¹ The research for this paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, “La evolución de la ciencia en la sociedad de al-Andalus desde la Alta Edad Media al pre-Renacimiento y su repercusión en las culturas europeas y árabes (siglos X–XV)”, ref. FFI 2008–00234 Filo, and FFI2011–30092–C02–01.

² Wolfson, Harry A., “The terms taṣawwur and taṣdīq in Arabic philosophy and their Greek, Latin and Hebrew equivalents”, in Twersky, Isadore and Williams, George H. (eds.), Studies in the History and Philosophy of Religion, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 478–92Google Scholar, 487–90.

³ For this Farabian context, see Miriam S. Galston, Opinion and Knowledge in Fārābī's Understanding of Aristotle's Philosophy, unpublished PhD thesis (Chicago, 1973), pp. 204–10, Lameer, Joep, Al-Fārābī and Aristotelian Syllogistics. Greek Theory and Islamic Practice (Leidenet al., 1994)Google Scholar, pp. 266ff. and 275ff., Black, Deborah L., Logic and Aristotle's Rhetoric in Medieval Arabic Philosophy (Leidenet al., 1990), pp. 71–8Google Scholarpassim; “Knowledge (ʿilm) and certitude (yaqīn) in al-Fārābī's epistemology”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 16 (2006): 11–45Google Scholar; “Al-Fārābī on Meno's paradox”, in Adamson, Peter E. (ed.), In the Age of al-Fārābī: Arabic Philosophy in the Fourth/Tenth Century (London, 2008), pp. 15–34Google Scholar. See also on Ibn Rushd, Charles E. Butterworth, “À propos du traité al-Ḍarūrī fī l-manṭiq d'Averroès et les termes taṣdīq et taṣawwur qui y sont developpés”, in Gerhard Endress and Jan A. Aersten (eds.), Averroes and the Aristotelian Tradition. Sources, Constitution and Reception of the Philosophy of Ibn Rushd. 1126–1198). Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Averroicum. Cologne, 1996 (Leiden et al., 1999), pp. 163–71; on Ibn Sīnā, Miklós Maróth, “Taṣawwur and Taṣdīq”, in Simo Knuutila et al. (eds.), Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Proceedings of the VIII International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, 2 vols. (Helsinki, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 265–74.

⁴ Black, Logic and Aristotle's Rhetoric, p. 74.

⁵ I borrow the expression from Black, “Logic” in “Al-Fārābī”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v., accessed at http://www.iranicaonline.org, last update January 24, 2012.

⁶ The article will be based on the notes by Ibn Bājja that present self-contained, coherent sections on conceptualization and assent. There are two editions of Ibn Bājja's Taʿālīq: one is by Majid Fakhry, who made an incomplete edition of Ibn Bājja's notes to al-Fārābī's Burhān which appeared together with the edition of this latter treatise (al-Manṭiq ʿinda al-Fārābī: K. al-Burhān wa-K. Sharāʾiṭ al-Yaqīn [Beirut, 1987]), and edited the other works in a later volume (Taʿālīq Ibn Bājja ʿalā Manṭiq al-Fārābī [Beirut, 1994]). The other edition is by Muḥammad T. Dāneshpazūh (al-Manṭiqiyyat li-al-Fārābī, 3^rd vol. [Qum, 1410/1989–90]). Both editions will be contrasted with MS Escorial 612 if necessary for the sake of comprehension.

⁷ Lameer, Al-Fārābī, p. 266.

⁸ Galston, Opinion and Knowledge, pp. 203–4.

⁹ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, p. 20, 3–9, particularly ls. 4–5. Cf. moreover Black, Logic and Aristotle's Rhetoric, p. 73, where assent is said to be “in some way the epistemological counterpart of apophantic discourse”.

¹⁰ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, p. 84, 19 to end.

¹¹ Black, “Knowledge (ʿilm)”, p. 44.

¹² Galston, Opinion and Knowledge, p. 210.

¹³ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, p. 107, 12–18; ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 296, 3–9.

¹⁴ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, p. 107 i.f./ ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 296. Cf. below, section 5.

