## 1. Sources and First Expressions: Al-Kindi and Razi




 Aristotle's philosophy of mind in
Islamic philosophy is a combination of what we would today call
psychology and physiology, and is not limited to investigations of our
rational faculty. However important, the "mind" or
intellect, with its practical and theoretical aspects, is only part of
the *falasifa's* "science of the
soul." Their main sources are found in three Aristotelian
treatises: On the Soul (*De anima*), On Sense and Sensibilia
(*De Sensu et Sensibili*), and On Memory and Recollection
(*De Memoria et Reminiscentia*). The last two belong to a series
of nine short physical treatises, called accordingly *Parva
Naturalia*, and include two that deal with the related topic of
dreams and prophesying by means of dreams.




 The *De anima* was fully translated
into Arabic in the ninth century C.E., the *Parva Naturalia*
partially translated, including those treatises relevant to our topic.
Muslim authors had access to Arabic translations of Hellenistic
commentaries on these works, particularly those done by Alexander of
Aphrodisias (third century c.e.) and Themistius (fourth
 century).[1]
The views of the
Muslim philosophers reflect these various sources, and are
thus "Aristotelian" in an attenuated sense, particularly as
concerns the role and entailments of the rational faculty.




 The scientifically rich Hellenistic
culture to which Islam was heir is evident in the work of Abu
Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. c.870) and Abu
Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya ibn Yahya al-Razi (865-925 or 932).
Al-Kindi, known as "the philosopher of the Arabs" for
his Arabian genealogy, was active, with others of his circle, in
editing Arabic translations and paraphrases of both Aristotelian and
Neoplatonic texts. He also was familiar with other branches of Greek
science, and wrote treatises on many diverse topics. His views on
psychology were formed mainly by acquaintance with paraphrases made of
*De anima*, the Theology of Aristotle (An abridgement of
Plotinus' *Enneads*) and the Book on the Pure Good (an
abridgement of Proclus' Elements of Theology, known in Latin as
*Liber De Causis*). An Arabic version of Euclid's Optics
also helped al-Kindi develop his theory of vision, expressed in his
*De Aspectibus* and two smaller treatises (extant in Arabic
only). Unfortunately, al-Kindi does not integrate his understanding
of vision with other aspects of his psychology, the parts never
amounting to a whole, complete system. We have instead a fragmentary
report indicating directions in which al-Kindi was headed, and
probable sources with which he had some acquaintance.




 Thus, the *De Aspectibus* shows that
al-Kindi favored an extramission view of vision, in which rays
extend from the eyes to make contact with an object, enabling a person
to see
 it.[2]
Following Euclid's Optics ultimately, al-Kindi offers
geometrical demonstrations against both the alternative
"intromission" view, and the view that fuses extramission
with intromission; views identified mostly with Aristotle's
*De anima* and Plato's *Timaeus*, respectively. In
other treatises, however, al-Kindi may be more sympathetic to
Aristotle's understanding of vision, mixed with possible
familiarity with relevant treatises of Ptolemy and John Philoponus.




 Al-Kindi's exposure to Plato and
Aristotle was through doxographies and paraphrases that attempted to
harmonize their views, and that often grafted Gnostic and hermetic
themes onto a Platonic--more exactly 
 Neoplatonic--trunk.[3]
Thus, his Statement
on the
 Soul,[4]
which purports to give a summary of the views on the subject of
"Aristotle, Plato, and other Philosophers," emphasizes the
immortal nature of the soul; its origins as a tripartite unified
substance created by God, which returns through various heavenly stages
to be in proximity to its Creator, upon having lived a life controlled
by its rational faculty. Indeed, the superior person
(*fadil*) who abjures physical desires and pursues wisdom
(*hikmah*), justice, goodness and truth (these following from
knowledge) resembles the
 Creator.[5]
This resemblance is elsewhere qualified to
pertain to God's activities, not to His
 essence.[6]
Aristotle is seen as in agreement
with this essential separation of soul and body, and the ability of the
soul to know things not given to empirical investigation.




 Al-Kindi is more conventional
philosophically in his *magnum opus*, On First Philosophy, when
he highlights the mechanics of perception as proceeding from the
sensible object (via the sense organs) to the common sense, imagination
and
 memory.[7]
Elsewhere, he mentions the role of the imagination in both abstracting
and presenting images apart from their matter (Ivry, 135). The
intellect deals with universals, as mentioned in On First Philosophy,
whereas particular, material objects are treated by the senses (and,
presumably, the imagination and memory).




 The divergent sources present in
Al-Kindi make their appearance again in his short treatise
On
 Intellect.[8]
Aristotle's Hellenistic commentators had long since elaborated on
Book Three of his De anima, and discerned stages of cognition that the
master had left too vague for their liking. In al-Kindi's
case, John Philoponus appears to have provided a model for
al-Kindi's scheme of four kinds of intellect (Jolivet, pp.
50-73; Endress, 197). The first intellect is that which is in act
always, a separate principle of intelligibility that contains the
species and genera, i.e., the universals, of our world. This first
intellect, like that of Alexander of
 Aphrodisias,[9]
endows our potential intellects
(the second intellect) with the abstract ideas they are capable of
receiving; which ideas become part of a (third) acquired but passive
intellect. When active, however, the (fourth) intellect emerges as just
that, an intellect in act, in which its subject is united with its
object. As such, the first and fourth intellects are alike
phenomenologically, though different quantitatively.




