User:Willraschkowan/Floating man

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Ibn Sina, a physician regarded as one of the greatest philosophers during medieval Islam.

Floating man, flying man or man suspended in air is a thought experiment created by Ibn Sina designed to argue in favor of the existence of the soul.[1] The expriment aims to explain the concept of an existential soul by presenting the idea of knowledge by presence.[2][3]

Contents[edit]

Background[edit][edit]

Ibn Sina allegedly wrote the argument while imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan, in the Iranian province of Hamadan.[4] [full citation needed] He reached the conclusion that the soul is immaterial and substantial. He also claimed that all humans cannot deny their own consciousness and awareness.[5] According to Ibn Sina, the floating man could attain the concept of being without any sense experience[6], meaning that one's awareness of themself is affirming their own existence. The relation between the existence of the self, and self-awareness, is investigated further in Ibn Sina’s al-Taʿliqāt. Sina asserts that to be a self is to be self-aware using the following arguments:

a) “When the self exists, self-awareness exists with it.”[7]

b) “For the existence of the self is the awareness of itself, and these concepts are both inextricable.”[7]

c) “Our awareness of our selves is itself our existence.” [7]

Concept[edit][edit]

The floating man argument is concerned with one who falls freely in the air. This subject knows himself, but not through any sense perception data. Floating or suspending refers to a state in which the subject thinks on the basis of his own reflection without any assistance from sense perception or any material body. This mind flutters over the abyss of eternity.[8] Sina points out a connection between "being a self" and "being aware of that which is a self". Therefore, if you are aware that you exist, you acknowledge yourself. In knowing something exists, you also are aware of yourself, due to the cognitive process of awareness. So, the awareness of oneself is present in every act of cognition.[7]

There are three primary stages that examine and observe the versions of Ibn Sina’s project, the floating man.

The main intention, the existential separability, describes the understanding of the reality of the human soul and the belief of its nature

While the existential separability, helps one comprehend the reality of a human soul and the belief, the conceptual separability answers the question to how a human self can form a thought without having one’s human body included

And finally, the last stage, "the awareness of awareness", describes that oneself is aware of something as well as one being aware of being aware of something.[9]

Premises of the argument[edit][edit]

According to Ibn Sina, we cannot deny the consciousness of the self. His argument is as follows:

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.

This argument relies on an introspective thought experiment. We have to suppose a man who comes into existence fully developed and formed, but he does not have any relation with sensory experience of the world or of his own body. There is no physical contact with the external world at all. According to Ibn Sina, this subject is, nonetheless, necessarily conscious of himself. In other words, such a being possesses the awareness of his own existence. He thereby believes that the soul has an unmediated and reflexive knowledge of its own existence.[10] Thus, appealing to self-consciousness, Ibn Sina tries to prove the existence of soul, or Nafs. This argument is not supported by the concept of substance in metaphysics. This experiential field shows that the self is not consequently a substance and thereby there is no subjectivity.[11][full citation needed] On the other hand some scholars like Wisnovsky believe that the flying man argument proved the substantiality of the soul.[12] Ibn Sina believes that innate awareness is completely independent of sensory experience.[13][full citation needed]

Floating man and Descartes's Cogito[edit][edit]

Before the French philosopher Descartes (1596–1650) pointed out the existence of the conscious self as a turning point in epistemology, using the phrase "Cogito ergo sum," the 11th century Islamic philosopher Ibn Sina had referred to the existence of consciousness in the flying man argument. Thus, long before Descartes, Ibn Sina had established an argument for the existence of knowledge by presence without any need for the existence of the body.[14]

There are two stances on the relationship between the arguments of Ibn Sina and Descartes. Some scholars believe that there are apparent similarities between the floating man and Descartes' cogito. Others consider these similarities trivial and superficial. Both Ibn Sina and Descartes believed that the soul and self are something other than sense data. Also, Ibn Sina believed that there is no relation logically between the self and the body. In other words, there is no logical dependency between them.[15]

