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Avicenna and Husserl on the Concept of Intentionality

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Avicenna and Husserl on the Concept of Intentionality

Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino

Florida Atlantic University

Presented at:
Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy
4 International Research Conference
th

Columbia, Missouri
September 28-October 1, 2000

Introduction

The concept of intentionality has enjoyed a long history within Western philosophy. It was a

particularly important notion in the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic philosophical traditions of the

Middle Ages, and it regained philosophical importance in the 20 century, particularly in the
th

writings of Edmund Husserl. This essay proposes to confront medieval philosophy with

contemporary phenomenology by conducting a comparative study of the concept of

intentionality as it appears in the philosophical works of the Islamic philosopher and physician

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and of the phenomenological philosopher and mathematician Edmund

Husserl.

There are profound differences between Avicenna’s and Husserl's account of intentions, and

it is particularly interesting to examine the influences and the specific philosophical concerns that

helped to shape each philosopher’s unique conception of intentionality and intentional processes

and of intentionality’s relation to consciousness. To this end, I will first examine Avicenna’s

naturalistic conception of intentionality and how this conception was, in many ways, influenced

by the tradition of the Baghdad school of philosopher-physicians and their understanding of the

‘internal senses’. I will, after this, examine Husserl’s anti-naturalistic stance regarding

intentionality and how it was both influenced by and, in part, a response to Franz Brentano’s

psychologistic account of ‘intentional in-existence’. Lastly, I will argue that, in their approach to
 2

the concept of intentional meanings and intentionality, Avicenna and Husserl were, in many

ways, strongly influenced by the professional culture to which each of them belonged, that of the

physician and that of the mathematician. After this I will argue for the superiority of the

Husserlian transcendentalist view over the Avicennian naturalistic view.

Avicenna’s Account of Intentionality

Though many philosophers today, even those who do not consider themselves

phenomenologists, are somewhat familiar with Husserl’s theory of intentionality, they are less

familiar with Avicenna’s understanding of this concept unless they are, of course, Medievalists or

have a certain degree of competence in Medieval philosophy. I will, therefore, begin by

examining the concept of intentionality as it appears in the work of Avicenna, particularly in his

psychology and in his metaphysics as they are found in the Kitab Al-Najat and the Kitab Al-Shifa.

The theory of intentionality elaborated by Avicenna, in his accounts of psychology,

epistemology, and metaphysics, was transmitted to Scholastic philosophy through the work of

Thomas Aquinas. In Avicenna’s discussion of Being and substance,

Being is the proper and primary object of metaphysics […] Being per se is substance;

within this [Avicenna] distinguishes separate and material forms and matter, which is a

substance of inferior order.

Avicenna reaches the conclusion that one thing can legitimately exist in the spirit and

be missing from external objects; he calls this type of existence intentional being [or

intentional existence] […] In his epistemological theory, [Avicenna] uses [the theory of

intentionality] to explain the relation between object and subject.

1

In Chapter III of Najat, entitled ‘Internal Sense’, we read the following account of

intentionality:

There are some faculties of internal perception which perceive the form of the sensed

things, and others which perceive the ‘intention’ thereof. Some faculties, again, can both
 3

perceive and act while others only perceive and do not act. Some possess primary

perception, others secondary perception. The distinction between the perception of the

form and that of the intention is that the form is what is perceived both by the inner soul

and the external sense; but the external sense perceives it first and then transmits it to the

soul, as for example, when the sheep perceives the form of the wolf, i.e., its shape, form,

and colour. This form is certainly perceived by the inner soul of the sheep, but it is first

perceived by its external sense. As for the intention, it is a thing which the soul perceives

from the sensed object without its previously having been perceived by the external

sense, just as the sheep perceives the intention of harm in the wolf, which causes it to fear

the wolf and to flee from it, without harm having been perceived at all by the external

sense. Now, what is first perceived by the sense and then by the internal faculties is the

form, while what only the internal faculties perceive without the external sense is the

intention.2

Why does the sheep, through its internal sense, perceive hostility in the wolf? According to one

reading of this text, the intention in itself is not perceived by the external senses, and one cannot

point to anything specifically perceived by the external senses that displays the intention. There

is, however, something about the form (sura) that is perceived by the external senses and which,

in turn, leads to the perception of intention by the internal senses.

