Re: Avicenna's Doctrine of Cerebral Function
L.S., Avicenna made a distinction between two retentive faculties, the imaginatio (in the anterior ventricle) and memory (in the posterior ventricle). In his De anima, he did not say anything about the spatial location of stored images WITHIN these ventricles, as far as I can see. Nor did he say anything about the spatial location of images within the other ventricles, as far as I can see. He only said that images are transmitted from the front ventricle to the middle ventricle, where the estimative faculty creates 'intentions' (contents of beliefs) on the basis of them, which may then be stored in the memorative ventricle. Images are not stored in the posterior ventricle. How stored intentions are used to recall images is a complicated story. It is natural to assume that Avicenna thought that there are certain spatial relationships between the images in the spirit (pneuma) of the sensus communis, but he did not say so, as far as I can see. Nor did he maintain that these spatial relations between images reflect the spatial relations between the corresponding objects in the external world, at least as far as I am aware. Nor did I find a reference to a spatial isomorphism between the images in the spirit (pneuma) of the imaginatio and that of the sensus communis. The sources for my claims are De Anima, part 1, chapter 5; part 3, chapter 8; part 4, chapter 1; and part 5, chapter 8. I hope this helps. Dr Gert-Jan C. Lokhorst, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands mailto:lokhorst@fwb.eur.nl http://www.eur.nl/fw/staff/lokhorst/