but sensation itself and the attraction and aversion that follow it are particular in their causes and purposes—unlike hearing and sight, which are both means of acquiring knowledge, including universal knowledge in the heart: sight provides knowledge of actually existing realities themselves, while hearing provides knowledge of what is said concerning their names and attributes—hearing and sight are singled out for mention in the Book of Allah, unlike the other senses.

As for his statement in the first argument, “They rest on the premise that, for any two existents in the observable realm, one must either be co-located with the other or spatially separate from it,” followed by his statement, “This premise is not conceded,” we reply: refusing to concede this is among the most flagrant forms of sophistry. For the observable realm consists of what we perceive through our external senses, or through our external and internal senses. Nothing we perceive fails to be either co-located with something else—namely attributes, which are accidents—or situated to one side of it—namely entities subsisting in themselves, which are substances.

Thus, anyone who denies that whatever is perceived must have one of these two characteristics has denied that perceptible things divide into substances and accidents. This plainly contradicts the consensus of all people, from the earliest to the latest, as well as what is known necessarily and through the senses. For anything perceived either subsists in itself and is separate from other things, or subsists in something else and is co-located with it.