Sensible forms are […] corporeal qualities that affect the sensory organs in such a way

that they are received by virtue of their similitude. This is the reason for which they are

received first by the external senses and are then transmitted to the internal senses. But

the ‘meanings’ that these objects signify are not such corporeal qualities but, rather,

qualities or values that are latent in the sensible forms, such as the quality of being

agreeable or disagreeable, good or bad, sympathetic or non-sympathetic, etc. […] For

example, the animal, seeing a yellow liquid that is honey, judges that it is sweet and

proceeds to taste it. The sweetness that is seized by this judgment is not sensible,

although this quality in itself is sensible, because it has not yet actually been tasted by the
 4

animal […] The sheep, perceiving the figure, the howls and the scent of a wolf, judges

that he is ferocious and dangerous, and runs away from it immediately. It is not merely

that it seizes the living object by simply accepting certain of its vital qualities, but also by

the attribution of those qualities to the object. 3

According to Avicenna, the faculty of estimation is responsible for the perception of

intentions and, thus, for intentionality. This faculty is part of Avicenna’s rather complex scheme

of the ‘internal senses’ which he inherited, in part, from the Baghdad School of philosopher-

physicians. According to this scheme, there are two types of sensible objects that can be

perceived by the internal senses and there are two types of faculties, within the internal senses,

that perceive these sensible objects. The two types of faculties of internal sense are the receptive

faculty and the retentive faculty. Avicenna explains that these two faculties are distinct from the

fact that reception requires a malleable substrate since, when receiving a form, a change must

take place in the substrate. On the other hand, retention requires a stable substrate since

retaining a form requires a changeless substrate.

The two types of sensible objects are sensible forms and intentions. We must understand

that, in this context, ‘sensible’ does not mean ‘sensuous’, i.e., perceivable by the external senses,

but merely perceivable by the internal senses. This is why Avicenna can refer to intentions as

‘sensible objects’ even though, as established in Najat, intentions are never perceived or

perceivable by the external senses. Intentions, according to Avicenna, are what sensible form

‘means’ or ‘signifies’ to the percipient subject. Thus, to return to the example used by Avicenna,

the sensible form of the wolf ‘signifies’ hostility to the sheep. Though the sheep does not literally

‘see’ hostility in the wolf’s eyes, the sensible form of the expression in the wolf’s eyes ‘means’, to

the sheep, that the wolf is hostile. The ferociousness of the wolf is latent in his appearance and

comportment. However, because an intention is not itself a sensuous quality of the object,

although it may be conveyed to the percipient through a sensory faculty, it does not affect any

sense organ at the time during which the judgment is being made.

In the scheme of internal senses, there is a faculty of the receptive type and a faculty of the

retentive type that handle each type of sensible object. Common sense is the faculty that receives
 5

(or perceives) sensible forms, whereas the formative (or retentive) imagination is the faculty that

retains sensible forms. The estimative faculty (wahm) is the faculty that receives (or perceives)

intentions, whereas the memorative faculty retains intentions. The proper objects of the

estimative faculty are, then, ma’nan or intentions. In non-human animals, the estimative faculty is

somewhat limited. They can, as the example of the sheep illustrates, perceive non-sensual

aspects of the environment “that exceed the perceptual capacities of the [external] senses and the

imagination” . However, in human animals, the estimative faculty also has cognitive functions
4

that it does not have in non-human animals. Thus, in human animals the estimative faculty and

the intellective faculty are co-present. 5

Unlike Alexander of Aphrodisias and Plotinus who had understood the idea of perception

non-physiologically, Avicenna rematerializes perception and, in doing this, he also indirectly

materializes his account of intention. As has already been established above, for Avicenna,

intentions are closely connected to sense perceptions because they are dependent upon them and,

for him, sense perception contains a clearly physiological and materialistic element. “[A]lthough

the estimative faculty has non-sensible intentions as its proper objects, it only possesses those

intentions when they are conjoined with particular sensible forms represented in the imagination,

thereby compelling estimation to ‘impede the existence of things which cannot be imagined and

are not imprinted in [the imagination], and to refuse to assent to them.’“ As we have seen above,
6

however, there is nothing in the imagination that is not first received through perception of

sensible forms.

