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Epiphany: Vol. 7, No. 1, 2014  

ISSN 1840-3719 

Ethics and Dualism in Contemporary 

Psychology: From Avicenna and Descartes to 

Neuroscience 
Alma Jefti�

∗∗∗∗

 

Abstract 

 
From Avicenna and Descartes a long debate on the role of mind-body dilemma 

has left a huge impact on ethics of psychological research. That is especially 

applicable on researches that include both human and non-human participants, 

as well as their limitations and constraints that are connected to ethical 

principles. However, these principles are closely related to the interpretation of 

mind-body dilemma, which depends on different understandings of connection 

between soul and senses. The purpose of this paper is to examine the major 

impact of well-known “mind-body” dualism on ethics in psychological 

researches, with special emphasis on neuropsychology and neuroscience in 

general, as well as major constraints related to that dillema. The thought 

experiment has been recognized as a precursor to Rene Descartes’ famous 

‘Cogito ergo sum’, as well as his body-mind dilemma. However, Avicenna's 

argument is more intended to demonstrate conceptually that Aristotle’s 

empirical axiom “there is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses” 

is mistaken, since there is at least one thing in the mind which is not contingent 

upon experience, and that is self-awareness. The major contribution of this 

paper is the inclusion of two philosophical debates on mind-body dilemma 

while considering ethical approaches to neuropsychological research on both 

human and non-human participants.  

Keywords: Ethics; Neuroscience; Dualism; Mind-body Dillema; Human and 

Non-human Participants 

  

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�Corresponding Author: Alma Jefti�, PhD Candidate, University of Belgrade; 

e-mail: ajeftic@ius.edu.ba�



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Introduction 

According to Avicenna theoretical psychology lies outside 

the province of the physician qua physician. In his experiment 

which he called the “flying man” or the ‘floating’ man, found at 

the beginning of his Fi’-Nafs/De Anima (Treatise on the Soul), he 

asks us to imagine a human being with absolutely no sensory 

experience. According to Avicenna's opinion, the only thing this 

person with no experiences would know is that she/he himself 

exists. Therefore, person would be aware of herself/himself (self-

aware) quite apart from experiences of other things which stand in 

some relation to her/him. 

The thought experiment has been recognized as a 

precursor to Rene Descartes’ famous ‘Cogito ergo sum’, as well 

as his body-mind dilemma. However, Avicenna's argument is 

more intended to demonstrate conceptually that Aristotle’s 

empirical axiom “there is nothing in the mind which was not first 

in the senses” is mistaken, since there is at least one thing in the 

mind which is not contingent upon experience, and that is self-

awareness.  

Suspended in such a state, person is not able to affirm the 

existence of her/his body because she/he is not empirically aware 

of it, thus the argument may be seen as affirming the 

independence of the soul from the body, a form of dualism. 

However, there is a subject that is thinking, so she/he cannot 

doubt that self exists therefore the argument can be seen as an 



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affirmation of the self-awareness of the soul and its substantiality. 

This argument does raise an objection, which may be applicable 

to different understandings of ethics in neuroscientific research: 

how do we know that the knowing subject is the self and what the 

major differences and ethical constraints between human and non-

human participants are.  

Avicenna's Psychology and Descartes' Dualism 

Avicenna's interest in classical psychology is primarily 

embodied in the Kitab al-nafs parts of his Kitab al-shifa' (The 

Book of Healing) and Kitab al-najat (The Book of Deliverance), 

which were known in Latin under the title De Anima. The main 

thesis of these tracts is represented in his “thought experiment”, 

also known as "flying man" argument, which resonates with what 

was centuries later entailed by Descartes's cogito argument (Nader 

El-Bizri, 2003). 

Avicenna's psychology requires that connection between 

the body and soul should be strong enough to ensure the soul's 

individuation, but weak enough to allow for its immortality 

(Rahman, 1981, 40). His psychology is based on physiology, 

which reveals that his understanding of the soul is one that deals 

almost entirely with the natural science of the body and its 

abilities of perception. Therefore, the major connection between 

the soul and body is explained by his understanding of perception, 



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where bodily perception interrelates with the immaterial human 

intellect (Rahman, 1981, 40).  