 The first and fourth intellects do not
conjoin, though al-Kindi would have the perfect soul ascend to its
creator. Similarly, he is not explicit as to the relationship of the
imagination and intellect; the imaginative forms, recognized as
partially abstracted from matter, should provide the raw material for
the intellect, but it is not at all clear they do. The Platonic
disparagement of sensibilia may have affected al-Kindi here,
leaving his psychology ultimately dualistic.




 Al-Razi, known to the Latin West as Rhazes
and hence referred to usually as Razi, was similarly drawn to a
Platonically inspired view of the soul, colored by theosophic accounts
of creation and salvation. While he agreed with Plato's notion of
a tripartite soul, Razi often spoke of three souls, the rational or
divine one enlisting the higher passions of the animal soul to control
the base appetites of the vegetative
 soul.[10]
Following Hellenistic
tradition, he locates the vegetative soul in the liver, the animal soul
in the heart and the rational soul in the brain. While the physical
organs of the two subordinate souls are sufficient to account for their
activities, the brain--seat of sensation, voluntary movement,
imagination, thought and memory--is regarded merely as an
instrument of the rational soul, which is non-physical and
immortal.




 In an introductory medical treatise, Razi
goes into further physiological detail concerning the responsibilities
of the various psychic organs. The special faculties required for the
brain to exercise its soul's dominion are identified as the
imagination (here called *wahm*, a term that Avicenna was to
adopt and expand upon); a cogitative power *(al-fikr*); and
memory (*al-hifz*).




 While Razi constructed his psychology with
eclectic borrowings from Plato, Galen and Aristotle, he is reported to
have gone further afield in metaphysics. He believed there were five
eternal cosmic principles, one of which was a world soul that needed
divine intervention to liberate it from the seductive and defiling
matter of the
 world.[11]
This is similar to the message he presents in
*Al-Tibb al-Ruhani*, that the immortal rational soul of
an individual must strive to free itself from corporeal entanglements,
lest it be reincarnated in another, not necessarily human, body.




 Razi's mythically based metaphysics,
coupled with his belief in the transmigration of the soul and a bold
indifference to identifiably Islamic tenets, led to his marginalization
among the faithful and philosophers alike. Nevertheless, Razi as well
as al-Kindi sketched the components of cognition that later
philosophers were to develop.


## 2. Al-Farabi




 This development owes a great deal to the work of Abu Nasr Muhammad
ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan al-Farabi (c. 870-950). A
prolific author, Farabi, as he is often referred to in English,
adopted and commented upon much of Aristotle's logical corpus,
while turning to Plato for his political philosophy. His metaphysics
and psychology were a blend of both traditions, establishing a
modified or Neoplatonised form of Aristotelianism which later
generations adopted and adapted.




 Farabi's familiarity with Aristotle
is evident in the summary sketch of his writings that he presents in
The Philosophy of Aristotle. The soul is defined as "that by
which the animate substance--I mean that which admits of 
 life--is realized as
 substance,"[12]
serving the triple function of
being a formal, efficient and final cause. For human beings, the
intellect assumes the mantle of substance (Mahdi, 125), it being
"a principle underlying the essence of man," both an agent
and final cause (Mahdi, 122). Specifically, it is the theoretical
intellect that has this status, the practical intellect being
subsidiary to it. The final perfection of a person is found in the
actualization of this theoretical intellect, its substance being
identical with its act.




 Beyond the individual intellect there lies a universal (though Farabi
does not call it such) Active (or Agent) Intellect (*al-'aql
al-fa'al*). This is conceived as the formal principle
of the soul, engendering in the potential intellect both the basic
axioms of thought and the ability to receive all other intelligible
notions (Mahdi, 127). This external intellect is also the ultimate
agent and final cause of the individual intellect. It both facilitates
the individual intellect's operations and, serving as an example
of perfect being, draws it back towards itself through acts of
intellection. The more the individual intellect in act is absorbed in
theoretical activity, the greater its accumulation of scientific
knowledge; each step bringing it closer to that totality of knowledge
and essential being encapsulated in the Agent Intellect.




 For Farabi, the individual intellect, even
when perfected, can only come close to joining with the substance of
the Agent Intellect. This reprises a theme sounded in Aristotle's
metaphysics, in which the intellects of the heavenly spheres, desiring
to be like the Intellect that is the Prime Mover, imitate it as best
they can. For Farabi, a person's ultimate happiness is found in
this approximation to the ideal.




 Farabi expounds upon this and other issues
pertaining to the soul in his wide-ranging masterpiece,
"Principles of the Views of the Citizens of the
Perfect
 State."[13]
He recounts the various faculties of the soul, following the model of
Aristotle's *De anima*, emphasizing the presence of an
inclination or propensity (*niza'*) concomitant with
each
 one.[14]
Thus,
the senses immediately like or dislike what they perceive, depending on
whether it is attractive or repulsive to them. This affective reaction
accompanies the imaginative faculty as well as the practical intellect,
which chooses its course of action accordingly.




 For Farabi, it is the faculty of will that
is responsible for these desires and dislikes that occur in sensation
and imagination, ultimately motivating the social and political
behavior of the individual (Walzer, 171-173). Farabi distinguishes
between what must be the automatic response of animals to the affects
created in their senses and imagination, and the conscious and
considered response of human beings, assisted by their rational
faculty. The former response is attributed to "will" in
general (*iradah*), the latter to "choice"
(*ikhtiyar*) (Walzer, 205).




 The intellect, considered as purely
immaterial, has no physical organ to sustain it, unlike the other
faculties of the soul. As Alexander of Aphrodisias, Farabi identifies
the heart as the "ruling organ" of the
 body.[15]
Assisted by the
brain, liver, spleen and other organs, the heart provides the innate
heat that is required by the nutritive faculty, senses and imagination
(Walzer, 175-187).




