Avicenna, a Persian Muslim philosopher of the Middle Ages, devised the following “thought experiment”:?

4 Responses to Avicenna, a Persian Muslim philosopher of the Middle Ages, devised the following “thought experiment”:?

1. j153e

   February 22, 2012 at 6:43 am

   The intention of the experiment is to permit being without sensation.

   The question is “mentation without data stream?”

   A pre-verbal “I am” is a likely conclusion. Brouwer notes this preverbal awareness as a “movement of time” in mathematical intuition.

   This process parallels the movement of subconscious waking awareness, unto dreaming consciousness/post-passing consciousness lucidity.

   With the human data stream and sense patterns, the typical human remains cocooned within dream or dialog images.

   Authors such as Ann Ree Colton, “Men in White Apparel,” Mark Prophet, “The Masters and Their Retreats,” and Dr. Olga Kharitidi, “The Master of Lucid Dreams” explain.

   cordially,

   j.
2. Rafiki

   February 22, 2012 at 7:30 am

   perhaps he was trying to point out that there is a sense of selfidentity independent of the ego and sensation.
3. Mr. Wizard

   February 22, 2012 at 8:29 am

   “… Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of every Witch Doctor (a premise he shared explicitly with Augustine): “the prior certainty of consciousness,” the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one’s consciousness—which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception—which means: the indiscriminate contents of one’s consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform.” [Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology - Ayn Rand]

   For a close to real life version of your Persian muslim philosophers’ ‘experiment’ read The Miracle Worker by William Gibson. This describes the life of Hellen Keller who was born blind and deaf, and her teacher Annie Sullivan… “Without being accompanied by sensations,” her “interpretative apparatus” did not act; it did not act “as do all reflexes”; it did not produce any knowledge at all, let alone any “theoretical knowledge.”
4. Mozarella

   February 22, 2012 at 8:45 am

   This argument is based on the specious hypothesis that human life could exist under the imagined conditions proposed by Avicenna. Descartes would probably say “can I have a glass of water please”