The perceiver senses the form of the object first by 

perceiving features of the object by our external senses, but 

sensory information is supplied to the internal senses, which 

merge all the pieces into a whole, unified conscious experience. 

This process of perception and abstraction is the nexus of the soul 

and body, for the material body may only perceive material 

objects, while the immaterial soul may only receive the 

immaterial, universal forms, therefore the soul and body interact 

in the final abstraction of the universal (Rahman, 1981, 41). 

The soul completes the action of intellection by accepting 

forms that have been abstracted from matter, which means that a 

concrete particular (material) must be abstracted into the universal 

intelligible (immaterial) (Rahman, 1981, 68-69). Both of them 

continue interaction through the Active Intellect, which is a 

"divine light" containing the intelligible forms (Rahman, 1981, 

68-69). Reason is designed material (or hylic), possible or 

habitual, and it may be called  “material” either in the pure sense, 

by analogy with the pure matter, which in itself is entirely 

formless but is the substratum of all possible forms (Fakhry, 2004, 

145).  

The most lasting legacies of Descartes’ philosophy are his 

thesis that mind and body are really distinct entities. That thesis is 



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now called “mind-body dualism”. He argues that the nature of the 

mind is completely different from that of the body, and therefore 

it is possible for one to exist without the other. This argument 

gives rise to some of the intriguing questions, such as: how can 

the mind cause some of our bodily limbs to move, and how can 

the body’s sense organs cause sensations in the mind.  

In the Second Meditation, Descartes argues that he is 

“thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is 

unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions” 

(Descartes, 1985, 19). Neither a mind can be understood to be 

shaped or in motion, nor can a body understand or sense anything. 

However, human beings are combinations of mind and body such 

that the mind’s choices can cause modes of motion in the body, 

and motions in certain bodily organs.  

According to Descartes, a clear and distinct understanding 

of the mind without the body exists. Since the mind must have a 

surface and a capacity for motion, the mind must also be extended 

and, therefore, mind and body are not completely different. Even 

though he never described this problem clearly, Descartes himself 

never took this issue very seriously: 

“These questions presuppose amongst other things an 

explanation of the union between the soul and the body, 

which I have not yet dealt with at all. But I will say, for your 

benefit at least, that the whole problem contained in such 

questions arises simply from a supposition that is false and 

cannot in any way be proved, namely that, if the soul and the 

body are two substances whose nature is different, this 



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prevents them from being able to act on each other.” 

(Descartes 1985, 275). 

It is evident that his response to mind-body problem 

presupposes an explanation of the union between these two 

entities, as well as the false presupposition that two substances 

with completely different natures cannot act on each other.  

          „Flying Man“ vs „Cogito“ 

One cannot fail to note the striking similarities between the 

flying man and Rene Descartes' cogito six centuries later 

(Kaukua, 2007, 14). Avicenna's most general definition of the 

soul conceives it as a perfection of a living body, but it is 

important to allow differences between the souls of animals and 

plants on the one hand, and the souls of human beings and the 

celestian spheres on the other hand (Kaukua, 2007, 24). 

Avicenna’s epistemology is based on a theory of soul that 

is independent of the body and capable of abstraction. This proof 

for the self in many ways prefigures by 600 years the Cartesian 

cogito and the modern philosophical notion of the self (Black, 

2008, 65). It somehow demonstrates the Aristotelian base and 

Neoplatonic structure of his psychology. The so-called ‘flying 

man’ argument or thought experiment found at the beginning of 

his Fi’-Nafs/De Anima (Treatise on the Soul) can serve as one of 

the examples: 

“We say: one of us must imagine himself as creates all at 

once an perfect but with his sight veiled from observing 



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external things, and as created floating in the air or the void 

so that he would not encounter air resistance which he would 

have to sense, and with his limbs separate from each other in 

such a way that they neither meet nor touch each other. He 

must then reflect upon (the question) whether he would 

affirm the existence of his essence…” (Rahman 1959, 36) 

The main question is: If a person were created in a perfect 

state, but blind and suspended in the air but unable to perceive 

anything through his senses, would he be able to affirm the 

existence of his self? Suspended in such a state, he cannot affirm 

the existence of his body because he is not empirically aware of it, 

thus the argument may be seen as affirming the independence of 

the soul from the body, which represents a form of dualism. But in 

that state he cannot doubt that his self exists because there is a 

subject that is thinking, thus the argument can be seen as an 

affirmation of the self-awareness of the soul and its substantiality 

(Black, 2008, 66). The same objection may also be posed at 

Descartes: how do we know that the knowing subject is the self? 

