As for the second kind, thinkers have disagreed about it. They observed that a human being is described as knowing, powerful, and willing, even though knowledge and will do not subsist in his heel or his back, but only in his heart.
Some said:
The effect of accidents that require life extends beyond their locus. If they subsist in one part of the whole, the rest of the whole is characterized by them. This is the position of those among the Muʿtazila and others who hold this view.
Others said:
Rather, that which is characterized by these attributes is a single, discrete part within the heart.
Still others said:
Rather, their effect does not extend beyond their locus; life, knowledge, and power subsist in every part of the body.
Some of these maintain:
No particular structure is required for these accidents to subsist in an indivisible atom. This is the position of al-Asharī and those who followed him among the adherents of Mālik, al-Shāfiī, Ahmad, and others. They based this upon affirming the existence of the indivisible atom. This, however, is a weak foundation, for that doctrine is false, as has been explained at length elsewhere.
Then some of the Peripatetic philosophers claimed that the locus of knowledge in the human being is indivisible. What they mean is that no part of the rational soul is distinguishable from any other: it neither moves nor rests, neither ascends nor descends, neither enters the body—or anything else in the world—nor departs from it, and neither draws near to anything nor moves away from it.
Some of them further claim that it does not know particulars but knows only universals, as is related of Ibn Sīnā and others. Their principal basis was that some objects of knowledge are indivisible; knowledge of them is therefore indivisible, because knowledge corresponds to the object known,