 Avicenna proceeds to elaborate his “metaphysical” conception of the efficient cause in a series of arguments, which aim to correct common errors about this type of cause. One such error is the claim that every agent is first inactive and then active, and the related claim that every agent is also a recipient of action (Avicenna MH: 200). These claims accord with familiar examples of agency. Suppose I rise from my chair upon hearing the doorbell. I am first inactive and then active. And my activity (rising) is partly due to my being the recipient of action (hearing the sound made by the bell). Avicenna maintains that, though agency often or mostly occurs in this way, it need not: being first inactive and then active, and being the recipient of action, are not essential characteristics of agency. Indeed, because inactivity and being affected are opposed to activity and action, he reasons, the former do not belong to the account of agency, strictly speaking. In correcting this error about the efficient cause, Avicenna aims to make conceptual room for divine agency. One feature of divine agency, which we have already seen in al-Kindī, is that God acts without his being affected in any way. However, Avicenna does not appeal to accepted features of divine agency to defend his view. Rather, he attempts to rebut the common account of agency on  independent grounds.