This rational self possesses faculties or senses in a theory 

that begins with Aristotle and develops through Neoplatonism. 

According to Avicenna, the first sense is common sense, the 

second sense is imagination, the third sense is the imaginative 

faculty, the fourth sense is estimation, and the final sense is where 

the ideas produced are stored and analyzed and ascribed meanings 

based upon the production of the imaginative faculty and 

estimation (Fakhry, 2004). 



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The last move in Avicenna’s “Thought experiment” is 

slightly problematic, since it seems to contain the obviously 

fallacious inference pattern, “If I know x but I do not know y, then 

x cannot be the same as y” (Black, 2008, 11). The question of 

whether Avicenna explicitly or implicitly commits this fallacy, 

(which is often laid against the Cartesian cogito as well), has been 

much discussed. However, while the Flying Man argument 

focuses primarily on the impossibility that self-awareness is a 

mode of sense perception, the primitive character of the 

experience exemplified in the Flying Man poses parallel and equal 

difficulties for the claim that it could be a mode of intellectual 

understanding as well (Black 2008, 12). 

          Ethics of Human Soul 

Avicenna’s particular interest was in the persistence of the 

Soul’s consciousness of itself and its identity throughout the 

changing cycle of psychic conditions and states, from dreaming to 

intoxication to sleep (Fakhry, 2004, 164). According to him, even 

if the Soul is supposed to have been suspended in the air, and 

without any contact with the body or the external world, it would 

still be fully unconscious of anything but the fact of its existence. 

By this fact, existence and identity are achieved at once.  

The Soul itself is the basis, of the entire motive, cognitive 

or the vital functions we associate with it, and as such is logically 

prior to all these functions (Fakhry, 2004, 164). This concept is 



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pretty similar to Descartes’ cogito, and the similarity has been 

noted by many scholars. Also, both Aristotle and Plotinus had 

insisted on the unity or identity of the Soul and the fact that, in its 

inner and outer functions, motive and cognitive, it is diversified 

purely accidentally (Fakhry, 2004, 164).  

Avicenna claims that human souls are subsistent entities in 

their own right, and yet, since there are multiple individuals in the 

species “human”, those individuals can only been distinguished 

from one another by the diversity of their matter (Black, 2008, 

77). But in that situation, what is happening to the souls of both 

human and non-human participants in neuropsychological 

researches? Is there possibility for researcher to distinguish causes 

and effects, or, to be sure that the knowing subject is aware? Are 

there difference between human and animal self-awareness, and, 

in the same line, differences in ethical principles that should be 

applied before conducting neuropsychological research on human 

and/or non-human participants? 

According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and 

Code of Conduct (2010), “psychologist conducting intervention 

research involving the use of experimental treatments clarify to 

participants at the outset of the research (1) the experimental 

nature of the treatment; (2) the services that will or will not be 

available to the control group(s) if appropriate; (3) the means by 

which assignment to treatment and control groups will be made; 

(4) available treatment alternatives if an individual does not whish 



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to participate in the research or wishes to withdraw once a study 

has begun; and (5) compensation for or monetary costs of 

participating including, if appropriate, whether reimbursement 

from the participant or a third –party payor will be sought” 

(Standards 8.02b, Research and Publication, Informed Consent to 

Research).  

However, there is no informed consent when it comes to 

the non-human participants, but the Ethical Principles of 

Psychologists and Code of Conduct (2010) contains parts 

describing “Human Care and Use of Animals in Research”, as 

follows: 

(a) Psychologists acquire, care for, use, and dispose of animals in 

compliance with current federal, state and local laws and 

regulations, and with professional standards. 

