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Ibn Sīnā and Husserl on Intention and IntentionalityAuthor(s): Marina Paola Banchetti-RobinoSource: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 71-82Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1399863Accessed: 18/09/2009 21:55

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IBN SINA AND HUSSERL ON INTENTION ANDINTENTIONALITY

Marina Paola Banchetti-RobinoDepartment f Philosophy, Florida Atlantic University

The concepts of intention and intentionality have enjoyed a long history withinWestern philosophy. They were particularly mportant notions in the Christian, ew-ish, and Islamic philosophical traditions of the Middle Ages and regained philo-sophical importance n the twentieth century, particularly n the writings of EdmundHusserl. This essay proposes to confront medieval philosophy with contemporaryphenomenology by conducting a comparative tudy of the concepts of intention andintentionality s they appear in the philosophical works of the Islamic philosopherand

physicianIbn Sina

(latinizedas

Avicenna)and the

phenomenological philoso-pher and mathematician Edmund Husserl.There are profound differences between Ibn Sina's and Husserl's accounts of

intention and intentionality, and it is particularly nteresting o examine the in-fluences and the specific philosophical concerns that helped to shape each phi-losopher's unique conception of intentions and intentional processes and of in-tentionality's relation o consciousness. To this end, I shall first examine Ibn Sina'snaturalistic conception of intention and how it was, in many ways, influenced by thetradition of the Baghdad school of philosopher-physicians nd their understandingof the 'internal senses'. After this I shall examine Husserl's anti-naturalistic tance

regarding ntention and intentionality nd how this stance was both influenced byand, in part, a response to Franz Brentano's psychologistic account of 'intentionalin-existence'. Lastly, shall argue that, in their approach o the concept of intentionalmeanings and of intentionality, bn Sina and Husserl were, in many ways, stronglyinfluenced by the professional ulture o which each belonged, that of the physicianand the mathematician, espectively. After his I shall argue for the superiority f theHusserlian ranscendentalist iew over the Avicennian naturalistic iew.

Ibn STna's Account of Intention and Intentionality

Although many philosophers today, even those who do not consider themselvesphenomenologists, are somewhat familiar with Husserl's theory of intentionality,they are less familiar with Ibn Sina's understanding of the concept of intention,unless, of course, they are medievalists or have a certain degree of competence inmedieval philosophy. Therefore, shall begin by examining the concept of intentionas it appears in the work of Ibn STna, particularly n his psychology and his meta-physics, as found in the Kitab al-Najat and the Kitab al-Shifa'.

The theory of intention elaborated by Ibn Sina in his accounts of psychology,

Philosophy East & West Volume 54, Number 1 January 2004 71-82? 2004 by University of Hawai'i Press

71



epistemology, and metaphysics was transmitted to Scholastic philosophy through thework of Thomas Aquinas. In Ibn STna's discussion of Being and substance,

Being is the proper and primary object of metaphysics.... Being per se is substance;within this [Ibn STna] istinguishes eparate and material orms and matter, which is asubstance of inferior rder.

... [Ibn STna] eaches the conclusion that onething

canlegitimately

xist in thespiritand be missing from external objects; he calls this type of existence intentional being

[or intentional xistence].... In his theory of knowledge, [Ibn STna] ses [the concept ofintention] o explain the relation between object and subject. (Emphasis mine)'

In chapter 3 of the Najat, titled "Internal Sense," we read the following accountof intention:

