is not knowledge, nor is it established as true and sound, and therefore cannot be accepted. Thus, on either assumption, what he has advanced cannot be accepted: it is not knowledge, nor has it been established as true and sound. His opponent’s statement therefore remains intact and unrefuted.

The sixth argument: He has stated that sound reason does not reject this division of existent things into those that occupy space and those that do not. He should be asked: When you say that sound reason does not reject this division, do you mean that sound reason does not know this to be impossible within space, or that sound reason knows it to be possible in external reality?

If he says that sound reason knows this to be possible in external reality, this means that sound reason knows that there can exist in external reality something that occupies space and something that does not—just as it knows that things occupying space and things inhering in them exist, and that bodies and their attributes exist. Here, “sound reason” can only mean necessary knowledge; otherwise, the intended conclusion would not follow.

Yet it is well known that he has neither claimed, nor reported any of his associates as claiming, that they know by necessary knowledge, and that their sound reason judges, that something can exist in external reality which neither occupies space nor inheres in anything occupying space—when “occupying space” is understood to mean being distinct from something else in terms of direction. Rather, these people establish its possibility, just as they establish its existence, through inferential arguments. If they could claim necessary knowledge of this, they would be claiming knowledge