Abstract

LOPEZ-FARJEAT, Luis Xavier. Do animals have a self? a possible response from avicenna's philosophy of mind. Sig. Fil [online]. 2013, vol.15, n.30, pp.71-88. ISSN 1665-1324.

In several passages from his psychological works Avicenna suggests that non-human animals have a self. Here I argue that from the Avicennian description of perception, there are strong reasons to suspect that non-human animals have a self: their natural self-preservation impulse, the familiarity they have with their own body, their capacity to move towards what they perceive as convenient and to avoid what is dangerous according to their own circumstances, and the way each one relates to the world, are behaviors that, as will be shown, would require the presence of a self.

Keywords : self-awareness; animal cognition; arabic philosophy; medieval philosophy; theory of perception.

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