There are some faculties of internal perception which perceive the form of the sensedthings, and others which perceive the 'intention' hereof. Some faculties, again, can bothperceive and act while others only perceive and do not act. Some possess primary per-ception, others secondary perception. The distinction between the perception of the form

and that of the intention s that the form is what is perceived both by the inner soul andthe external ense; but the external ense perceives it first and then transmits t to the soul,as for example, when the sheep perceives the form of the wolf, i.e., its shape, form, andcolour. This form is certainly perceived by the inner soul of the sheep, but it is first per-ceived by its external sense. As for the intention, t is a thing which the soul perceivesfrom the sensed object without its previously having been perceived by the externalsense, just as the sheep perceives he intention of harm n the wolf, which causes it to fearthe wolf and to flee from it, without harm having been perceived at all by the externalsense. Now, what is first perceived by the sense and then by the internal aculties is theform, while what only the internal aculties perceive without he external sense is the in-tention.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 theexternal senses, and one cannot point to anything specifically perceived by the ex-ternal senses that displays the intention. There is, however, something about theform (sura) that is perceived by the external senses and which, in turn, leads to the

perception of intention by the internal senses:

Sensible orms are ... corporeal qualities hat affect he sensory organs n such a way that

they are received by virtue of their similitude. This is the reason for which they arereceived first by the external senses and are then transmitted o the internal enses. 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 beingagreeable or disagreeable, good or bad, sympathetic or non-sympathetic, tc.... Forexample, 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, al-

though this quality n itself is sensible, because it has not yet actually been tasted by theanimal.... The sheep, perceiving he figure, he howls and the scent of a wolf, judges thathe is ferocious and dangerous, and runs away from t immediately. t is not merely hat itseizes the living object by simply accepting certain of its vital qualities, but also [that tseizes the object] by the attribution f these qualities o the object.3

72 Philosophy East & West



According o Ibn STna, he faculty of estimation s responsible or the perceptionof intentions and, thus, for intentionality. This faculty is part of Ibn STna's athercomplex scheme of the 'internal enses' that he inherited, n part, rom the Baghdadschool of philosopher-physicians. According to this scheme, there are two types ofsensible objects that can be perceived by the internal enses, and there are two typesof

faculties,within the internal

enses,that

perceivethese sensible

objects.The two

types of faculties of internal ense are the receptive faculty and the retentive faculty.Ibn Sina explains that these two faculties are distinct from the fact that receptionrequires a malleable substrate since, when receiving a form, a change must takeplace in the substrate. On the other hand, retention requires a stable substrate inceretaining a form requires a changeless substrate.

The two types of sensible objects are sensible forms and intentions. We mustunderstand hat, in this context, 'sensible' does not mean 'sensuous', that is, per-ceivable by the external senses, but merely perceivable by the internal enses. This is

why Ibn Sina can refer o intentions as 'sensible objects' even though, as established

in the Najat, intentions are never perceived or perceivable by the external senses.Intentions, ccording to Ibn SYna, re what sensible form 'means' or 'signifies' o the

percipient ubject. Thus, to return o the example used by Ibn SYna, he sensible formof the wolf 'signifies' hostility o the sheep. Although he 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 latentin its appearance and comportment. However, because an intention is not itself asensuous quality of the object, although it may be conveyed to the percipientthrough a sensory faculty, t does not affect any sense organ at the time during whichthe judgment s being made.

In the scheme of internal senses, there is a faculty of the receptive type and afaculty of the retentive type that handle each type of sensible object. Common senseis the faculty that receives (or perceives) sensible forms, whereas the formative orretentive) magination s the faculty hat retains ensible forms. The estimative aculty(wahm) s the faculty hat receives (or perceives) ntentions, whereas the memorativefaculty retains intentions. The proper objects of the estimative faculty are, then,ma'nan or intentions. In nonhuman animals, the estimative faculty is somewhatlimited. They can, as the example of the sheep illustrates, perceive non-sensualaspects of the environment "that exceed the perceptual capacities of the [external]senses and the imagination."4 However, in human animals, the estimative facultyalso has cognitive functions that it does not have in nonhuman animals. Thus, inhuman animals the estimative aculty and the intellective aculty are co-present.5

Unlike Alexander of Aphrodisias nd Plotinus, who understood he idea of per-ception non-physiologically, bn STna ematerializes perception, and, in doing this,he also indirectly materializes his account of intention. As has already been estab-lished above, for Ibn STna ntentions are closely connected to sense perceptions be-cause they are dependent on them and, for him, sense perception contains a clearlyphysiological and materialistic lement: "although he estimative faculty has non-sensible intentions as its proper objects, it only possesses those intentions when they

Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino 73



are conjoined with particular ensible forms represented n the imagination, herebycompelling estimation o 'impede the existence of things which cannot be imaginedand are not imprinted n [the imagination], and to refuse to assent to them."'6 Aswe have seen above, however, there is nothing in the imagination hat is not firstreceived through he perception of sensible forms.

