[Responses to al-Rāzī’s fourth argument: The first response]

What the intellect conceives in terms of negation and affirmation is either particular or unrestricted.

If it concerns the affirmation and negation of a particular entity, its conception follows that entity. If that entity shares its location with another or is spatially separate from it, its conception is likewise. Thus, if the intellect judges with certainty that there cannot be two existing entities that are neither spatially separate nor share a location, it rules out a third possibility. If, on the other hand, it conceives unrestricted negation and unrestricted affirmation, this belongs to the category of general, universal propositions. Universals exist in minds, not in external reality.

It has already been explained that the discussion concerns external existence, not mental existence.

[The second response]

It may be said:

We do not concede that the intellect does not judge one to share its location with the other. Rather, its conception of negation and affirmation has its locus in the mind. The conception of one occupies the same locus as the conception of the other, and this is all we mean by sharing a location.

[The third response]

It may be said:

He has expressed their position in words they do not use. They do not say that, of any two existing entities, one must either pervade the other or be spatially separate from it. For accidents that coexist in a single locus are not spatially separate from one another.

Nor is it said that one accident pervades another. Rather, it is said that accidents pervade their locus.

Unless, of course, someone uses the term