the white sand white and the red red, because there is no other cause that can give a reason or evidence of why this should be thus and that should be thus.

So this is what they say, and they do not look at reality.

Reality as Custom, Not as Necessity

The Fixed Order in the World

They said, and I need to read all these writings several more times, to see what he means each time he repeats himself. But they say thus, that this existent, yes, this existence, this existing thing, the entire world, the universe, which has known forms, yes, it exists in known forms, in known manners, in certain measures.

Here there are certain sizes for all things, the stars are not as large as human beings, and human beings not like the stars, and cities not like hills, and hills not like grasses and so forth. And necessary matters that have not changed and have not been exchanged, there are also customs, yes, He gave them a law that they should not change their function, the moon always revolves every month and the sun every day and so forth and so forth. All these things that appear and continue in a fixed order.

The Order is Merely Custom

However, being thus is according to the continuation of custom. This is all custom and it is not something causal, it is not something necessary, there is no cause for it to be thus, yes, this is what they deny.

They do not deny that we see the sun rise from the east and set in the west every day, they do deny that there is a cause that necessitates it to be thus.

And then, if you ask them, okay, but don’t you notice that it is always thus? So they say, yes, but here they again introduce and sharpen very strongly the difference between what is intellectually possible and what our eyes see, yes.

The Parable of the Riding King

The Example

And they say, we will give you a very simple and clear example that will sharpen for you this difference between something that is a custom, that indeed we always see it thus, and something that is an actuality that has a cause.

They say thus, as, I am here, as the custom of the king is not to pass through the markets of the city except riding, and he has never been seen except thus. The king is never seen, if we were, they are as if mocking the scientists, saying, you scientists would enter our city and you would see that the king never walks in the market. He always rides on, sorry, he never walks, he always rides, he always goes on the horse, he never walks on his own feet.

The Argument Against the Scientists

So you would conclude, okay? So if the king never walks on foot, apparently there is something in nature, the king’s legs, that does not allow him to walk on foot in the market. Apparently at home it works, but his legs don’t work in the market, what can you do, they don’t work. After all, it is a fact that never in his life, maybe before he was king, but in his life he did not walk on foot in the market.

So they say, what, are you foolish? Why are you foolish? Well, there is another answer here, but they claim, why are you foolish? Why?

Because everyone understands that there is a difference between what we see, and even see always, without any exception, and what is the nature, how things are in themselves.

The Distinction Between Intellect and Eyes

They say, it is not prevented by the intellect that he should walk on foot in the city, there is no intellectual prevention. They say, there is a difference here between your intellect and your eyes. Your intellect knows very well that there is nothing preventing the king from walking on foot in the city. He can, his legs work, he is not sick, there is no strange nature in the market that contradicts the king’s nature, nothing.

But this is possible without doubt, and passing its being, yes? This is the word passing (oveir), yes? It is possible, permitted, one can even say permitted, yes? Permitted means possible, intellectually it is permitted, only the king has a custom that he never does thus. So this is simply a custom, and it is not a truly simple thing. This is a custom that has no necessity, yes?

And he gives a very good example of a custom.

Critique of the Parable: Form as Cause

Is There a Cause Here?

I think Aristotle could answer this, but we can think how we would answer this, yes? Because I think there is indeed, I am now thinking, it could be that there is indeed something that they, yes, after all they somewhat confused here the word concept, sorry, the concept of cause, yes?

The Mutakallimun as Materialists

That is, because they, yes, a great principle in the Torah, the Mutakallimun are a kind of materialists, yes? They do not believe in Forms, yes? And what they imagine as a cause can only be a necessitating physical cause, that would necessitate as logic necessitates.

And then they say, there is no logical cause, as if a logical physical cause, that prevents the king from walking on foot in the city, and they are right about this.

But They Forget the Form

But they forget that there is indeed such a thing called king, and a king is forbidden to walk in the city. This is not the same kind of prohibition as a physical prohibition, true, but it is also a real thing.

