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Background
Background
Since Muhammad (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ), Islam has had a proud history of academic study in all different areas but especially mathematics, medicine, physics and philosophy. After Muhammad (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ) the Islamic empire expanded all across the middle east, north Africa and into Spain. And at a time when many philosophical texts of Ancient Greece and Rome had been destroyed by over-zealous Christian leaders, the Muslims kept copies of the works of, for example, Aristotle, that would otherwise have been lost. (Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, for example, who we learned about as part of the Nestorian Controversy was a keen book-burner). The first University, the University of al-Qarawiyyin, was set up in Morroco and became the model for the Medieval Universities of Europe, and cities such as Cordoba became melting pots of ideas, mixing Muslim, Jewish, and Christian ideas with those of ancient Greece, eventually leading to the reintroduction of Aristotle into Europe.
Ibn Sina, or Avicenna as the Europeans called him, was born in 980 in a village near Bukhara, now in Uzbekhistan.
Ibn Sina was, by all accounts, a very clever child who became better at logic, philosophy, and medicine than his teachers. Even as a teenager, he was such a good doctor that he became known to the Samanid ruler Nuh ibn Mansur, and was given the use of his magnificent library.
Ibn Sina spent his life in service of various princes as a doctor and a political adviser.
He went on to write more than 200 texts, on subjects as diverse as metaphysics, animal physiology, mechanics of solids, and Arabic syntax.
The Flying Man argument
The Flying Man argument
In the Flying man argument, Avicenna asks us each to imagine this:
One of us must suppose that he was just created at a stroke, fully developed and perfectly formed but with his vision shrouded from perceiving all external objects – created floating in the air or in the space, not buffeted by any perceptible current of the air that supports him, his limbs separated and kept out of contact with one another, so that they do not feel each other. Then let the subject consider whether he would affirm the existence of his self. There is no doubt that he would affirm his own existence, although not affirming the reality of any of his limbs or inner organs, his bowels, or heart or brain or any external thing. Indeed he would affirm the existence of this self of his while not affirming that it had any length, breadth or depth. And if it were possible for him in such a state to imagine a hand or any other organ, he would not imagine it to be a part of himself or a condition of his existence.
— Ibn Sina, De Anima , Being the Psychological Part of Kitab Al-ShifaWe can formulate Ibn Sina's argument as follows:
The Flying Man is conscious of the existence of his soul without being conscious of the existence of his body.
The Flying Man affirms the existence of his soul without affirming the existence of his body.
Rejecting the existence of his soul is unimaginable, since it is necessary for his existence.
But rejecting the existence of his body is plausible, since it is not a necessary condition of his existence.
Ibn Sina's conclusion from this is that the body is an inessential part of the person, whereas their soul is essential. Let's think about another example. If I want draw a triangle, it doesn't matter whether I draw a red or a blue triange - the colour is inessential. It does matter, however, whether I give the triangle three sides - the number of sides the shape has is essential.
Tasks
Tasks
Explain Ibn Sina’s flying man thought experiment in your own words, and explain what the thought experiment is meant to show.
Write down one objection to Ibn Sina’s thought experiment.
Do you find the flying man argument convincing? Do you think that the mind is separate from the body?
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