Ibn Sina · Theology
Ibn Sina’s dazzling thought experiment - a man created in mid-air, in total sensory blankness, who would still be certain of his own self - six centuries before Descartes.
Ibn Sina asks you to imagine something impossible but illuminating. Suppose a fully grown man were created all at once, in a single instant - but in conditions of total sensory deprivation. He is suspended in empty air or a void, his limbs spread apart so they touch nothing and he feels no pressure; his eyes are veiled, he sees nothing; he hears, smells, tastes nothing; he has no memories, no prior experience of any kind. He floats in complete blankness, cut off from every sensation of the external world and even of his own body. Ibn Sina’s question: in this utter sensory void, would such a man be aware of anything?
Ibn Sina’s argument: if the Flying Man, in total sensory deprivation, is certain of his self while affirming nothing of his body, then the self he is certain of cannot be the body. For you cannot be certain that something exists while being entirely unaware of the thing - yet he is certain of his self while unaware of his body. The thing he affirms (the self, the soul) and the thing he does not affirm (the body) must therefore be distinct. The self is something other than the body, known directly and immediately from within, prior to and independent of any awareness of the physical. The soul, Ibn Sina concludes, is immaterial - and we know it not through the senses but through this immediate self-awareness.
The Flying Man reveals something distinctive about self-knowledge: that the self is known not as an object among other objects, perceived through the senses from outside, but immediately from within, by a direct self-presence that needs no senses at all. You do not discover your own existence by observing yourself the way you observe a tree; your self is given to you directly, prior to all perception, in the very act of being a self. This immediate, non-sensory self-awareness is, for Ibn Sina, the most certain knowledge there is - more certain than any knowledge of the external world, which depends on the fallible senses. The self knows itself with a certainty that needs no body and survives the loss of every sensation.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that Ibn Sina’s Flying Man would affirm his self while affirming no body. Reconstruct the thought experiment and what it’s meant to show, in your own words.
Leads to Rene Descartes.
Begin this lesson →epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.