a capacity for discernment (1).
It is well known (2) that if the soul were to entertain, with respect to an informative statement, some meaning other than knowledge, this very definition would still apply to it. For that reason, both the early and later scholars divided knowledge into conception and assent (3). They defined conception as the knowledge of simple terms—that is, their mere apprehension—while they defined assent as the knowledge of compound informative propositions, whether affirmative or negative. Accordingly, they referred to knowledge in this context as “assent” (4) and regarded knowledge itself as identical with assent. Yet if the soul possessed an assent to those informative propositions that was not knowledge, one would have to distinguish between knowing them and assenting to them. There is no doubt that a person may believe in such knowledge and assent—understanding it, retaining it, and committing himself to what it requires—or he may neither believe nor understand it.
“The qualifying soul discerns the reality of that which is not perceptible by the soul.”
(1) In the autograph: biha mīzan; in the S recension: bihi mīzan. The reading with ṭāʾ (ṭ) is adopted as most appropriate in context.
(2) In both the S and Ṭ recensions: “in.”
(3) In Abkar al-Afkar, Vol. 1, Paper 3, al-Āmidī states: “And whoever posits a distinction between taṣawwur (conception) and taṣdīq (assent) has advanced arguments which we have refuted in Daqāʾiq al-Ḥaqāʾiq.” He thus refers to his refutation in the treatise Daqāʾiq al-Ḥaqāʾiq. This work—preserved in manuscript at Princeton University Library—was noted by Aḥmad al-Mahdī, editor of the first volume of Abkar al-Afkar; see Section One: Study of the Book, p. 94.
(4) In al-Mawāqif (p. 11), al-ʿAjī writes:
“The third observation concerning the divisions of knowledge, which comprises the following objectives: the first objective is that if it is devoid of ḥukm (judgment), it is taṣawwur (conception); otherwise it is taṣdīq (assent). These are two distinct types in themselves and by reference to the commonly assumed condition of possibly bearing truth or falsehood.”
Al-Jurjānī, in his commentary on al-Mawāqif (1: 87–88), clarifies that one naturally infers (al-mutabādar) that taṣdīq is the comparative apprehension (idrāk muqāran) of the judgment—as later theologians hold—rather than the judgment itself, as asserted by the early theologians, nor the composite whole of the judgment together with the conceptions of the relation (nisba) and its two termini, as Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Rāzī proposed.