 So, according to al-Ghazālī, it is conceivable that the cotton not burn, even though its contact with fire is unimpeded and it is dry, so it is not necessary that it burn, even when these conditions obtain. On this view, even Averroes’ revised version of the philosophers’ account of causal necessity in nature is mistaken. On the other hand, the philosophers do not accept al-Ghazālī’s account of “necessary”. More generally, they do not characterize the modalities in terms of conceivability. This suggests that the disagreement between al-Ghazālī and the philosophers about causal necessity in nature has partly to do with their differing accounts of the modalities (Kukkonen 2000; Dutton 2001). However, the fundamental source of their disagreement is  theological.