“Intentions” in Avicenna’s Psychology and Its Role in Forming the Methodic Experience and Empirical Knowledge

Since Avicenna considers the main function of the estimative faculty to be the apprehension of intentions (maʿānī), other functions of this faculty must be understood in light of this form of apprehension. His primary and well-known meaning of intention is something inherently non-sensible that nonetheless exists within the particular sensibles. These intentions can generally be categorized under the duality of agreeableness (muwāfaqa) and disagreeableness (muẖālafa). Thus, a connection can be established between this class of intentions and particular accidents of existent qua existent. However, intentions never lose their relational aspect to the sensibles neither in the actualization nor in conceptualization. Avicenna also considers another kind of intention apprehended by estimation. This type of intention is nothing but the relation among the sensible forms, which is perceived from the external sensible objects and entities. Although this intention is non-sensible, unlike the first type, it is derived from and reducible to sensibles. Based on this second kind of intention, one can explain how, in estimative propositions (wahmiyyāt), judgments about sensibles are generalized to non-sensible objects. Furthermore, this generalization, if applied to the sensibles and their attributes, leads to the formation of induction. Given that Avicenna considers methodic experience (tajriba) to be the result of the conjunction between sensory induction and syllogism, it can be concluded that the estimative faculty and its apprehended intentions play a central role in the formation of empirical method and knowledge.