Now, perception, for Avicenna, occurs when common sense receives sensible forms, that is,

form without matter. This account of perception is directly inherited from Aristotle, for whom

the reception of form without matter was interpreted by the Scholastics as ‘intentional in-

existence’. Once the form without matter has been received by common sense, the imaginative

faculty retains these sensible forms. Thus, the estimative faculty receives intentions on the basis

of the sensible forms, or the form without matter, that are received by common sense and that are

retained by the imagination. This, then, establishes the dependence of the faculty of estimation,

or of intentionality, upon sense perception. “[F]or all five senses, the reception of form without

matter is interpreted as making the perceiver become like the form of the thing perceived […]
 6

Although the form is received stripped of its original matter, the abstraction from matter in

sense-perception is not so complete as in the estimative faculty or in the intellect.” Therefore,

7

since it can be shown that, for Avicenna, there is a physiological element to the reception and

retention of the sensible forms of external objects, one would have to conclude that intentionality

has, ultimately, physiological origins.

I would like to examine, at this point, the cultural influences that helped shape Avicenna’s

account of perception, cognition, and intentionality. However, rather than focus on ethnic

culture, I will focus on the professional culture that helped to shape Avicenna's understanding of

these concepts. Although there are Platonic and Neoplatonic influences in Avicenna’s conception

of the intellect, Avicenna’s account of other mental faculties, such as perception, is not

Neoplatonic. However, one should not extract from this that Avicenna’s account of perception is

entirely Aristotelian. Notwithstanding the fact that his account of perception was, in some ways,

inherited from Aristotle and the Peripatetic philosophical tradition, the evidence suggests that

Avicenna’s naturalistic, psychologistic, and quasi-physiological account of perception and other

mental faculties was, in many ways, influenced by his own training as a physician and by his

attempt to respond to and mediate between the physicians’ account of mental faculties and the

philosophers’ account.

Greatly influential in Avicenna’s medical training and in his understanding of the mental

faculties, especially that of perception, was the Baghdad school of philosopher-physicians. This

medical circle represented the ‘afterlife’ of the Baghdad Peripatetics, and they were “a constant

feature of the intellectual life of medieval Islam” They were not only prominent physicians but
8

also translators and students of the work of Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, and it is out of this

cultural tradition of the philosopher-physician that emerged Avicenna.

The physicians’ account of the mental faculties was much more physiological than the

account to be found in the Aristotelian tradition. We find, for example, in Ibn Lûkâ the following

purely physiological conception of the spirit.

The spirit […] is a subtle substance that emanates throughout the body. Arising from the

heart, it directs itself in the arteries and gives birth to life, to breath, and to arterial
 7

pulsation and, arising from the brain, it passes through the nerves and produces

sensation and movement. 9

Ibn Lûkâ views the spirit is viewed as an intermediary between the body and the soul. It is

through the spirit that the soul communicates life and sensation to the body. Thus, although he

does not endorse a materialist conception of the soul, Ibn Lûkâ does endorse a materialist

conception of the spirit as the intermediary between soul and body. 10

One could speculate that

Ibn Lûkâ might be trying to avoid the obvious philosophical and physical problems associated

with the notion of interaction between a material and an immaterial substance. The problem,

however, is not successfully avoided by adding a third and material substance as an

intermediary, since this material substance called ‘spirit’ must also interact with the immaterial

soul, thereby resurrecting the problem of interaction.

