Outside the Logic of Necessity: Deontic Puzzles and 'Breaking' Compound Causal Properties in Islamic Legal Theory and Dialectic

This study examines an Islamic dialectical objection called kasr, or "breaking," as treated by the dialecticians and legal theorists Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī (d. 1083 CE) and Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī (d. 1081 CE). Kasr has both legitimate and illegitimate applications, and we confront the fallacious modes denounced by our theorists with deontic paradoxes and puzzles falling under the rubric of logical extrapolation fallacy. Our primary claim is that, whereas logical extrapolation produces fallacies or paradoxes by unsafely applying inference rules of standard alethic and/or logical necessity to the deontic realm, the fallacies generated by illegitimate modes of kasr in Islamic legal theory (wherein logical rules are expressed dialectically) constitute a genuine source for reflecting on what patterns of reasoning should be endorsed for determining causality in legal-and, perhaps, natural-epistemological contexts. Ultimately, this is the first step towards a larger study of kasr, which will compare it with other dialectical objections and treat relevant critical discourses from later Muslim legal theorists and dialecticians.