(b) Psychologists trained in research methods and experienced in 

the care of laboratory animals supervise all procedures involving 

animals and are responsible for ensuring appropriate consideration 

of their comfort, health and humane treatment. 

(c) Psychologists ensure that all individuals under their 

supervision who are using animals have received instruction in 

research methods and in the care, maintenance and handling of the 

species being used, to the extent appropriate to their role. 



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(d) Psychologists make reasonable efforts to minimize the 

discomfort, infection, illness and pain of animal subjects. 

(e) Psychologists use a procedure subjecting animals to pain, 

stress or privation only when an alternative procedure is 

unavailable and the goal is justified by its prospective scientific, 

educational or applied value. 

(f) Psychologists perform surgical procedures under appropriate 

anesthesia and follow techniques to avoid infection and minimize 

pain during and after surgery. 

(g) When it is appropriate that an animal's life be terminated, 

psychologists proceed rapidly, with an effort to minimize pain and 

in accordance with accepted procedures. 

However, it is evident that research ethics of non-human 

participants relies upon discomfort, illness, harms, while research 

ethics of human participants includes informed consent and basic 

information on research provided by researcher. Ethical standards 

do not include data on human and non-human souls, “knowing 

subject” and its ability to inform researcher of his/her/its states of 

awareness, as well as ethical considerations of interpretations of 

research results. It is a commonplace in the history of philosophy 

that issues surrounding self-awareness, consciousness, and self-

knowledge do not become prominent until the early modern 

period, since for medieval philosophers, particularly those in the 

Aristotelian tradition, the nature of self-knowledge plays only an 



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ancillary role in psychology and epistemology (Black, 2008, 63). 

This is a natural consequence of Aristotle’s characterization of the 

intellect as a pure capacity that has no nature of its own, therefore 

self-knowledge for Aristotle is derivative upon knowledge of 

other things, and thought is itself thinkable in exactly the same 

way as its objects are (Black 2008, 64). 

States of Awareness: How Do We Know that the 

Knowing Subject Is the Self? 

Avicenna recognizes two distinct levels of self-knowledge, 

the most basic of which is exemplified in the experience of the 

Flying Man, which Deborah Black labeled “primitive self-

awareness” (Black, 2008, 69). Primitive self-awareness violates 

many of the structures placed on self-knowledge by the 

Aristotelian principles, and Avicenna differentiates it from the 

reflexive awareness of oneself via one’s awareness of an object 

that is characteristic of Aristotelianism (Black, 2008, 69). He also 

distinguishes primitive self-awareness from our knowledge of our 

bodies and psychological faculties and from our scientific 

understanding of our essential natures as humans; and he 

explicitly recognizes the capacity for “knowing that we know” as 

a distinctive form of self-knowledge (Black, 2008, 70).  

It remains unclear whether Avicenna is able to provide a 

coherent account of the relations among primitive self-awareness 

and the other varieties of self-knowledge that he inherits from the 



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Aristotelian tradition, but the broad contours of the Flying Man 

are generally well-known. Through that experiment, Avicenna 

identifies two fundamental sources of sense knowledge: 

everything previously acquired from experience, that is, all 

knowledge anchored in memory and imagination, and any 

ocurrent sensations (Black, 2008, 70).  

Avicenna beliefs that no one would deny that his/her 

awareness of himself/herself would remain stable even in these 

conditions, therefore the subject would continue to affirm the 

existence of his self. Despite the fact that all sense perception is 

cut off, person is aware of his/her existence, and affirmation of 

our existence cannot be dependent upon the experience of having 

a body. Avicenna thus concludes that since “it is not possible for 

the thing of which one is aware and not aware to be one in any 

respect,” it follows that the self cannot be either the whole body 

nor any one of its parts (Black, 2008, 74).  

Insofar as the growth of the human body involves 

development of its faculties, and insofar as consequent changes in 

self-world relations are brought about through learning based on 

both exteroception and proprioception, these changes concern the 

corresponding dispositions in the intellect (Kaukua, 2007, 143). 