According to the physicians of the Baghdad school,

the faculties of the soul are regarded only with reference to the bodily organs in which

they reside and not with reference to the variety of function which they perform, for

physicians […] concern themselves with faculties of the soul only in so far as a hindrance

in the functioning can be traced to an injury in the bodily organs in which they are

located. Consequently, if two functionally different faculties of the soul reside in one

bodily organ, then physicians regard it as one faculty, inasmuch as any injury in that

organ will affect the two faculties alike. 11

Thus, the physicians made no distinction, for example, between the receptive and the retentive

types of faculty of internal sense. Avicenna seems to want to balance the account given by the

medical circle and that given by the philosophers, such as Al-Kindî and Al-Fârâbî. It is clear that,

in his scheme of faculties of the internal senses, Avicenna tries to break away from the strict

physiological account of the Baghdad school of philosopher-physicians. He does this by

considering the receptive faculties as distinct from the retentive faculties by focusing on their

functional differences. He appeals to syllogistic logic to make his argument. Only a malleable
 8

substrate can acquire the non-material sensible form that is received in perception. Only a stable

substrate can retain the form after it has been acquired. A substrate cannot both be malleable and

stable. Therefore, the receptive faculty and the retentive faculty must be distinct in kind, one

malleable and the other stable. QED. Furthermore, his account of intentions is that they are

‘meanings’ or ‘significations’, abstract and non-sensory aspects of the external environment that,

although they accompany sense perception, are not themselves perceived by the external senses.

However, there is also evidence in several of Avicenna’s writings, especially in his medical

magnum opus, the Canon, but also in Shifa and Kafet, that he does not completely break away from

the physician’s account. In these works, Avicenna places wahm, or the estimative, or intentional

faculty, in a specific bodily location, at the end of the middle hollow of the brain. Thus, to follow
12

the reasoning of the medical circle, any injury to this part of the bodily organ would affect the

animal’s ability to receive intentions. Therefore, a sheep whose middle hollow of the brain had

been somehow injured to the point of affecting the estimative faculty, but without any injury to

any other part of the brain, would be conceivably able to perceive the wolf but would be unable

to detect hostility in the animal. This would then lead to the conclusion, unacceptable to

someone like Edmund Husserl, that there could be an almost perfectly functioning consciousness

without intentions or intentionality.

Husserl’s Account of Intentionality

Husserl’s doctrine of intentionality is a highly sophisticated and developed version of the

frequently held epistemological position that “the human mind makes substantial contributions

to the specific structure of what appears before it, so that experience is construed to be a complex

of data given externally and organizational principles supplied internally” 13

Once one has

suspended all ontological commitments, assumptions, and presuppositions and once

contingencies are bracketed, the structure of consciousness is revealed in its essence as being

intentional. Husserl tells us that all consciousness is necessarily actionally ‘directed’ towards an

‘object’. In other words, all consciousness is necessarily consciousness of something. It is this

peculiarity of mental processes that is known as intentionality.

 9

Intentionality is also referred to, by Husserl, as ‘egological constitution’ for the reason that

the intentional act is one in which subjective consciousness synthesizes the sensuous data that is

given to it and bestows sense or meaning upon it. The act through which the ego bestows meaning

upon its object is called the noetic act, and the meaningful object or 'meaning' that is constituted

through this act is called a noema. Thus, for Husserl, the intentional object and the noema are

one and the same. In Ideas I, for example, Husserl tells us that

[l]ike perception, every intentive mental process - just this makes up the fundamental part

of intentionality - has its "intentional Object," i.e., its objective sense. Or, in some other

words: to have sense or "to intend to" something [etwas "im Sinne zu haben"], is the

fundamental characteristic of all consciousness which, therefore, is not just any mental

living [Erlebnis] whatever, but is rather a <mental living> having sense, which is "noetic."

