Psychology

These considerations lead us to the question of what precisely cognition is, and hence into the realm of psychology or rather, the theory of the rational soul. The fullest account of this topic can be found in Avicenna’s On the Soul (Ft l-nafs). It involves two aspects, namely his concept of intuition, and his notion of abstraction, the crucial relationship of which remains a matter of controversy. To discuss these two aspects, some general remarks on Avicenna’s concept of the soul are required. First, there is his distinction of supra-lunar and sub-lunar souls, where the former belong to the spheres of the planets and stars and are therefore discussed in the context of cosmology (in particular, Metaphysics, IX). It is the latter, however, which are at issue here. Sub-lunar souls are of three different kinds, corresponding to the hierarchy of animate beings: plants possess vegetative souls, animals, sensible souls, and humans, rational souls. These kinds of sub-lunar souls are nevertheless related, insofar as the ‘‘higher’’ kind possesses all the faculties of the ‘‘lower.’’ As a result an animal, e. g., is not only gifted with senses such as smell, hearing and vision, but also with vegetative functions, namely, growing, nutrition, and aging. Consequently, any ‘‘higher’’ soul, although it will simply be called a ‘‘sensible soul’’ or ‘‘rational soul,’’ enfolds not only its ‘‘own’’ faculties but also the ‘‘lower’’ ones. The highest faculty obtainable in the sublunar world is the human intellect, and this is precisely the entity which is able to acquire knowledge.

In the fifth book of his On the Soul, Avicenna addresses the question of how man can attain knowledge. As mentioned above, he interprets cognition as a movement from the known to the unknown, which however presupposes something known as the starting point of the whole enterprise. This problem is resolved by Avicenna’s theory of the four stages of the human intellect, which he introduces in the first book (On the Soul, I v:48-50; Lat.:96.37-99.78; cf. Hasse 1999:28-40). There he distinguishes between (1) the material intellect (‘aql hayulant.; intellectus materialis), (2) the intellect in habit (‘aql bi-l-malaka; intellectus in habitu), (3) the intellect in effect (‘aql bi-l-fi‘l; intellectus in effectu), and (4) the acquired intellect (‘aql mustafad; intellectus accomodatus). Accordingly, at a very early stage of life, man’s intellect (which is at that time the material intellect) is endowed with the so-called primary concepts and primary principles (it remains unclear from where these primary intelligibles derive; usually their origin is assumed to be the external active

Intellect; for this latter, see below). Whereas primary concepts are notions such as the existent, the one, the thing, etc. (i. e., transcendentalia), primary principles are first axioms such as ‘‘the whole is bigger than its part,’’ or (p A — p).’’ Both these concepts and principles are required to obtain further concepts, the so-called secondary intelligibles, and to draw conclusions. Once the human intellect has acquired these first concepts and principles, it can begin the process of learning. At this stage, the human intellect is called ‘‘intellect in habit,’’ which merely designates its capacity to acquire further knowledge. The remaining stages - the intellect in effect and the acquired intellect - do not strictly refer to evolutionary phases, but rather to the intellect’s actual state: whether it has already acquired secondary intelligibles (intellect in effect), and whether it actually intelligizes, as well as to what extent it still requires support from the lower faculties of the soul in order to get in contact with the active intellect (acquired intellect).

For man to cognize (i. e., cognition of the causes), he must be able to find syllogisms to verify newly obtained pieces of knowledge. Since the latter, according to Avicenna, form the conclusions of such syllogisms, man’s primary task consists in finding the appropriate middle terms. On the one hand, this model clearly reveals the strong connection between logic and the process of acquiring knowledge mentioned above; it also explains the abundance of logical procedures in Avicenna’s writings. On the other hand it leads us to the core of his theories of intuition and abstraction. To detect the middle terms of syllogisms, our intellects, according to Avicenna, must come into contact with the active intellect mentioned earlier, which is the lowest of the cosmological intellects. This cosmological entity in turn bestows the human intellect with the secondary intelligibles it seeks, a process also described in terms of emanation and influx. It is precisely this form of knowledge acquisition to which Avicenna refers when he speaks of intuition (particularly, On the Soul, V vi; Gutas 1988:159-176).

However this is only one side of the schema introduced above. For since Avicenna interprets the acquisition of knowledge as the detection of the causes of a piece of knowledge, this process must in fact take the conclusion (ofa syllogism) as its starting-point and then proceed with the search for a middle term. It is at this point that Avicenna’s theory of abstraction comes into play (particularly, On the Soul, I v:44-45; Lat.:87.19-90.60). In contrast to intuition, this is a bottom-up procedure, which typically begins with sense-data and is accomplished in concert with the five internal senses, which belong to the sensible faculty of the soul. In the human soul, these internal senses (a doctrine that clearly originates with Avicenna) differ from those of animals in that one of them possesses additional capacities. More precisely, whereas both animals and humans share common sense, estimation, imagination (which is, rather different from what the term implies, a mere storage place for ‘‘images’’ of perceived things), and memory, they differ in that the imaginative faculty (the faculty for producing new ‘‘images’’) in human souls is further endowed with a cogitative function. By virtue of this sense, man is able to compose and divide individual forms or intentions perceived by either the external senses or the estimation, as well as reveal similarities and differences or, more generally, detect the relationships between these forms. In so doing, the cogitative faculty transforms individually perceived forms or intentions into particular forms (i. e., forms abstracted from certain material accidents adhering to individual forms), which must however be sharply distinguished from universal concepts (i. e., completely abstract forms, or universals). Meanwhile, these particular forms are precisely that missing link which man requires at the outset to produce syllogisms and thus attain knowledge.

Hence, despite the ongoing debate regarding the exact nature of the relationship between this ‘‘emanative’’ intuition and ‘‘empirical’’ abstraction, we may read Avicenna as follows: knowledge has as its starting point the sensory perceptible world. From this world are abstracted particular forms or intentions, which in the first instance are simple conceptions. To attain knowledge in the strict sense, we must now find a syllogism. As we already possess the primary concepts and principles, our task thus consists in revealing the necessary middle terms. However, these middle terms, according to Avicenna’s description, are received from the active intellect through influx. Meanwhile, for such an influx to occur, man, by virtue of his cogitative faculty, must present the particular form mentioned earlier to the active intellect. If the particular form is ‘‘exposed in the right way’’ (i. e., muqabil; recte opposito; On the Soul, V v:235; Lat.:128.61) to the active intellect, then the latter is like a source oflight shining upon it, such that the human intellect is able to grasp the corresponding universal form. Hence, taken as a whole, the acquisition of knowledge appears to be the result of the collaboration of two processes. It is characterized by a bottom-up abstraction of particular forms by the human soul, and the top-down emanation of universal concepts by the active intellect, at the interface of which cogitation is located and performs its activity, i. e., abstracting particular forms and exposing them in the correct way. Only at a later stage of human life, when one has already acquired a sufficient number of intelligibles, can one dispense with abstraction and concentrate upon construing syllogisms that consist exclusively of universal concepts (i. e., with the conclusion included).