Now, perception, for Ibn Sina, occurs when common sense receives sensibleforms, that is, form without matter. This account of perception is directly inheritedfrom Aristotle, or whom the reception of form without matter was interpreted bythe Scholastics as 'intentional n-existence'. Once the form without matter has beenreceived by common sense, the imaginative aculty retains these sensible forms.Thus, the estimative aculty receives intentions on the basis of the sensible forms, orform without matter, hat are received by common sense and that are retained by the

imagination. This, hen, establishes he dependence of the faculty of estimation, or ofintentionality, on sense perception. "[F]or all five senses, the reception of formwithout matter s interpreted s making the perceiver become like the form of the

thing perceived.... Although he form is received stripped of its original matter, heabstraction rom matter n sense-perception s not so complete as in the estimativefaculty or in the intellect."7 Therefore, ince it can be shown that, for Ibn STna, hereis a physiological element to the reception and retention of the sensible forms ofexternal objects, one would have to conclude that intentionality has, ultimately,physiological origins.

At this point, I would like to examine the cultural nfluences that helped shapeIbn STna's ccount of perception, cognition, and intentionality. However, rather hanfocus on ethnic culture, I shall focus on the professional ulture hat helped to shapeIbn Sina's understanding f these concepts. Although there are Neoplatonic influ-

ences in Ibn Sina's conception of the intellect, his account of other mental faculties,such as perception, is not Neoplatonic. However, one should not extract from thisthat Ibn STna's ccount of perception s entirely Aristotelian. Notwithstanding he factthat his account of perception was, in some ways, inherited rom Aristotle and thePeripatetic hilosophical radition, he evidence suggests that Ibn STna's aturalistic,psychologistic, and quasi-physiological account of perception and other mentalfaculties was, in many ways, influenced by his own training as a physician and byhis attempt o respond to and mediate between the physicians' account of mentalfaculties and the philosophers' account.

Greatly influential n Ibn Sina's medical training and in his understanding fthe mental faculties, especially that of perception, was the Baghdad school ofphilosopher-physicians. his medical circle represented he 'afterlife' f the BaghdadPeripatetics, nd they were "a constant feature of the intellectual ife of medievalIslam."8 They were not only prominent physicians but also translators nd studentsof the work of Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, nd it is out of this cultural raditionof the philosopher-physician hat Ibn Sina emerged.

The physicians' account of the mental faculties was much more physiologicalthan the account to be found in the Aristotelian radition. We find for example, inIbn Luka, he following purely physiological conception of the spirit. "The spirit ..




is a subtle substance that emanates throughout he body. Arising rom the heart, itdirects itself in the arteries and gives birth o life, to breath, and to arterial pulsationand, arising rom the brain, t passes through he nerves and produces sensation andmovement."9 bn Luka views the spirit as an intermediary etween the body and thesoul. It is through the spirit that the soul communicates life and sensation to the

body. Thus, although he does not endorse a materialist onception of the soul, IbnLuka does endorse a materialist conception of the spirit as the intermediary etweensoul and body.10 One could speculate that Ibn Luka might be trying to avoid theobvious philosophical and physical problems associated with the notion of interac-tion between a material and an immaterial ubstance. The problem, however, is notsuccessfully avoided by adding a third and material substance as an intermediary,since this material substance called 'spirit' must also interact with the immaterialsoul, thereby resurrecting he problem of interaction.