[Emphasis in original] 14

This actional Ego-advertence is not to be found in every mental event, that is, not every

mental event is directed or intentional. ‘Pain’, for example, is a mental event that is not itself

intentional. But, every mental process can, within itself, include intentionality. Husserl calls

those mental events that are not intentional apperceptions, whereas those mental events that are

intentional are called inner or outer perceptions. Thus, apperceptions are states, whereas

perception and all actionally directed mental events are not states but mobile activities. The

essential dynamic of an intentional event is that it projects itself toward something, its intended

object. Although Husserl distinguishes between apperception and perception, he claims that all

mental processes, even those which are not themselves intentive, are ultimately born in and

borne by intentionality. This is due to the fact that Ego unification itself occurs through an

intentional act, the most fundamental of all intentional acts, for without it there would be no

unified stream of consciousness. Meaning must, then, be bestowed upon the Ego before meaning

can be bestowed upon the world of experience. Thus, an apperception like ‘pain’, although it is

not itself a mental event characterized by intentionality, is experienced by an Ego that is unified

and, therefore, the product of an intentional act.

 10

Consciousness, for Husserl, is thus immersed in intentionality. Consciousness is

intentionality. For there to be mental events, there must be an Ego serving as the subject of those

mental events and, in order for there to be an Ego, there must an intentional, constitutive act

capable of synthesizing and unifying the stream of consciousness. Thus, to speak of any

conscious state or mental event as being, in no manner whatsoever, founded on intentional acts is

absurd, for the empirical or psychological self is, itself, the product of the transcendental Ego’s act

of constitutive synthesis.

Following Husserl, we can draw the following conclusions. Because we are not speaking of

the empirical Ego but of the transcendental Ego, and because we have bracketed all ontological

commitments to or assumptions about a material world external to the Ego, we realize that

intentionality cannot be reduced to brain states or located in a particular brain or part of the

brain. Intentionality does not presuppose the existence of a physical, material brain.

Intentionality only presupposes consciousness and consciousness presupposes intentionality.

The two are, in essence, one and the same. For, as long as there is consciousness, there is

intentionality. And, when there is no longer intentionality, there is no longer consciousness.

Though we understand that, as a matter of fact, only beings with a nervous system and a brain

have consciousness, the essential characteristic of consciousness, that is, intentionality, is not

reducible to the brain itself or to any particular part of the brain. Thus, no damage could be done

to the brain that could lead to non-intentional conscious states. A non-intentional conscious state

is, for Husserl, a contradiction in terms. The only possible damage to the brain that could destroy

intentionality is damage that destroys consciousness altogether.

It is clear that Husserl’s concept of intentionality was not born in a void but was, rather,

inherited from the long tradition that preceded him. The tradition through which the concept of

intentionality was transmitted from Aristotle to the 20 century is a long and complex one.
th

Avicenna is but one of the many philosophers through which this concept passed from its origins

in Aristotelian psychology, through Scholasticism, on its way to contemporary philosophy. It is

not the purpose of this essay to trace this long history which has already been successfully

addressed by other authors. 15

Suffice it to say that, after the Scholastic period in Medieval

philosophy, the concept of intentionality existed in semi-obscurity until 1874 when Franz
 11

Brentano, in his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, “[re]introduced into the philosophy of

mind the seminal idea of an intentional object” Brentano tell us that

16

[e]very mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages

called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though

not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is

not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental

phenomenon includes something as object within itself although they do not all do so in

the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is

affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. This

intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical

phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenomena by

saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within

themselves. 17

In Brentano, the definition of intentional existence remains virtually unchanged from the

definition found in the Scholastics. For Brentano, the ontological status of an intentional object,

as it had been for the Scholastics, is that of ‘intentional in-existence’. In other words, an object

does not have to exist outside the mind in order for it to become an object for consciousness. An

intentional object does not exist outside the mind. It is inexistent in this sense. However, it exists

in the mind. It is in-existent in this sense. Furthermore, according to Brentano. the feature that

distinguishes mental phenomena from physical phenomena is that they are directed towards

objects that have intentional in-existence. 18

It is this aspect of Brentano’s theory that greatly

influences Husserl, for Husserl also concludes that mental events and consciousness as a whole

are essentially distinguished by their intentional character, i.e., their directedness towards

intentional objects.