I don’t know why they think this only passes by the intellect. It passes by the intellect in terms of the capacity of his legs. Yes, very nice, but that is not the question. When we speak of a king, we are not speaking of a human being who has legs, yes? That is not the attribute of a king. A king is something else.

The Essence of Kingship

A king is something that has, let us invent some definition, a king is something that has honor in the city, a certain honor. He also has power and dominion, but at least he has honor.

Now, for something that has honor to walk on foot in the market is a contradiction, it is truly a logical contradiction, because it is not honorable, perhaps today it is honorable, for them it was accepted that it is not honorable. A king must ride, so it is indeed a contradiction, there is nevertheless a cause, it is not true that there is no cause.

An Opposite Example: A King Who Walks on Foot

I am only saying this because, because I presented this as if this parable necessitates something. He gives a very sharp example of the difference between reality and thought and habit. I am only showing that when we see a habit, then usually it is not exactly correct. It is true that physically it is thus, but in terms of what it means to be a king, it could be that if the king read this parable too many times, and he says, okay, I am going to prove to everyone that there is a God.

How am I going to prove to them that there is a God? That I am going to be the king and I am going to walk on foot, and then everyone will see that the customs they see are just customs and not real. So it could be that he would prove that there is God, and it could also be that he would prove that he is not a king. Yes? He would cease to be a king if he did thus. Cease to be a king in terms of the honor that is necessary for a king to have.

Summary of the Critique

So just, I am only saying, why did I enter into this? To explain why I think this analogy also works for truly physical things, but let us think about this.

In any case, this is the argument, this is just a parable they give in order to…

Continuation of the Sixth Premise: The Limits of the Impossible

The Central Claim: Cooling Fire and Heating Water

And thus they say, and thus they said, yes? There are many times here the word “they said,” yes? We remember that the Mutakallimun, they say a lot, yes? They say more than they think, according to the claim of the Rambam.

So they also said that the earth moving to the center point and fire upward, yes? So he returns to his previous example, or fire heating and water cooling, yes? Fire is something that heats, and water is something that cools, at least cold water. Well, there is here, is the continuation of custom, this is something that the continuation, the continuity of this, is custom. And it is not prevented by the intellect that this custom should change, and the fire should cool, the fire will cool, and move to the bottom, and it is fire, yes, this is what is important. And likewise the water should heat and move upward, and it is water, yes, this is what is important.

What Does “And It Is Water” and “And It Is Fire” Mean?

Because after all everyone understands, everyone can agree, well, this is perhaps a question of how this can work, but everyone can agree that fire can be water, but what water and not fire, so what is it worth, yes? If I were you and you were me, then there would again be me and you, it would not help us at all.

No, they do not mean this. They mean that when they say that fire can be cold and heavy, yes? Instead of now that they are hot and light, yes? Rising upward, we call this lightness. They mean fire, yes? One can say to this thing that looks like fire, it has some color, it will remain something, of course we need here a definition of what is something, and the truth is that according to their view there is no such thing as something, so therefore it is possible, but this thing that we think about, when we say fire, this red or yellow thing, I don’t know, it can suddenly be something that cools and falls down.

You can imagine this, it is not difficult, we have all kinds of fantasy books that describe cooling fire, yes? Why is it difficult to imagine? Very easy to imagine, I have fire that freezes things. Instead of heating things, heating things it freezes things. One can… sit in Gehinnom, there is cold fire, no? Yes, cooling fire.

So this is the question, what is meant there? Therefore, well, I said fantasy books, I don’t know what cooling fire is. And well, one needs to know what the one who wrote that story means, what he means to say. There is a Gehinnom of ice, as if, so perhaps someone called it cooling fire, so perhaps he simply means ice, I don’t know. There is in Kabbalistic books, yes, fire, no, after all it is written upon their heads, yes, the terrible ice, upon the heads of the creatures, it could be that this is something cold, or he means so hot that it is cold, I don’t know, also questions of what in poetry, what is meant by words.

