IBN SĪNĀ AND HUSSERL ON INTENTION AND

INTENTIONALITY

Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino

Department of Philosophy, Florida Atlantic University

The concepts of intention and intentionality have enjoyed a long history within
Western philosophy. They were particularly important notions in the Christian, Jew-
ish, and Islamic philosophical traditions of the Middle Ages and regained philo-
sophical importance in the twentieth century, particularly in the writings of Edmund
Husserl. This essay proposes to confront medieval philosophy with contemporary
phenomenology by conducting a comparative study of the concepts of intention and
intentionality as they appear in the philosophical works of the Islamic philosopher
and physician Ibn Sı̄nā (latinized as Avicenna) and the phenomenological philoso-
pher and mathematician Edmund Husserl.
There are profound differences between Ibn Sı̄nā’s and Husserl’s accounts of
intention and intentionality, and it is particularly interesting to examine the in-
fluences and the specific philosophical concerns that helped to shape each phi-
losopher’s unique conception of intentions and intentional processes and of in-
tentionality’s relation to consciousness. To this end, I shall first examine Ibn Sı̄nā’s
naturalistic conception of intention and how it was, in many ways, influenced by the
tradition of the Baghdad school of philosopher-physicians and their understanding
of the ‘internal senses’. After this I shall examine Husserl’s anti-naturalistic stance
regarding intention and intentionality and how this stance was both influenced by
and, in part, a response to Franz Brentano’s psychologistic account of ‘intentional
in-existence’. Lastly, I shall argue that, in their approach to the concept of intentional
meanings and of intentionality, Ibn Sı̄nā and Husserl were, in many ways, strongly
influenced by the professional culture to which each belonged, that of the physician
and the mathematician, respectively. After this I shall argue for the superiority of the
Husserlian transcendentalist view over the Avicennian naturalistic view.

Ibn Sı̄nā’s Account of Intention and Intentionality

Although many philosophers today, even those who do not consider themselves
phenomenologists, are somewhat familiar with Husserl’s theory of intentionality,
they are less familiar with Ibn Sı̄nā’s understanding of the concept of intention,
unless, of course, they are medievalists or have a certain degree of competence in
medieval philosophy. Therefore, I shall begin by examining the concept of intention
as it appears in the work of Ibn Sı̄nā, particularly in his psychology and his meta-
physics, as found in the Kitāb al-Najāt and the Kitāb al-Shifā’.
The theory of intention elaborated by Ibn Sı̄nā in his accounts of psychology,

Philosophy East & West Volume 54, Number 1 January 2004 71–82 71
> 2004 by University of Hawai‘i Press
 epistemology, and metaphysics was transmitted to Scholastic philosophy through the
work of Thomas Aquinas. In Ibn Sı̄nā’s discussion of Being and substance,
Being is the proper and primary object of metaphysics. . . . Being per se is substance;
within this [Ibn Sı̄nā] distinguishes separate and material forms and matter, which is a
substance of inferior order.
. . . [Ibn Sı̄nā] reaches the conclusion that one thing can legitimately exist in the spirit
and be missing from external objects; he calls this type of existence intentional being
[or intentional existence]. . . . In his theory of knowledge, [Ibn Sı̄nā] uses [the concept of
intention] to explain the relation between object and subject. (Emphasis mine)1
In chapter 3 of the Najāt, titled ‘‘Internal Sense,’’ we read the following account
of intention:
There are some faculties of internal perception which perceive the form of the sensed
things, and others which perceive the ‘intention’ thereof. Some faculties, again, can both
perceive and act while others only perceive and do not act. Some possess primary per-
ception, others secondary perception. The distinction between the perception of the form
and that of the intention is that the form is what is perceived both by the inner soul and
the external sense; but the external sense perceives it first and then transmits it to the soul,
as for example, when the sheep perceives the form of the wolf, i.e., its shape, form, and
colour. This form is certainly perceived by the inner soul of the sheep, but it is first per-
ceived by its external sense. As for the intention, it is a thing which the soul perceives
from the sensed object without its previously having been perceived by the external
sense, just as the sheep perceives the intention of harm in the wolf, which causes it to fear
the wolf and to flee from it, without harm having been perceived at all by the external
sense. Now, what is first perceived by the sense and then by the internal faculties is the
form, while what only the internal faculties perceive without the external sense is the in-
tention.2
Why does the sheep, through its internal sense, perceive hostility in the wolf?
According to one reading of this text, the intention in itself is not perceived by the
external senses, and one cannot point to anything specifically perceived by the ex-
ternal senses that displays the intention. There is, however, something about the
form (sura) that is perceived by the external senses and which, in turn, leads to the
perception of intention by the internal senses:
Sensible forms are . . . corporeal qualities that affect the sensory organs in such a way that
they are received by virtue of their similitude. This is the reason for which they are
received first by the external senses and are then transmitted to the internal senses. But
the ‘meanings’ that these objects signify are not such corporeal qualities but, rather,
qualities or values that are latent in the sensible forms, such as the quality of being
agreeable or disagreeable, good or bad, sympathetic or non-sympathetic, etc. . . . For
example, the animal, seeing a yellow liquid that is honey, judges that it is sweet and
proceeds to taste it. The sweetness that is seized by this judgment is not sensible, al-
though this quality in itself is sensible, because it has not yet actually been tasted by the
animal. . . . The sheep, perceiving the figure, the howls and the scent of a wolf, judges that
he is ferocious and dangerous, and runs away from it immediately. It is not merely that it
seizes the living object by simply accepting certain of its vital qualities, but also [that it
seizes the object] by the attribution of these qualities to the object.3

