is a privative attribute. Something positive depends upon a complete cause, whereas something privative requires only that its cause be absent or incomplete. Accordingly, merely knowing the evidence—whether it is a cause or something else—does not entail knowing what it indicates—whether an effect or something else—unless one brings to mind how the evidence indicates it and recognizes its significance. Thus, many people hear Allah’s speech, which provides evidence and guidance, and witness His signs by night and day, yet turn away from them because they do not reflect or contemplate.

When a person does know a judgment, however, there must be a cause that produces this knowledge in his heart. That a thing must be either co-located or spatially separate, either beginningless or brought into existence, and the like, is simply an intellectually apprehended attribute: an existent must possess one of the two attributes, and existents fall into these two categories. For an existent considered in the abstract exists in the mind.