"The Flying Man" and Types of Consciousness!

The writer: Bakr Abu Bakr

The philosopher and renowned scholar Ibn Sina considered self-awareness (the ego) to be a substance independent of the body: he formulated his famous thought experiment "the flying man" to prove that a person is aware of his existence even if completely isolated from his senses and body. In this regard, he divided levels of perception and inner (self) awareness into five faculties centered in the brain: the common sense, which is responsible for the five apparent senses; secondly, the imagination (or the image), which is responsible for preserving the images of perceived things after their absence; and the illusion, meaning the perception of non-material meanings in things, such as a sheep's awareness of the wolf's hostility and a child's awareness of its mother's breast; the fourth is the imaginative (or the manipulative), which means the composition of images and meanings or the separation between them; and lastly, the memory (or the repository), which represents the storehouse of perceptual meanings.

As for modern times, we can look at awareness in the following way

1. Self-awareness: the ability of a person to understand his feelings, thoughts, strengths, and weaknesses.

2. Social awareness: understanding the impact of a person on his human environment (the circles around the person: from the family circle, the friends circle, the work colleagues circle, the organizational circle, and then society, or according to how he arranges his circles).

3. Environmental awareness: Understanding the impact of humans on nature and the environment and feeling a sense of responsibility towards the earth, trees, and living beings in general, and then towards the planet.

4. Political and legal awareness: Meaning that a person understands their rights and duties within the state or their rights to liberation from exploitation (colonialism) and occupation, and understands how systems of governance and leadership operate, as well as the components of society, laws, customs, and traditions.

5. Existential or cosmic awareness: This can be understood as philosophy, as philosophy is concerned with answering the big questions such as the values of truth, goodness, existence, and purposes, including the purpose of the universe.

The relationship of awareness with attention and perception

Let us illustrate the picture as follows: Let us consider that attention is the "gateway" or sieve or filter, as the brain is surrounded by thousands of sensory and non-sensory stimuli.

Attention highlights a specific stimulus over others, thus it selects and chooses. When you pay attention to something (after sensing it), you bring it onto the stage of consciousness. In contrast, distraction or loss of attention makes consciousness either absent or obscured from the details of sensations and the environment.

So, we first have sensation, then we have a gate or sieve that selects data or information or sensations, which is attention, and then comes the stage of interpretation of what has been attended to, which is the stage of perception.

Let's take an example: sensation is the first component, then with filtering and through the gate, that is, the gate of attention, you can notice a specific sound, for example, let's assume it is the sound of a notification from WhatsApp. Here comes the role of perception to tell you (interpret) that this sound is a notification of an incoming message. In this context, consciousness is the overarching umbrella that receives perception and mixes it with previous experiences to understand the meaning.

Let us move on to another aspect of thinking about relationships. The relationship between consciousness and knowledge is indeed close, as knowledge forms the raw material and stored files (information, facts, perceptions, theories, ideas, etc.). Consciousness, on the other hand, is the processor of this knowledge. In other words, we can say that knowledge tells you what something is, and consciousness gives you the ability to critique this knowledge or process it, its consequences, and its applicability.

Let us take another step to see the relationship between learning and consciousness. You could say that science and learning represent the process of development and modification. When a conscious person goes through an experience (attention, perception, knowledge), they analyze it, which leads to an expansion of their view of the world. This change is the learning that occurs. Learning, in turn, feeds back into consciousness and broadens its horizons in a continuous cycle.

Footnote: The experience of the "flying man" (or the suspended human) is a mental thought experiment formulated by the philosopher Avicenna to prove that the human soul or spirit is independent of the body, and that self-awareness exists and is stable even if all senses and material influences are absent. The details of this thought experiment are

Assumption: Avicenna asks us to imagine a human being created all at once, who is complete in mind and form, but is suspended in the air or in total emptiness so that he touches nothing. The absence of senses: It is also assumed that this human is blind and has no contact with the senses (he cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or feel his limbs or body at all), and the result: Despite this complete abstraction from any physical or material sensation, this human will still be aware and certain of his existence and self (he will say "I"), and will never doubt his existence. As for the philosophical goals and implications, they are

The independence of the soul from the body: Avicenna concluded that the soul or consciousness is something distinct and completely independent from the parts of the body, because a person proved his existence without feeling the presence of his body.

Innate awareness: The experiment confirms that the awareness of self is primary and direct, and is not necessarily derived from material senses.

Historical precedence: This argument closely resembles Descartes' famous statement "I think, therefore I am," which appeared about six centuries later.