what this really amounts to is that knowledge arises merely through the existence of the object known, without any knowledge subsisting in the knower or any intellectual form. This is manifestly false, and he himself concedes its falsity in the case of the servant. He says that being a substrate for that form is a condition of the form’s being present, which is itself a condition of his intellectually apprehending it. He thus makes inherence a condition of presence, and presence a condition of intellectual apprehension, while affirming the intellectual form that subsists in the human heart. He therefore cannot mean, by the form that is present without inhering, the intellectual form present to a human being.

If he means instead the existent form, there is no doubt that it can be present without inhering; indeed, its inherence is impossible.

But the response is:

Its merely being present to a human being does not entail his intellectually apprehending it if he has no knowledge of it within himself. Indeed, presence unaccompanied by knowledge subsisting in the knower necessarily involves no knowledge. If he claims that the intellectual form can be present without inhering, that is impossible. If he claims that the existent form can be present without inhering, that is possible. But knowledge cannot arise from that alone, without awareness subsisting in the one aware of it.

This is known by necessity and by the agreement of rational people. Yet these people claim that Allah knows things without any knowledge subsisting in Him, and they describe Him as intellectually apprehending. They distinguish between one instance of intellectual apprehension and another, while treating intellectual apprehension as a single genus. This is a manifest contradiction and an assertion made without knowledge—indeed, one known to be false.