According o the physicians of the Baghdad chool,

the faculties f the soul areregarded nly

with reference o thebodily organs

n whichthey reside and not with reference o the variety f function which they perform, orphysicians .. concern hemselves ith aculties f the soul only in so far as a hindrancein the functioning an be traced o an injury n the bodily organs n which they arelocated. Consequently, f two functionally ifferent aculties f the soul reside n onebodily organ, hen physicians egard t as one faculty, nasmuch s any injury n thatorgan will affect he two faculties like.'1

Thus, the physicians made no distinction, or example, between the receptive andthe retentive ypes of faculty of internal ense. Ibn Sina seems to want to balance theaccount given by the medical circle and that given by the philosophers, such as

al-Kindi and al-Farabi. t is clear that in his scheme of faculties of the internal ensesIbn STna ries to break away from the strict physiological account of the Baghdadschool of philosopher-physicians. He does this by considering he receptive acultiesas distinct rom the retentive aculties by focusing on their functional differences. Heappeals to syllogistic logic to make his argument. Only a malleable substrate canacquire the nonmaterial ensible form that is received in perception. Only a stablesubstrate an retain he form after it has been acquired. A substrate annot be bothmalleable and stable. Therefore, he receptive faculty and the retentive faculty mustbe distinct in kind, one malleable and the other stable. QED. Furthermore, is ac-count of intentions s that they are 'meanings' or 'significations', bstract and non-sensory aspects of the external environment hat, although they accompany senseperception, are not themselves perceived by the external senses.

However, there is also evidence in several of Ibn Sina's writings, especially inhis medical magnum opus, the Canon, but also in Shifa' and Kafet, hat he does notcompletely break away from he physician's account. In these works, Ibn Sina placeswahm, or the estimative or intentional aculty, in a specific bodily location, at theend of the middle hollow of the brain.12 Thus, o follow the reasoning of the medicalcircle, any injury o this part of the bodily organ would affect the animal's ability toreceive intentions. Therefore, a sheep whose middle hollow of the brain had been




somehow injured o the point of affecting he estimative aculty, but without any in-

jury to any other part of the brain, would conceivably be able to perceive the wolfbut would be unable to detect hostility n the animal. This would then lead to theconclusion, unacceptable to someone like Edmund Husserl, hat there could be analmost perfectly unctioning consciousness without intentions or intentionality.

Husserl's Account of Intention and Intentionality

Husserl's doctrine of intentionality s a highly sophisticated and developed version ofthe frequently held epistemological position that "the human mind makes substantialcontributions o the specific structure f what appears before it, so that experienceis construed to be a complex of data given externally and organizational princi-ples supplied internally."'3 Once one has suspended all ontological commitments,assumptions, and presuppositions nd once contingencies are bracketed, he struc-ture of consciousness is revealed in its essence as being intentional. Husserl ells us

that all consciousness is necessarily actionally directed' oward an 'object'. In otherwords, all consciousness is necessarily consciousness of something. It is this pecu-liarity of mental processes that is known as intentionality.

Husserl also refers o intentionality s 'egological constitution' or the reason hatthe intentional act is one in which subjective consciousness synthesizes the sensu-ous data that is given to it and bestows sense or meaning upon it. The act throughwhich the ego bestows meaning upon its object is called the noetic act, and themeaningful object or 'meaning' hat is constituted through his act is called a noema.Thus, for Husserl, the intentional object and the noema are one and the same. InIdeas I, for example, Husserl ells us:

Like perception, every intentive mental process-just this makes up the fundamental partof intentionality-has its "intentional Object," .e., its objective sense. Or, in some otherwords: to have sense or "to intend to" something [etwas "im Sinne zu haben"], is thefundamental haracteristic f all consciousness which, therefore, s not just any mental

living [Erlebnis] hatever, but is rather (mental living) having sense, which is "noetic."