 It is this innate heat that
presumably is also responsible for the differences between the sexes,
Farabi asserts. The greater warmth (as well as strength) in their
organs and limbs make men generally more irascible and aggressively
forceful than women, who in turn generally excel in the
"weaker" qualities of mercy and
 compassion.[16]
The sexes are
equal, however, as regards sensation, imagination and intellection.




 It would appear from this that Farabi has
no problem in seeing both sexes as equal in terms of their cognitive
faculties and capabilities. This would seem to be part of his Platonic
legacy, a view shared by Averroes in his paraphrase of the Republic
(Walzer, 401, note 421). In theory, therefore, Farabi would consider
women capable of being philosophers (as well as prophets), able to
attain the happiness and perfection this brings.




 Possible as this is, and necessary
even in theory, Farabi does not elaborate on this view, in deference
undoubtedly to Islamic conventions. He is more explicit as regards the
process of intellection, a topic that he covers here and in greater
detail in a separate treatise, On the Intellect.




 In the Perfect State, Farabi already
characterizes the potential or "material" intellect, as
Alexander called it, as a disposition in matter to receive intelligible
"imprints" (*rusum al-ma'qulat*)
(Walzer, 199). These imprints originate as sensible forms that are
conveyed to the imagination and modified by it before being presented
to the intellect. The potential intellect is considered unable to
respond to these imaginative constructs on its own, it needs an agent
to activate it, to move it from potentiality to actuality. This is
Aristotle's active intellect, as removed by Alexander of
Aphrodisias from the individual soul to a universal separate sphere of
being. It is now associated with the tenth heavenly sphere (Walzer,
203), being a separate substance that serves both as an emanating
source of forms in prophecy (Walzer, 221), and as a force in all people
that actualizes both potential intellects and potential intelligibles.
Farabi compares its force to the light of the sun that facilitates
vision by illuminating both the subject and object of sight (Walzer,
201).




 With the assistance of this Agent
Intellect, the potential intellect is able to receive all intelligible
forms, beginning with "the first intelligibles which are common
to all men," in the areas of logic, ethics and science (Walzer,
205). These first intelligibles represent the first perfection in a
person, the final perfection being possession of as many intelligible
notions as it is possible to acquire. This creates the felicity,
*al-sa'adah*, human beings strive to attain, for it brings
them close to the divine status of the Agent Intellect, having
conjoined with it as much as is possible.




 Farabi portrays the imaginative
 faculty[17]
as having a
mimetic capability, "imitating" the sensible forms
previously received yet not present until recalled to mind. This
imitative ability extends over all the other faculties of the soul,
including the intelligible notions of the rational faculty. Farabi
adapts this originally Aristotelian
 idea[18]
to prophecy as well as to
lesser forms of divination, asserting that an individual imagination
can receive intelligible ideas directly from the Agent Intellect,
converting them to imaginative representations. Farabi believes the
Agent Intellect emanates particular as well as universal intelligibles
upon a given individual, expressing present as well as future events,
and, for the prophet, particularized knowledge of eternal truths,
"things divine" (*ashya'u
ilahiyah*) (Walzer, 221-23).




 Farabi naturalizes prophecy by having the
emanated forms received by the imagination pass on to the senses and
then out to the air. There they assume a sensible though immaterial
form that then embarks on a conventional return trip to the internal
senses (Walzer, 223).




 Farabi's most detailed study of the
intellect is to be found in the aptly titled "Epistle on the
 Intellect," *Risala fi'l-'Aql*.[19]
He begins by showing the
diverse contexts in which nominal and verbal forms of
"intellect" and "intelligence" are employed.
Aristotle, he points out, uses the term in his logical, ethical,
psychological and metaphysical treatises. In each area, it is the
intellect that is responsible for comprehending the first principles or
premises of the subject, and for enabling a person to perfect his (or
her) knowledge of it. For Farabi, this apparently innocuous statement
must serve to commend the epistemic methodologies of Aristotle over the
denaturalized, logically confined analyses of the
*mutakallimun*, the Muslim theologians. Yet, as emerges
later in the treatise, these first principles, seemingly innate to the
intellect, are engendered there by the Agent Intellect (Bouyges, 29;
Hyman, 219). That universal intellect, for all its ontic priority, is
the last of the four intellects that Farabi formally discusses in the
treatise. It is a separate intellect, totally immaterial and external
to the human intellect. Revising al-Kindi's schematization,
and showing the influence of Alexander of Aphrodisias'
understanding of Aristotle, Farabi posits a cognitive process in which
the human intellect moves from a state of potentiality to one of
actuality, acquiring in the process a discrete sum of intelligibles
that it can access when desired.




 Ignoring here the role of sensation and
imagination prior to the activity of the rational faculty, Farabi
describes the potential intellect as prepared and disposed to abstract
the intelligible "essences" and forms of things from
their
 matters.[20]
The
dynamic readiness of the potential intellect to act is due, however, to
the Agent Intellect. It invests the sub-lunar world with the forms that
comprise all species, rendering them potentially intelligible; and
energizes our potential intellect to receive them (Bouyges, 24, 29;
Hyman, 218, 219).




 This reception of the intelligible
transforms the potential intellect from being a mere disposition to
think to the active thinking of the intelligible; a process in which
the "intellect in act" (*al-'aql bi'l-fi'l*)
becomes its intelligible (Bouyges, 15; Hyman, 216). The potential
intellect itself remains unaffected by this metamorphosis, however, and
remains purely potential, able to receive additional intelligible ideas
objectively. The greater the number of intelligibles deposited by the
intellect in act in the "acquired intellect" (*al-'aql
al-mustafad*), the more that intellect thinks itself in
thinking them. In doing so, the acquired intellect imitates the Agent
Intellect, which it increasingly resembles.