72 Philosophy East & West

 According to Ibn Sı̄nā, the faculty of estimation is responsible for the perception
of intentions and, thus, for intentionality. This faculty is part of Ibn Sı̄nā’s rather
complex scheme of the ‘internal senses’ that he inherited, in part, from the Baghdad
school of philosopher-physicians. According to this scheme, there are two types of
sensible objects that can be perceived by the internal senses, and there are two types
of faculties, within the internal senses, that perceive these sensible objects. The two
types of faculties of internal sense are the receptive faculty and the retentive faculty.
Ibn Sı̄nā explains that these two faculties are distinct from the fact that reception
requires a malleable substrate since, when receiving a form, a change must take
place in the substrate. On the other hand, retention requires a stable substrate since
retaining a form requires a changeless substrate.
The two types of sensible objects are sensible forms and intentions. We must
understand that, in this context, ‘sensible’ does not mean ‘sensuous’, that is, per-
ceivable by the external senses, but merely perceivable by the internal senses. This is
why Ibn Sı̄nā can refer to intentions as ‘sensible objects’ even though, as established
in the Najāt, intentions are never perceived or perceivable by the external senses.
Intentions, according to Ibn Sı̄nā, are what sensible form ‘means’ or ‘signifies’ to the
percipient subject. Thus, to return to the example used by Ibn Sı̄nā, the sensible form
of the wolf ‘signifies’ hostility to the sheep. Although the sheep does not literally ‘see’
hostility in the wolf’s eyes, the sensible form of the expression in the wolf’s eyes
‘means’, to the sheep, that the wolf is hostile. The ferociousness of the wolf is latent
in its appearance and comportment. However, because an intention is not itself a
sensuous quality of the object, although it may be conveyed to the percipient
through a sensory faculty, it does not affect any sense organ at the time during which
the judgment is being made.
In the scheme of internal senses, there is a faculty of the receptive type and a
faculty of the retentive type that handle each type of sensible object. Common sense
is the faculty that receives (or perceives) sensible forms, whereas the formative (or
retentive) imagination is the faculty that retains sensible forms. The estimative faculty
(wahm) is the faculty that receives (or perceives) intentions, whereas the memorative
faculty retains intentions. The proper objects of the estimative faculty are, then,
ma’nan or intentions. In nonhuman animals, the estimative faculty is somewhat
limited. They can, as the example of the sheep illustrates, perceive non-sensual
aspects of the environment ‘‘that exceed the perceptual capacities of the [external]
senses and the imagination.’’4 However, in human animals, the estimative faculty
also has cognitive functions that it does not have in nonhuman animals. Thus, in
human animals the estimative faculty and the intellective faculty are co-present.5
Unlike Alexander of Aphrodisias and Plotinus, who understood the idea of per-
ception non-physiologically, Ibn Sı̄nā rematerializes perception, and, in doing this,
he also indirectly materializes his account of intention. As has already been estab-
lished above, for Ibn Sı̄nā intentions are closely connected to sense perceptions be-
cause they are dependent on them and, for him, sense perception contains a clearly
physiological and materialistic element: ‘‘although the estimative faculty has non-
sensible intentions as its proper objects, it only possesses those intentions when they

Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino 73

 are conjoined with particular sensible forms represented in the imagination, thereby
compelling estimation to ‘impede the existence of things which cannot be imagined
and are not imprinted in [the imagination], and to refuse to assent to them.’ ’’ 6 As
we have seen above, however, there is nothing in the imagination that is not first
received through the perception of sensible forms.
Now, perception, for Ibn Sı̄nā, occurs when common sense receives sensible
forms, that is, form without matter. This account of perception is directly inherited
from Aristotle, for whom the reception of form without matter was interpreted by
the Scholastics as ‘intentional in-existence’. Once the form without matter has been
received by common sense, the imaginative faculty retains these sensible forms.
Thus, the estimative faculty receives intentions on the basis of the sensible forms, or
form without matter, that are received by common sense and that are retained by the
imagination. This, then, establishes the dependence of the faculty of estimation, or of
intentionality, on sense perception. ‘‘[F]or all five senses, the reception of form
without matter is interpreted as making the perceiver become like the form of the
thing perceived. . . . Although the form is received stripped of its original matter, the
abstraction from matter in sense-perception is not so complete as in the estimative
faculty or in the intellect.’’7 Therefore, since it can be shown that, for Ibn Sı̄nā, there
is a physiological element to the reception and retention of the sensible forms of
external objects, one would have to conclude that intentionality has, ultimately,
physiological origins.
At this point, I would like to examine the cultural influences that helped shape
Ibn Sı̄nā’s account of perception, cognition, and intentionality. However, rather than
focus on ethnic culture, I shall focus on the professional culture that helped to shape
Ibn Sı̄nā’s understanding of these concepts. Although there are Neoplatonic influ-
ences in Ibn Sı̄nā’s conception of the intellect, his account of other mental faculties,
such as perception, is not Neoplatonic. However, one should not extract from this
that Ibn Sı̄nā’s account of perception is entirely Aristotelian. Notwithstanding the fact
that his account of perception was, in some ways, inherited from Aristotle and the
Peripatetic philosophical tradition, the evidence suggests that Ibn Sı̄nā’s naturalistic,
psychologistic, and quasi-physiological account of perception and other mental
faculties was, in many ways, influenced by his own training as a physician and by
his attempt to respond to and mediate between the physicians’ account of mental
faculties and the philosophers’ account.
Greatly influential in Ibn Sı̄nā’s medical training and in his understanding of
the mental faculties, especially that of perception, was the Baghdad school of
philosopher-physicians. This medical circle represented the ‘afterlife’ of the Baghdad
Peripatetics, and they were ‘‘a constant feature of the intellectual life of medieval
Islam.’’ 8 They were not only prominent physicians but also translators and students
of the work of Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, and it is out of this cultural tradition
of the philosopher-physician that Ibn Sı̄nā emerged.
The physicians’ account of the mental faculties was much more physiological
than the account to be found in the Aristotelian tradition. We find for example, in
Ibn Lūkā, the following purely physiological conception of the spirit. ‘‘The spirit . . .

74 Philosophy East & West

is a subtle substance that emanates throughout the body. Arising from the heart, it
directs itself in the arteries and gives birth to life, to breath, and to arterial pulsation
and, arising from the brain, it passes through the nerves and produces sensation and
movement.’’9 Ibn Lūkā views the spirit as an intermediary between the body and the
soul. It is through the spirit that the soul communicates life and sensation to the
body. Thus, although he does not endorse a materialist conception of the soul, Ibn
Lūkā does endorse a materialist conception of the spirit as the intermediary between
soul and body.10 One could speculate that Ibn Lūkā might be trying to avoid the
obvious philosophical and physical problems associated with the notion of interac-
tion between a material and an immaterial substance. The problem, however, is not
successfully avoided by adding a third and material substance as an intermediary,
since this material substance called ‘spirit’ must also interact with the immaterial
soul, thereby resurrecting the problem of interaction.
According to the physicians of the Baghdad school,

the faculties of the soul are regarded only with reference to the bodily organs in which
they reside and not with reference to the variety of function which they perform, for
physicians . . . concern themselves with faculties of the soul only in so far as a hindrance
in the functioning can be traced to an injury in the bodily organs in which they are
located. Consequently, if two functionally different faculties of the soul reside in one
bodily organ, then physicians regard it as one faculty, inasmuch as any injury in that
organ will affect the two faculties alike.11

