by correspondence is what is stated in answer to “What is it?” when the question concerns the meaning of the name.

When one is asked what is intended by this expression, one states the entirety of what it signifies by correspondence. As for the signified meaning, it lies outside its reality and is an accident inseparable from it. This is an intelligible division, but it comes down to the speaker’s intention and what he means by the expression.

As for the claim that the inseparable attributes of an externally existing thing—without which it cannot exist—are divided into those that are internal to its reality, constitutive of it and essentially prior to it, and those that are external to its reality and accidental to it: this is false according to the vast majority of rational thinkers, including Muslim theologians and others.

We have explained the invalidity of this in various places, as have a number of theologians and philosophers. We have discussed what Ibn Sīnā stated in al-Ishārāt and elsewhere, and explained his inconsistency and that of others in distinguishing between essential attributes and inseparable accidental attributes when both are held to be inseparable from realities existing outside the mind. What he stated concerning the question of knowledge rests on that unsound foundation, for he said:

“If the Necessary Existent apprehended things by deriving its knowledge from those things, its essence would either be constituted by what it apprehends, and thus be constituted by things; or its apprehending them would be accidental to its essence, in which case it would not be necessarily existent in every respect.”

[Ibn Sīnā’s argument is invalid on several grounds. The first ground]

Ibn Sīnā’s argument is invalid on several grounds.

The first ground

We then say:

This argument is invalid on several grounds: