have not said that sound reason accepts the existence of an existent that is neither inside the world nor outside it. Had you said this, you would have returned to your first statement, countering a claim of necessary knowledge of its impossibility with a claim of necessary knowledge of its possibility. When the matter reaches the point where one disputant says, “I know necessarily that this is impossible,” and the other says, “I know necessarily that it is possible,” the dispute can only be settled on other grounds, as we have explained elsewhere. Even so, neither would have conclusively refuted the other.

Thus, even if you had claimed necessary knowledge of its possibility, this would not have been decisive, and the two would then have stood on an equal footing. How much less, then, when you make no such claim, but instead claim knowledge of something other than the disputed point concerning which your opponent has claimed necessary knowledge!

It is well known that no human being can claim necessary knowledge of the possibility of an existent that is neither inside the world nor outside it. Rather, the most he can do is to cite inferential knowledge and