Lesson · 4 min Stretch
Denying Causes
In one line Ibn Rushd answered al-Ghazali: deny causes, and you lose the means of knowing anything.
Ibn Rushd, known in Latin as Averroes, was a judge and doctor in twelfth-century Córdoba. His commentaries on Aristotle were so influential that Latin writers called him simply the Commentator. He answered al-Ghazali in a book whose title mocks the original: The Incoherence of the Incoherence.
On causation he argued that things have natures. Fire burns because of what fire is, and cotton burns because of what cotton is. Take away real causes, and a thing no longer has a definite nature, so it can no longer be named or understood. Knowledge, he said, is knowing things through their causes, so denying causes denies reason itself.
The debate is still alive: what, if anything, makes the regularities of nature hold?
Go deeper
Ibn Rushd’s influence in the Islamic world was limited after his death, but in Latin Europe his commentaries shaped the universities. A movement of thinkers called Latin Averroists drew controversial conclusions from his reading of Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas wrote against some of them. In his Decisive Treatise he argued that philosophy and revelation, rightly read, do not conflict.
The bridge inspector
An engineer is told that a bridge has held for fifty years by habit alone, and that there is no deeper reason it stands.
She replies that she can say why it stands: the loads, the steel and the joints. If those causes did not hold, no inspection could tell her anything. Her work depends on things behaving according to what they are.
Try this today When someone dismisses a pattern as coincidence, ask what knowledge would be left if every pattern were treated that way.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “Denying Causes.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/denying-causes. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Ibn Rushd [Averroes]” — Covers his commentaries, his reply to al-Ghazali and his view of causes and natures.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Ibn Rushd (Averroes)” — Overview of his life in Córdoba, The Incoherence of the Incoherence and his influence in Latin Europe.
- Ibn Rushd, The Incoherence of the Incoherence, discussion 17 — Things have natures; deny causes and knowledge goes with them. Paraphrased; no translation is quoted.