Natural Causality and Miracles in the 17th Discussion of the Incoherence

This chapter will examine the debate over natural causality and miracles in the Islamic philosophical tradition, centering on the 17th discussion of Al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers and Ibn Rushd’s Incoherence of the Incoherence. Oversimplified, often polemic accounts of the debate have proliferated until recent times, which reduce it to a conflict between faith and science. As a corrective, it will provide a careful analysis of the arguments deployed, and positions taken by all three figures represented in the discussion; that is, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd, as well as Ibn Sina. The chapter will show that rather than a simple conflict between theology and philosophy, it is a rich intellectual exchange between three distinct, highly systematic, and genuinely philosophical points of view involving several currently relevant questions in the metaphysics of causality and modality, epistemology, and the philosophy of natural science.