…knowledge being divided into taṣawwur (simple apprehension) and taṣdīq (assent), and their further contention that taṣawwur is a bare, unadorned conception in which the mind passes no judgment at all—neither affirming nor denying. Although we ourselves have said that such a state does not merit the name of knowledge and that only a conception accompanied by affirmation or negation deserves that title, it is nonetheless possible for someone to conceive a thing from one angle without at the same time conceiving that the thing, by its very nature, entails the concomitants that flow from it. Thus, by the unanimous agreement of rational people, his assertion is invalid.
The Fifth Route of Refutation
If what you claimed were sound, it would follow that anyone who apprehends a thing must apprehend all of that thing’s concomitants. For once the mind grasps the malzūm (the conditioned element), it must also grasp its immediate lāzim (concomitant); grasping that concomitant would then entail grasping the next, and so on ad infinitum, until the knower had apprehended every single concomitant. Not only would this destroy your specific proof, it would overturn the very principle on which you rely, namely, that an immediate concomitant needs no evidence for anyone.
Were that principle true, whoever conceived a single thing would necessarily conceive all of its concomitants. It would follow that anyone who knew Allah would know everything that Allah knows, and thus would be omniscient, for His knowledge is one of the concomitants of His essence. By the same reasoning, anyone who knew one created being would know absolutely everything, because the creature entails the Creator, the Creator entails His knowledge of all things, and He in turn entails His will; His will encompasses everything He has created, for whatever He wills comes to be and whatever He does not will does not come to be. Therefore, if knowing the malzūm inevitably brought knowledge of its lāzim, anyone who knew a single thing would, of necessity, know all things.
The absurdity of this is plain to see. Indeed, the falsity of the claim is so evident that it scarcely requires formal argument; yet once one realizes the monstrosity of its implications, its repugnance and falsehood stand out even more starkly. This includes the very objection he himself raised, saying that it requires further discussion, as we have already quoted his words. The answer he supplied to that objection is invalid, and he contradicts himself in doing so, a point that will become clear when we set forth…