DESCARTES AND AVICENNA ON THE SOUL-BODY PROBLEM A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Cem Türköz

ABSTRACT

In comparative studies between the Islamic and European traditions of philosophy, no two arguments have received more attention than Avicenna’s (d. 1037) Floating Man and Descartes’ (d. 1650) Cogito. This paper contributes to the rather extensive literature on this topic by revisiting these two arguments and offering novel insights into how they read in relation to each other. In contrast with much of the existing literature, this paper argues that doubt is not an exclusively Cartesian feature and also factors into Avicenna’s reasoning in the Floating Man. Next, it argues that the prevalent characterization of the Floating Man in the existing literature as a thought-experiment becomes problematic when this epithet is applied exclusively to the Floating Man. If a thought-experiment is defined as a process of reasoning carried out within the context of a well-articulated imaginary scenario, with the aim of confirming or denying a proposition, there seems to be no reason to suppose the Floating Man to be more or less ‘thought-experimental’ than the Cogito. Furthermore, the paper shows that the conclusions of the two arguments show more overlap than has typically been observed: three of the four conclusions reached in the Floating Man are in common with the Cogito. The overall methodology employed is that of descriptive philosophical criticism, but effort is made to read the authors in their own terms and proper historical and cultural contexts. Finally, the paper draws upon a range of primary material from both authors: For the Floating Man, the two sources used are Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Shifā’ and his Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa al-Tanbīhāt. For the Cogito, the discussion is limited to the only two works in which the argument makes a full appearance, which are Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.