Avicenna on the Causes of Pain

Muslim philosophers and theologians have considered pain from various aspects and tried to answer to the relevant questions. One of these questions which attracted the attention of philosophers is about the causes of pain. As a philosopher as well as a physician, Avicenna investigates the problem of the (efficient) cause(s) of pain. He does not restrict the cause of bodily pains to the ‘separation of the continuity of bodily organs’. Instead, he adds the ‘unbalanced temperament’ as the second cause. In order to argue for the claim that such a separation can cause pain, he appeals to some experiences. Moreover, he provides some arguments for the second claim; one of them is based on the cases in which a specific pain is distributed in all parts of an organ. For him, such a pain cannot be caused by the separation. His view, however, faces many counter examples which show that neither of these two expresses the sufficient conditions of pain.