And He, the Exalted, says:

“and the water Allah sends down from the sky, giving life thereby to the earth after its death” [al-Baqarah: 164].

There are numerous other texts in the Quran and Sunnah, as well as statements of the early generations and leading authorities cited elsewhere. Thus, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Hārithī, al-Muhāsibī, and others explicitly stated that reason is an innate faculty in the human being.

Yet those who adopted the first view—those who deny causes and powers, following al-Ashʿarī in denying them—said that reason is merely a kind of immediate knowledge. This was the view of Judge Abū Bakr ibn Tayyib, Judge Abū Yaʿlā, Judge Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī, and others.

The point is that this conception of meanings in directly observed concrete things—for example, conceiving that this is in accord with me, is friendly toward me, benefits me, and contains what I love, whereas that opposes me, is hostile toward me, harms me, and contains what I hate—is acknowledged by all rational people. This holds whether these powers are considered multiple, a single power, or nonexistent, and whether the perceiving subject is said to be the soul or the body.