Thus, the physicians made no distinction, for example, between the receptive and
the retentive types of faculty of internal sense. Ibn Sı̄nā seems to want to balance the
account given by the medical circle and that given by the philosophers, such as
al-Kindı̄ and al-Fārābı̄. It is clear that in his scheme of faculties of the internal senses
Ibn Sı̄nā tries to break away from the strict physiological account of the Baghdad
school of philosopher-physicians. He does this by considering the receptive faculties
as distinct from the retentive faculties by focusing on their functional differences. He
appeals to syllogistic logic to make his argument. Only a malleable substrate can
acquire the nonmaterial sensible form that is received in perception. Only a stable
substrate can retain the form after it has been acquired. A substrate cannot be both
malleable and stable. Therefore, the receptive faculty and the retentive faculty must
be distinct in kind, one malleable and the other stable. QED. Furthermore, his ac-
count of intentions is that they are ‘meanings’ or ‘significations’, abstract and non-
sensory aspects of the external environment that, although they accompany sense
perception, are not themselves perceived by the external senses.
However, there is also evidence in several of Ibn Sı̄nā’s writings, especially in
his medical magnum opus, the Canon, but also in Shifā’ and Kafet, that he does not
completely break away from the physician’s account. In these works, Ibn Sı̄nā places
wahm, or the estimative or intentional faculty, in a specific bodily location, at the
end of the middle hollow of the brain.12 Thus, to follow the reasoning of the medical
circle, any injury to this part of the bodily organ would affect the animal’s ability to
receive intentions. Therefore, a sheep whose middle hollow of the brain had been

Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino 75

 somehow injured to the point of affecting the estimative faculty, but without any in-
jury to any other part of the brain, would conceivably be able to perceive the wolf
but would be unable to detect hostility in the animal. This would then lead to the
conclusion, unacceptable to someone like Edmund Husserl, that there could be an
almost perfectly functioning consciousness without intentions or intentionality.

Husserl’s Account of Intention and Intentionality

Husserl’s doctrine of intentionality is a highly sophisticated and developed version of

the frequently held epistemological position that ‘‘the human mind makes substantial
contributions to the specific structure of what appears before it, so that experience
is construed to be a complex of data given externally and organizational princi-
ples supplied internally.’’ 13 Once one has suspended all ontological commitments,
assumptions, and presuppositions and once contingencies are bracketed, the struc-
ture of consciousness is revealed in its essence as being intentional. Husserl tells us
that all consciousness is necessarily actionally ‘directed’ toward an ‘object’. In other
words, all consciousness is necessarily consciousness of something. It is this pecu-
liarity of mental processes that is known as intentionality.
Husserl also refers to intentionality as ‘egological constitution’ for the reason that
the intentional act is one in which subjective consciousness synthesizes the sensu-
ous data that is given to it and bestows sense or meaning upon it. The act through
which the ego bestows meaning upon its object is called the noetic act, and the
meaningful object or ‘meaning’ that is constituted through this act is called a noema.
Thus, for Husserl, the intentional object and the noema are one and the same. In
Ideas I, for example, Husserl tells us:

Like perception, every intentive mental process—just this makes up the fundamental part
of intentionality—has its ‘‘intentional Object,’’ i.e., its objective sense. Or, in some other
words: to have sense or ‘‘to intend to’’ something [etwas ‘‘im Sinne zu haben’’], is the
fundamental characteristic of all consciousness which, therefore, is not just any mental
living [Erlebnis] whatever, but is rather a hmental livingi having sense, which is ‘‘noetic.’’
(Emphasis in original)14

