that Ibn Sina wrote the argument while imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan in the Iranian province of Hamadan.
[5] Using his knowledge, Ibn Sina saved one of the Iranian rulers, Shams al-Dawla, from death, which caused the envy of many of the courtiers.
As a result, after the death of Shams al-Dawla, Ibn Sina was arrested and imprisoned in a castle between the Iranian provinces of Hamadan and Isfahan, where he supposedly wrote the floating man argument[citation needed].
In the early days of its creation, Ibn Sina attempts to prove the dissociability of a consciousness and its physical body.
In the final edition of his argument, Sina brings into question self-awareness and the continuity of consciousness.
[6] Ibn Sina states that the eyes are the only thing preventing them from seeing anything externally, and he further describes that the floating man is created in the air, like a vacuum.
Therefore, since they are separate, Ibn Sina believes that he has no consciousness of his limbs, innards, heart or anything external to him that is truly there.
Sina uses the word ānniyya to describe individual existence or quiddity, and declares its independence from the physical realm.
When defining the ānniyya as a separate entity from the body, Sina believes it is essential to distinguish the external limbs and parts from the internal organs, specifically the brain.
His argument is as follows: One of us must suppose that he was just created at a stroke, fully developed and perfectly formed but with his vision shrouded from perceiving all external objects – created floating in the air or in the space, not buffeted by any perceptible current of the air that supports him, his limbs separated and kept out of contact with one another, so that they do not feel each other.
We have to suppose a man who comes into existence fully developed and formed, but he does not have any relation with sensory experience of the world or of his own body.
Some scholars like Wisnovsky believe that the flying man argument proved the substantiality of the soul.
[11] Ibn Sina believes that innate awareness is completely independent of sensory experience.
In the argument of the floating man, Ibn Sina affirms the existence of a mental self, even without any physical perception.
[13] Descartes' famous phrase "Cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am") bears some resemblance to the Floating Man argument, in that both argue for knowledge by presence.