Evaluating Ibn Sina's View Regarding Intentionality of the Future and the Past

The present paper evaluates Ibn Sina's view about the intentionality and the truth of declaration in the case of the future and the past, the object of which is nonexistent. The paper strives to demonstrate that there is a close relationship between the well-known intentionality and the truth of the declaration (khabar), and that both can be used to elucidate certain unclear points in Ibn Sina's reasoning. Furthermore, an inconsistency in Ibn Sina’s view of intentionality is pointed out: He first states that regarding the knowledge of the nonexistent entities of the future, the mental forms we have of the entities in our mind have no relation to reality. However, he sets out to prove such a relation a few lines later. The paper tries to resolve the inconsistency as much as possible, and lastly, it criticizes the view(s) of Ibn Sina, i.e. the pure mentality of knowledge and the potentiality of knowledge about nonexistent entities in the future and the past.