Abstract
Certain famous innovations notwithstanding, Avicenna’s cognitive psychology is Peripatetic in its principles. In particular, he holds that sense perception is best explained as a process in which the five senses passively receive their proper percepts from an external object. This general framework, however, leaves considerable room for the soul’s other cognitive faculties (the internal senses and the intellect) to make their contribution. The present article studies three case examples: the production of experienced temporal duration in the common sense, the incidental perception of an object as something, which Avicenna conceives as the result of the co-operation of the internal senses under the governance of the estimative faculty, and the perception of so-called vague individuals, that is, objects that are perceived but the true essence of which remains undetermined to the perceiving subject. Investigation of these cases yields the conclusion that in spite of his Peripatetic convictions, Avicenna does attribute the soul with a considerable degree of activity in the production of its cognitive objects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For a general overview, see Hasse (2000, pp. 4–12, 229–233); for a more detailed account, the entire section I.
- 2.
Ibid., 230.
- 3.
- 4.
Avicenna (1959), I.5, 43–44. I will subsequently refer to this edition as Shifā’: Fī al-nafs, followed by the numbers of book and chapter, and the relevant page.
- 5.
The translation of this ambiguous and difficult term is a matter of debate. The medieval Latin translators opted for intentio which has persisted up to our time. For criticisms of this translation and suggestions for alternatives, see Gyekye (1971, pp. 32–38), and Hasse (2000, pp. 127–141). The use of intentio and its modern equivalent is defended in Black (2010).
- 6.
It is unclear to me why Avicenna does not think that an active faculty capable of having two types of object does not violate his first principle of distinction. I will, however, set this question aside as inconsequential for the purposes of this paper.
- 7.
Unlike in the case of “imagery” and “formative faculty”, here the two terms are not synonymous. Avicenna thinks that imagination/cogitation is one faculty, but since its action is governed by different faculties in non-human and human animals (by estimation and intellect, respectively) it should be referred to by two correspondingly different names.
- 8.
This account is from Shifā’: Fī al-nafs I.5, 43–45. Slightly divergent classifications can be found in the Najāt, the Maqāla fī al-nafs and the Qānūn fī al-ṭibb. For a discussion and tentative explanation of the divergences, see Wolfson (1973, pp. 276–282).
- 9.
Cf. also Avicenna’s description of the functioning of the internal senses in Shifā’: Fī al-nafs IV.1, 163–165, which strongly suggests that in most cases they operate as a system.
- 10.
Cf. the discussion of common sense in Shifā’: Fī al-nafs III.7, 141–142; and IV.1, 163–165.
- 11.
Shifā’: Fī al-nafs I.5, 44–45. Cf. Avicenna (1892), III, 123–124. I will subsequently refer to this edition as Ishārāt, followed by the numbers of section (namaṭ) and page, respectively.
- 12.
Avicenna has just mentioned the persistence of the Sun’s image in vision after one has gazed at it.
- 13.
Shifā’: Fī al-nafs III.7, 142–143. All translations from the Arabic are my own. The replacement of the tip of an oblong object with the point on a wheel is trivial for our concerns, but the fact that the passage relates the familiar examples not to the common sense but to the imagery and the imagination is more crucial. I will come back to this discrepancy in the concluding remarks to this paper.
- 14.
- 15.
Given that the two sections of the Shifā’ were likely composed relatively close to each other, see Gutas [1988, pp. 103–106]; cp., however, Michot [1997, pp. 157–161], there is little ground for a developmental reading. Hasnawi (2001, p. 231) suggests, not entirely implausibly, that the difference in accounts is because in the section on physics Avicenna is only concerned with showing that movement as temporal duration is a mental phenomenon in a general sense, for which concern psychological details will be of relatively slight importance. Arguably then, the psychological section would be Avicenna’s final word on how exactly time is constituted. The problem is that the psychological section, as we have seen, is ambiguous in this regard, one of the two passages being coherent with this passage from the physical section. Again, I will suggest a tentative solution in the concluding remarks.
- 16.
Shifā’: al-Samā‘ al-ṭabī‘iyy II.13, 258.
- 17.
Shifā’: Fī al-nafs I.5, 45. The somewhat inelegant translation of maḥsūsāt is intended in order not to lose sight of the perfect tense in the participle.
- 18.
Cf. Shifā’: Fī al-nafs IV.3, 183–184. Indeed, Hasse (2000, pp. 136–139) accuses Avicenna for trying to incorporate too wide a range of phenomena into his theory of estimation, which according to Hasse, is first and foremost a theory of instinctual behavior. Constraints of space do not allow a full assessment for Hasse’s revisionist interpretation here, but see n. 27 below.
- 19.
For the latter example, see Shifā’: Fī al-nafs I.5, 45.
- 20.
For a discussion of this aspect of estimation, see Kaukua and Kukkonen (2007).
- 21.
This is a reference to the natural or instinctive functioning of estimation.
- 22.
Shifā’: Fī al-nafs IV.3, 184–185.
- 23.
Shifā’: Fī al-nafs IV.1, 166.
- 24.
Black (1993, pp. 225–226).
- 25.