¹⁵ Ibn Bājja, Taʿālīq ʿalā al-Fuṣūl al-Khamsa li-al-Fārābī, ed. Fakhry, p. 69/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 123 apud al-Fārābī, al-Fuṣūl al-Khamsa, ed. Dunlop, Donald P., “Al-Fārābī's Introductory Sections on Logic”, The Islamic Quarterly, 2 (1955): 264–82Google Scholar, pp. 268–9. Al-Fārābī mentions five kinds of anteriority: in time, by nature, in precedence, in perfection and as cause of existence; Ibn Bājja adds two other kinds that al-Fārābī mentions in K. al-Burhān, pp. 39–41: anteriority in knowledge and anteriority in existence. On these grounds, Ibn Bājja's argument runs as follows: to conceptualize a thing as perfectly as possible, one should take into account the elements that best explain its essence, differentiating them from those that only explain accidental or less essential features, the latter being posterior as cause and less perfect as characteristics of this thing. As for assent, Ibn Bājja says that the usefulness of distinguishing between anterior and posterior consists of the possibility of discerning to which kind of proposition one assents: either undisputable knowledge or what is commonly accepted or what is given by tradition. Thus, memorizing the concepts is easier because the mind remembers better what is well arranged. Ibn Bājja's argument borrows also from al-Fārābī's thought on the premises of syllogism (al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, p. 23); on this question, see below, section 5, and also Forcada, Miquel, “Ibn Bājja on medicine and medical experience”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 21 (2011): 111–48CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, pp. 126–34 and the bibliography mentioned.

¹⁶ Al-Fārābī, Al-Fuṣūl al-Khamsa, ed. and trans. Dunlop, pp. 274, 1–10/281–2.

¹⁷ “Restrictive composition” (tarkīb taqyīd): composite expressions in which an adjective specifies the properties or attributes of a noun, such as “the white man”; the adjective is said to be a “condition” imposed over the name (cf. al-Fārābī, K. al-Īsāghūjī ay al-madkhal, ed. and trans. Dunlop, , “Al-Fārābī's Eisagoge”, The Islamic Quarterly, 3[1956]: 117–38Google Scholar, pp. 119, 14–18/128).

¹⁸ Or. “bi-ismin mā”. Dunlop omits “some” but the comprehension of Ibn Bājja's gloss requires it.

¹⁹ Ibn Bājja, T. Īsāghūjī, ed. Fakhry, pp. 39, 19–40, 2/ ed. Dāneshpazūh, pp. 29–30. The division into sections in this text and the others that will appear in the present paper is mine.

²⁰ This sentence, “al-muqawwama bi-qiwām” is not given in Fakhry's edition.

²¹ I.e.: a concrete name that corresponds to a concrete definition.

²² Al-Fārābī, al-Fuṣūl al-Khamsa, pp. 273, 9ff/281, 10ff; K. al-Īsāghūjī ay al-madkhal, pp. 119, 14–18/128: “The definition is equal to the thing defined in extension, as when we say ‘every man is a rational animal’ and ‘every rational animal is man’, and similarly the description in regard to the thing described. The definition of every meaning which has a name and a definition is equal in signification to the name, and both of them indicate the quiddity of the thing, except that the name indicates the meaning of the thing and its quiddity in sum (mujmalan), not in detail and clearly explained, while the definition indicates its meaning and quiddity clearly explained and in detail, with the things which constitute it.”

²³ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Īsāghūjī, pp. 127, 14–17/137–8. There is a second gloss of this expression in another collection of notes devoted to al-Fārābī's Isagoge (T. K. Īsāghūjī, ed. Fakhry, pp. 52, 21–53, 17/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 41), where Ibn Bājja specifies that, from any concept, one may predicate expressions which are either more general, equal or more specific. This note seems to borrow from two loci: on the one hand, al-Farābī's Isagoge (pp. 123, §10 i.f.–§10, 13/133, dealing with the definition that expresses a species which is equal to and more general than the definiendum); on the other hand, a lost sentence from al-Fārābī's K. al-Burhān that, according to Ibn Bājja's T. K. al-Burhān (ed. Fakhry, pp. 142 i.f.–143, 1/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 333) said: “In this, there is a difference according to what is remembered [from it] and according to what it is possible [to do with it]. What is conceptualized from all this as equal is more perfect than what is conceptualized more generally or more specifically” (cf. below, ns. 28 and 32).