The Difference from the Aristotelian View

In any case, their claim, this is not so relevant to the claim here, the claim here is that there is no intellectual prevention that fire should be cooling, and vice versa, and water should heat and go upward, and it is water, yes? This is what is important, yes? He means to say that this is not a contradiction, yes?

If one thinks about this, one understands that the meaning is there is no such thing as water, because if you after all turn around and you understand that there is such a thing as water, there is here some kind of definitional game, but it is not only a definitional game, because he means, there is such a thing as water, and the nature of water necessitates that it be cold, because it is something and something, and in such a way it comes out cold. And if you, yes, you can perhaps transform it, yes? Aristotle believes that one can transform everything into everything in another sense, yes? It is written in Yesodei HaTorah, yes? The water, part of the water can be fire, and part of the fire can be, yes, but this, so it truly ceases to be water, yes? No problem. Part of the matter that composed the water can now be fire. Okay, this is normal, every time fire burns something, so part of the earth that was there becomes fire, yes? This is normal, the transformations of nature are normal, and then they turn into the second thing.

Their innovation is that they claim that there can be fire that has the property of water and it is still fire, because the fact that we are accustomed to fire burning is just our habit, no one is guilty of anything for our habit. Exactly thus there can be cooling fire.

Natural Opposites Versus Logical Opposites

And upon this the entire matter is built, I don’t know why he cut here the cut on the Mutakallimun thus, and upon this the entire matter is built, that is, upon this foundation, that all this is possible, the entire matter of the wisdom of Kalam is built.

And here this is something very important, and they with this agree, they do not say that there are no impossibilities, very important, and they with this agree that two opposites should gather in one subject and at one time, remember, one subject for them is one atom, and everything exists only for one time, yes? One time, a moment of time, is false. For this is not possible and the intellect will not pass it, yes? This indeed cannot be imagined, yes? We cannot imagine two opposites, like cold that heats, yes?

Heating fire is possible, these are not logical opposites, they are only natural opposites, which according to Aristotle are also logical opposites, because there is a cause, yes? If there is a cause for why nature is thus, then every opposition, every opposite, not opposition, every opposite natural is also a logical opposite. But if there is no cause then it is truly not a logical opposite, one can imagine it, it is not difficult to imagine it, and therefore they think it is thus.

What Is Indeed Impossible for the Mutakallimun — The Limits of Necessity

They certainly admit that there are things that are indeed, and they define it thus. A thing that is at one time and in one thing, in one subject, in one atom, there is a contradiction, this is truly impossible, this will not occur, this does not pass the gate of passage, there is no difficulty here, yes? We do not need to give a cause for why there is no cold that heats, there is no cold that heats. Even God does not need to do this, because it is simply impossible.

And they will say, and they also have other things that they claim are impossibilities, because after all, one must remember, impossibility is, everyone who claims that there is causality in nature claims that there are impossibilities, yes? That is, that there are things that are thus because they are thus, yes? Because they must be thus. And therefore, they truly, they have almost no natural causes, yes? Therefore they truly allow almost everything, except for simple contradictions, that contradictions are not a natural impossibility, it is an impossibility from the side, there is some very basic law in reality, that things cannot be opposite, one truly must ask about this, but this is what is agreed upon.

The Basic Impossibilities: Substance and Accident

But at least they have, yes, several, after all what do they indeed have in nature? They have substance and accident, yes, atom and accident. Therefore, they will also say that the existence of a substance without any accident in it, they also agree that these are impossibilities, yes? Because they think that one cannot think otherwise, or imagine otherwise, as the Rambam will give upon them. Therefore they also admit, they will also say, that the existence of a substance without any accident in it, yes, a substance without any accident, yes, or for example an accident without a subject, according to the words of some of them, here they had an argument, we learned, if there is somewhat a thing, an accident that has no subject, that has no atom bearing it, as there were those who spoke of the accident of destruction, that God can create in opposition to the world, and then there will be an accident without a subject, such things. But according to most of them, according to some of them, this is impossible and the intellect will not pass it, yes? It is thus.