 Echoing a Neoplatonic hierarchy of being,
Farabi ranks the intelligible order of our sub-lunar world, the Agent
Intellect being at the top and prime matter at the bottom. Intellection
of the separate, immaterial substances of the heavens, particularly
intellection of the Agent Intellect, is the highest cognition
desirable, except that Farabi does not think it possible. Not even
acquiring total or near-total knowledge of everything in our world will
suffice for Farabi; the formation of our intelligibles differs from
their order in the Agent Intellect, and there is a qualitative
difference between their presence in it and as known to us; we must
make do with imitations or likenesses (*ashbah*) of the pure
intelligibles (Bouyges, 29; Hyman, 219).




 Nevertheless, the formation of a
substantial amount of knowledge, or in Farabian terms, a strong
acquired intellect, is that which forms and enriches us, creating a
substance that in its immateriality resembles the Agent Intellect. This
represents "ultimate happiness" (*al-sa'adah
al-quswa)*, and even an afterlife (*al-hayah
al-akhirah*) of sorts (Bouyges, 31; Hyman, 220).




 Farabi holds diverse views on immortality,
now identifying it with a perfected intellect, now with the entire
soul, though his justification for positing an eternal individual soul
or intellect is weak (Davidson 1992, 56-57). As with his more detailed
treatment of prophecy, Farabi may prudently be appropriating the
religious belief in an afterlife, a tenet held fervently--and
very differently--by his community.


## 3. Avicenna




Avicenna (Abu 'Ali al-Husayn b.'Abd Allah Ibn Sina,
d. 1037), the multi-talented and prodigiously productive
*faylasuf* whose work had the greatest impact among later
Muslim thinkers, unequivocally posited an independent, self-conscious, substantial
and immortal soul, and with it asserted its
immortality. Avicenna could do this, following Plato rather than
Aristotle in positing an essential separation of body and soul.
Avicenna opens his chapter on the soul in the encyclopedic work
*Al-Shifa'* (known in English both as "The
Healing" and "The Cure") asserting this
separate
 existence.[21]
Later, in both The Healing itself and in its abridged form of the
*Najat* (called both "The Deliverance," and
"The
 Salvation"),[22]
Avicenna presents arguments to support this
claim.




 He views the physical, corruptible body in
all its parts, including the formal components, as irreconcilably other
than the purely immaterial soul, such that the latter cannot be an
essential form of the former. Rather, the soul is in an accidental
relation to a particular body, occasioned by the generation of that
body and its need for a central organizing and sustaining principle.
The soul itself is generated by the separate intelligences of the
heavens and emanated by them upon the body, having a natural
inclination, or proclivity, *niza'*, for the body that has
come into
 being.[23]




 The soul is individuated by the particular
nature of its designated body, which it strives to bring to moral and
intellectual perfection. Being essentially immaterial, the soul does
not perish with the body, and even retains its individuality, i.e., the
images and intelligible ideas it amassed during its sojourn on
 earth.[24]
Avicenna
attributes self-consciousness to the soul, an ego that has
self-awareness and is not to be identified unilaterally with the
rational faculty (Rahman 1952, 66). Depending primarily on the amount
of knowledge it accumulated, but also on the life the person lived,
with its virtues or vices, the immortal soul experiences continuous
pleasure or
 pain.[25]




 In this manner, both philosophically and
theologically, Avicenna goes beyond his Aristotelian and Muslim
predecessors. He does this by combining Aristotelian and Neoplatonic
motifs in his
 epistemology.[26]




 The deviation from the hylomorphic ontology
of Aristotle is apparent in the famous thought experiment that Avicenna
devises, conceiving of a person suspended in air in total isolation
from any physical or sensory
 experience.[27]
The purport of this experiment
is to show the ability of a person to deduce the soul's existence
intellectually, without assistance from the sensory or imaginative,
material faculties of the soul. For Avicenna this proves that the soul
is an independent intelligent substance, both prior to involvement with
the world, and afterwards, when the corporeal organs that service the
soul perish.




 Avicenna's depiction of the five
external faculties of the soul follows Aristotle's *De
anima*, the senses receiving the impressions of their designated
sensible objects by intromission. In his discussion of the internal
senses, however, Avicenna significantly modifies the Aristotelian
tradition that he received. The more he considered the matter, the more
he deviated from Aristotle, in a Platonic direction.




 Avicenna located the internal senses
in three ventricles of the brain, placing two in each ventricle, with
receptive and retentive capacities
 respectively.[28]
The common sense and (one
aspect of) the imaginative faculty comprise the first pair, located in
the front ventricle of the brain. The common sense coordinates the
impressions received by the individual senses, in order to produce a
unified picture of a sensible object. This includes, as Aristotle said,
impressions that are related incidentally (*kata
symbebeke*) to the
 object,[29]
a phenomenon that links memory of past
sensible impressions to a current sensation. This indicates a certain
capacity to make judgments present already in the common sense.