The concept of an intentional object that we find in Brentano’s work, however, is very

different from that to be found in Husserl. After inheriting the concept of intentionality from

Brentano, Husserl clearly breaks away from Brentano’s account. Although Brentano’s account is
 12

not naturalistic in the way that Avicenna’s account is naturalistic, Brentano’s conception of

intentional in-existence is a theory about the nature of the psychological Ego, i.e., of empirical

consciousness and, therefore, remains psychologistic and naturalistic. Husserl as a

mathematician who embraces the Bolzanian requirement for a pure logic is, on the other hand,

concerned with developing an account of consciousness and intentionality that is non-

psychologistic, non-naturalistic, and non-reductionistic. Only such a non-naturalistic account

could, according to Husserl, provide us with a phenomenology that could serve as the truly

scientific foundation for logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences. Logic, as Husserl claims,

is not concerned with the vague laws of empirical psychology but with precise and universal

laws. Logical laws are normative in form, and this is what we mean when we assert them.

19
Understanding that these laws are not merely descriptive and contingent features of the

empirical world but are, rather, normative and necessary principles, Husserl seeks to overcome

the naturalism, empiricism, and reductionism that, he believes, was responsible for the

emergence of logical psychologism. According to logical psychologism, there is nothing a priori,

objective, or necessary about logic, mathematics, and meanings. To embrace logical

psychologism is to embrace a view of logical and mathematical laws as contingently true

descriptions of how empirical subjects happen to think. Psychological facts serve as the

foundation of logical laws. Logical psychologism, according to Husserl, inevitably lead to

relativism and skepticism, and logical psychologism emerges from naturalism. “Naturalism, in

the sense in which Husserl understands it, seems […] to be nothing more than one of those many

residual tendencies all of which converge in the overlooking of the act in favor of the object.” 20

It is within the framework of his reflective and ‘transcendental’ phenomenological method

and of the variously stated theory of intentionality that Husserl offers his own solution to the

problems of the theory of evidence, truth, and ontology. To further discuss how the

phenomenological method and its discovery of intentionality put the nail on the coffin of

psychologism would extend beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that, since the laws

of logic and mathematics are the product of intentional acts of the transcendental Ego and since

they are not descriptive and contingent but normative and necessary, intentionality and

intentional acts could never be conceived in naturalistic, reductionistic, or physiological terms.

 13

To conceive it in those terms would undermine Husserl's entire anti-psychologistic foundational

project.

Comparative Discussion of the Avicennian and Husserlian Conceptions of Intentionality

It is clear that the medical culture of which Avicenna was a part greatly influenced his

philosophical work, particularly his views on the nature of mind, perception, and intentionality.

Though we find, in Avicenna, an attempt to mediate between the strictly physicalistic account of

mental activity found in the medical circle and the non-physicalistic account found in the

philosophical circles, certain remnants of physicalism, reductionism, and naturalism still linger in

many of his writings, even those that are philosophical rather than medical.

It is also clear that Husserl's background as a mathematician and his desire to ground

mathematics and the empirical sciences in a truly scientific philosophy led him to the rejection of

psychologism and naturalism and to the development of a concept of intentionality as not

reducible to physiological states, since physicality itself, and all other assumptions of the natural

attitude, are bracketed prior to the discovery of intentionality.

I wish to argue that Husserl’s account of intentionality is far superior to Avicenna’s, although

Avicenna’s contribution to the theory of intentionality is certainly important both in itself and for

its influence on the Scholastic notion of ‘intentional in-existence’. It is, as we have seen, from this

Scholastic notion that Brentano resurrects the concept of intentionality that will later allow

Husserl to give us a new way of understanding consciousness. Though, in both Avicenna and

Husserl, intention refers to the ‘meaning’ of the perceived object, Husserl takes this notion much

further than Avicenna precisely because he de-materializes and de-naturalizes intentionality and

moves away from a substantive theory of consciousness. For Husserl, consciousness (or mind,

soul) is no longer a substance but an activity and this activity is intentional. Consciousness

bestows meaning upon the world rather than finding meaning already in the world. Thus, the

intentional object is a product of the constitutive activities of consciousness and of its directness.