²⁴ “Simple expressions” span, according to al-Fārābī's al-Fuṣūl al-khamsa (pp. 269–70/278), name (ism), particle (ada) and the syntagma consisting of a name and a verb, which expresses the time in which meaning exists (kalima, “vocable” according to Dunlop's trans.).

²⁵ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, pp. 28–32; cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 73a36ff. On both concepts according to Ibn Rushd, see Arnzen, Rüdiger, On Aristotle's “Metaphysics” (Berlin and New York, 2010)Google Scholar, pp. 127 and 219.

²⁶ Al-Fārābī, , K. al-Ḥurūf, ed. Mahdī, Muḥsin, 2^nd edn (Beirut, 1990), pp. 100–1Google Scholar, §§ 66–67: what makes a thing subsist is its matter, its form, or both at the same time; or else, that by which a thing subsists are the elements out of whose composition appears the quiddity of a thing. We will see below that the term is understood by Ibn Bājja as referring to the formal cause. It is worth noting that K. al-Ḥurūf is an important reference in several treatises by Ibn Bājja and is explicitly quoted in his notes on al-Fārābī's on Categories, T. K. al-Maqūlāt, p. 109.

²⁷ Ibn Bājja, epistle to Abū Jaʿfar b. Ḥasdāy, ed. al-ʿAlawī, Jamal al-Dīn, Rasāʾil falsafiyya li-Ibn Bājja (Beirut-Casablanca, 1983), p. 79, 3–5Google Scholar.

²⁸ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, p. 142 i.f. ff/ed. Dāneshpazūh, pp. 333 ff. Cf. above, n. 23.

²⁹ Though not explained here, Ibn Bājja refers to the plurality of causes that make up any concept.

³⁰ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Dāneshpazūh, pp. 375, 18–377, 15. This part of the treatise is not edited by Fakhry. I translate the excerpt following the edition and the only MS which contains it, Escorial 612.

³¹ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, p. 44, 2–3.

³² This sentence alludes to al-Fārābī's lost sentence of the Burhān mentioned above in ns. 23 and 28.

³³ Difficult words in the text (p. 376, 12). The editor renders the whole sentence as: akmal taṣawwurāt al-alfāẓ ʿalā baʿḍihā ʿan [al-jzw] (sic). The manuscript (Escorial 612, fol. 96r, 12) may be read as akmal taṣawwurāt al-alfāẓ ʿalā naqṣihā ʿan al-ḥudūd, although the sentence has little sense for me. Be as it may, it seems that the problematic words stem from a sentence in al-Fārābī's K. al-Burhān (p. 45, 3), which says: “the most complete [conceptualizations] are those that result from definitions” (akmaluhā mā awqaʿathu al-ḥudūd). It is thus possible that the copyist missed some words.

³⁴ ʿAlāma, as “mental signals”, is also a term borrowed from al-Fārābī's works. In K. al-Alfāẓ al-mustaʿmala fī al-manṭiq, ed. Mahdī, Muḥsin (Beirut, 1968)Google Scholar, p. 88, it is said that a thing is represented in the mind by a sign which may be: the name, a definition or description, something similar, a property or an accident, a particular or a universal. This paragraph is mentioned in Ibn Bājja's T. K. al-Burhān (ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 378, 11), as a quote from “another book by al-Fārābī”. In K. al-Ḥurūf, pp. 172–3, § 171, when dealing with imperfect conceptualization, al-Fārābī speaks of the accidents as signals of the thing which are conceptualized generally by means of its name. He also mentions specifically the conceptualization of man via the shape of a man as an example of general conceptualization.

³⁵ Allusion to a conceptualization by means of “description”. It is worth noting that, according to al-Fārābī's Isagoge (pp. 127/137), whereas definition expresses a definition made out of genus plus differentiae, description contains genus plus property or accident.

³⁶ Maṭlūb is usually rendered as “problem” and I will employ this translation below in dealing with assent.