 The sensible forms that the common sense
receives and unifies are then transmitted to the imaginative faculty,
as Aristotle had said; except that Avicenna divides this faculty,
calling the first appearance a *quwwah musawwirah*, or
*khayal*. It retains these forms fully, and is thus called
in English, after the Arabic, the "retentive" as well as
"informing," or "formative,"
 imagination.[30]




 The middle ventricle is the location of the
next pair of internal senses, as Avicenna first conceived them. They
comprise a novel faculty of "estimation" (following the
Latin *aestimatio*), *wahm* in Arabic; and a second,
chameleon type faculty. It functions both imaginatively (in animals and
humans), and rationally (in humans alone). As another aspect of the
imaginative faculty, Avicenna calls it simply
*al-mutakhayyilah*, "the imagination," but due to its
function it is known as the "compositive imagination."
However, when this faculty deals with specific, materially based
concepts, Avicenna calls it *quwah mufakkirah*, a thinking
or "cogitative" faculty.




 Avicenna posits the existence of an
estimative faculty in order to explain the innate ability in all
animals (humans included) to sense a non-sensible intention
(*ma'nan)* that is intrinsic to the object as perceived by the
subject. Intentions are thus the extra-sensible properties that
an object presents to an animal or person at the moment of perception.
These intentions affect the perceiver powerfully, such as the negative
feelings a sheep senses in perceiving a wolf, or the positive feelings
sensed in perceiving a friend or
 child.[31]




 Avicenna does not limit *wahm* to
animals, as Averroes later
 assumed,[32]
but rather conceived it broadly, affecting
logical as well as physical subjects. He believed estimation grasps the
core characteristic of every discrete physical object, the intention
that distinguishes it from every other object.




 In addition to the faculty of estimation,
and akin to it in being innate and spontaneous, Avicenna recognized,
with Aristotle, a faculty of intuition (*hads*) that is the key
step in obtaining certain knowledge. This is the ability a person has
to discern suddenly the middle term of a putative syllogism, the
proposition that anchors a particular
 argument.[33]
Avicenna recognizes that
occasionally brilliant individuals exist whose intuitive sense is so
innately strong that they can do without much prior experience,
empirically or rationally. In extreme and rare cases, there are
individuals, like the prophets, with a developed intuitive acumen,
*dhaka'* (Aristotle's *anchinoia*), that
enables them to know instantly the entire subject matter of a given
science. While not part of his normative epistemology, Avicenna
attempts to accommodate this phenomenon scientifically, seeing it not
as an innate power of an internal sense, but as an expression, however
rare, of the emanative powers of the Agent Intellect.




 Avicenna believes that the intentions that
the estimative faculty obtains are received in the third and rear
ventricle of the brain, in memory, *hafizah* . Memory shares the
third ventricle with a faculty of recollection (*dhikr)*, which
retains the estimative intentions ready for recall.




 Remembering for Avicenna thus consists in
the collation by the imaginative/cogitative faculty of estimative
intentions on the one hand, and the appropriate sensible forms retained
by the formative imagination, on the other. For that reason, this
"second" aspect of the imaginative faculty is referred to as the
"compositive imagination;" both it and the cogitative
faculty deal with specific sensible forms and concepts, respectively,
presenting them exactly and completely. They do this by combining the
impressions received by the common sense and estimation, and separating
out what is not relevant to the object.




 The cogitative faculty is primarily
concerned with practical issues rooted in material being, forming
judgments based on empirical data with the help of innate powers of
abstraction and logical acumen. In what may well be a nod to tradition,
Avicenna counts the "reports (*al-akhbar*) to which
the soul gives assent on account of unbroken and overwhelming tradition
(*shiddah al-tawatur*)" as a further credible source
for forming practical
 judgments.[34]




 For Avicenna, animals have this developed imaginative
faculty only. It allows them to represent to themselves that which they
remember, and also affords them the ability, like human beings, to
dream. The cogitative faculty in human beings, on the other hand,
allows them to go beyond instinctive remembering, and introduces an
element of rational deliberation that is limited primarily to purely
individual, discrete objects and
 actions.[35]




 Avicenna considers estimation to be
involved with the cogitative faculty in reconstructing a specific,
physically based concept. As such, it can influence that faculty, and
when excessive, be responsible for the fantasies and fictions in our
dreams and thoughts (Black 2000, 227-28). Similarly, the estimative
faculty can over-reach itself in logical matters by using the
syllogisms that it helped create to pass judgments on immaterial
beings, thus leading to false judgments in
 metaphysics.[36]




 As described, many of the internal senses,
particularly the extended activities of estimation and the cogitative
faculty, perform in ways that encroach upon the preserve of the
rational faculty and threaten to compromise its objectivity and
separate, immaterial nature, damaging the soul in its quest for
immortal bliss. Consequently, in his later writings Avicenna distanced
intuition from any physical base within estimation and the brain,
locating it amorphously in the soul as a divine emanation; and he
limited the internal faculty of cogitation to thinking of particular
conceptual concepts
 only.[37]




 This attempt to separate the rational
faculty from the internal senses is echoed in Avicenna's
treatment of the stages in the development of the intellect. He views
the entire cognitive process in which the internal senses were
preoccupied as a necessary (for most people) but insufficient condition
for possessing true knowledge. The efforts of the internal senses are
seen in some of his major compositions as having but a propadeutic
effect on the soul, preparing it to receive the universal intelligible
notions that are its ultimate goal and, ultimately, its sole concern.
These intelligible ideas are not abstracted from the imagination, as
Aristotle would have it, but come from the universal Agent Intellect,
transforming the purely potential and passive intellect into an
 acquired intellect (*'aql mustafad*).[38]
This is an active state of
cognition, when the intellect is actively conjoined to its intelligible
object. Ultimately, this conjunction is with the Agent Intellect, the
source of all forms on earth.




