3 Avicenna
3.2 Logic
3.2.9 The place, where indication to an individual concept is possible
As we have already mentioned it in several contexts, the intellect cannot intellect an individual qua individual. If we return to Avicenna’s passage in the Madkhal I.12, we see him alluding to an already acquired knowledge (“son of so and so”), to time (“existent at a certain time”) so that nothing shares these features at that time.336 This last one implies practically the awareness of a particular event.
Suppose that we are aware that Zayd has no brother at time t, and his father is ʽAbdallāh. The predicate that he is the son of ʽAbdallāh signifies only him, on the condition that we all agree on the identification of ʽAbdallāh, another individual.
334 Maqūlāt, 104, 4–8.
335 Maqūlāt, 104, 9–12.
336 Madkhal, 70, 16–19.
82 These examples, as being signified by proper names, are individuals. Their notions are contained in the memory, on a psychic faculty imprinted in a corporeal organ. For Avicenna, unlike the intellect, all the psychic faculties are placed in a bodily organ, and thus, they are divisible. The intellect thinks only the universal concepts, and his argument rests on the fact that a concept like this cannot be placed in a divisible faculty.337
The faculties of the soul, like the five senses, the sensus communis, imagination, estimation, and memory are all in a bodily, i.e., extended organ. In consequence, only the intellect can contain universal intelligibles, whereas the rest of the faculties cannot: their scope is restricted to particulars or spatially differentiated objects.
This leads us to Avicenna’s theory of mental representation.338 For the sake of simplicity, he prefers to present the problem by drawing squares: the two squares on the two sides are identical in every feature, except their position.
Avicenna then asks for the reason that explains their difference. There are several candidates:
the form, a certain accident, either concomitant or separable, or their substrates. He concludes after a lengthy discussion that it cannot be the form of squareness, because it is the same for all the squares, nor the accidents, be they concomitant or separable. The concomitant accident is the same for all sharing the given quiddity; therefore, it does not differentiate. If the separable accident parts, the form of the imagined concept will change. The imagination does not imagine it like this because of an inhering thing; it just imagines it as it is.339 It is possible to suppose among the intelligibles that being-to-the-right be superadded to squareness, but not in the imagination because here the image derives from the material object perceived by sense-perception. It is a direct representation, its being to the right is not due to its definition; at least, it might be due to something on the account which it is deserved to be described as such.340 Moreover, this is the spatially distinct material substrate. If we change the position of the two squares, so that the one on the left goes to the right and the one on the right goes to the left, they
337 This is what he attests in his letter addressed to al-Kiyā: Mubāḥathāt, 373 [1159]. This is the most important idea on which his argument for the immortality of the rational soul rests, however, there is no place here to get into more details. See Nafs, 188–192.
338 See Black, 2014, 204–210.
339 Nafs, 168, 11–16.
340 Nafs, 169, 7–10.
83 will still be different. Therefore, the only possibility left is that their difference is due to the divisible substrate in which they inhere. In other words, the only candidate left is that their distinction is due to the difference of parts in the receiving faculty or tool, in which they are imprinted.341
The spatially differentiated images may be represented only in a spatially extended organ that has spatially distinct parts. Otherwise, the representation of spatially non-distinct objects is impossible. Avicenna goes so far as to admit that a concept cannot be represented in the imagination, only as individuated:
As far as the imagination is concerned, until the concept is not individuated by which it is individuated, it cannot be represented for the imagination. […] until the represented does not have a determined particular position; it cannot be imprinted in the imagination, nor may it be anything that might be subject for any supposition.342
The author stresses the importance of the determined particular position (waḍʽ maḥdūd juz’ī), as a sine qua non: if it not spatially extended, it cannot be differentiated from a similar object.
If we start from an intellectual concept, the problem is the same. We may conceptualize humanity or the universal human, but we cannot represent it in the imagination, only as endowed with individuating features, and, only if we posit it into a spatially structured field. If we imagine Zayd and ʽAmr together, they must be in spatial relation to each other, that is, in our imagination, they must stand beside each other.
Although Avicenna is not that explicit regarding spatial accidents, this is what he makes clear in the Dānishnāma-yi ʽAlā’ī:
Whenever we strive to propel this concept [i.e., that of humanity] into the imagination, we cannot – and the estimation does not accept it – but whenever the imagination or the estimative faculty want to receive it, it makes an individual form (ṣūrat-i shakhṣī) [from it], like Zayd or ʽAmr, or a human being who has never been.
However, if it has been, it would have been an individual [human] on the one hand, and it would have been mixed with material features.343
In this passage Avicenna offers a reversed perspective: if we start from a universal concept, like humanity, we cannot imagine it, unless, if we endow it with several accidents, that is we represent it in our mind. It means that it is a concrete particular or an imagined one.
341 Nafs, 167,12–170,9.
342 Nafs, 169, 14–17.
343 Ṭabīʽiyyāt-i Dānishnāma, 106.
84 Thus, apart from the intellect, the inner faculties of the human soul are in a spatially extended organ. He is adamant that the intellect can think only universals, and the assemblage of universals will still be universal.
As it became clear above, the so-called individual concept cannot be intelligible; because every single intelligible concept is universal. Thus, it must be retained in a divisible organ, where particular features may be represented.
This is for the identification of Zayd: we may identify it only if temporal and spatial relations are taken into consideration, as we saw in the Madkhal I.12.
Nevertheless, this is only the epistemological whereabouts of individual concepts. This theory leads us to the metaphysical necessity of spatial difference of individuation. The mental representation mirrors this condition, which is a sufficient reason that explains the distinctness of different objects.
Avicenna’s theory on the vague individual clearly mirrors this distinction. The vague individual is an undetermined concept of an individual, but it is not a unanimous opinion in the secondary literature, whether it means imagined and mentally represented individuals or intellectual, vacuous concepts of individuals. In the next chapter, I will argue that this idea relates to vacuous intellectual concepts as well. On the other hand, this is a good bridge that leads us back to the conceptualization of individuals, because the vague individual is another formulation of individuality, namely that the concept of the individual consists of a given quiddity in itself and the concept of individuality.