Avicenna’s Flying Man in Einstein’s Elevator: What Does the Flying Man Know?

In Avicenna’s celebrated Flying Man Thought Experiment (FMTE), we are invited to imagine a physically and mentally sound, mature person who suddenly comes into existence. He is flying in the air, in the state of complete sensory deprivation, and without any memory. Yet, Avicenna insists that despite his complete unawareness of his body, the Flying Man (FM) has some kind of awareness. But what is the subject of FM’s awareness? This is the central question of our paper. To answer it, we read FMTE through two lenses: Avicenna’s celebrated essence-existence distinction and the distinction between the inside observer and the outside observer in thought experiments, highlighted by Einstein in his well-known elevator thought experiment. By looking at FMTE through the lenses of these two distinctions, first, we argue that to say that “FM is self-aware”—the received view that we call the “self-awareness thesis”—although not straightforwardly incorrect, is insufficiently fine-grained and in need of more analysis. Moreover, we show that FM’s self-awareness thesis is potentially misleading especially if it results in thinking that FM’s self-awareness is similar to our self-awareness. Second, we argue that the “essence-awareness thesis” according to which FM is aware of the essence of his soul is completely inconsistent with Avicenna’s philosophy. Finally, we defend the “existence-awareness thesis,” the view that FM is aware of nothing but that he exists. To be more precise, we argue that FM is not even aware that he exists. Rather, he is only aware of an existent.