then it may be said: each of them possesses a distinctive feature, and thus depends both on what distinguishes it and on what distinguishes the other. There must therefore be further distinctive features, and the same argument applies to these as to the first.

In short, a thing is distinguished by its particular characteristics just as it is by its own self, its existence, and all its attributes, whether inseparable or incidental. To say, “Everything possessing a distinctive feature must have a determiner distinct from it,” is like saying, “Every existent must have something distinct from it that gives it existence,” or, “Every reality must have something distinct from it that makes it real,” or, “Everything that subsists independently must have something distinct from it that sustains it,” and similar statements.

For the mind can conceive each of these things as being otherwise than it actually is. Merely conceiving this possibility in the mind, however, does not establish its possibility in external reality. Yet a group of proponents of false disputation and sophistical philosophy infer that something is possible in external reality because it is possible in the mind. Such reasoning appears in the writings of many speculative theologians and philosophers.

Al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others like them frequently employ this reasoning. For example, al-Rāzī and others argue for the possibility of an existent that is neither separate from the world nor alongside it by saying: “Logical division requires that every existent be either separate from another, alongside it, or neither separate from it nor alongside it”; or, “Every existent is either inside another, outside it, or neither inside nor outside it.”