For Avicenna, on the other hand, the meaning signified by the object, though not a corporeal

quality of the object, is latent in the sensible form of the object. Thus, although for Husserl, the
 14

sheep constitutes the wolf-as-perceived, and this includes the wolf’s ferociousness, for Avicenna,

the wolf’s ferociousness is latent in his appearance and comportment.

Avicenna’s account is naturalistic for two reasons. First of all, his account of intentions is

dependent upon is account of perception, and his account of perception suffers from a

materialism that is inherited from the medical tradition to which Avicenna himself contributed

greatly. Second of all, his account of intentions focuses on the object rather than on the act.

Intentions or ‘meanings’ are latent in the object perceived, though they are not themselves

sensuous qualities of the object. They are in the object, rather than being the product of the

subject’s actions. This is one of the aspects of naturalism to which Husserl himself objected. As

was recently stated by Ronald McIntyre in his critique of Fred Dretske’s ‘representational

naturalism’, “senses are not properties of the objects we intend […] the sense belongs to the

content of the experience, while the properties belong to the object. An act is intentional by virtue

of having a sense or content, even if there is no object that ‘satisfies’ this sense.” 21
It seems that

Dretske, a contemporary philosopher of mind, is guilty of thinking of intentions or ‘senses’ in a

way similar to Avicenna. Thus, the same criticism that McIntyre raises against Dretske could also

be raised against Avicenna. For both Dretske and Avicenna, “senses are properties of the sort

that physical objects have. For Husserl, they are abstract ‘contents’ of intentional thoughts or

experiences” , intentional thoughts being the acts that constitute those very senses.
22

Husserl does not make either of the naturalistic mistakes that we find in Avicenna. First of

all, Husserl avoids physicalistic reductions of intentionality, perception, cognition, and other

mental faculties by suspending the natural attitude in which the existence of the material world

and the psychological empirical self are taken for granted. Second of all, Husserl focuses on

intentional acts of the subject rather than objects. Husserl is able to arrive at his conception of

intentionality precisely by bracketing or suspending all assumptions about a material world, a

physiological self, and a psychological empirical self. In doing this, Husserl is isolates

consciousness as such and discloses its activities. From this, Husserl understands that, even if

one suspends belief in an extra-mental reality, experience-as-such has meaning. Husserl. thus,

realizes that meaning must not come from outside of consciousness. It is not latent in some

extramental reality. It is not given to a passive consciousness. Rather, it is constituted by an

 15

active consciousness. Husserl is, thus, able to divorce himself from both Brentano’s and his own

early psychologism and naturalism, a psychologism and naturalism that, unfortunately, clearly

permeate Avicenna's understanding of intentional meaning and of intentionality. It is in these,

and many other respects, that transcendental phenomenology provides a superior account of

mental events, and particularly of intentionality, than that provided by naturalistic theories. It is

clear that both Husserl and Avicenna, in their development of an account of mental events and of

intentions, were greatly influenced by their respective training as a mathematician and a

physician. The physician was drawn towards naturalism because of a need to locate mental

functions in a particular part of the brain in order to explain injuries to those functions. The risk

of this, however, is to fall into a reductionistic programme that is not able to explain the quality

and meaningfulness of our mental life. A mathematician like Husserl, on the other hand, was

drawn toward a transcendental account because of his desire to escape psychologism. In doing

so, Husserl was successful in providing us with an account of experience and mental life that is

much richer than the naturalistic account found in Avicenna.

NOTES

1
Avicenna, Sobre Metafisica (Antología), translated from the Arabic, with an introduction and notes, by Miguel Cruz
Hernandez (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1950), p. 37. The original text reads as follows:

