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

universals must, by admitting in His knowledge a plurality of species,
conclude that a plurality of individuals and a plurality of conditions of one
and the same individual is permissible for His knowledge, is a sophistical
objection. For the knowledge of individuals is sensation or imagination,
and the knowledge of universals is intellect, z and the new occurrence of
individuals or conditions of individuals causes two things, a change and a
plurality in the perception; whereas knowledge of species and genera
does not imply a change, since the knowledge of them is invariable and
they are unified in the knowledge which comprehends them, and
universality and individuality only agree in their forming a plurality.
And his statement that those philosophers who assume one simple
knowledge, which comprehends genera and species without there existing
in it a plurality and diversity which the differentiation and diversity of the
species and genera would imply, will have also to admit one simple
knowledge which will comprehend different individuals and different
conditions of one and the same individual, is like saying that if there is an
intellect which comprehends species and genera, and this intellect is one,
there must be one simple genus which comprehends different individuals;
and this is a sophism, since the term ‘knowledge’ is predicated equivocally
of divine and human knowledge of the universal and the individual. But his
remark that the plurality of species and genera causes a plurality in the
knowledge is true, and the most competent philosophers therefore do not
call God’s knowledge of existents either universal or individual, for
knowledge which implies the concepts of universal and individual is a
passive intellect and an effect, whereas the First Intellect is pure act and a
cause, and His knowledge cannot be compared to human knowledge; for
in so far as God does not think other things as being other than Himself
His essence is not passive knowledge, and in so far as He thinks them as
being identical with His essence, His essence is active knowledge. ‘
And the summary of their doctrine is that, since they ascertained by
proofs that God thinks only Himself, His essence must of necessity be
intellect. And as intellect, in so far as it is intellect, can only be attached to
what exists, not to what does not exist, and it had been proved that there
is no existent but those existents which we think, it was necessary that His
intellect should be attached to them, since it was not possible that it
should be attached to non-existence and there is no other kind of existent
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