³⁷ Ibn Bājja, Ittiṣāl al-ʿaql bi-al-insān, ed. Fakhry, M., Rasāʾil Ibn Bājja al-ilāhiyya (Beirut, 1968)Google Scholar, pp. 164ff. Obviously, the well-known implications in ethics of this scale of knowers and knowledge are beyond the scope of the present paper.

³⁸ It is worth remembering that, whereas Ibn Bājja wrote on logic at the beginning of his career, he composed Ittiṣāl in his maturity.

³⁹ This expression, which refers to the ontology of intelligibles and universals, may be translated into the logical and epistemological language of Posterior Analytics (II.19), according to the Aristotelian doctrine of abstraction, as follows. The process by which one attains a universal comprises a first inductive moment, when one scrutinizes the particulars of the real world. Within that frame, our percepts of the experiential data are “the matter” in which the pure knowledge of a thing is embedded. At a second, illuminative moment, the nous makes us realize the universal concepts in the data picked up in the first stage. Thus, the nous strips off pure knowledge from matter; the more perfect our knowledge about something is, the least embedded in matter its corresponding universal (or intelligible or conceptualization) will be. We will discuss this issue further below.

⁴⁰ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, p. 149, last paragraph/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 340.

⁴¹ The problems in Ibn Bājja's thought about mathematical entities will be discussed in a forthcoming paper.

⁴² It is worth noting that both works concur in considering the notions acquired through learning as imperfect.

⁴³ Ibn Bājja, Ittiṣāl al-ʿaql bi-al-insān, p. 167 and ff.

⁴⁴ See the arguments of the editor of these texts, ʿAlawī, in Rasāʾil falsafiyya, introd. Discussion of whether ʿAlawī is always right or not when he rules out Ibn Bājja's authorship is beyond the scope of the present paper.

⁴⁵ Galston, Opinion and Knowledge, pp. 215–21.

⁴⁶ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, p. 20, 3–9.

⁴⁷ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, pp. 109–15 and 150 ff/ed. Dāneshpazūh, pp. 297 i.f.–304 and 341 ff.

⁴⁸ The two series of notes seem to correspond to two different readings that Ibn Bājja devoted to K. al-Burhān. There is no way of knowing why Ibn Bājja discussed the same text twice, nor the conditions under which these commentaries were written or dictated. The comparison between the two series suggests that both were written by the same author because neither the main ideas, the style, the expressions employed nor the references vary essentially. It is possible that the second series was written in an attempt to add further nuances to what the author had said in the first series and to clarify it to some extent.

⁴⁹ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, pp. 109, 12 and 150, 14/ed. Dāneshpazūh, pp. 298 and 341.

⁵⁰ It is the well-known Book on Analysis that Ibn Bājja glossed. Al-Fārābī comments on the summary of Topics that appears in Prior Analytics and adds further nuances to this latter treatise about the generation of premises (cf. Mallet, Dominique, “Le Kitāb al-Taḥlīl d'al-Fārābī”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 4 [1994]: 317–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁵¹ Probably al-Fārābī's K. al-Mudkhal ilā al-qiyās, an introduction to Prior Analytics glossed by Ibn Bājja (cf. Lameer, Al-Fārābī, pp. 18–19, and Fakhry, Taʿālīq Ibn Bājja, pp. 17–18). As Lameer says, following Grignaschi, it is possible that the notes to this book attributed to Ibn Bājja were actually written by one of his disciples. However, Lameer is not sure about this. Grignaschi's argument is that Ibn Bājja appears in the third person, but this does not preclude his authorship since we know that he dictated some of his works.

⁵² It is al-Fārābī's epitome of Topics. Although no specific gloss of this book by Ibn Bājja has come down to us, significant similarities between it and Ibn Bājja's T. K. al-Burhān on the issue we are discussing here suggest that he was well aware of K. al-Jadal (cf. al-Fārābī, K. al-Jadal, ed. al-ʿAjam, Rafīq, al-Manṭiq ʿinda al-Fārābī, 3^rd vol. [Beirut, 1986]Google Scholar, pp. 20 ff.).

⁵³ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, p. 109, 4–11/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 298, 1ff.

⁵⁴ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, p. 20, 1–2.