This actional Ego-advertence is not to be found in every mental event; that is, not
every mental event is directed or intentional. ‘Pain’, for example, is a mental event
that is not itself intentional. But, every mental process can, within itself, include
intentionality. Husserl calls those mental events that are not intentional appercep-
tions, whereas those mental events that are intentional are called inner or outer
perceptions. Thus, apperceptions are states, whereas perception and all actionally
directed mental events are not states but mobile activities. The essential dynamic of
an intentional event is that it projects itself toward something, its intended object.
Although Husserl distinguishes between apperception and perception, he claims that
all mental processes, even those which are not themselves intentive, are ultimately
born in and borne by intentionality. This is due to the fact that Ego unification itself
occurs through an intentional act, the most fundamental of all intentional acts, for

76 Philosophy East & West

without it there would be no unified stream of consciousness. Meaning must, then,
be bestowed upon the Ego before meaning can be bestowed upon the world of
experience. Thus, an apperception like ‘pain’, although it is not itself a mental event
characterized by intentionality, is experienced by an Ego that is unified and is,
therefore, the product of an intentional act.
Consciousness, for Husserl, is thus immersed in intentionality. Consciousness is
intentionality. For there to be mental events, there must be an Ego serving as the
subject of these mental events, and, in order for there to be an Ego, there must an
intentional, constitutive act capable of synthesizing and unifying the stream of con-
sciousness. Thus, it is absurd to speak of any conscious state or mental event as
being, in no manner whatsoever, founded on intentional acts, for the empirical or
psychological self is itself the product of the transcendental Ego’s act of constitutive
synthesis.
Following Husserl, we can draw the following conclusions. Because we are not
speaking of the empirical Ego but of the transcendental Ego, and because we have
bracketed all ontological commitments to or assumptions about a material world
external to the Ego, we realize that intentionality cannot be reduced to brain states or
located in a particular brain or part of the brain. Intentionality does not presup-
pose the existence of a physical, material brain. Intentionality only presupposes
consciousness, and consciousness presupposes intentionality. The two are, in es-
sence, one and the same. For as long as there is consciousness, there is intention-
ality. And, when there is no longer intentionality, there is no longer consciousness.
Although we understand that, as a matter of fact, only beings with a nervous system
and a brain have consciousness, the essential characteristic of consciousness, that is,
intentionality, is not reducible to the brain itself or to any particular part of the brain.
Thus, no damage can be done to the brain that could lead to non-intentional con-
scious states. A non-intentional conscious state, for Husserl, is a contradiction in
terms. The only possible damage to the brain that could destroy intentionality is
damage that destroys consciousness altogether.
It is clear that Husserl’s concept of intentionality was not born in a void but was
inherited, rather, from the long tradition that preceded him. The tradition through
which the concept of intentionality was transmitted from Aristotle to the twentieth
century is a long and complex one. Ibn Sı̄nā is but one of the many philosophers
through which this concept passed from its origins in Aristotelian psychology
through Scholasticism on its way to contemporary philosophy. It is not the purpose
of this essay to trace this long history, which has already been successfully addressed
by other authors.15 Suffice it to say that, after the Scholastic period in medieval phi-
losophy, the concept of intentionality existed in semi-obscurity until 1874 when
Franz Brentano, in his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, ‘‘[re]introduced
into the philosophy of mind the seminal idea of an intentional object.’’16 Brentano
tell us:

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages
called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call,

Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino 77

 though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object
(which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every
mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself although they do not all
do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something
is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. This
intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical
phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenomena
by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within
themselves.17