(Emphasis n original)14

This actional Ego-advertence s not to be found in every mental event; that is, notevery mental event is directed or intentional. Pain', for example, is a mental eventthat is not itself intentional. But, every mental process can, within itself, includeintentionality. Husserl calls those mental events that are not intentional appercep-tions, whereas those mental events that are intentional are called inner or outerperceptions. Thus, apperceptions are states, whereas perception and all actionallydirected mental events are not states but mobile activities. The essential dynamic ofan intentional event is that it projects itself toward something, its intended object.Although Husserl distinguishes between apperception and perception, he claims thatall mental processes, even those which are not themselves intentive, are ultimatelyborn in and borne by intentionality. This is due to the fact that Ego unification tselfoccurs through an intentional act, the most fundamental of all intentional acts, for

76 Philosophy ast&West



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 ofexperience. Thus, an apperception ike 'pain', although it is not itself a mental eventcharacterized by intentionality, s experienced by an Ego that is unified and is,therefore, he product of an intentional act.

Consciousness, for Husserl, s thus immersed nintentionality.

Consciousness isintentionality. For there to be mental events, there must be an Ego serving as thesubject of these mental events, and, in order for there to be an Ego, there must anintentional, constitutive act capable of synthesizing and unifying he stream of con-sciousness. Thus, it is absurd to speak of any conscious state or mental event asbeing, in no manner whatsoever, founded on intentional acts, for the empirical orpsychological self is itself the product of the transcendental Ego's act of constitutivesynthesis.

Following Husserl, we can draw the following conclusions. Because we are notspeaking of the empirical Ego but of the transcendental Ego, and because we have

bracketed all ontological commitments to or assumptions about a material worldexternal o the Ego, we realize that intentionality annot be reduced to brain states orlocated in a particular brain or part of the brain. Intentionality does not presup-pose the existence of a physical, material brain. Intentionality nly presupposesconsciousness, and consciousness presupposes intentionality. The two are, in es-sence, one and the same. For as long as there is consciousness, there is intention-ality. And, when there is no longer intentionality, here is no longer consciousness.

Although we understand hat, as a matter of fact, only beings with a nervous systemand a brain have consciousness, the essential characteristic f consciousness, that is,intentionality, s not reducible o the brain tself or to any particular art of the brain.

Thus, no damage can be done to the brain that could lead to non-intentional on-scious states. A non-intentional conscious state, for Husserl, is a contradiction nterms. The only possible damage to the brain that could destroy intentionality s

damage that destroys consciousness altogether.It is clear that Husserl's oncept of intentionality was not born in a void but was

inherited, rather, rom the long tradition hat preceded him. The tradition throughwhich the concept of intentionality was transmitted rom Aristotle o the twentiethcentury is a long and complex one. Ibn STna s but one of the many philosophersthrough which this concept passed from its origins in Aristotelian psychologythrough Scholasticism on its way to contemporary philosophy. It is not the purposeof this essay to trace this long history, which has already been successfully addressedby other authors.15 uffice it to say that, after he Scholastic period in medieval phi-losophy, the concept of intentionality existed in semi-obscurity until 1874 whenFranz Brentano, n his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, "[re]introducedinto the philosophy of mind the seminal idea of an intentional object."16 Brentanotell us:

Everymental phenomenon s characterized y what he Scholastics f the Middle Agescalled the intentional or mental) nexistence f an object, and what we might call,




though not wholly unambiguously, eference to a content, direction toward an object(which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Everymental phenomenon includes something as object within itself although hey do not alldo so in the same way. In presentation omething s presented, n judgement omethingis affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. Thisintentional n-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physicalphenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenomenaby saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally withinthemselves.17

In Brentano, the definition of intentional inexistence remains virtually un-

changed from the definition found in the Scholastics. According to Brentano, thefeature that distinguishes mental phenomena from physical phenomena is that theyare directed toward objects that have intentional inexistence.18 It is this aspect ofBrentano's theory that greatly influenced Husserl, for Husserl also concludes thatmental events and consciousness as a whole are essentially distinguished by their

intentional character, that is, their directedness toward 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 broke away from Brentano's account.

