and, in a large volume, the false doctrines peculiar to the philosophers.

[THE SECOND METHOD]

As for the second method (1), the one who denies that Allah can be seen and argues against it on the grounds that its necessary concomitant—namely, direction—is absent should be told: “Your argument is: ‘He is not in a direction; whatever is not in a direction cannot be seen; therefore, He cannot be seen.’” Likewise, all those who deny the truth do so because, in their view, its necessary concomitant is absent. They say, “Were He to be seen, such-and-such would necessarily follow; but that necessary consequence is absent, so what entails it must also be absent.”

The general response to such fallacious arguments is to reject one of the two premises, either specifically or without specifying which one, for either one of them or both must necessarily be false (2). Frequently, the expression used in both premises is ambiguous: it is valid in one respect and invalid in another. They have based their proof on that ambiguous expression, which logicians call the middle term. The expression yields a true proposition in one premise when understood in one sense, and in the other premise when understood in a different sense. Yet because the expression is ambiguous, a person may suppose—owing to the ambiguity of the wording and the confusion between the meanings—that the meaning intended in one premise is the same as that intended in the other, when this is not so.

An example of this in the question of seeing Allah] (3) [is that he be asked] (4): “By ‘direction,’ do you mean a positive reality or a privative one?”