if its essence were not absent from itself, would know itself.

But if one of the two is possible without the other, this does not necessarily follow. If both are possible together, non-absence entails knowledge; yet for non-absence to entail knowledge does not mean that it is knowledge itself.

If he says, “By ‘immaterial,’ I mean that it is neither a body nor something that governs a body,” the first response is: This rests on establishing the existence of immaterial entities fitting this description.

Most rational people deny this—even those who hold these Peripatetic philosophers, Aristotle and his followers, in high esteem have found their account of intellects and souls false upon examining it. They maintain one of the following positions:

Either nothing subsists in itself except a body, as Ibn Hazm and others hold;

or the distinction between soul and intellect is merely incidental, as with the human soul: while associated with the body, it is a soul, and when separated from it, it is an intellect, as Abū al-Barakāt and others hold;

or these intellects affirmed by these philosophizers amount to nothing beyond the intellect that is an accident inhering in a rational being. To affirm an intellect that subsists in itself and is not a body is false.

These matters are discussed at length elsewhere. The point is that the term “immateriality” is ambiguous. When they explain it, they may explain it in terms known to be false, or in terms for whose validity there is no evidence.

The fourth response: It may be said: Grant that immateriality has been established in the sense that