Avicenna’s imagined adult

Use in the book

Ficino attributes to Avicenna’s sixth book of Natural Philosophy an imagined adult created instantaneously without apprehending anything through the five senses. The subject is not an infant gradually deprived of impressions. Immediate maturity removes the bodily disturbance Ficino’s earlier developmental account assigns to childhood, while sensory isolation removes the occupations that normally distract mind. This is an imagined alternative education, not a report of an observed person or a direction to induce sensory deprivation.

The absence of sensation is not itself the positive object thought. The soul’s own substance remains present to mind and supplies something intelligible. The imagined subject consequently thinks that substance without calling it coloured, long, broad, sounding or fragrant, because no sense has furnished those predicates. What first offers itself to intuition is its own essence. It affirms that it exists, and Ficino’s version then draws the further conclusion that it is incorporeal. The steps should remain separate: exclusion of sensory predicates, positive self-affirmation and interpretation of the affirmed essence are not one identical proposition.

VI.2.13 tests an objection: the isolated mind might deny that it is one of our familiar bodies but invent some body of an unfamiliar nature. Ficino replies first through an account of imagination. Even people experienced in many bodies devise new things by combining or eliciting what encountered bodies supply. A mind without such experience lacks the materials for fabricating an entirely unfamiliar corporeal nature. He then adds a different point about identification: even if it could conceive a member of its body, it would not thereby include that member in the substance whose existence it already affirms. The experiment does not claim that the person has no body; an adult bodily constitution is part of its premise. It distinguishes that constitution from the content of immediate self-knowledge.

The argument then explicitly supplies a warrant for trusting the distinction. What is affirmed and what is not affirmed are different; and the judgement follows the soul’s unadulterated nature, rather than images acquired externally. Ficino therefore calls it thoroughly natural and utterly true. That premise must stay visible. The inference from absence of corporeal self-predication to actual incorporeality should not be presented as if it required no philosophical account of natural judgement.

Finally, the imagined person awakens into ordinary sensation. Because self-awareness came first, this person would retain an easier path to inward contemplation than those who encountered bodies before considering themselves. The comparison returns the experiment to the chapter’s diagnosis of habituation: ordinary people mistake the bodily conditions of early cognition for the full nature of the cognizing subject. VI.2.14 expressly calls the preceding narrative educatio ficta before introducing Plato’s cave. It serves the preliminary weakening of corporealist disbelief and is not silently interchangeable with a different familiar version of Avicenna’s flying-man argument.

Places to read

1. VI.2.12The adult’s immediate self-affirmation is staged without sensory predicates.
2. VI.2.13The unfamiliar-body objection is answered and natural judgement is explicitly defended.

Translation in this edition

This is Ficino’s report and development of the experiment, translated from his Latin. It should not be replaced by another standard version of Avicenna’s “flying man.” The apparatus records the correction pervidere, “see through/discern fully,” at the end of VI.2.13.

aetas perfecta

aetas perfecta. Printed forms: aetate adulta; aetate perfecta.

Perfected or adult age. The imagined person is mature immediately, removing the bodily disturbance Ficino assigns to childhood cognition. References: VI.2.12. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

affirmare esse

affirmare esse. Printed forms: affirmabit esse se ipsam; esse se prorsus incorporalem.

To affirm one’s existence, then one’s incorporeality. The second inference depends on Ficino’s account of uncorrupted natural judgement, not solely the first assertion. References: VI.2.12. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

affirmare; asserere; asseverare

affirmare; asserere; asseverare. Printed forms: affirmabit; affirmare; affirmari; affirmat; affirmatur; affirmetur; asseras; asseres; asseri; asserit; asseritur; asseverabimus; asseverabit; asseveraret.

To affirm, assert or maintain a proposition. The verbs can introduce an opponent’s hypothesis, the imagined adult’s self-affirmation, or Ficino’s own inference; who asserts and under what condition determines the force. References: VI.1.1, VI.2.8, VI.2.12, VI.2.13, VI.5.2, VI.5.4, VI.8.5, VI.12.4, VI.12.6, VI.12.7. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

apprehendere

apprehendere. Printed forms: apprehendat; apprehendit.

To receive or grasp cognitively. The senses supply no qualities, while the soul’s own substance remains available to thought. References: VI.2.12. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

Avicenna; educatio ficta

Avicenna; educatio ficta. Printed forms: Avicenna; Avicenna narravisse; educationem fictam.

Avicenna and the imagined upbringing attributed to him. The thought experiment is Ficino’s version, not silently a replacement with another account of the flying man. References: VI.2.12, VI.2.14. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

cogitare; considerare

cogitare; considerare. Printed forms: cogitabit; cogitare; Cogitate; cogitatio; cogitatione; considerare; considerarent; consideratione; considerationem.

To think, conceive or consider, including deliberately staged thought experiments. A point separated in thought is distinguished from real release, and the imagined adult’s self-consideration is compared with ordinary acquired habits. References: VI.2.10, VI.2.12, VI.2.13, VI.2.19, VI.2.20, VI.2.25. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

esse; existere

esse; existere. Printed forms: esse; existere; existit.

Being or to be; existing. Affirming one’s being in the Avicennian experiment differs from predicating corporeal qualities; giving substantial being to members differs from merely moving them. References: VI.2.9, VI.2.12, VI.2.23, VI.9.2. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

expergisci

expergisci. Printed forms: expergiscatur.

To awaken into ordinary sensory life. After sensory isolation the imagined adult would retain an easier route toward self-contemplation than ordinary upbringing provides. References: VI.2.13. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

fingere; machinari; effingere

fingere; machinari; effingere. Printed forms: effingere; fingere; machinari.

To imagine, devise and fashion a conception. The objection that the isolated soul invents an unfamiliar body is answered by restricting imaginative construction to prior materials. References: VI.2.13. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

intuitus; essentia

intuitus; essentia. Printed forms: ipsius essentia; primo offeretur intuitu.

Immediate presentation to awareness; the soul’s own essence. The isolated mind first affirms its existence without attaching sensory predicates. References: VI.2.12. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

naturale iudicium

naturale iudicium. Printed forms: iudicium naturale.

A judgement following unadulterated nature rather than acquired external images. Ficino expressly gives this as the warrant for the thought experiment’s conclusion about soul. References: VI.2.13. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

pervidere

pervidere. Printed forms: pervidere.

To discern fully or see through an obscuring condition. The printed correction concerns the ordinary soul’s inability to see itself apart from bodily contamination. References: VI.2.13. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

Avicenna (authorities and interlocutors)

Avicenna. Ficino recounts an imagined adult created without sensory experience and argues from self-affirmation. His further inference to incorporeality relies on the truth of an uncorrupted natural judgement. The account is explained as printed rather than replaced by another familiar version of the experiment. References: VI.2.12, VI.2.13, VI.2.14. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.

Avicenna, Natural Philosophy, book VI (explicitly named works)

Avicenna, Natural Philosophy, book VI. The source explicitly names this work in introducing the imagined adult without sensory experience. The subsequent reply and the comparison with Plato develop Ficino’s local presentation, rather than replacing it with another version of the experiment. References: VI.2.12, VI.2.13, VI.2.14. See Avicenna’s imagined adult.