Criticism[edit][edit]

Adamson thinks that the weakness in the argument is that, even if the flying man would be self-aware, the thought experiment does not prove that the soul is something distinct from the body.[16] One could argue that self-awareness is seated in the mind. In this case, in being self-aware the flying man is only aware because of his mind that is doing the experiencing, not because of a distinct soul. He just does not realize that the self-awareness is a property of his nervous system.[16] Although the title of the text was widely interpreted as “Flying Man”, Ahmed Alwishah believes that the right terminology is “Floating Man”, due to the verbs “yahwā in al-Nafs”, which translates to “fall down” and from the verb “muʿallaqa in al-Ishārāt” which signifies “Floating”. [7]

See also[edit][edit]

References[edit][edit]

  1. ^ Groff, Peter S. (2007). Islamic philosophy A-Z. Oliver Leaman. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-7486-2927-5. OCLC 163587110.
  2. ^ One hundred years of intuitionism (1907-2007) : the Cerisy conference. Markus Sebastiaan Paul Rogier van Atten, 1907-2007: one hundred years of intuitionism. Basel: Birkhauser. 2008. p. 121. ISBN 978-3-7643-8653-5. OCLC 304563691.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. ^ Goodman, Lenn Evan (1992). Avicenna. London: Routledge. p. 178. ISBN 0-415-24575-3. OCLC 45732626.
  4. ^ Ervin Reffner 2013, p. 13
  5. ^ Katherine A. A. Zupan (24 April 2012). Philosophy for Breakfast. Lulu.com. p. 31. ISBN 978-1-105-54677-8.
  6. ^ Augustine and philosophy. Phillip Cary, John Doody, Kim Paffenroth. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books. 2010. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-7391-4540-1. OCLC 1253438628.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  7. ^ a b c d e Alwishah, Ahmed (2013). "Ibn Sina on Floating Man Arguments" (PDF). https://pzacad.pitzer.edu. p. 53. Retrieved 27 October 2022. {{cite web}}: External link in |website= (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ Goodman, Lenn Evan (1992). Avicenna. London: Routledge. p. 160. ISBN 0-415-24575-3. OCLC 45732626.
  9. ^ Alwishah, Ahmed (2013). "Ibn Sīnā on Floating Man Arguments" (PDF). https://pzacad.pitzer.edu. p. 69. {{cite web}}: External link in |website= (help)
  10. ^ Groff, Peter S. (2007). Islamic philosophy A-Z. Oliver Leaman. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2927-5. OCLC 163587110.
  11. ^ Nader El-Bizri, pp. 149–150
  12. ^ Wisnovsky (2005). The Cambridge companion to Arabic philosophy. Peter Adamson, Richard C. Taylor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81743-9. OCLC 55008410.
  13. ^ Deborah L.Black, p. 138
  14. ^ Phenomenology of space and time. Book two, The forces of the cosmos and the ontopoietic genesis of life. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Wien. 3 February,2014. p. 155. ISBN 978-3-319-02039-6. OCLC 870645914. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: others (link)
  15. ^ Lé, Dan (2012). The Naked Christ : an Atonement Model for a Body-Obsessed Culture. La Vergne: Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-63087-027-0. OCLC 1088325761.
  16. ^ a b Adamson, Peter (2015). Philosophy in the Islamic world : a very short introduction. [Oxford]. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-19-178542-9. OCLC 935188207.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

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Article Draft[edit]

The floating man article has relavent content when it comes to the thought experiment, but it seems under-developed. Personally, I think the article should have a physicalist and dualist take on the experiment. The article is in fact neutral, but again they don't really argue for anything when it comes to the floating man experiment, they just state certain philosophers takes. What I find underdeveloped as well is one the history of the theory of the floating man came to be, the article briefly brushes over the history.

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Article body[edit]

References[edit]

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