Saeed Hassanzadeh; Mohammad Saeedimehr; Reza Akbari
Volume 21, Issue 2 , March 2024, , Pages 37-60
Abstract
From Ibn Sina's point of view, the estimative faculty is one of the most important cognitive principles of action. The prior perception of action, the use of composite imagination for ...
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From Ibn Sina's point of view, the estimative faculty is one of the most important cognitive principles of action. The prior perception of action, the use of composite imagination for action, the emergence of desire and anger through the perception of profit and harm, helping practical intellect, creating some psychological qualities such as fear or hope, producing false statements, influencing outside the body and mediating between physical states and action are among the functions of this faculty. This faculty needs to be accompanied by other cognitive faculties to have its functions. Due to its association with intellect, human estimation has achieved another function such as dogmatic judgment and making universal propositions. Similarity, experience, needs of other faculties, and the merciful inspirations of God are among the ways through which estimation reaches its perceptions without the help of intellect. In most cases, estimation perceives benefits and harms without judgment but with conceptual perception. Ibn Sina's statements about image eliciting propositions and the passivity of the soul from imaginations prove this claim. Despite Ibn Sina's attention to various dimensions of estimation and its role in action, his thought is incoherent and ambiguous in some cases. For instance, attributing universal perception to estimation in some cases and the impossibility of explaining some functions of estimation