 Avicenna also posits, as had
Aristotle originally, the existence of an intermediate stage of
potentiality, calling it an "intellect *in habitu*"
(*al-'aql bi'l-malakah)*. At this stage, the
intellect's acquired intelligibles are not being used, and are
therefore
 potential.[39]
However, treating the active acquired
intellligibles as potential seemed contradictory to Avicenna, so he
returns them to the Agent Intellect, where they are deposited and await
recollection by the intellect *in habitu*. This intellect does
not therefore store the acquired intelligibles, but merely serves to
facilitate their reacquisition from the Agent
 Intellect.[40]




 The Agent intellect is, then, the source of
intelligible forms on earth, and the source of our being able to
conceive of them. It functions much as does the sun, illuminating both
subject and object of intellection, and is present at every stage of
the individual person's intellectual development (Davidson 1992,
86, 87, 92).




 While most people require preliminary
training of the senses to prepare their souls for intellectual
cognition, which the Agent Intellect automatically
 grants,[41]
some few
individuals with prodigious intuitions can, as we saw, grasp
intelligible concepts and propositions immediately. Avicenna labels the
intellects of such intuitively endowed persons "holy"
(*'aql qudsi*), and calls the Agent Intellect the
 "Holy Spirit" (*al-ruh al-qudsi*).[42]
Prophets have
this sense to an extreme degree, receiving emanations of all, or nearly
all, of the intelligible forms in the Agent Intellect. It is "not
far-fetched" (*wa la yab'ud*), Avicenna says, that the
imaginative faculties of such persons are able to depict the emanated
universal intelligible forms in particular, sensory,
 terms.[43]




 Prophecy is thus a natural, if exceptional,
occurrence for Avicenna, who equivocates on the issue of personal
providence. However much God is the final cause of intellection, He is
not directly involved in the entire process, a sanctified Agent
Intellect being His intermediary to man. Here as elsewhere, we see
Avicenna attempt to accommodate his philosophy to traditional religious
conceptions.




 Avicenna has severed the natural link
between imagination and intellection, in order to preserve the
immaterial and immortal nature of the soul. It is dependent on the
Agent Intellect entirely, with only the soul's independent
substantiality separating it from being totally absorbed in it.


## 4. Averroes




 Averroes (Abu'l-Walid Muhammad b.
Ahmad ben Rushd, 1126-98) hews closer to the Peripatetic tradition than
his predecessors, and it is as The Commentator on Aristotle that he was
known in Europe. He commented on *De anima* three times, and
wrote an epitome of the *Parva Naturalia*. His Short Commentary
on *De anima* is also, and more correctly, an epitome, being a
summary of Aristotle's work rather than a precise and more
literal commentary, as are his Middle and Long, or
Grand,
 commentaries.[44]
In the Short Commentary, Averroes sets the stage for Aristotle's
description of the soul by offering a capsule summary of his main
teachings in physics, meteorology, and physiology. These mainly concern
the hylomorphic composition of all bodies; the nature of the four
elements; and the generative role in an organism caused by the heavenly
bodies and by the innate heat, or *pneuma*, of a
 body.[45]
The soul,
Averroes thus indicates, is the product of natural causes, both
proximate and remote, terrestial and celestial. Among the latter is the
Agent Intellect, whose relation to bodies, like that of the other
heavenly intelligences, is "incidental" (or
"accidental," *bi'l-'arad*), since it is
essentially "separate" from them, being immaterial.




 Averroes stresses the hierarchical
structure of the soul, beginning with the nutritive faculty. It serves
as a substrate for the sensory faculties, their matter
"disposed" to receive sensory perceptions. This disposition
is the first perfection or actuality of the sensory faculty, rendering
that faculty's potentiality an actual, if still unrealized, state
of being. The higher faculty is thus present, albeit potentially, in
the lower.




 Each faculty is similarly sustained by one
more material, or less "spiritual," than it: the senses
serve as substrate for the common sense, it the substrate for the
imagination, and that faculty the substrate for the rational
 faculty.[46]
As such, the
imagination follows the senses in providing the intellect with images
that have intelligible dimensions, or "intentions"
(*ma'ani*), which term Averroes uses more broadly than
heretofore. These intentions are present in the form presented to the
senses, but must wait upon an intellect to appreciate them, being
represented first as sensible and then imaginative intentions to the
senses and imagination, respectively. Averroes thus employs
"intentions" to convey not the form of the perceptible
object as it is, but as it is sensed, imagined, remembered or
intellected by the respective faculties of the soul.




 Averroes' contribution to the
philosophy of mind lies primarily in his attempt to refine and redefine
the activities of the internal senses, and to determine the nature of
the hylic, or material, intellect. He discusses the role of the
internal senses primarily in his *De anima* commentaries as well
as in his epitomes on the senses and memory. His work builds on
Aristotle and the psychological writings of his Andalusian predecessor
Ibn Bajjah (d. 1138), known to the West as
 Avempace.[47]
Averroes'
work also incorporates a response and rebuke to Avicenna, rejecting,
among other things, his elevation of *wahm*, estimation, to the
status of an additional internal sense. For Averroes, imagination and
memory can do the work of Avicenna's estimative faculty.




 Aristotle had begun his
treatise On Memory by distinguishing between the acts of remembering
and recollecting. He saw both as related to, though distinct from, the
internal senses (common sense and imagination) and the
rational
 faculty.[48]




 In Aristotle's view, the
imagination internalizes and copies an object originally presented to
the senses and assembled into a single sensation by the common sense;
and the memorative faculty receives "some such thing as a
picture" (*zographema ti*), "a sort of
impression" (*tupon tina*) of that percept (transmitted
through the
 imagination).[49]
Recollection is a deliberative act that joins
the impression retained in memory with the percept as originally
imagined.




