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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Avicenna on the Soul’s Activity in Perception

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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.