Although Brentano's account is not naturalistic in the same way as Ibn Sina's, Bren-tano's conception of intentional inexistence is a theory about the nature of the psy-chological Ego, that is, of empirical consciousness and, therefore, remains psycho-logistic and naturalistic. Husserl, as a mathematician who embraces the Bolzanian

requirement for a pure logic, is, on the other hand, concerned with developing anaccount of consciousness and intentionality that is nonpsychologistic, nonnatural-

istic, and non-reductionistic. Only such a nonnaturalistic account could, accordingto Husserl, provide us with a phenomenology that could serve as the truly scientificfoundation for logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences. Logic, as Husserlclaims, is not concerned with the vague laws of empirical psychology but with pre-cise and universal laws.19 Understanding that these laws are not merely descriptiveand contingent features of the empirical world but are, rather, theoretical laws

holding for the domain of ideal meanings, Husserl seeks to overcome the naturalism,empiricism, and reductionism that, he believes, were responsible for the emergenceof logical psychologism. According to logical psychologism, there is nothing a priori,objective, or necessary about logic, mathematics, and meanings. To embrace logicalpsychologism is to embrace a view of logical and mathematical laws as contingentlytrue descriptions of how empirical subjects happen to think. Psychological factsserve as the foundation of logical laws. Logical psychologism, according to Husserl,

inevitably leads to relativism and skepticism, and logical psychologism emergesfrom 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 con-

verge in the overlooking of the act in favor of the object."20It is within the framework of his reflective and 'transcendental' phenomeno-

logical 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. Todiscuss further how the phenomenological method and its discovery of intentionalityput the nail in the coffin of psychologism s beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice tto say that since the laws of logic and mathematics re the product of intentional actsof the transcendental Ego and since they are not descriptive and contingent, inten-

tionality and intentional acts could never be conceived in naturalistic, eductionistic,or physiological terms. To conceive it in those terms would undermine Husserl'sentire anti-psychologistic oundational project.

Comparative Discussion of the Avicennian and Husserlian Conceptions of Intentionand Intentionality

It is clear that the medical culture of which Ibn STnawas a part greatly nfluenced hisphilosophical work, particularly his views on the nature of mind, perception, andintentionality. Although in Ibn Sina we find an attempt to mediate between the

strictly physicalistic account of mental activity found in the medical circle and thenonphysicalistic account found in the philosophical circles, certain remnants ofphysicalism, reductionism, and naturalism till linger in many of his writings, eventhose that are philosophical rather han medical.

It is also clear that Husserl's background as a mathematician nd his desire toground mathematics and the empirical sciences in a truly scientific philosophy ledhim to the rejection of psychologism and naturalism nd to the development of aconcept of intentionality as not reducible to physiological states, since physicalityitself, and all other assumptions of the natural attitude, are bracketed prior to thediscovery of intentionality.

I wish to argue that Husserl's account of intentionality s far superior to IbnSTna's, lthough Ibn Sina's contribution o the theory of intentionality s certainlyimportant both in itself and for its influence on the Scholastic notion of 'intentionalinexistence'. As we have seen, it is from this Scholastic notion that Brentano resur-rects the concept of intentionality hat will later allow Husserl o give us a new wayof understanding onsciousness. Although in both Ibn Sina and Husserl intentionrefers o the 'meaning' of the perceived object, Husserl akes this notion much fur-ther than Ibn STna recisely because he de-materializes and de-naturalizes he con-cepts of intention and intentionality nd moves away from a substantive theory ofconsciousness. For Husserl, consciousness (or mind, soul) is no longer a substancebut an activity, and this activity s intentional. Consciousness bestows meaning uponthe world rather han finding meaning already in the world. Thus, the intentionalobject is a product of the constitutive activities of consciousness and of its directness.For Ibn Sina, on the other hand, the meaning signified by the object, although nota corporeal quality of the object, is latent in the sensible form of the object. Thus,although for Husserl he sheep constitutes he wolf-as-perceived, and this includesthe wolf's ferociousness, or Ibn Sina the wolf's ferociousness s latent n its appear-ance and comportment.