Ibid., 225–226. Notice that this is not Black’s final view (for which see 226–227), which recognizes a role for estimation that is comparable to that proposed here.
- 26.
Cf. Shifā’: Fī al-nafs IV.2, 169–173, 179–180.
- 27.
In my interpretation Avicenna will also be immune to the kind of accusations of incoherence Hasse (2000, pp. 136–139) directs at him. One of the most serious drawbacks of Hasse’s interpretation is precisely the fact that he has to judge so much of Avicenna’s explicit discussion as nothing but unfortunate additions to his “core theory”.
- 28.
Shifā’: Fī al-nafs IV.3, 182–183.
- 29.
Cf. Ishārāt III, 125.
- 30.
Shifā’: al-Samā‘ al-ṭabī‘iyy I.1, 3–6. This is because the more common or general is a part of the definition of the more specific, which means that knowledge of it is required in knowing the more specific.
- 31.
Shifā’: al-Samā‘ al-ṭabī‘iyy I.1, 7.
- 32.
Shifā’: al-Samā al-ṭabī‘iyy I.1, 8. Avicenna’s second example is of course rather implausible, perhaps he did not spend much time with infants. However, if we forgive him the somewhat unfortunate example, the point is clear: it is by learning that we become able to make distinctions between the individual objects of our perception, both between objects belonging to different species and objects within the same species.
- 33.
Shifā’: al-Samā‘ al-ṭabī‘iyy I.1, 9.
- 34.
Of course the second case is also related to the question of the soul’s activity in perception. However, since I believe it can be treated as a case of incidental perception, I will not dwell on it at any greater length here.
- 35.
Avicenna discusses the two senses of “vague individual” in an order reverse to ours.
- 36.
Shifā’: al-Samā‘ al-ṭabī‘iyy I.1, 9.
- 37.
Black (2011).
- 38.
Avicenna (1954), IV.10, 206.
- 39.
As suggested in Shifā’: Fī al-nafs III.7 and Shifā’: al-Samā‘ al-ṭabī‘iyy II.1.
- 40.
As suggested in Shifā’: Fī al-nafs I.5.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Avicenna. (1892). J. Forget (Ed.), Le Livre des théorèmes et des avertissements publié d’après les mss de Berlin, de Leyde, et d’Oxford. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Avicenna. (1954). A. Badawī (Ed.), Abū ‘Alī ibn Sīnā: al-Burhān min Kitāb al-Shifā’. Cairo: Maktaba al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya.
Avicenna. (1959). F. Rahman (Ed.), Avicenna’s De anima (Arabic Text): Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al-shifā’. London: Oxford University Press.
Avicenna. (2009). J. McGinnis (Ed.), Avicenna: The physics of the healing. Al-Shifā’: al-Samā’ al-á¹abī‘iyy (2 vols). Provo: Brigham Young University Press.
Secondary Sources
Black, D. L. (1993). Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The logical and psychological dimensions. Dialogue, 32, 219–258.
Black, D. L. (2000). Imagination and estimation: Arabic paradigms and Western transformations. Topoi, 19, 59–75.
Black, D. L. (2010). Intentionality in medieval Arabic Philosophy. Quaestio, 10, 65–81.
Black, D. L. 2011. Avicenna’s ‘vague individual’ and its impact on medieval Latin Philosophy. In C. Fraenkel, J. Fumo, F. Wallis, & R. Wisnovsky (Eds.), Vehicles of Transmission, Translation and Transformation in Medieval Textual Culture (pp. 259–292). Turnhout: Brepols.
Gutas, D. 1988. Avicenna and the Aristotelian tradition: Introduction to reading Avicenna’s philosophical works. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Gyekye, K. (1971). The terms ‘Prima Intentio’ and ‘Secunda Intentio’ in Arabic logic. Speculum, 46, 32–38.
Hasnawi, A. (2001). La Définition du mouvement dans la Physique du Šifā’ d’Avicenne. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 11, 219–255.
Hasse, D. N. 2000. Avicenna’s De anima in the Latin West: The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul 1160–1300. London & Turin: The Warburg Institute and Nino Aragno Editore.
Kaukua, J., & Kukkonen, T. (2007). Sense perception and self-awareness: Before and after Avicenna. In S. Heinämaa, V. Lähteenmäki, & P. Remes (Eds.), Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy (pp. 95–119). Dordrecht: Springer.
McGinnis, J. (2010). Avicenna. New York: Oxford University Press.
Michot, J. R. (1997). La Réponse d’Avicenne à Bahmanyâr et al-Kirmânî: Présentation, traduction critique et lexique arabe-français de la Mubâḥatha III. Le Muséon, 110, 143–221.
Rahman, F. (1952). Avicenna’s Psychology: An English Translation of Kitāb al-najāt, Book II, Chapter VI with Historico-philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition.. London: Oxford University Press.
Wolfson, H. A. (1973). The internal senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew philosophical texts. In H. A. Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (pp. 250–314). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kaukua, J. (2014). Avicenna on the Soul’s Activity in Perception. In: Silva, J., Yrjönsuuri, M. (eds) Active Perception in the History of Philosophy. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04360-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04361-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)