apart from being alive, and that which can only occupy space cannot exist without occupying space. How, then, could something that can only exist with knowledge and power, and cannot exist without them, possibly exist outside the mind as something conceived without knowledge or power?

According to the majority, knowledge and power themselves are identical with His being knowing and powerful. They deny that states have any existence outside the mind additional to the attributes. Those who affirm states additional to the attributes—such as al-Qādī Abū Bakr, Abū Yaʿlā, and Abū al-Maʿālī in the earlier of his two positions—say that establishing the attributes entails establishing the states and affirming that which entails them. Yet the correct view is that states, like universals, exist in minds and in concrete particulars.

This is further clarified by the fact that much of the dispute over whether the Lord Most High knows by virtue of His essence or by virtue of knowledge, and whether He is powerful by virtue of His essence or by virtue of power, is merely verbal. Indeed, when the terms of the discussion are carefully clarified for most of those disputing it, no substantive disagreement emerges between them. The actual disagreement is only between those who affirm states and those who deny them. Those who affirm the attributes agree that His knowledge and power are inseparable from His essence, that He cannot exist without knowledge or power, and they deny the existence of