Ibn Sina's account is naturalistic or two reasons. First of all, his account of




intentions s dependent on his account of perception, and his account of perceptionsuffers rom a materialism hat is inherited rom the medical tradition o which IbnSTna himself contributed greatly. Second, his account of intentions ocuses on theobject rather han on the act. Intentions or 'meanings' are latent in the object per-ceived, although they are not themselves sensuous qualities of the object. They arein

the object, rather han being the product of the subject's actions. This is one of theaspects of naturalism o which Husserl himself objected. As was recently stated byRonald Mcintyre in his critique of Fred Dretske's 'representational naturalism',"senses are not properties of the objects we intend.... [T]he sense belongs to thecontent of the experience, while the properties belong to the object. An act is in-tentional by virtue of having a sense or content, even if there is no object that 'sat-isfies' this sense."21 t seems that Dretske, at least in this respect, is guilty of thinkingof intentions or 'senses' in a way similar o Ibn STna.Thus, the same criticism hatMcintyre raises against Dretske could also be raised against Ibn STna. For bothDretske and Ibn STna, "senses are properties of the sort that physical objects have.

For Husserl, they are abstract contents' of intentional houghts or experiences,"22intentional houghts being the acts that constitute hese very senses.

Husserl does not make either of the naturalistic mistakes hat we find in Ibn STna.First f all, Husserl avoids physicalistic reductions of intentionality, erception, cog-nition, and other mental faculties by suspending the natural attitude in which theexistence of the material world and the psychological empirical self are taken forgranted. Second, Husserl focuses on intentional acts of the subject rather thanobjects. Husserl is able to arrive at his conception of intentionality precisely bybracketing or suspending all assumptions about a material world, a physiologicalself, and a psychological empirical self. In doing this, Husserl solates consciousness

as such and discloses its activities. From his, Husserl understands hat, even if onesuspends belief in an extramental eality, experience-as-such has meaning. AlthoughHusserl s not embracing a conception of consciousness as disembodied, he never-theless realizes that meaning must not come from outside consciousness. It is notlatent in some extramental eality. It is not given to a passive consciousness. Rather,it is constituted by an active consciousness. Husserl s, thus, able to divorce himselffrom both Brentano's nd his own early psychologism and naturalism, psycholo-gism and naturalism hat, unfortunately, learly permeate Ibn STna's nderstanding fintentional meaning and of intentionality.

It is in these and many other respects that transcendental phenomenology pro-vides an account of mental events-and particularly f intentionality-that is supe-rior o that provided by naturalistic heories. It s clear that both Husserl and Ibn STna,in their development of an account of mental events and intentions, were greatlyinfluenced by their training, respectively, as a mathematician nd a physician. Thephysician was drawn toward naturalism because of a need to locate mental func-tions in a particular part of the brain in order to explain injuries o those functions.The risk of this, however, is to fall into a reductionistic program hat is not able toexplain the quality and meaningfulness f our mental life. The mathematician Hus-serl, on the other hand, was drawn toward a transcendental ccount because of his




desire to escape psychologism. In doing so, Husserl was successful in providing uswith an account of experience and mental life that is much richer than the natural-istic account found in Ibn Smna.

Notes

1 - Avicenna, Sobre Metafisica (Antologfa), trans. from the Arabic, with an introd.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 proprio de la metaffsica.... El ser per se es la sustancia;dentro de esta distingue as formas eparada y material y la materia, que es la sustanciade orden inferior.

... Ilega Avicena a la conclusi6n de que una cosa puede existir egitimamente n el

espiritu y faltar n los objetos exteriores; esta existencia le llama ser intencional.... Ensu teorfa del conocimiento la usa

para explicara relacion entre los

objetos yel

sujeto.2 - Avicenna, "Concerning the Soul," in F. Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology: An

English Translation of Kitab AI-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI with Historico-

Philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements to the Cairo Edition (Oxford

University Press, 1952; reprint, Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1981),p. 30.