⁵⁵ “Problem” here renders maṭlūba (qaḍiya maṭlūba), a hypothetical proposition that should be checked.

⁵⁶ The following sentence between dashes might be understood in my opinion as a parenthetical sentence that Ibn Bājja includes as a footnote of sorts.

⁵⁷ “Hypothesis”, in the sense of problem that one seeks to solve; cf. al-Fārābī, K. al-Taḥlīl, ed. Dāneshpazūh, al-Mantiqiyyāt li-al-Fārābī, vol. 1 (Qum, 1408/1987–8), p. 229.

⁵⁸ In the MS Escorial 612, fol. 73r, 17, aw ʿalā jihati al-taʿdīd, “or in the sense of enumerating”. Though the two editions read also taʿdīd, this syntagma seems to me to make more sense if the last word is replaced by taḥdīd. According to al-Fārābī's K. al-Jadal, p. 74, one of the meanings of waḍʿ is taḥdīd, “the action of defining or positing”, i.e. positing a waḍʿ understood as “thesis” that affirms a predicate about a subject expressing thereby a definition.

⁵⁹ The following sentence between angle brackets appears in brackets in Fakhry's as a possible addition. I'm inclined to think that it must be understood as the last clause of the long parenthetical sentence that the author has started some words before.

⁶⁰ Or. aw yutaqarrara aḥadu al-ṭarafayni… In my interpretation of the excerpt, this sentence introduced by aw plus subjunctive is connected with the preceding clause “unless [one of these extremes] is submitted to the search of reasoning”, as an explanation.

⁶¹ In Fakhry's ed. amr. Iqrār, which makes more sense, appears in Dāneshpazūh edition (p. 298, 10) and in MS Escorial 612 (fol. 73r, 19).

⁶² Al-Fārābī, K. al-Jadal, p. 3, 8–17.

⁶³ Or put another way, we assent to the affirmation that pleasure is perfection because this is what Zayd states, and we believe that it is Zayd who understands best these questions.

⁶⁴ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, pp. 152, 13–156, 19/ed. Dāneshpazūh, pp. 343–8. The continuation of excerpt V, as well as being intrinsically obscure due to Ibn Bājja's well-known style, is poorly edited in both versions. Since this is not the place for a thorough revision of the wording of this part of the text, I will omit it from my study.

⁶⁵ Ibid., ed. Fakhry, p. 151, i.f./ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 342.

⁶⁶ For a preliminary approach, see Forcada, Ética e ideología de la ciencia. El médico filósofo en al-Andalus (siglos X-XII) (Almería, 2011), pp. 250–2.

⁶⁷ Galston, Opinion and Knowledge, pp. 234ff. based mainly on al-Fārābī's K. al-Jadal and K. al-Burhān. Al-Fārābī and Ibn Bājja echo Topics I. 4, which states that scientific inquiry only starts when we posit a problem which is a yes-or-no question; cf. on this question from a general perspective Hintikka, Jaakko, Analyses of Aristotle (New York, 2004), pp. 157–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁸ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Jadal, p. 34, 4–17; K. al-Burhān, p. 94, 6–14.

⁶⁹ This means all theoretical disciplines with the exception of arithmetic and geometry (al-Fārābī, K. al-Jadal, pp. 32–4, K. al-Burhān, pp. 68–9 passim; cf. moreover Galston, Opinion and Knowledge, pp. 232–6). This problem is addressed particularly in the works in which Ibn Bājja deals with the premises of mathematical disciplines, namely Kalām fī al-hayʾa, ed. Yāfūt, Salīm, “Ibn Bājja wa-ʿilm al-falak al-baṭlīmūsī”, Dirasāt fī taʾrīkh al-ʿulūm wa-al-ibistīmūlūjya (Rabat, 1996), pp. 65–73Google Scholar, 66–7 and K. al-Ḥayawān, ed. al-ʿImmāratī, Jawwād (Casablanca and Beirut, 2002), pp. 65–7Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Galston, Opinion and Knowledge, pp. 210–54; see also Galston, M., “Al-Fārābī on Aristotle's theory of demonstration”, Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism, ed. Morewedge, Parviz (New York, 1981), pp. 23–34Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Ibn Bājja addresses this question in his super-commentary on Galen's commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, ed. Forcada, Ética e ideología de la ciencia, pp. 380–2.

