Embodied Cognition in Avicenna's Viewpoint

From the perspective Islamic of Philosophers, particularly the Peripatetics, cognition is primarily an act of the soul rather than the body. While conventional philosophical approaches often view cognition as entirely separate from the body, this article employs an analytical-descriptive methodology to explore how the body might influence cognition within Avicenna's philosophical and medical frameworks. Despite Avicenna's dualistic view that soul and body are distinct entities and his identification of the soul as the primary agent of cognition, his understanding of the soul-body relationship allows for a form of embodied cognition. In this view, variation or changes in the body at any level of perception can affect the soul, thereby altering the cognition of a single known object. However, Avicenna's concept of embodied cognition is fundamentally different from physicalism, as the soul retains its role as the essential principle in the emergence of cognition.