so too it cannot be known without its necessary concomitant being known. Confusion arises here only because one supposes that an incomplete conception constitutes knowledge of it. This is not so, for awareness has degrees: a person may be aware of something without being aware of most of its concomitants, and may then become aware of some concomitants but not others.

We do not know anything fully. Indeed, if we knew anything fully, we would know its concomitants and the concomitants of those concomitants. Thus, our knowledge of anything cannot be like the Lord’s knowledge.

Hence, when people discussed signification by denotation, inclusion, and implication, some considered entailment without qualification, while others required mental entailment. They said:

“External entailment has no end, since every concomitant has a concomitant, and that concomitant has another. Thus, when the word ‘house’ signifies the walls, floor, and roof by denotation, and some of these by inclusion, it necessarily implies the foundation, the foundation of that foundation, the builder, the builder’s father, his father’s father, the maker of the tools, and other things. Mental entailment must therefore be the criterion.”

They may be told:

“Mental entailment has no fixed criterion, for concomitants may occur to one person that do not occur to another.”

If you say:

“Whatever occurs to the listener as necessarily entailed is signified by the expression through implication; otherwise, it is not.”

They may be told:

“In that case, one necessary implication may occur to him, then another, and the infinite regress you mentioned follows. There is therefore no difference.”