Do animals have a self? A possible response from Avicenna’s philosophy of mind
Abstract
In several passages from his psychological works Avicenna suggests that non-human animals have a self. Here I argue that from the Avicennian description of perception, there are strong reasons to suspect that non-human animals have a self: their natural self-preservation impulse, the familiarity they have with their own body, their capacity to move towards what they perceive as convenient and to avoid what is dangerous according to their own circumstances, and the way each one relates to the world, are behaviors that, as will be shown, would require the presence of a self.Downloads
References
Aristóteles (1978), Acerca del alma, Madrid, Gredos.
Avicena (1985), Kitāb al-Najāt, edición de Majid Fakhry, Beirut, Dar al-´Afaq al-Jadidah.
Avicena (1972), Liber de anima seu Sextus de naturalibus (I-II-III), edición de S. van Riet, Louvain/ Leiden, E. Peeters/E. J. Brill.
Avicena (1959), Avicenna’s De anima, Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al- Shifā´, edición de F. Rahman, Londres, Oxford University Press.
Avicena (1956), al-Šifā´ (Mathèmatiques. 3. Musique) (Jauāmi` `ilm el-mūsiqā), edición de Zakariyya Yousef, El Cairo, Imprimérie Nationale.
Avicena (1952), Avicenna’s Psychology, traducción de F. Rahman, Londres, Oxford University Press.
Avicena (1947), Mubāhathāt (Discusiones), edición de A. Rafi Badawi, El Cairo, Maktaba al-Nahadan al-Masriya.
Avicena (1892), al-Isāhrāt wa al-Tanbīhāt (Observaciones y advertencias), edición de J. Forget, Leiden, Jacobus Forget Publisher.
Black, Deborah (2008), “Avicenna on self-awareness and knowing that one knows”, en Shahid Rahman, Tony Street y Hassa Tahiri (eds.), The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 63-87.
Black, Deborah (2000), “Imagination and estimation: Arabic paradigms and western transformations”, Topoi, vol. 19, núm. 1, pp. 59-75.
Black, Deborah (1993), “Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The logical and psychological dimensions”, Dialogue, vol. XXXII, núm. 2, pp. 212-258.
Dennett, Daniel (1983), “Intentional systems in cognitive ethology: The ‘panglossian paradigm’ defended”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 6, núm. 3, pp. 343-390.
Druart, Thérèse-Anne (1988), “The soul and body problem: Avicenna and Descartes”, en Thérèse-Anne Druart (ed.), Arabic Philosophy and the West: Continuity and Interaction, Washington D. C., Center for Contemporary Arab Studies-Georgetown University, pp. 27-48.
Hasse, Dag Nikolaus (2000), Avicenna’s De anima in the Latin West. The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul, 1160-1300, Londres/Turín, The Warburg Institute/Nino Aragno Editore.
Kaukua, Jari (2007), Avicenna on Subjectivity, Jyväskylä, University of Jyväskylä.
Kaukua, Jari y Taneli Kukkonen (2007), “Sense-perception and self-awareness: Before and after Avicenna”, en Sara Heinämaa, Vili Lähteenmäki y Pauliina Remes (eds.), Consciousness. From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 95-119.
Lagerlund, Henrik (2007a), “Introduction: The mind/body problem and late medieval conceptions of the soul”, en Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Forming the Mind. Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 1-16.
Lagerlund, Henrik (2007b), “The terminological and conceptual roots of representation in the soul in late ancient and medieval philosophy”, en Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Representation and Objects of Thought in Medieval Philosophy, Hampshire, Ashgate, pp. 11-32.
López-Farjeat, Luis Xavier (2013), “Avicenna on musical perception”, en Luis Xavier López-Farjeat y Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp (eds.), Philosophical Psychology in Arabic Thought and the Latin Aristotelianism of the 13th Century, París, Vrin, pp. 83-110.
López-Farjeat, Luis Xavier (2012), “Self-awareness (al-shu´ūr bi-al-dhāt) in human and non-human animals in Avicenna’s psychological writings”, en Alejandro Vigo (ed.), Oikeiosis and the Natural Bases of Morality, Hildesheim, Georg Olms Verlag, pp. 121-140.
López-Farjeat, Luis Xavier (2010), “El conocimiento animal en Aristóteles y Avicena”, Acta Philosophica. Rivista Internazzionale di Filosofia, vol. 19, pp. 125-144.
López-Farjeat, Luis Xavier y Jorge Morales Ladrón de Guevara (2010), “El contenido cognitivo de la
percepción: Avicena y McDowell”, Thémata. Revista de Filosofía, núm. 42, pp. 251-270.
Marmura, Michael E. (1986), “Avicenna’s ‘flying man’ in context”, The Monist, vol. 69, núm. 3, julio,
pp. 383-395.
McDowell, John (1994), Mind and World, Cambridge, Estados Unidos, Harvard University Press.
Perler, Dominik (ed.) (2001), Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality, Leiden, Brill.