El ser es el objeto primario y proprio de la metafísica […] El ser per se es la sustancia; dentro de ésta distingue
las formas separada y material y la materia, que es la sustancia de orden inferior.
Estudiando después las privaciones, llega Avicena a la conclusión de que una cosa puede existir
legítimamente en el espíritu y faltar en los objetos exteriores; a esta existencia le llama ser intencional […] En su
teoría del conocimiento la usa para explicar la relación entre los objetos y el sujeto.
2
Avicenna, “Concerning the Soul”, in F. Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology: An English Translation of Kitab Al-Najat, Book II,
Chapter VI with Historico-Philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements to the Cairo Edition (Wesport, Conn.: Hyperion Press,
Inc., 1981, Reprint of 1952 Oxford University Press edition), p. 30.
3
Noriko Ushida, Étude Comparative de la Psychologie d’Aristote, d’Avicenne et de St. Thomas d’Aquin (Tokyo: The Keio
Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1968), p. 158. The original text reads as follows:

Les formes sensibles sont […] des qualités corporelles qui affectent les organes sensoriels en sorte qu’elles sont
reçues en vertu de leur similitude. C’est pourquoi elles sont reçues en premier lieu par les sens externes, et
ensuite elles sont transmises aux sens internes. Mais les sens que les objets signifient ne sont pas telles qualités
corporelles, mail plutôt des qualités ou de valeurs qui sont latentes dans les formes sensibles, telles que les
qualités agréables ou désagréables, bonne ou mauvaise, sympathique ou antipathique, etc. […] Par exemple,
l’animal, en voyent un liquide jaune qui est du miel, juge qu’il est doux et va le goûter. La douceur saisie par ce
jugement n’est pas sensible, quoique cette qualité en elle-même soit sensible, car ell n’est pas encore goûtée
actuellement par l’animal […] La brebis, en percevant la figure, les cris et l’odeur d’un loup, juge qu’il est féroce
et dangereux, et le fuit tout de suite. Ce n’est pas seulement qu’elle saisit l’objet viant par la simple acceptation
de certaines de ses qualités vitales, mais aussi par l’attribution de ces qualités à l’objet.
 16

4
Deborah L. Black, “Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations”, in Topoi 19, No. 1
(2000), p. 60.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid, p. 61. Black is here quoting Avicenna, Al-Shifa’: Al-Nafs (Healing: De anima), ed. F. Rahman, Avicenna’s “De Anima,”
Being the Psychological Part of Kitab al-Shifa’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 4.1, p. 166.
7
Richard Sorabji, “From Aristotle to Brentano: The Development of the Concept of Intentionality”, in Aristotle and the Later
Tradition, edited by Henry Blumenthal and Howard Robinson, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary
Volume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 236.
8
F.E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1968), p. 163.
9
Abderrahman Tlili, Contribution à l’étude de la psychologie à travers la philosophie avicennienne, préface de Roger Deladriere
(Tunis: Université de Tunis I, 1995), p. 78. The original text reads as follows:

L’esprit […] est une substance subtile répandue dans le corps. S’élevant du coeur, elle se dirige dans les artères
et donne naissance à la vie, à la respiration et à la pulsation artérielle et, partant du cerveau, elle passe dans les
nerfs et produit la sensation et le mouvement.
10
Ibid, pp. 79-80.
11
Harry Austin Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, Volume One, edited by Isadore Twersky and
George H. Williams (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973).
12
Ibid, p. 284.
13
Edmund Husserl, The Paris Lectures, translated by Peter Koestenbaum, with an introductory essay (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 1964), xxvii.
14
Edmund Hussel, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, translated by F.
Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982).
15
For one excellent account of this history, I refer the reader to Richard Sorabji’s essay “From Aristotle to Brentano: The
Development of the Concept of Intentionality”, cited in Note 7 above.
16
Richard Sorabji, p. 247.
17
Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, edited by Linda McAlister, translated by A. Rancurello and D.
Terrell (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), pp.88-89.
18
Ibid.
19
Edmund Husserl, “Prolegomena”, Logical Investigations, Ch. 5, §25, p. 114.
20
Natalie Depraz, “When Transcendental Genesis Encounters the Naturalization Project”, Naturalizing Phenomenology:
Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, edited by Jean Petitot, Francisco J. Varela, Bernard Pachou, and
Jean-Michel Roy (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999), p.484.
21
Ronald McIntyre, “Dretske on Qualia”, Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive
Science, p. 433.
22
Ibid.

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