He said:

“All these are numerous, weighty questions, each requiring a separate investigation into the question itself and what the ancients said about it. Treating many questions as a single question is a well-known tactic of the sophists. An error in any one of these principles leads to another, grave error in the investigation of existing things.”

I say:

The purpose here is to clarify their differing conventions in the use of the term ‘possible’, and to show that the approach prevalent among the later philosophers is the one attributed to the most eminent of their later thinkers, Ibn Sīnā, and, before him, al-Fārābī.

Here is Ibn Rushd, despite his extensive attention to the works of Aristotle and the ancients, his abridgments of their writings, and his concern to champion and defend them, stating that much of this belongs only to these later thinkers, not to their ancient predecessors.

When he mentioned that Ibn Sīnā used the term ‘possible’ in a broader sense than the philosophers did, he said:

“He took the term ‘possible’ to mean whatever has a cause.”