If we destroy the possibility of, the necessity of the most basic association of their substance and accident, then they will not have physics at all, yes? They will have nothing, and this they agree cannot be.

And likewise they will say again that the opposite, the substance an accident or the opposite the accident a substance, is not possible, yes? The difference between substance and accident is a basic component in nature, impossible that it be opposite, we cannot imagine this, yes? Because it is very simple, because substance and accident, as we learned, are logical definitions, yes? It is not clear if they exist in reality at all, but they are logical definitions. An accident is something, about something, and the substance is the something about which, or upon which the something applies. And therefore, to say it opposite is simply nonsense, it does not pass, one cannot imagine it.

And likewise a body entering into a body, is possible, yes? An atom, yes? A body cannot enter into another body, yes? This is one of the reasons they need empty space in order for motion to be possible, yes? If this were not needed, then it would be possible to do, then empty space would not be needed, as we learned.

So all these things, they knew that these are impossibilities from the intellect, yes? All these things are impossibilities from the side of the intellect, one cannot imagine them, and therefore here they agree that the world follows the intellect, yes?

The Organizing Principle: Imagination as Criterion

They claim, most of what we see in the world, most of the things that the naturalists, the Aristotelians give natural causes for them, they are truly customs and do not need a cause, because they do not exist. And about those things they say, there is a great difference between what you think and what you see. You think, you understand that what passes by the intellect, most of the changes, most of the exchanges in the world, and you see that it is always the same thing, but it is not necessary, it is like the custom of the king, not to walk on foot in the city.

But these basic things, like the fact that there is substance and form, and there are certain laws, yes, in substance the laws we learned, like what is it called? Like that substance is distinguished from accident, and accident must be upon substance, and perhaps even more things, like that there is no accident without substance, and perhaps also there is no substance and there is no substance without accident, all these things are truly impossible to imagine otherwise, and therefore they are truly in this sense, yes, they claim that the correspondence between the intellect and the world is only upon what one cannot imagine otherwise. This is essentially the argument.

The Central Argument: To What Extent Does the World Correspond to the Intellect?

We will reach this in another moment explicitly. There is an argument in what sense, to what extent the world corresponds to our conception, to the intellect. They claim that everything we can imagine is possible, and in this sense the correspondence is only to what they call what one cannot imagine, to what one cannot conceive, which is the impossibilities, the logical impossibilities. This is the claim of Kalam.

And from this it follows that all the other customs—

The Tenth Premise of Kalam: Imagination Versus Intellect

The Dispute Over the Correspondence of Intellect to Reality

And also, but the place where there is indeed correspondence is what one cannot imagine, and both admit this. Whereas Aristotle thinks that our intellect corresponds to reality completely. One can say that what happens with intellect is simply reality.

As the Rambam Will Sharpen in His Argument

As the Rambam will sharpen in his argument shortly, and also to show here why this is problematic, the Aristotelian system as well, and one must remember that the Rambam himself has a problem here with the Aristotelian system, because it says that all of nature is necessary, so this destroys the creation of the world, right? The other side is also problematic for him, at least as he presents himself here.

And therefore, but once we claim that there is indeed something, a reason why it is fitting that water should be below and fire above, right? Then we said that they are necessary, and then our intellect, that is, what we see, not only the intellect, also the eyes, also our senses in some sense, correspond to reality truly, yes, one can say it like this, that there is a debate whether our senses too are intellectual, they show us the world as it is, or only the intellect, what they call intellect, which the Rambam calls imagination.

The Rambam’s Response: Agreement in Description, Disagreement in Interpretation

Okay, let’s continue a bit, I. Let’s continue a bit. But, so the Rambam, I’ll get there, let’s get to 41 here, to the end of this section, before the debate he makes, that he makes a dialogue.