In Brentano, the definition of intentional inexistence remains virtually un-

changed from the definition found in the Scholastics. According to Brentano, the
feature that distinguishes mental phenomena from physical phenomena is that they
are directed toward objects that have intentional inexistence.18 It is this aspect of
Brentano’s theory that greatly influenced Husserl, for Husserl also concludes that
mental events and consciousness as a whole are essentially distinguished by their
intentional character, that is, their directedness toward intentional objects.
The concept of an intentional object that we find in Brentano’s work, however,
is very different from that to be found in Husserl. After inheriting the concept of
intentionality from Brentano, Husserl clearly broke away from Brentano’s account.
Although Brentano’s account is not naturalistic in the same way as Ibn Sı̄nā’s, Bren-
tano’s conception of intentional inexistence is a theory about the nature of the psy-
chological Ego, that is, of empirical consciousness and, therefore, remains psycho-
logistic and naturalistic. Husserl, as a mathematician who embraces the Bolzanian
requirement for a pure logic, is, on the other hand, concerned with developing an
account of consciousness and intentionality that is nonpsychologistic, nonnatural-
istic, and non-reductionistic. Only such a nonnaturalistic account could, according
to Husserl, provide us with a phenomenology that could serve as the truly scientific
foundation for logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences. Logic, as Husserl
claims, is not concerned with the vague laws of empirical psychology but with pre-
cise and universal laws.19 Understanding that these laws are not merely descriptive
and contingent features of the empirical world but are, rather, theoretical laws
holding for the domain of ideal meanings, Husserl seeks to overcome the naturalism,
empiricism, and reductionism that, he believes, were responsible for the emergence
of logical psychologism. According to logical psychologism, there is nothing a priori,
objective, or necessary about logic, mathematics, and meanings. To embrace logical
psychologism is to embrace a view of logical and mathematical laws as contingently
true descriptions of how empirical subjects happen to think. Psychological facts
serve as the foundation of logical laws. Logical psychologism, according to Husserl,
inevitably leads to relativism and skepticism, and logical psychologism emerges
from naturalism. ‘‘Naturalism, in the sense in which Husserl understands it, seems . . .
to be nothing more than one of those many residual tendencies all of which con-
verge in the overlooking of the act in favor of the object.’’ 20
It is within the framework of his reflective and ‘transcendental’ phenomeno-
logical method and of the variously stated theory of intentionality that Husserl offers

78 Philosophy East & West

his own solution to the problems of the theory of evidence, truth, and ontology. To
discuss further how the phenomenological method and its discovery of intentionality
put the nail in the coffin of psychologism is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it
to say that since the laws of logic and mathematics are the product of intentional acts
of the transcendental Ego and since they are not descriptive and contingent, inten-
tionality and intentional acts could never be conceived in naturalistic, reductionistic,
or physiological terms. To conceive it in those terms would undermine Husserl’s
entire anti-psychologistic foundational project.

Comparative Discussion of the Avicennian and Husserlian Conceptions of Intention

and Intentionality

It is clear that the medical culture of which Ibn Sı̄nā was a part greatly influenced his
philosophical work, particularly his views on the nature of mind, perception, and
intentionality. Although in Ibn Sı̄nā we find an attempt to mediate between the
strictly physicalistic account of mental activity found in the medical circle and the
nonphysicalistic account found in the philosophical circles, certain remnants of
physicalism, reductionism, and naturalism still linger in many of his writings, even
those that are philosophical rather than medical.
It is also clear that Husserl’s background as a mathematician and his desire to
ground mathematics and the empirical sciences in a truly scientific philosophy led
him to the rejection of psychologism and naturalism and to the development of a
concept of intentionality as not reducible to physiological states, since physicality
itself, and all other assumptions of the natural attitude, are bracketed prior to the
discovery of intentionality.
I wish to argue that Husserl’s account of intentionality is far superior to Ibn
Sı̄nā’s, although Ibn Sı̄nā’s contribution to the theory of intentionality is certainly
important both in itself and for its influence on the Scholastic notion of ‘intentional
inexistence’. As we have seen, it is from this Scholastic notion that Brentano resur-
rects the concept of intentionality that will later allow Husserl to give us a new way
of understanding consciousness. Although in both Ibn Sı̄nā and Husserl intention
refers to the ‘meaning’ of the perceived object, Husserl takes this notion much fur-
ther than Ibn Sı̄nā precisely because he de-materializes and de-naturalizes the con-
cepts of intention and intentionality and moves away from a substantive theory of
consciousness. For Husserl, consciousness (or mind, soul) is no longer a substance
but an activity, and this activity is intentional. Consciousness bestows meaning upon
the world rather than finding meaning already in the world. Thus, the intentional
object is a product of the constitutive activities of consciousness and of its directness.
For Ibn Sı̄nā, on the other hand, the meaning signified by the object, although not
a corporeal quality of the object, is latent in the sensible form of the object. Thus,
although for Husserl the sheep constitutes the wolf-as-perceived, and this includes
the wolf’s ferociousness, for Ibn Sı̄nā the wolf’s ferociousness is latent in its appear-
ance and comportment.
Ibn Sı̄nā’s account is naturalistic for two reasons. First of all, his account of

Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino 79

 intentions is dependent on his account of perception, and his account of perception
suffers from a materialism that is inherited from the medical tradition to which Ibn
Sı̄nā himself contributed greatly. Second, his account of intentions focuses on the
object rather than on the act. Intentions or ‘meanings’ are latent in the object per-
ceived, although they are not themselves sensuous qualities of the object. They are
in the object, rather than being the product of the subject’s actions. This is one of the
aspects of naturalism to which Husserl himself objected. As was recently stated by
Ronald McIntyre in his critique of Fred Dretske’s ‘representational naturalism’,
‘‘senses are not properties of the objects we intend. . . . [T]he sense belongs to the
content of the experience, while the properties belong to the object. An act is in-
tentional by virtue of having a sense or content, even if there is no object that ‘sat-
isfies’ this sense.’’21 It seems that Dretske, at least in this respect, is guilty of thinking
of intentions or ‘senses’ in a way similar to Ibn Sı̄nā. Thus, the same criticism that
McIntyre raises against Dretske could also be raised against Ibn Sı̄nā. For both
Dretske and Ibn Sı̄nā, ‘‘senses are properties of the sort that physical objects have.
For Husserl, they are abstract ‘contents’ of intentional thoughts or experiences,’’ 22
intentional thoughts being the acts that constitute these very senses.
Husserl does not make either of the naturalistic mistakes that we find in Ibn Sı̄nā.
First of all, Husserl avoids physicalistic reductions of intentionality, perception, cog-
nition, and other mental faculties by suspending the natural attitude in which the
existence of the material world and the psychological empirical self are taken for
granted. Second, Husserl focuses on intentional acts of the subject rather than
objects. Husserl is able to arrive at his conception of intentionality precisely by
bracketing or suspending all assumptions about a material world, a physiological
self, and a psychological empirical self. In doing this, Husserl isolates consciousness
as such and discloses its activities. From this, Husserl understands that, even if one
suspends belief in an extramental reality, experience-as-such has meaning. Although
Husserl is not embracing a conception of consciousness as disembodied, he never-
theless realizes that meaning must not come from outside consciousness. It is not
latent in some extramental reality. It is not given to a passive consciousness. Rather,
it is constituted by an active consciousness. Husserl is, thus, able to divorce himself
from both Brentano’s and his own early psychologism and naturalism, a psycholo-
gism and naturalism that, unfortunately, clearly permeate Ibn Sı̄nā’s understanding of
intentional meaning and of intentionality.
It is in these and many other respects that transcendental phenomenology pro-
vides an account of mental events—and particularly of intentionality—that is supe-
rior to that provided by naturalistic theories. It is clear that both Husserl and Ibn Sı̄nā,
in their development of an account of mental events and intentions, were greatly
influenced by their training, respectively, as a mathematician and a physician. The
physician was drawn toward naturalism because of a need to locate mental func-
tions in a particular part of the brain in order to explain injuries to those functions.
The risk of this, however, is to fall into a reductionistic program that is not able to
explain the quality and meaningfulness of our mental life. The mathematician Hus-
serl, on the other hand, was drawn toward a transcendental account because of his

80 Philosophy East & West

desire to escape psychologism. In doing so, Husserl was successful in providing us
with an account of experience and mental life that is much richer than the natural-
istic account found in Ibn Sı̄nā.

