…possess any existence, let alone require a cause for its existence; yet for it to be conceived in the mind one must conceive the two correlatives together. This, as we have already affirmed, is correct—and it refutes his position.

The Thirteenth Path:
They claim that concomitants are, by their very nature, arranged in an intrinsic sequence: the first entails the second, the second entails the third, the third entails the fourth, and that whatever entails without a middle term is self-evident and needs no proof. His exposition of this, however, contradicts itself, for the thesis is internally inconsistent. One therefore says to him: whatever you have said concerning the entailment of the first lâzim to the original malzûm must be said, in every respect, concerning the second lâzim’s entailment to the first. Accordingly, whatever explanation you offered for knowing the entailment of the first without a middle term obliges you to offer the same for the second. The upshot of your reasoning would then be that whoever knows one thing necessarily knows all of its concomitants—an utter absurdity.

Section:
Another argument advanced by al-Rāzī for this distinction.

He then produced yet another proof for his assertion that whenever the entailment is without a middle term it is self-evident. He said:

“Another proof is that when we apprehend a quiddity, some of its concomitants remain unknown to us, yet we are able to discover those unknown concomitants. Were there no concomitants whose attachment to the thing is manifest, an infinite regress would ensue; likewise were it impossible to discover those concomitants. Both alternatives are false.”

He comments:

“This proof is sufficient to establish the basic point that of the attributes intrinsically concomitant with a thing, some entail others through a middle term in reality and some do so without a middle term. What it actually shows, however, is only that a person may perceive the entailment of certain concomitants without a proof, whereas for others he cannot perceive it except through a proof.

There is no doubt about this; but a proof is simply whatever entails the conclusion—it is not confined to what is the cause of the conclusion. Nor is one concomitant in reality the cause of another, and whatever is self-evident to Zayd need not be self-evident to ʿAmr.

It therefore becomes clear that the distinction he drew between first principles (awwaliyyāt) and widely accepted propositions (mashhūrāt)—namely, that a first principle is one in which the predicate is borne by its subject ‘first’ in both modes of existence, whereas a mashhūr is borne ‘second’—is erroneous and cannot stand except—