Indeed, so the Rambam now gives his response to what they said here. Indeed, he says like this, since all that they answered from the impossibilities is not conceivable in any way, that what they agree are truly impossibilities cannot be conceived, because it cannot be imagined, it cannot be thought, and also since all that they called possible is conceivable, that all the things they call possible can truly be thought, this is a true statement. This is something they say is true, right? They did not err, that is, there is no debate here in the phenomenological description, one could say. There is no debate here in the description of how our intellect works.

Our intellect works exactly as they claim. All these things that they claim are impossible to imagine, truly cannot be conceived or thought, and let’s get to in a moment what it means to think, or to conceive or to imagine, and all that they say is possible, truly can be thought, there is no debate here. The Rambam too, I say, I too can imagine an elephant, a person the height of an elephant who has, the size of a mountain, who has a thousand heads and noses, all these things I can imagine, and I too cannot imagine a body entering into a body, for example, right?

The Philosophers’ Claim: The Kalam Do Not Distinguish Between Imagination and Intellect

However, here is the debate, the philosophers say that what you called impossible is not because it is impossible, but because it is unimaginable. And what you called possible is because it is imaginable. You do not distinguish between something called imagination and something called intellect. And this possible according to you is the possible in imagination, not according to the intellect. So this is what they claim.

The Rambam says he agrees that to imagine, that is to imagine is simply to draw a picture in the head, yes, to make a picture in the head. I can make a picture of an elephant with wings etc., and I cannot make a picture of an elephant entering into… I don’t know, maybe this yes, there’s a story here about dreams. In any case, something that contradicts itself, I cannot imagine. This is true, but this imagination is not the same thing as intellect.

And the philosophers continue and claim, Behold, you in this premise consider the fitting and the possible and the false, sometimes in imagination, not in intellect, and sometimes in the beginning of common opinion. Some of the things you determine as a criterion for what is possible, is simply imagination not intellect at all. That is, because you simply do not take into account other considerations, other things, and you think that everything that can be imagined is necessarily possible, and this is not correct.

The Distinction Between Imagination and Intellect — A Concrete Example

There are other intellectual reasons, you say, yes, it is very easy to imagine a person who is the height of a mountain, but think what a person is and you will understand that a person because of his nature, because of how he is built, cannot be the height of a mountain, because he will collapse upon himself, something like that.

That is, yes, you can imagine it, but if for example one does science fiction, then there are those who want to make, for example, that it should be possible in our world, within the constraints of our physics. Then one sees, it is truly impossible to describe a person the height of a mountain. One can imagine, because if you build a person the height of a mountain, you will see that he collapses into himself, his legs will not hold his body, all kinds of physical problems. You need to change other things, and maybe if you do it according to the same proportions it will work, and maybe also how much it won’t work.

Yes, you run into problems, and then these problems, the imagination does not see. You can draw it as much as you want, but you cannot truly build such a person. Nature cannot build such a person. So this is called, you distinguish the possible from the impossible in imagination, and not in intellect. Because the intellect reveals to you other facts about the world that you, the imagination does not take them into account.

The Beginning of Common Opinion — Common Sense

And there is another thing, sometimes you take into account not imagination, because for example to say that a substance cannot be an accident, for example is not really a problem of imagination, there is more a problem of thought, right? This is no longer a question of pictures in my head, it’s not that I cannot draw a picture of this, there is no picture of this at all, no one has ever seen an atom, even they never saw an atom, why is this a scientific, mathematical, logical concept.

But you imagine it in the beginning of common opinion, right? What do we call this? In the beginning of common opinion, right? What… this is a kind of literal translation of common sense, right? Common opinion. He doesn’t mean exactly this, but he means the opinion common to all people or something like that, in common sense. And common sense is not exactly how the world works either. This is the beginning of opinion, that is, this is the first thought, but this is only the first thought, it could be that this is only the premise, but not the conclusion, it doesn’t have to be.

