Zayd, with his shape and contours and the positions of his limbs relative to one another. We say, then, that the parts of his limbs and their spatial orientations must be imprinted in a body, with the image’s different orientations distributed across the orientations of that body, and its parts across the body’s parts.”

He said:

“Let us now replace the image of Zayd with that of a square.”

He then posited two squares equal in every respect and argued that one is distinguished from the other only by its location.

[Ibn Malkā’s Objection to Ibn Sīnā]

Abū al-Barakāt objected to this, arguing, in substance, that the bodies seen and imagined are numerous, whereas their locus within the body cannot exceed the human body as a whole, and the human body cannot accommodate the dimensions of all these bodies.

Abū al-Barakāt said:

“The first step in the objection is to contradict his claim: we state and maintain the contrary of the opening proposition, namely, that what apprehends particulars in us—things seen and heard, and all other objects of sense—is not a faculty