3 - Noriko Ushida, Etude Comparative de la Psychologie d'Aristote, d'Avicenne etde St. Thomas d'Aquin (Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies,1968), p. 158. The original text reads as follows:

Les ormes sensibles sont ... des qualites corporelles qui affectent es organes sensorielsen sorte qu'elles sont regues en vertu de leur similitude. C'est pourquoi elles sont repuesen premier ieu par les sens externes, et ensuite elles sont transmises ux sens internes.Mais les sens que les objets signifient ne sont pas telles qualites corporelles, mais plutotdes qualites ou des valeurs qui sont latentes dans les formes sensibles, telles que les

qualites agreables ou d6sagreables, bonne ou mauvaise, sympathique u antipathique,etc.... Par exemple, I'animal, n voyent un liquide aune qui est du miel, juge qu'il estdoux et va le gouter. La douceur saisie par ce jugement n'est pas sensible, quoique cettequalite en elle-meme soit sensible, car elle n'est pas encore goutee actuellement parl'animal.... La brebis, en percevant a figure, es cris et I'odeur d'un loup, juge qu'il estferoce et dangereux, et le fuit tout de suite. Ce n'est pas seulement qu'elle saisit I'objetvivant par la simple acceptation de certaines de ses qualites vitales, mais aussi par I'at-tribution de ces qualit6s a I'objet.

4 - Deborah L. Black, "Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and WesternTransformations," Topoi 19 (1) (2000): 60.

5 - Ibid.

6 - Ibid., p. 61. Black is here quoting Avicenna, Al-Shifa': AI-Nafs (Healing: Deanima), in Avicenna's "De Anima," Being the Psychological Part of Kitab al-Shifa', ed. F. Rahman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 4.1, p. 166.




7 - Richard Sorabji, "From Aristotle to Brentano: The Development of the Conceptof Intentionality," in Aristotle and the Later Tradition, ed. Henry Blumenthaland Howard Robinson, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementaryvolume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 236.

8 - F. E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam (NewYork: New York

University Press, 1968), p.163.

9 - Abderrahman Tlili, Contribution a I'Etude de la psychologie a travers la phi-losophie avicennienne, preface de Roger Deladriere (Tunis: Universite deTunis 1, 1995), p. 78. The original text reads as follows:

L'esprit .. est une substance subtile r6pandue dans le corps. S'elevant du coeur, elle sedirige dans les arteres et donne naissance a la vie, a la respiration t a la pulsationarterielle t, partant du cerveau, elle passe dans les nerfs et produit a sensation et lemouvement.

10- Ibid., pp. 79-80.

11 - Harry Austin Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 1,ed. Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1973), p. 283.

12 - Ibid., p. 284.

13 - Edmund Husserl, The Paris Lectures, trans. Peter Koestenbaum, with an intro-

ductory essay (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1964), p. xxvii.

14 - Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phe-

nomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff Publishers, 1982), ? 90, p. 21 7.

15 - For one excellent account of this history, I refer the reader to Sorabji's "FromAristotle to Brentano."

16- Ibid., p. 247.

17 - Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, ed. Linda McAlister,trans. A. Rancurello and D. Terrell (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972),pp. 88-89.

18 - Ibid.

19- Edmund Husserl, "Prolegomena," Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlayfrom the second German edition of Logische Untersuchungen (London: Rout-

ledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), vol. 1, chap. 5, ?25, p. 114.

20 - Natalie Depraz, "When Transcendental Genesis Encounters the Naturalization

Project," in Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenome-

nology and Cognitive Science, ed. Jean Petitot, Francisco J. Varela, BernardPachou, and Jean-Michel Roy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999),p. 484.

21 - Ronald Mcintyre, "Dretske on Qualia," in Petitot et al., Naturalizing Phenome-

nology, p. 433.

22 - Ibid.


avicenna and husserl on intention

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