Corporeal awareness relies on perceptual functions (e.g., tactile, 

proprioceptive, gravitational, visual) and motor programs for 

bodily actions (Knoblich et al., 2006, 171). Also, picture of other 

people’s bodies give rise to physical and emphatic responses in a 



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way that no text can produce (Knoblich et al., 2006, 136). 

Experimental paradigms have proves useful in elucidating the 

neuropsychological mechanisms underlying phantom-limb 

experiences, especially for the hemiphantom or phantom half-

body (the experience of a defferented/deefferente half of one’s 

body as an entity living a life on its own, and autoscopic 

phenomena in which one’s entire body is experienced as a 

phantom (Knoblich et al., 2006, 172). 

According to Avicenna, there are four basic requirements 

related to the concept of self-awareness: radical temporal 

continuity of self-awareness, non-reflectivity of self-awareness, 

immediacy of self-awareness, and lack of inherent objective 

content of self-awareness (Kaukua 2007, 102). However, 

Avicennian animals are capable of intentional apprehension of 

perceptible objects, therefore one can assume he is not denying 

the primitive type of self-awareness in animals (Kaukua, 2007, 

112). If phenomenality is taken as a mental feature. then Descartes 

would have to deny any kind of awareness from animals and 

argues that animals can feel but that there is no sense of what it is 

like in this animal capacity of feeling (Morris 2000). However, 

difference between Avicenna and Descartes is quite obvious, and 

Avicennian animals are more “Aristotelian” animate beings. 

If animals are primitively self-aware in much the same 

sense as humans, than it seems they should both adhere to the 

same ethical standards and guidelines prior to neuropsychological 



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research. Since animals cannot provide informed consent, 

experiments should be organized in a way to include zero harm. 

However, interpretation of results and conclusions should be 

analyzed seriously, since one cannot be sure if the knowing 

subject(s) is(are) the Self. Whereas in humans the account of 

primitive self-awareness was most intimately connected to the 

individuated existence of the incorporeal human soul, this cannot 

be true of animals whose souls are material souls (Kaukua 2007, 

114). However, there is no essential difference between animal 

and human self-awareness. The only difference that should be 

taken into account is that human self-awareness possesses 

capacity of taking itself as object of consideration (Kaukua 2007, 

117). 

Conclusion 

The main purpose of this essay was to examine different 

approaches to human soul and self-awareness provided by 

Avicenna and Descartes in order to examine its influence on 

ethics of neuropsychological researches conducted on both human 

and non-human participants. 

According to the ethical standards informed consent is 

necessary for human participants, while researches conducted on 

non-human participants should exclude harm and life-threatening 

situations (same is for human participants as well). However, 

differences between human and animal soul according to 

Avicennian psychology do not imply huge differences when it 

comes to ethical standards and guidelines for human and non-



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human participants. Since awareness is in its essence innate, 

knowing subject should be considered as a soul that is aware if its 

action in governing the body of both humans and non-humans. 

Therefore, the interpretation of neuropsychological experiments 

as well as results should be analyzed through the constraints of 

researcher to understand the dualism of mind and body united in 

self-awareness of knowing subject. 

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The Unity of Science in Arabic Tradition. Logic, Epistemology, and 

the Unity of Science, Vol 11. Ed. Rahman, Shahid, Street, Tony, and 

Tahiri, Hassan. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2008, 63-67. 

Descartes, Rene. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols., (trans. John 

Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny). 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1991.   

El-Bizri, Nader. "Avicenna's De Anima between Aristotle and Husserl". The 

Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming. Ed. Anna-

Teresa Tymieniecka. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003, 

67-89. 

Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Adopted August 21, 

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Fakhry, Majid. A History of Islamic Philosophy. New York: Columbia 

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Kaukua, Jari. Avicenna on Subjectivity. A Philosophical Study. Yivaskyla: 

University of Yivaskyla, 2007. 

Knoblich, Gunther, Thornton, Ian M., Grosjean, Marc, and Shiffrar, Maggie. 

Human Body Perception from Inside Out. London: Oxford University 

Press, 2006. 

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