Abstract
Aaron Spevack (Brandeis University, Waltham, MA and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA) introduced the American Society of Islamic Philosophy and Theology (ASIPT), funded by a grant from the Templeton Foundation with institutional support from Harvard University's Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department and Brandeis University's Near Eastern and Judaic Studies department. [...]Spevack noted that in addition to papers on the instrumental sciences, there were papers addressing applied philosophy and theology which all constitute innovative contributions to a rich and growing field. While modern analytic philosophers would hold that "a necessary being is a being that exists in all possible worlds," the application of the kalām conception of a possible world as "including all contingent possibilities of the contingent actual universe" to this definition and its modal variables creates a contradiction, as "it is not possible for something contingent [i.e., the 'possible world' necessary being] to be necessary." [...]Karamali concludes, "a kalām interpretation of Kripkean possible world semantics cannot be applied to certain necessity propositions" including the fundamental one on the existence of a necessary being. After demonstrating how both approaches would determine the meaning of God, Muhtaroglu concludes that "a modified version of the direct reference view" which allows for "the identification of God as an ultimate being in all possible worlds" would be upheld by the mutakallimūn. The former view "only allows for the identification of the thing in question [i.e., God]" but, he argues, leaves unclear "whether this description describes God's ultimate essence . . . and only allows us to know Him through our [fundamentally incomplete] knowledge of Him."