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The Philosophy of Ibn Sina, a free philosophy course on Tomo

The Philosophy of Ibn Sina

Like Duolingo, but for The Philosophy of Ibn Sina. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Investigating Your Own Mind and Dissecting the Nature of Reality. It starts from scratch.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Sina the Sparrow, the guide who teaches the The Philosophy of Ibn Sina course
The Philosophy of Ibn Sina
with Sina the Sparrow
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in The Philosophy of Ibn Sina

  • The Floating Man experiment strips away all external senses and physical feelings
  • Even with zero sensory input, a person would still be certain that they exist
  • Self-awareness happens directly and instantly without needing evidence
  • Knowing you exist does not require deducing it from physical clues like a heartbeat or breathing
  • You can easily doubt whether your hands, feet, or torso exist in thought
  • You cannot doubt that you exist to do the doubting, showing mind and body are distinct
  • Constant bodily sensations and sensory feedback run continuously from birth
  • This endless sensory stream distracts us from noticing pure, underlying consciousness
  • An instantaneous creation would have no memories, learned words, or bodily senses
  • Even without past experience, immediate self-awareness of an 'I' remains intact
  • Physical senses capture visible and tangible properties like color, sound, and shape
  • The estimative faculty perceives non-physical meanings like danger or care that the eye cannot see directly
  • Different internal faculties handle sensory binding versus value judgments
  • A sheep does not see 'danger' as a physical color or shape; its inner estimative sense grasps the threat directly
  • Estimation reads non-physical meaning (intent, threat, friendliness) immediately without needing prior logical deduction
  • Eyes only register sight and the tongue only registers taste; neither can perceive what the other detects
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives The Philosophy of Ibn Sina the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Floating in Midair

If you floated in the air with zero senses working, what would you still know?

Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.

Course map

Where The Philosophy of Ibn Sina takes you

Explore the revolutionary thought experiments of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the thinker who reshaped world philosophy. Learn to isolate pure consciousness, dissect how your mind reads meaning, and trace the fundamental logic of existence.

  1. 1

    Investigating Your Own Mind

    • Isolating Consciousness with the Floating Man
    • Decoding Perception with Ibn Sina’s Inner Senses
  2. 2

    Dissecting the Nature of Reality

    • Separating What Things Are from Whether They Exist
    • Tracing Contingency to Find the Ground of Being

2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
Explain Like I'm 5

The Philosophy of Ibn Sina is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

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