Their opponents—such as al-Rāzī and others—responded that the first argument is merely an analogy without a common basis. Even supposing that a body necessarily possesses one kind of accident, why must it necessarily possess the remaining kinds? Moreover, what they concede to them is motion and rest. But is rest an existent state or an absence? There are two well-known positions on this. As for conjunction and separation, the argument depends on the question of the indivisible atom. Those who hold that “bodies are not composed of indivisible atoms”—and they represent most groups—do not maintain that a body cannot be devoid of both conjunction and separation. Rather, in their view, a simple body is a single entity, whether or not it is capable of separation. Likewise, supposing that it contains distinct, inseparably connected realities does not entail that it is capable of conjunction and separation.

As for the claim that, once characterized by an accident, a body cannot be devoid of both that accident and its opposite, they responded by denying this in the case of accidents incapable of persisting, such as motions and sounds. As for those capable of persisting, the argument depends on whether the cessation of something that persists requires an opposite. Whoever holds that “the cessation of something that persists does not require an opposite” can maintain that a subject may become devoid of a temporally originated attribute after that attribute has inhered in it, without an opposite removing it. Whoever holds that “it ceases only through an opposite” says that what is temporally originated ceases only through a temporally originated opposite. Thus, after it has come into existence, its subject cannot be devoid of both it and its opposite, on the basis of this