 Elaborating on Aristotle's text,
Averroes regards memory as created by a process of continuous
abstraction, or "spiritualization." The form of an
external object is sensed at first with its many "rinds" or
husks of corporeality (*qushur*), for which read
particularity. The common sense and then the imaginative
 faculty[50]
receive
(intentional adaptations of) this form in an increasingly immaterial
manner, followed by a "discriminating faculty," i.e., the
cogitative faculty, treated as another internal
 sense.[51]
This faculty actually serves
as a bridge between imagination and intellect, dealing with particular
images as it does, but selecting out the most distinctive aspect of
each percept. It brings the purification process to a close, memory
(*dhikr*) receiving an essentialized notion or intention of a
particular
 percept.[52]




 Memory stores these dismembered
essentialized images and is able to remember them at will, that is,
with an act of will. Recollection (*tadhakkur*) rejoins them in
the cogitative faculty with full images that flesh out the corporeal
features of the sought object. As described, there is a parallel
between the activity of memory and that of the intellect *in
habitu* as developed by Alexander of Aphrodisias, for both retain
the essential notions that form respectively the previously apprehended
contents of a given particular percept (the role of memory) or of a
universal concept (the intellect *in habitu*).




 While generally restricting the memorative
faculty to the intentions of a given imagined form, Averroes
acknowledges that it also relates to universals. This is done through
the cogitative faculty, associating the universal with some particular
image, recollected with the assistance of the intention stored in the
memorative faculty; an "intention" that is the distinctive
character or nature of that
 image.[53]
That is to say, one remembers a universal
idea by remembering an image that connotes it. As Aristotle says,
"without an image, thinking is
 impossible."[54]




 Averroes thus understands
recollection as a three-fold operation: the cogitative faculty employs
the intentions of an imagined form retained in memory, and combines
them with the original sensory image to elicit a full recollection of
the percept
 desired.[55]
The similarity of this scheme to that
developed by Avicenna is striking, though Averroes' scheme is
more parsimonious.




 Averroes recognizes with Avicenna
that animals have an acute intentional sense, and are able to identify
non-sensible qualities in the nature of others immediately, thereby
enhancing their survival. Averroes considers this a function of the
imagination, abetted by memory, and doesn't grant it the status
of an independent "estimative" faculty (*wahm*), not
wanting to multiply the soul's faculties more than Aristotle
had
 done.[56]




 Averroes follows Galen and "the
consensus of opinion" rather than Aristotle in locating the
internal senses and memory in various parts of the brain: the common
sense and imaginative faculty in the forward lobe, the cogitative
faculty in the middle, and memory in the
 rear.[57]
Good memory is said to depend
on dryness in the front and back of the brain, poor memory due to
moisture that prevents images and ideas from retaining their hold. The
best disposition, manifest mostly in youth, is of a middle kind,
enabling both quickness of understanding (the positive benefit of
moisture) and a long
 memory.[58]




 While the internal senses, as of course the
external senses, have physical locations in the organs of the body, the
rational faculty has not. That does not prevent Averroes from
conceiving it as being structured in the hylomorphic pattern that is
characteristic of Aristotle's physics. As expressed in the
Epitome to *De anima*, it is the cogitative faculty, there
called simply the practical intellect, which first processes sensory
and imaginative intentions, exercising choice and deliberation along
rational lines both inductive and deductive. This practical intellect
then serves as matter or substrate for its theoretical counterpart,
which abstracts the universal idea or proposition from the particular
subject formerly
 addressed.[59]




 The theoretical intellect's striving
for universal truth is the acme of the soul's perfection, which
Averroes calls a "very divine"
 pursuit,[60]
though he believes relatively
few individuals succeed at it. The ultimate knowledge sought is of the
Agent Intellect itself. Mankind as a whole has not reached this level,
but it will one day, since "nature refuses" to allow all
true (and finite) possibilities not to be eventually realized (given an
eternal
 universe).[61]




 While this statement is not repeated in his
other two commentaries on De anima, Averroes' belief in the attainment
of personal perfection through knowledge of the Agent Intellect
remained constant. Every cognition of an intelligible is an act of
identification of subject and object, no material barrier existing
between
 them.[62]
Knowledge of the Agent Intellect,
however, is thought to surpass everything else, its content uniquely
and totally comprehensive. The species of all forms on earth are found
unified in it in a way that renders it a single intelligible being.




 Averroes held to the view of the Agent
Intellect as a form of (earthly) forms throughout his life, though his
understanding of the relationship between it and the forms on earth
underwent change. While first thinking the Agent Intellect an emanative
substance that bestowed forms on all sub-lunar substances, he later
regarded it in Aristotelian terms simply as an efficient cause of
intellection, "illuminating" or actualizing both the
potentially intelligent subject and intelligible
 object.[63]
However, as the
ultimate object of humanity's quest for knowledge, the Agent
Intellect served as a final cause of intellection, conjunction with it
offering a person the greatest felicity (*sa'adah*) one's
soul could have.




