Fifth reply: One may say the following. You have treated the opposition of privation and capacity as applying only to a subject that can in fact possess the positive attribute. Now, if by “can” you mean actual, external possibility—that is, that the attribute is known to exist in the world—your claim is invalid for two reasons.

First, it would require you to say that inanimate objects cannot be described as neither living nor dead, nor as speaking nor silent. That is indeed your convention, yet it is nothing more than a terminological choice. In ordinary Arabic usage such objects are described as dead and silent.

The Quran itself employs this usage. Allah, the Exalted, says, “Those whom they invoke besides Allah create nothing, but are themselves created. They are dead, not living, and they do not realize when they will be resurrected” (Quran 16:20–21). The verse refers to idols, which are inanimate, yet they are explicitly called “dead.”

Likewise, the Arabs classify land as either ḥayawān (living) or mawāt (dead). The lexicographers say: al-mawātān, with the middle letter vocalised, is the opposite of al-ḥayawān. They would say, “Buy the mawātān and do not buy the ḥayawān,” meaning: purchase lands and houses, not slaves and riding beasts. They also say that al-mawāt is that which has no spirit in it.