Notes

1 – Avicenna, Sobre Metafisica (Antologı́a), trans. from the Arabic, with an introd.
and notes, by Miguel Cruz Hernandez (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1950),
p. 37. The original text reads as follows:
El ser es el objeto primario y proprio de la metafı́sica. . . . El ser per se es la sustancia;
dentro de ésta distingue las formas separada y material y la materia, que es la sustancia
de orden inferior.
. . . llega Avicena a la conclusión de que una cosa puede existir legı́timamente en el
espı́ritu y faltar en los objetos exteriores; a esta existencia le llama ser intencional. . . . En
su teorı́a del conocimiento la usa para explicar la relación entre los objetos y el sujeto.
2 – Avicenna, ‘‘Concerning the Soul,’’ in F. Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology: An
English Translation of Kitab Al-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI with Historico-
Philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements to the Cairo Edition (Oxford
University Press, 1952; reprint, Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1981),
p. 30.
3 – Noriko Ushida, Étude Comparative de la Psychologie d’Aristote, d’Avicenne et
de St. Thomas d’Aquin (Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies,
1968), p. 158. The original text reads as follows:
Les formes sensibles sont . . . des qualités corporelles qui affectent les organes sensoriels
en sorte qu’elles sont reçues en vertu de leur similitude. C’est pourquoi elles sont reçues
en premier lieu par les sens externes, et ensuite elles sont transmises aux sens internes.
Mais les sens que les objets signifient ne sont pas telles qualités corporelles, mais plutôt
des qualités ou des valeurs qui sont latentes dans les formes sensibles, telles que les
qualités agréables ou désagréables, bonne ou mauvaise, sympathique ou antipathique,
etc. . . . Par exemple, l’animal, en voyent un liquide jaune qui est du miel, juge qu’il est
doux et va le goûter. La douceur saisie par ce jugement n’est pas sensible, quoique cette
qualité en elle-même soit sensible, car elle n’est pas encore goûtée actuellement par
l’animal. . . . La brebis, en percevant la figure, les cris et l’odeur d’un loup, juge qu’il est
féroce et dangereux, et le fuit tout de suite. Ce n’est pas seulement qu’elle saisit l’objet
vivant par la simple acceptation de certaines de ses qualités vitales, mais aussi par l’at-
tribution de ces qualités á l’objet.
4 – Deborah L. Black, ‘‘Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western
Transformations,’’ Topoi 19 (1) (2000): 60.
5 – Ibid.
6 – Ibid., p. 61. Black is here quoting Avicenna, Al-Shifā’: Al-Nafs (Healing: De
anima), in Avicenna’s ‘‘De Anima,’’ Being the Psychological Part of Kitab al-
Shifa’, ed. F. Rahman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 4.1, p. 166.

Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino 81

 7 – Richard Sorabji, ‘‘From Aristotle to Brentano: The Development of the Concept
of Intentionality,’’ in Aristotle and the Later Tradition, ed. Henry Blumenthal
and Howard Robinson, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary
volume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 236.
8 – F. E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam (New
York: New York University Press, 1968), p. 163.
9 – Abderrahman Tlili, Contribution à l’Étude de la psychologie à travers la phi-
losophie avicennienne, préface de Roger Deladriere (Tunis: Université de
Tunis I, 1995), p. 78. The original text reads as follows:
L’esprit . . . est une substance subtile répandue dans le corps. S’élevant du coeur, elle se
dirige dans les artères et donne naissance à la vie, à la respiration et à la pulsation
artérielle et, partant du cerveau, elle passe dans les nerfs et produit la sensation et le
mouvement.
10 – Ibid., pp. 79–80.
11 – Harry Austin Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 1,
ed. Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1973), p. 283.
12 – Ibid., p. 284.
13 – Edmund Husserl, The Paris Lectures, trans. Peter Koestenbaum, with an intro-
ductory essay (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1964), p. xxvii.
14 – Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phe-
nomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 1982), § 90, p. 217.
15 – For one excellent account of this history, I refer the reader to Sorabji’s ‘‘From
Aristotle to Brentano.’’
16 – Ibid., p. 247.
17 – Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, ed. Linda McAlister,
trans. A. Rancurello and D. Terrell (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972),
pp. 88–89.
18 – Ibid.
19 – Edmund Husserl, ‘‘Prolegomena,’’ Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay
from the second German edition of Logische Untersuchungen (London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), vol. 1, chap. 5, § 25, p. 114.
20 – Natalie Depraz, ‘‘When Transcendental Genesis Encounters the Naturalization
Project,’’ in Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenome-
nology and Cognitive Science, ed. Jean Petitot, Francisco J. Varela, Bernard
Pachou, and Jean-Michel Roy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999),
p. 484.
21 – Ronald McIntyre, ‘‘Dretske on Qualia,’’ in Petitot et al., Naturalizing Phenome-
nology, p. 433.
22 – Ibid.

82 Philosophy East & West