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

I say:
The answer is: Do you recognize the impossibility of
connecting the eternal Will with the temporal production of
anything, through the necessity of intuitive thought or
through a logical deduction, or-to use your own logical
terminology-do you recognize the clash between these two
concepts through a middle term or without a middle term? If
you claim a middle term-and this is the deductive methodyou
will have to produce it, and if you assert that you know
this through the necessity of thought, why do your
adversaries not share this intuition with you? For the party
which believes in the creation of the world in time through an
eternal Will includes so many persons that no country can
contain them and no number enumerate them, and they
certainly do not contradict the logically minded out of
obstinacy, while knowing better in their hearts. A proof
according to the rules of logic must be produced to show this
impossibility, as in all your arguments up till now there is only
a presumption of impossibility and a comparison with our
decision and our will; and this is false, for the eternal Will
does not resemble temporal volitions, and a pure
presumption of impossibility will not suffice without proof.
This argument is one of those which have only a very feeble persuasive
power. It amounts to saying that one who claims the impossibility of delay
in an effect, when its cause with all its conditions is realized, must assert
that he knows this either by a syllogism or from first principles; if through a
syllogism, he must produce it-but there is none; if from first principles, it
must be known to all, adversaries and others alike. But this argument is
mistaken, for it is not a condition of objective truth that it should be known
to all. That anything should be held by all does not imply anything more
than its being a common notion, just as the existence of a common notion
does not imply objective truth.
Ghazali answers on behalf of the Ash’arites:
If it is said, ‘We know by the necessity of thought that,
when all its conditions are fulfilled, a cause without effect is
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