The Sixth Route:
Your statement that “knowledge of the essence of the cause does not entail knowledge of the effect unless another condition is met—namely, that the effect itself be present to the mind” is unsound. For the “effect” you speak of is, according to your own theory, the first concomitant that the described entity produces by virtue of its very nature; in becoming a cause for that concomitant it has no need of the effect. Were the cause to depend on the effect in order to be a cause, it would cease to be a cause in its own right, and the effect would have to precede the causality of its cause, while the causality of the cause is prior to the cause’s own existence—a vicious circle that every rational person deems impossible.

You also maintain that whenever an entailment (luzūm) requires a middle term (wasaṭ), knowledge of that entailment likewise needs a middle term, and that whatever entails without a middle is known without a middle. Yet you now make knowledge of the entailment contingent on conceiving both the effect and the cause—the malzūm and the lāzim together—and insist that the entailment cannot be known until these two conceptions are in place. In external reality, however, the entailment depends on the cause alone, not on both. Hence your claim that the mental middle is identical with the external one collapses: knowledge of the entailment hinges on two conceptions, whereas the actual entailment arises from only one.

The Seventh Route:
You reply that “the essence by itself is not enough for causality to obtain, because causality is a relational property, and a single thing cannot suffice for any relational property; both relata must be present.” This is false whether causality is regarded as privative or as positive. If it is privative, your assertion falls apart. If it is something positive, it is self-evident that the cause alone brings the effect into being; otherwise it would be only part of a cause. Moreover, the effect comes only after the cause. Since the cause by itself produces the effect, and the effect exists only through the existence of the cause, it is clear that the cause alone confers both the effect and the causal relation.

The Eighth Route:
When you say that “a single thing is not enough for a relational property to obtain,” do you mean in the mind or in external reality? The point is ambiguous. If you mean that such a property cannot even be conceived without conceiving—