Food. Every millennial identity crisis starts with food.
The other day, I was standing in front of the fridge. Door wide open, staring blankly into the void (a.k.a. the shelf with five jars of jam and absolutely no dinner options), and this thought just hit me:
Who exactly is this asshole who can’t plan a single grocery run? Could it be… me?? (gasps in existential dread)
Then the internal dialogue kicked in, obviously:
“Make something healthy.”
“Or just eat cereal and cry about capitalism again.”
Same two voices. Different day.
But then it got weirdly deep. Like—if I wasn’t standing here, in this body, hearing these thoughts… would I still know I exist?
Philosopher Avicenna was wondering the same thing, so he came up with an interesting thought experiment: the Floating Man.
Avicenna’s Floating Man: Awareness Without a Body
So here’s the setup.
Imagine you come into existence fully formed. No baby steps, no backstory—just bam, you’re there. Floating in mid-air. You’ve got no senses. No sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. No memory, no culture, no voice saying “just breathe.” Your limbs are stretched out, not touching anything. You don’t even know you have arms and legs..
And yet—you still are.
No external stimuli. Nothing to “anchor” you in the world. But according to Avicenna, you’d still have a deep, quiet awareness of being. Of existing. Of “I am.”
No labels. No language. But something inside you would know you’re… here.
Honestly? It’s kind of beautiful. And a little freaky.
What Avicenna was trying to prove here is that the soul—what he calls the rational soul—exists independently of the body. You don’t need eyes to see that you are. You just are. You don’t even need thoughts. Just awareness.
This is important because it shifts the way we think about consciousness. Is it produced by the body? Or does it just… use the body to express itself?
Avicenna leans hard into the second option.
The Soul According to Avicenna
Avicenna loved a good system, so naturally, he categorized the soul:
- The vegetative soul (plants have this—growth, reproduction, doing their green leafy thing);
- The animal soul (movement, sensation—everything your dog does when it hears you opening treats);
- And the rational soul (conscious thought, self-awareness, and yes, overthinking your entire life in the shower).
This rational soul? Let’s call her your main character energy.
Avicenna believed it’s immaterial. Eternal. Not tied down to your body or your brain. You don’t inherit it from your parents. It gets planted in you when the body is “ready” (whatever that means).
It’s the rational soul that gives you the power to reflect, imagine, analyze, and even doubt. And for Avicenna, this soul never dies. It might leave the body at death, but it doesn’t end. In fact, sleep gives us a hint.
When we sleep, our senses shut off. We don’t hear, see, or feel the outside world the same way. But dreams? Oh, they’re alive and well. Our inner life continues.
That tells us something, doesn’t it? That we can have experiences without the physical world. That something within us is still watching, feeling, reflecting, even when the body hits pause.
So to Avicenna, the soul is not just a poetic idea. It’s a real, immaterial thing that holds our true self.
Babies, Amnesia, and the Birth of the “I”
Okay, but real talk: if the soul is already in us, why don’t we remember being babies? Shouldn’t our tiny, bald floating selves be full of Avicennan insight?
Modern psychology says infants are conscious—but not self-conscious. They’re aware of sensations, connection, discomfort, joy. But they don’t yet think in terms of “me.”
Their nervous system is still developing. Language hasn’t shown up yet. And memory? That’s a party that hasn’t started. So it makes sense that even if the soul is there, it hasn’t gotten the tools to express itself clearly yet.
Some might argue that because we can’t remember our early years, we must not have been conscious. But Avicenna would say that memory doesn’t equal consciousness. The Floating Man has no memory. No body. No language. And yet he knows he is.
So what if your baby self was conscious… but didn’t yet have the structures to say, “This is me, I am here, and I would like mashed bananas now”?
It’s kind of humbling, right? That consciousness might begin before you even know you’re a “you.”
Descartes, Doubt, and the Ego’s Renaissance Makeover
Fast-forward to 17th-century France and René Descartes is having his own mental spirals.
He famously writes, “Cogito, ergo sum.” I think, therefore I am.
At first glance, it sounds eerily like Avicenna. But Descartes had his own take on it. Where Avicenna focused on awareness, Descartes focused on thought.
Descartes’ approach is rooted in doubt. He doubted the senses, the world, the body—everything. But the one thing he couldn’t doubt? That he was thinking. Even doubting required a thinker. So, there you have it—proof of existence.
Unlike Avicenna, though, Descartes insisted that the soul (or mind) and the body were totally separate substances. This created a centuries-long debate known as the “mind-body problem”. How can something immaterial interact with something physical?
Avicenna might just shrug and say: “It’s always been that way. That’s what makes you human.”
Brain Soup, Stories, and Illusions
Modern neuroscience takes a different route.
Today, most scientists don’t talk about “souls.” They talk about the brain. Neurons. Electrochemical signals. According to them, consciousness is just a result of your brain doing its job.
Instead of the rational soul, we get the narrative self—a mental construct your brain builds from memories, beliefs, sensory input, trauma, and maybe a bit of star sign bias.
This narrative feels solid, continuous. But it’s a bit of an illusion. Your “self” is a story. A very convincing one. Told by you. To you. About you.
But even neuroscience hits a wall. They can explain how the brain works. But they can’t explain why it feels like anything. Why there’s a you inside all those neurons. That’s the so-called “hard problem of consciousness.” And it’s still unsolved.
So even in 2025, Avicenna might still walk into a neuroscience lecture and say, “Told you.”
Subconscious Shadows: Who’s Really Running the Show?
Let’s shift focus for a sec.
You know that weird feeling when you do something and then think, “Wait… why did I do that?” Or when you catch yourself acting out a fear you didn’t even know you had?
That’s your subconscious talking.
The subconscious mind is like a backstage director. You don’t always see it, but it’s running scripts from your childhood, culture, environment, past relationships, and deep-rooted beliefs. And those scripts? They shape the conscious “me.”
So the “I” that you think is you? It’s partly constructed. Sure, there’s a deep self there. But it’s filtered through years of programming, fear, family stories, and survival instincts.
This doesn’t negate Avicenna. It deepens him. The Floating Man might exist—but in real life, he’s been layered with narratives and neuroses.
Panpsychism, AI, and the Expanding Question of Who’s Conscious
Now let’s really open Pandora’s Box.
What if consciousness isn’t exclusive to us? What if everything has a sliver of awareness?
That’s panpsychism. It suggests consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality, like gravity or space-time. That maybe atoms have proto-awareness. That maybe your houseplants are kinda feeling things. That your coffee mug is a little… self-aware.
(Chill. It’s probably not judging you. Probably.)
Meanwhile, AI has entered the chat.
Can machines be conscious? Can they pass the Floating Man test?
Most philosophers and scientists would say: not yet. AI can mimic consciousness. It can process, respond, predict. But does it feel like anything to be ChatGPT? Does it know that it exists? Can it reflect? Doubt? Wonder?
Avicenna would say: absolutely not. No soul. No spark. Just syntax.
But if AI ever does gain that deep awareness, well… who the heck knows?
So… Who’s the “Me” in My Head?
Here’s the truth: the “me” inside your head might not be one thing. It might be:
- A soul, glowing steadily beneath it all,
- A story you’ve built out of experience,
- A bundle of patterns, thoughts, reactions, and leftover childhood fears,
- A consciousness that’s always been there—even when you didn’t know it.
Maybe the Floating Man lives in all of us as the quiet, persistent awareness that shows up in stillness, in spirals, in the shower, and (in front of the fridge).
Whether you believe in a soul, a constructed identity, or lowkey panpsychist coffee mugs, the question remains:
What is the self?
And more importantly: who’s asking?