⁷² Ibn Bājja, al-Qawl fī al-quwwa al-nāṭiqa, ed. Muḥammad Alūzādah et al., Dafātir majmūʿa al-baḥth fī al-falsafa al-islāmiyya (Fes, 1999), p. 232, 3–8.

⁷³ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, pp. 26–7 passim; cf. Galston, Opinion and Knowledge, pp. 217–21.

⁷⁴ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, p. 122, 14–15/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 311.

⁷⁵ In T. K. al-Burhān (ed. Fakhry, p. 120, 16–20 ff/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 309), Ibn Bājja deals with demonstratio quia, positing that it consists of proving the existence of one of the extremes of a dilemma in some detail (ʿalā al-taḥṣīl). The example, however, is about particular knowledge: in order for us to ascertain whether this particular man has a cough (understand a medically relevant cough and not a nervous or feigned one) or not, we need a middle term, “he expectorates” (understand that medical experience says that this is the sign of a real cough), from which we conclude the existence of a cough in this patient. Immediately after, Ibn Bājja explains the demonstratio propter quid in much the same way. Once the existence of cough is proved, we seek its cause through the following reasoning: who suffers searing ache suffers pleurisy; this man has a searing pain; therefore, this man suffers from pleurisy, which is the cause of the cough. In dealing with “absolute demonstration”, Ibn Bājja seems unable to give an example of the same nature and says instead: all houses in which there is a cooked meal have a kitchen; in this house there is a cooked meal; therefore, in this house there is a kitchen; cooked meal is the middle term that indicates that a kitchen will be found in that house, and, at the same time, the reason for having a kitchen at home.

⁷⁶ On al-Fārābī on induction and inductive syllogism, cf. Lameer, Al-Fārābī, pp. 133ff; cf. also Galson, Opinion and Knowledge, pp. 75ff. with the caveats contained in Lameer's thorough study.

⁷⁷ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Qiyās al-ṣaghīr, ed. Dāneshpazūh, Al-Manṭiqiyyāt li-l-Fārābī, vol. 1 (Qum, 1408/1987-8), p. 173; trans. Rescher, Nicholas, al-Farabi's Short Commentary on Aristotle's Prior Analytics (Pittsburgh, 1963)Google Scholar, p. 88.

⁷⁸ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Taḥlīl, p. 230; cf. Aristotle, Topics, I.8 and 12.

⁷⁹ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-al-Taḥlīl, ed. Fakhry, p. 201, 9ff/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 238. The author does not mention here conceptualization and assent, but they are implied in his arguments.

⁸⁰ About al-Fārābī on the problem of induction, cf. Lameer, al-Fārābī, pp. 150 ff.; Ibn Bājja deals with the issue in T. K. al-Taḥlīl, ed. Fakhry, p. 219, 4 ff.

⁸¹ Al-Fārābī, K. al-Burhān, pp. 41 ff.

⁸² On al-Fārābī's tajriba, cf. Janssens, Jules L., “‘Experience’ (tajriba) in classical Arabic philosophy (al-Fārābī-Avicenna)”, Quaestio, 4 (2004): 45–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 47–52; about Ibn Bājja, Forcada, “Ibn Bājja on medicine”, pp. 126 ff.

⁸³ Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, p. 126, 5 ff. Ibn Bājja refers to the definition that only differs from demonstration in the arrangement of the terms explained in Posterior Analytics 94a2 ff. Cf. on the same topic Ibn Bājja, Sharḥ al-āthār al-ʿulwiyya, ed. and trans. Lettink, Paul, Aristotle's Meteorology and its Reception in the Arab World (Leidenet al., 1998)Google Scholar, pp. 420/421 and n. 25 on the latter page.

⁸⁴ Ibn Bājja, T. K al-Burhān, ed. Fakhry, p. 126, 9-10/ed. Dāneshpazūh, p. 316; cf. also Kalām fī māhiya al-shawq al-ṭabīʿī, ed. ^ʿAlawī, Rasāʾil falsafiyya, p. 101, 9–10.