 For Averroes, as for his predecessors, the
intellectual potentiality of a person, represented by the hylic or
material intellect, is brought into actuality by the Agent Intellect.
This creates a latent store of ideas, the intellect *in habitu*
(*al-'aql bi'l malakah*), which become operationally the
acquired intellect (*al-'aql al-mustafad*). It is in this
last stage of the intellect's development that conjunction,
*ittisal*, with the Agent Intellect, is experienced, it
being a unification (*ittihad*) of subject and
 object.[64]




 Averroes struggled more than his
predecessors with the notion of the potential or "material"
intellect. In the Epitome of De anima, he presents two positions, at
first following an Alexandrian-Ibn Bajjahian view that saw the
material intellect as a disposition in the body or imaginative faculty;
and then, to guarantee its immaterial objectivity, as a substance
essentially outside the
 soul.[65]
This latter view, reflecting that held by
Themistius, is the one offered in the Long Commentary, to which he
refers the reader in what is an obvious recommendation of the position
he there
 holds.[66]




 Averroes, however, has a third position on
the nature of the material intellect. That is the view presented in his
Middle Commentary, which he may well have written after the Long
Commentary, or, as more likely, after a first draft of
 it.[67]
The Latin West
had only the Long Commentary in translation, and was ignorant of the
philosophical alternative view of the material intellect presented in
the Middle commentary. Though of importance only to Averroistically
inclined Jewish philosophers, who read it in Hebrew translation and
lacked a Hebrew translation of the Long Commentary, the Middle
Commentary's position has a certain coherence worth noting.




 As in his initial presentation in the Short
Commentary, Averroes considers the material intellect, in the Middle
Commentary, as relating directly to the imaginative faculty, or rather
to the intelligible intentions to which that corporeal faculty is
disposed. Now, however, Averroes emphasizes that this relation to the
imaginative faculty is "incidental" to the nature of the
material intellect, its essential relation being with the Agent
Intellect. The material intellect is a temporary, discrete appearance
in human beings of the eternal and always actual Agent intellect. It is
our "first perfection," while the Agent Intellect
represents an ultimate perfection, or "final form"
for
 us.[68]




 The Middle Commentary fashions the material
intellect from a fusion of the views of Alexander of Aphrodisias and
Themistius. With Alexander, Averroes believes the material or potential
intellect is a disposition or ability that the soul possesses to
represent imaginative forms as abstract
 intelligibles;[69]
while with Themistius,
Averroes views the material intellect as a separate immaterial
substance. It is, however, for Averroes in the Middle Commentary, but
the substrate of this separate substance, the Agent Intellect being its
full and eternally actual expression.




 In the Long Commentary, Averroes retains
the separate, i.e., immaterial yet substantial nature of the material
and Agent intellects, and their relation of potential to actual
intelligibility. However, he treats them as two separate substances,
not two aspects of the same intelligence. The material intellect is
thus hypostatized, treated as a "fourth kind of being," the
celestial principle of matter *qua* potentiality that, together
with the formal principle represented by the Agent Intellect, explains
the nature and activity of intelligible forms; even as sensible objects
are constituted by similar hylomorphic
 principles.[70]




 The Long Commentary thus sees the material
intellect as "the last of the separate intellects in the
(celestial) hierarchy," following the Agent
 Intellect.[71]
This physical
relocation of the material intellect may guarantee its incorruptibility
and objectivity, for Averroes, but it does not explain the presence in
human beings of a rational faculty, a presence that Averroes
recognizes. To that purpose, he enlarges the role of cogitation
(*fikr*) in the cognitive process. As mentioned above, he sees
it as a corporeal faculty located in the brain that is able to receive
and process both the imaginative intentions found in sensation, and the
intelligible intentions of the imagination, thereby initiating the
process of abstraction and universalization that the material and Agent
intellects
 complete.[72]
Averroes also introduces in the Long
Commentary a "passible intellect" that has a similar
corporeal nature and function, that of bridging the particular and
universal domains of images and
 intelligibles.[73]




 Yet, for all his attempts in
the Long Commentary to distance the material intellect from an
individual corruptible body through what may be seen as surrogate
intellectual powers, Averroes involves the material intellect, and even
the Agent Intellect, with a person's intellectual development.
Their presence is essential to the individual striving for rational
perfection, however non-essential from the standpoint of the universal
substances themselves. The location of these immaterial faculties in
the soul is nowhere explicit, neither in the Middle or Long
commentaries, but their function and internal dynamic is similarly
presented. The individual perfects his/her intellect, and the more it
is perfected, i.e., the more abstract truths accumulate, the less
particular and individual it is, the less it "belongs" to
that person. Ultimately, a person's fully realized intellect is
able theoretically to conjoin with the Agent Intellect, all traces of
individuality excised.




 Averroes was aware that very few if any
individuals reach intellectual perfection, i.e., mastery of all there
is to know, and even that person cannot maintain the state of
conjunction indefinitely, being human and requiring food, drink, and
non-intellectual pursuits. So it is that Averroes, in all his
commentaries and other writings on the subject, does not deprecate the
existence in living beings of intellectual individuation. This was
thought by many to be denied by Averroes' theory of monopsychism,
in which there is but one material as well as agent intellect.




 In one of his minor essays on the topic,
Averroes portrays the fully realized acquired intellect of a person as
losing its identity upon attaining conjunction with the
Agent
 Intellect,[74]
being totally absorbed in it. This can happen to the rare individual
while alive, though it is a temporary state of being then. Upon the
demise of a body, however, the immaterial intellect of every one,
however much or little developed, is enveloped within the one Agent
Intellect. The contingent and material circumstances that brought the
individual to recognize universal truths and which affected the
particular composition of that person's soul do not endure, and
the universal intelligibles acquired have no substance with which to
remain other than the Agent Intellect, where they are always
represented.




 In conclusion, one may say that the
psychology of the classical Muslim philosophers was torn between
Aristotelian and Neoplatonic perspectives, with attempted syntheses
that favored one perspective or another. The naturalism of Aristotle
was frequently subverted in the quest for a knowledge of universal
truths that promised eternal bliss, however philosophically difficult
that concept proved to be.