Al-Farabi on the Meanings of the Word “Intellect”

And he quotes, as Abu Nasr merited, yes, Abu Nasr al-Farabi, in his mention of the matter that the Mutakallimun call intellect, yes, Abu Nasr, as we call him, has a small treatise that he already referred to in chapter 68, in the eighth part, when he spoke about intellect, intellecter and intellected, and said there that whoever has not read the books composed on intellect, intellect, does not understand at all what one is talking about when saying intellect, right? And here is another place where he refers, or references that treatise, there is this treatise, a relatively very short treatise.

And there al-Farabi begins with the fact that there are six meanings to the word intellect. He says that the Mutakallimun say intellect many times, right? Mutakallimun, for example, we speak here about Rav Saadia, Rav Saadia says there are intellectual commandments, he says, these are not intellectual commandments, these are reasonable commandments, but they are not intellectual. Because intellectual, he takes only one of the meanings of the word intellectual as truly intellectual. Intellectual is something necessary, and there is no necessity.

Intellectual Commandments or Reasonable Commandments?

Even the intellectual commandments are not necessary, they are not science. They are good conducts, reasonable, or not foolish uses, they are wise, but this is called the beginning of opinion, for example. You ask me if to prohibit murder? Yes, sounds logical. But why? It’s difficult to arrive at least, the Rambam perhaps thinks it’s impossible to arrive at a demonstrated reasoning in this. This is reasoning, I call it reasoning and not proof, reasoning and not intellect. For example, students call it reasoning, this is usually not necessary reasoning, this is the beginning of opinion.

He counts there several more definitions of the word intellect, and from him the Rambam took, at least he is one of the greatest sources from which the Rambam took this claim, that the Mutakallimun do not distinguish what intellect is, what they call intellect is imagination, or sometimes, they themselves do not know all these distinctions, so sometimes they say intellect they mean just imagination, sometimes they mean something like the beginning of opinion, such reasoning that is not bad, but also not necessary etc.

Summary of the Kalam Position: Possibility Without Correspondence to Reality

Behold it has already been explained, and we, just already explained, so he concludes, that the imaginable according to them is possible, whether reality corresponds to it or does not correspond to it, right? They don’t care if reality equals this imagination, because if there is correspondence between this possibility and reality, this possibility is not something that needs to be limited to reality, right? Usually the definition of truth is something that corresponds to reality, right?

But they have a definition of truth, which is possibility, which they claim of course is something from reality, but they do not discover it by comparison to reality, but rather by thinking what is possible and what is not possible, sometimes in imagination, usually, sometimes also in opinion. And all that cannot be imagined, that cannot be imagined, is the impossible.

So this is what they claim, and thus far are the words of the Rambam in describing this premise of theirs.

Preview of the Next Section: The Dialogue Between the Mutakallim and the Philosopher

And the Rambam will explain in the next section, in something very beautiful that he makes a dialogue between the Mutakallim and the philosopher, and shows why, shows in this dialogue why this premise, which is a metaphysical premise of the intellect, of the imagination, of possibility, does not mention atoms and accidents etc. in its premise, but the Rambam claims that it is built upon their physical system, and therefore actually they need all the premises until now for this.

And this is in contrast to the later Mutakallimun who claimed that one can maintain possibility even without all the physical premises, because there are problems in atomism that they wanted to avoid, so they said, the main thing we need is this metaphysics of possibility and we don’t need all the physical premises, the Rambam denies this and he shows this very beautifully in the dialogue he invents in the next section in the dialogue between the Mutakallim and the philosopher, and afterwards he has a comment that enters into the definition of what is imagination and what is intellect, and in some sense this section is one of the…

Part I Chapter 73 – Conclusion of the Tenth Premise

Summary and Continuation

As we changed, this is also the matter of God as intellect, intellecter and intellected — it depends on the distinction of intellect of this type from common intellect, intellect, what we usually call intellect and it is not intellect. And also many other things, so we will get to this next time.