Philosophy and scriptural interpretation › Why reflection requires training

Reflecting carefully on what exists requires a method for reaching what is unknown from what is known. Averroes identifies syllogistic reasoning as the relevant instrument and demonstration as its most complete form. A syllogism connects premises to a conclusion through an organized inference. Demonstration adds demanding conditions concerning the knowledge those premises and inferences provide.

The argument then moves from an end to its necessary means. If a person is obliged to pursue a kind of knowledge, and that knowledge requires logical tools, acquiring those tools belongs to the obligation. Before undertaking demonstrations, the inquirer must learn what distinguishes them from other arguments and how their premises work.

He supports this move through an analogy with jurisprudence. A jurist needs training in legal reasoning to carry out the law's requirements. Someone pursuing intellectual reflection likewise needs training in intellectual reasoning. The analogy establishes a parallel between disciplines. It does not identify philosophy with jurisprudence or suggest that studying nature is simply another procedure for issuing legal rulings.

This distinction helps us assess the argument. A command to reflect does not immediately prove that one particular account of logic is the only suitable instrument. Averroes supplies a conception of the best kind of reflection and reasons from it. A critic can question that conception while recognizing why the training requirement follows within his framework.

He also answers the objection that this logical study was absent in the earliest period of Islam. Legal syllogistic reasoning was itself developed after that period, he observes. If that development is not rejected merely because it came later, the same objection cannot automatically disqualify intellectual syllogistic reasoning. The reply concerns the consistency of the proposed prohibition.