⁸⁵ Ibn Bājja, Sharḥ al-āthār al-ʿulwiyya, pp. 418–22/419–23.

⁸⁶ As for the first two works, cf. above n. 69; as for the latter, cf. ʿAlawī's ed., Rasāʾil falsafiyya, pp. 88–96.

⁸⁷ Avempace. Libro de la generación y corrupción, ed. Josep Puig Montada (Madrid, 1995), pp. 34 ff.

⁸⁸ Cf. n. 83 above and pp. 440 ff. of Lettink's ed.

⁸⁹ MS Ahlwardt 5060, fol. 82r.

⁹⁰ Ed. ʿAlawī, Rasāʾil falsafiyya, pp. 140–9; cf. Forcada, Ética e ideología de la ciencia, pp. 250–3.

⁹¹ Ibn Bājja, al-Qawl fī al-quwwa al-nāṭiqa, p. 232 passim.

⁹² Ibn Bājja, T. K. al-Burhān, pp. 123, i.f.–127, 8; Dāneshpazūh's ed., p. 315, 3 ff; Rasāʾil falsafiyya, pp. 97–102. Apart from minor variants, both sources contain the same text, which needs to be re-edited, but this is not the brief of the present paper.

⁹³ The text appears in T. K. al-Burhān naturally enough, when discussing the three classes of demonstration, as a gloss on the four causes that these demonstrations must contain. Nevertheless, since it is a self-contained text whose approach is psychological rather than logical, one gets the impression that it was written independently. The question, however, is of little relevance because the text is by no means out of place in T. K. al-Burhān, a patchwork of sorts where the materials are poorly structured.

⁹⁴ For an approach to this issue, cf. Forcada, Ética e ideología de la ciencia, pp. 250–6. The natural character of these cognitions is explained, among other places, in Ibn Bājja's Fī al-Waḥda wa-al-wāḥid. The author says here that the very first intelligibles (i.e. “conceptualizations”) are the categories, grasped in the simple things that a child may come across; then, the mind begins to grow by formulating simple, primary judgments (“assents”) with the faculty of reflection. Primary knowledge consists, therefore, of the sum of cognition that someone accumulates in childhood, the result of a process of updating of a capacity that is only potential at the very moment of birth and then goes on until intellectual maturity. It is worth noting that these natural intelligibles, which are self-evident truths like “the whole is greater than the part”, make up, together with the cognitions drawn from tajriba, the stock of premises which yield certainty and are the basis of scientific method.

⁹⁵ Ibn Bājja, Kalām fī māhiya al-shawq al-ṭabīʿī, ed. ʿAlawī, p. 97/ed. Fakhry, T. K. al-Burhān, p. 124. Cf. above text IV. Ibn Bājja's indebtedness to al-Farābī is beyond question. Cf., besides the references already given, al-Fārābī's Taḥṣīl al-saʿāda (Hyderabād, 1344/1925–26), pp. 4–6Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ As a pure intelligible or as a cognition that must be abstracted from experiential data.

⁹⁷ On whether this tract was written independently or not, cf. the intro. to its ed., pp. 216–18.

⁹⁸ Ibn Bājja, al-Qawl fī quwwa al-nāṭiqa, p. 223, 2–7.

⁹⁹ Ibn Bājja, Kalām fī māhiya al-shawq al-ṭabīʿī, p. 100, 4 ff.: It has been explained that any natural question brings to our minds two relationships. The first one is like matter and consists of being something conceptualized absolutely. The second, something that exists in conceptualization and cannot be found without it, is the assent: that this concept is based on a concrete reference; that it [the concept] has an essence outside the mind by which it exists, yet its existence will not be by means of that which is in the mind until its subsistence and <existence> will be in the mind only; and that this composition which belongs to it comes from the mind, for the latter is the cause of the composition, and therefore the cause of its existence is not in its essence but outside it, as has been explained in other places.

¹⁰⁰ Ibn Bājja, al-Qawl fī quwwa al-nāṭiqa, p. 226, 7–12.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., pp. 226–7, 1; 232, 4 ff.

¹⁰² Ibid., pp. 227, 6–230, 8.