Contemporary Wisdom

Body Awareness and Sensory Perception in Ibn Sīnā

Articles in Press

Document Type : Biannual Journal

Author

Morteza Jafarian

Assistant Professor of Islamic Philosophy, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies

10.30465/cw.2026.50376.2081
Abstract
Abstract
According to Ibn Sīnā, human beings perceive their own bodies through sense perception. This account reduces body awareness to the external manifestations of the body and fails to explain its fundamental features, including awareness of the distinctive activity of one's own sensory organ, the experience of pain, pleasure, and illness as one's own states, and the distinctive awareness through which the body is experienced as one's own body. Instead, it presents the body as an entirely external corporeal entity comparable to other bodies.
This study aims to explain a form of immediate body awareness as one of the layers of ordinary sense perception and as the ground for understanding the fundamental features of bodily experience. According to Ibn Sīnā, ordinary sense perception has two layers: the immediate apprehension of the state-form of one's own sensory organ and the perception of the external sensible. The external sensible, namely the “distal sensible”, is a secondary and mediately perceived sensible that appears within the framework of the immediately apprehended state-form of the sensory organ, namely the “proximal proper sensible”. Therefore, the sense perception of every body, including one's own body, is an extension and manifestation of immediate body awareness and is determined and limited by its framework. Nevertheless, insofar as it reveals the distinguishing features of every corporeal entity, it also constitutes a mode of body awareness distinct from immediate body awareness.
Keywords:
Body awareness; Sense perception; Sensory organ; Instrument; Proximal proper sensible; Distal sensible; Immediate and mediate perception; Ibn Sīnā.
Introduction
In contemporary philosophy, the question of body awareness concerns how and within what limits human beings know their own bodies, the relation of body awareness to self-awareness and awareness of others, and its role in the formation of personal identity, psychological states, and social agency.Within this context, body awareness encompasses a wide range of bodily experiences, including pain, pleasure, thirst, illness, balance, and the mental representation of the body, in which the body is not reduced to an external object; but rather, its states appear as one's own states. Although Ibn Sīnā does not explicitly address the problem of body awareness, his analyses of sense perception provide valuable resources for reconstructing this concept. This study aims to show the inadequacy of ordinary sense perception for explaining, first, the fundamental layers of our awareness of the body and its internal states as our own states, and second, our awareness of the sensory organ and faculty as our own instrument in sense perception.
Materials and Methods
This study employs an analytical-descriptive method and a conceptual and lexical analysis of terms such as “sense perception”, “proximal proper sensible”, “distal sensible”, and the “sensory organ as an instrument of perception”.First, it examines Ibn Sīnā's writings concerning the nature and requirements of sense perception and the manner in which human beings access and know material entities. Second, through a reconstruction of his argument for the instrumentality of sensation, it reveals the difficulties and limitations of ordinary sense perception regarded as the sole basis of body awareness.Third, through an analysis of the dual structure of sense perception, it demonstrates the existence of a form of immediate body awareness within the very structure of sense perception.
Discussion & Result
1. The Instrumentality of Sensation and the Challenges of Ordinary Sense Perception of the Body
According to Ibn Sīnā, sensation has a bodily nature and is inseparable from a corporeal mediating instrument, namely the sensory organ. It depends on the fundamental features, states, and conditions of the sensory organ, its relation to the perceived sensible, and their alterations. Moreover, every perception requires a certain affinity between the perceiver and the perceived. The body is therefore perceived only through a sense faculty and sensory organ.
The instrumentality of sensation gives rise to several difficulties: a sensory organ does not receive an impression of itself and therefore cannot perceive itself. Nor does any sensory organ appear within another sensory organ except within the framework of that other sense’s proper sensible. Accordingly, these fragmentary sensory perceptions of the body yield an integrated image of it only through reasoning and the cooperation of other faculties. They determine and present the body through features such as color, time, shape, and the like, without any manifestation or indication of its connection with the soul/self. Yet it is precisely this connection—belonging to the self—that constitutes its nature and identity. As a result, this mode of cognition reveals the body as an external corporeal object and provides no explanation for why bodily internal states are experienced and attributed to oneself, or why the recollection of such experiences gives rise to pleasure or suffering for oneself.

2. Immediate Apprehension of the Body and Its Organs in the Second Meaning of Sense Perception
In the act of perception, the form-impression produced by the sensible in the sensory organ is immediately apprehended; in other words, its occurrence in the sensory organ is identical with its being perceived by the perceiver. Otherwise, no change would occur in the cognitive status of the perceiver regarding the sensible in the first act of perception. Consequently, one would need another cognitive act for perceiving it. However, no finite series of subsequent cognitive acts can lead to the perception of the sensible, since each act would require another act for the apprehension of the preceding one.
According to Ibn Sīnā, the self/soul apprehends this very state-form within itself, namely the “proximal proper sensible”, and perceives the external sensible, namely the “distal sensible”, within its framework. In this sense, the apprehension of the internal form-state within oneself must be contained within the perception of the external sensible as one of its layers and constituents. From this perspective, sense perception is a manifestation of the immediate states and qualities of the sensory organ, because the body is the only corporeal entity directly accessible to the soul. Every other entity becomes knowable through the changes and impressions it produces in the sensory organ according to the specific capacity of that organ.Nevertheless, this direct awareness of the body does not by itself reveal bodily states as states of one's own body; but rather, they appear in the form of external sensibles according to the conditions and relations contained within the act of perception. The body possesses a distinctive structure and nature arising from its relation to the soul. This relation is both constitutive of the nature and capacities of the sensory organ for perceiving and the basis of the limitations imposed upon the perception of bodies. Accordingly, if ordinary sense perception is regarded as one of the essential characteristics and activities of the human being, immediate body awareness will be intrinsic to it. Our own body is neither similar nor equivalent to any other body; likewise, it has no equal or counterpart in awareness.
Conclusion
The perception we have through senses of the features of the body and other corporeal entities depends upon the immediate apprehension of the sensory organ and the body itself. Therefore, sensory body awareness and the perception of every other body are extensions and manifestations of immediate body awareness. External entities become determined and known within this immediate body awareness, because the body is the only corporeal entity directly accessible to our awareness.

A sensory faculty does not apprehend itself, nor does it provide a comprehensive image of the whole body. A unified cognition of the body is the result of the interrelated activities of sense, imagination, and intellect.
My body is both the ground in which all bodies—including my own body—come to appear for me in ordinary perception and the determinant of the scope and manner of this appearance. Since all features of bodies become manifest within the boundaries and framework of the states and qualities of our own body, the body itself cannot appear in the very respect in which it makes other bodies appear.
The body's being immediately apprehended is a unique form of awareness that distinguishes it from all other bodies. Although ordinary sensory perception is an extension and manifestation of immediate apprehension, it nevertheless constitutes a distinct mode of body awareness, because it presents one's own body, like every other body, as a determinate corporeal entity distinguished from other bodies.

Keywords

Body awareness
Sense perception
Sensory organ
Proximal proper sensible
Immediate
Ibn Sīnā
Subjects
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