ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to determine what it is that is said to be true or false in the Avicennian system, and what are the conditions that are necessary to call those items “true” or “false.” The importance of this investigation consists in its implications on the theory of knowledge and a fundamental thesis in this theory having to do with the “correspondence theory of truth” – a verificationist theory that Avicenna replaces by one of his own, as I shall be arguing throughout this work. In Section 1, I try to show that truth-values are typically ascribed to linguistic items, and in particular to those expressions where a speaker asserts there to be a relation between two matters, thereby claiming to provide ‘information’ about them. In Section 2, I distinguish these expressions from others in the language, and I try to show that, strictly speaking, this distinction requires that the expression in question be such as to succeed in eliciting a response from the audience. In Section 3, I point out how it is this response – assent or dissent – which is essentially an act of conferral to the speaker’s assertion rather than an intrinsic value that a statement has, which Avicenna considers to be the real meaning of ‘true’ and ‘false’. I then draw on Avicenna’s psychological work to help elucidate the meanings of the key terms ‘conception’ and ‘judgement’. In Section 4, I return to statements, and specifically to how to understand affirmative and negative assertions in these. In Section 5, I try to determine, in the light of what has been said, whether expressions in which there is a definition or an identity could be said to bear truth-values in the Avicennian model, and what the more general implications of Avicenna’s view on this matter are – specifically, whether definitions correspond to actual ontic relations in the external world. The discussion in this chapter is preparatory to understanding how Avicenna viewed logic, and it lays the ground for beginning to see in what sense – if at all – logic for him can be considered to be an ‘instrument for knowledge’.
