Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

two existents which differ in an extreme degree, not cxistents which
participate in their species or genus, but which are totally unlike.
The second proof is that we know a thing through a single knowledge
and that we know that we know by a knowledge which is a condition in the
first knowledge, not an attribute additional to it, and the proof of this is that
otherwise there would arise an infinite series. Now Ghazali’s answer, that
this knowledge is a second knowledge and that there is no infinite series
here, is devoid of sense, for it is self-evident that this implies such a
series, and it does not follow from the fact that when a man knows a thing
but is not conscious that he knows the fact that he knows, that in the case
when lie knows that he knows, this second knowledge is an additional
knowledge to the first; no, the second knowledge is one of the conditions
of the first knowledge and its infinite regress is therefore not impossible; if,
however, it were a knowledge existing by itself and additional to the first
knowledge, an infinite series could not occur. ‘
As to the conclusion which the philosophers force upon the theologians,
that all the theologians recognize that God’s knowledge is infinite and that
at the same time it is one, this is an negumentum ad hominem, not an
objective argument based on the facts themselves. And from this there is
no escape for the theologians, unless they assume that the knowledge of
the Creator differs in this respect from the knowledge of the creature, and
indeed there is no one more ignorant than the man who believes that the
knowledge of God differs only quantitatively from the knowledge of the
creature, that is that He only possesses more knowledge. All these are
dialectical arguments, but one may be convinced of the fact that God’s
knowledge is one and that it is not an effect of the things known; no, it is
their cause, and a thing that has numerous causes is indeed manifold
itself, whereas a thing that has numerous effects need not be manifold in
the way that the effects form a plurality. And there is no doubt that the
plurality which exists in the knowledge of the creature must be denied of
God’s knowledge, just as any change through the change of the objects
known must be denied of Him, and the theologians assume this by one of
their fundamental principles. ‘ But the arguments which have been given
here are all dialectical arguments.
And as to his statement that his aim here is not to reach knowledge of
the truth but only to refute the theories of the philosophers and to reveal
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