the scholar of legal theory examines evidence in Islamic law and its relative authority, distinguishing what constitutes legal evidence from what does not. He also examines the relative ranks of proofs, so that when they conflict, he gives precedence to the stronger over the weaker. They claim that the logician examines evidence as such, which is broader than legal evidence, and distinguishes what constitutes evidence from what does not. They claim that their logic stands in relation to meanings as prosody does to poetry, scales to goods, measures of time to time, and the cubit to the objects measured by it.
This is precisely what the majority of Muslim scholars and other rational people have declared false. Their logic does not distinguish evidence from what is not evidence, whether in its form or its content. Nor is there any need to weigh meanings by it; indeed, meanings cannot validly be weighed by it. Rather, this claim is among the most false of all claims.
Our dispute with them concerns the concepts they incorporated into logic, claiming that the conceptions and judgments sought cannot be attained except through them. They thus advanced “four claims” for their logic: two negative and two affirmative. They claimed that conceptions cannot be attained by any method other than the one they set out in it, and that judgments cannot be attained by any method other than the one they set out in it. These two claims are among the most manifestly false of all claims. They also claimed that their stated method yields a conception of realities not previously conceived. This too is false. Attention has already been drawn to these three claims, and there will follow