The point here is to present Ibn Rushd’s comments on Ibn Sīnā’s method. Ibn Rushd said:

“Even if Ibn Sīnā is granted this proposition—that the contingent is whatever has a cause—his division will not lead him to his intended conclusion. For the initial division of existence into what has a cause and what has no cause is not self-evident; then what has a cause is divided into the contingent and the necessary.”

I say:

As for dividing existence into what has a cause and what has no cause, this is a division between negation and affirmation and cannot be disputed. It is like saying that what exists is divided into what subsists in its own right and what does not subsist in its own right, or into what exists in its own right and what does not exist in its own right, and other such divisions between negation and affirmation.

This division is exhaustive, since there is no middle ground between negation and affirmation: they are contradictories. Just as they cannot both be true, neither can they both be false.

However, what is not self-evident is the claim of Ibn Sīnā and his followers, who make this division, that what has a cause is divided into the genuinely contingent—which is what comes into being—and the necessary. They have offered no proof for this, nor can they provide one; rather,