Classical theologians debate whether the certainty obtained through tawātur should always be classified as necessary or can sometimes be called inferential. One approach emphasizes the assessment of multiple statements and their supporting conditions. Another emphasizes the immediate arising of knowledge when the report is adequately established.
The dispute principally concerns the manner of acquiring certainty, not an assertion that mutawātir testimony can never rise above conjecture.
A person may be certain of a widely known event before being able to articulate the complex grounds for that certainty. Later explaining how independent transmissions support it is distinct from claiming that a fully conscious formal proof had to precede the knowledge.