In external reality there exists what is conceived and what is intended, and people readily understand and acknowledge this. No rational person imagines that when what is conceived in the mind is said to be found outside, its reality is identical in every respect to the reality of the external thing itself. Rather, the relationship is like saying: this content corresponds to this word, this word corresponds to this meaning, and belief and conception correspond to the truth. Whoever grasps this finds that the doubts arising in such discussions are resolved.

Yet someone like al-Rāzī went so far as to suppose that knowledge is neither an action nor an imprint of the knowables in the knower, arguing that such a view would entail that within the knower himself there must be a fire like the external fire. Had he properly apprehended the point and understood what was intended, he would never have advanced such a notion—an idea that would not occur to any rational person who is aware of what he is saying.

As for calling something universal (kullī), this may mean that it must encompass all of its particulars, in which case it is ‘general,’ or it may mean that simply conceiving it does not prevent others from sharing in it, in which case it is ‘absolute.’ This is what they intend by the term ‘universal,’ and it is the very subject that is divided among the various kinds of existents. The subject of division is common to the branches, embracing and applying to them either collectively—this is collective generality—or by way of