The weakness of this is clear as was mentioned in the seventeenth lesson.

The weakness of this is clear as was mentioned in the seventeenth lesson. There is no doubt at all that the intellect, after imagining the subject and predicate of self-evident propositions, automatically and without need for experience, definitively judges their unity. Those who have raised doubts about this proposition either have not correctly imagined the subject and predicate or are affected with a kind of illness or scruples.

But our discussion pertains to the following: whether this so-called innate kind of understanding is requisite of the way in which man’s intellect has been created, so that it would be possible for the intellect of another existent (for example, the intellect of a jinn) to understand the very same propositions but in another form, or if man’s intellect were created in another way would it understand matters in a different form, or whether these understandings correspond perfectly to reality and are representatives of things in themselves, and any other existent which also had an intellect would understand the same forms.

Plainly, what it means for intellectual knowledge to have real value and to be true is the latter, but its mere innateness (assuming that it is here interpreted in the correct way) does not prove the matter. On the other hand, empiricists hold that the standard for the truth of knowledge is capability of being proved by means of experience, and some of them have added that it must be proved by practical experience.

However, it is clear that first of all this standard is only applicable to sensory things and cases which are susceptible to practical experience. Matters of logic and pure mathematics cannot be evaluated by this standard. Secondly, the results of sensory and practical experience must be understood by means of acquired knowledge. Exactly the same question will be repeated regarding what guarantees the correctness of acquired knowledge, and by what standard can its truth be distinguished.

Inquiry into a Problem The main point of difficulty regarding acquired knowledge is how it can be determined when there is correspondence, while it is this very form of cognition and acquired knowledge that serves as the means of our relation to the external world!

Therefore, the key to this problem must be sought where we are able to have an overview of both the form of understanding and that which is concomitant with it and we can understand their correspondence by presence and without any other intermediary.