Body/soul distinction

Question 1

What is Substance dualism?

Answer 1

There are two different types of substances - mental substances (mind) and material substances (bodies), each capable of existing without the other.

Question 2

What is materialism?

Answer 2

Materialism holds that there’s only one substance, material substance and everything that exists is dependent upon material substances. For example, thoughts are dependent upon material substances.

Question 3

What evidence is there for Dualism?

Answer 3

Plato’s cycle of opposites, innate knowledge, some people can remeber past lives in which they existed as a different person, Plato argued that the body is divisible but the soul is not. Near Death experiences.

Question 4

How does Plato back up his dualist beliefs

Answer 4

Innate knowledge - soul recalled the forms e.g. a slave boy and maths sum. Plato argued that everything has an opposite. Therefore,death has an opposite, life, and life’s opposite is death. Death comes from life and life from death. The soul is the vital element to keep this cycle of life, death and rebirth going. Plato argued that the body is divisible but the soul is not. This is because the soul is unseen and so is simple. To destroy something, it had to be broken into parts. As the soul has no parts it can not be destroyed.

Question 5

What did Plato believe about the soul and the body?

Answer 5

Soul could know the truth through reason. Soul is not divisible but the body is. Body belonged to this physical earth. At death, the soul left the body and resided in the realm of the Forms. Was then reborn into another body. Habits of the past life determined the next rebirth. Must train the soul to remember the forms and to be virtuous.

Question 6

Explain the Charioteer analogy

Answer 6

Charioteer analogy - the charioteer - the soul had to guide mind and body together to find the truth. Soul divided into three parts - reason, emotion(thumos) and desire. Reason had to balance emotion and appetite to be virtuous.

Question 7

What does Descartes say about ourselves, and how does he use it to support dualism?

Answer 7

Descartes argued that we have a clear and distinct idea of ourselves as a thinking thing and we also have an idea of ourselves as a body which is a non-thinking thing. This shows that we are distinct from our bodies

Question 8

Does Descartes believe that the mind is divisible?

Answer 8

Descartes argues that the body is divisible but the mind is not divisilbe. This means that the mind cannot be destroyed as only things that are divisible can be destroyed.

Question 9

Explain what Descartes concluded from his hyperbolic doubt?

Answer 9

Descartes argues that he can doubt the existence of his body as sense experience is unreliable. However, he cannot doubt that he has a mind because doubting is to think.

Question 10

How does Descartes apply Leibniz’s Law?

Answer 10

Descartes argues that minds and bodies have different properties and so are distinct. An essential property of anything existing in space (Res Extensa) is to have parts, so the body, existing in space must have parts. However, the mind is not in space (Res Cognitas) and therefore has a different property which is thought, it does not have parts. Therefore, through Leibniz’s law, the mind and body are distinct.

Question 11

For Descartes, what connects the mind and body?

Answer 11

The pineal gland

Question 12

What do reductive materialists believe about mind and body?

Answer 12

They believe that the mind and brain are identical. They claim that different mental states correspond to different parts of the brain, for example, pain corresponds to a different part of the brain to memory. They believe that chemical reactions in the brain do not just cause mental events but are mental events. They believe that consciousness is physical and so when the body dies, so does consciousness.

Question 13

What does Gilbert Ryle say about the Soul?

Answer 13

In “concept of Mind”, Talk of soul is a category mistake - he gives the example of someone watching a cricket match and then asking to see the team spirit. Soul is a word used to describe our personality - not separate but we talk as though it is separate.

Question 14

What does Dawkins mean by Soul 1?

Answer 14

Soul One is the non-physical vital principle. This is the normal view of soul shared by most religious people. Dawkins claims that this view of soul is used incorrectly to mean the personality.

Question 15

What does Dawkins mean by Soul 2?

Answer 15

Soul 2 - self awareness of humans/consciousness can be explained - come about through electrical impulses in the brain. Over time, due to evolution, colonies of genes have become self aware.

Question 16

What does Dawkins say about the soul?

Answer 16

Belief in soul is wish fulfilment. Nothing exists except for matter. There is no soul humans are nothing more than “survial machines” - “bytes and bytes of digital information”.

Question 17

What are the key issues for body/mind distinction?

Answer 17

Is there any evidence for a soul? Do mind and body have separate properties? Is the way we talk about the soul a category error? Can science explain everything about a person? Does morality make sense without a soul?

Question 18

What key questions can be asked about body/mind distinction?

Answer 18

Is the soul better understood metaphorically or as a reality? “mind/body distinction is a category error”. Dualist have responded successfully to the challenge of materialims? Materialists have responded successfully to the challenge of dualism?

Question 19

How does Gilbert Ryle respond to Descartes and Plato

Answer 19

The mind and body are separate is a language category mistake. He referred to Descartes mind as the “ghost in the machine”. Descartes is using the term “mind” as though it is separate but really it is a term to cover physical things like our thoughts, personality etc. He has misused language.

Question 20

How do Davies and Lacewing respond to Descartes and Plato?

Answer 20

Lacwing - the soul may be distructable by annihilation rather than being broken into parts. Davies - How do we know our mind is not divisible?

Question 21

What is implied by the masked man fallacy?

Answer 21

Our thoughts can be wrong

Question 22

What is weak about Near Death Experiences

Answer 22

Dr Susan Blackmore - they can be explained by lack of oxygen to the brain

Question 23

How does Hick respond to evidence of remembering past lives?

Answer 23

People may be tuning into the memory of a living person who knew the dead person to recall their memories i.e. telpathy between living people.

Question 24

What is the weakness of Plato’s cycle of opposites?

Answer 24

Plenty of things are not brought about by their opposites e.g. balck does not bring about white. Therefore, there may not be a cycle with opposites so life can be the opposite of death without bringing about death.

Question 25

What are some Materialist challenges to dualism?

Answer 25

Evidence that body and mind interact e.g. Mel Thompson’s talks in her book about electrical impulses to the brain to stop depression. Dualists cannot prove other minds only their own. Hume - we may be aware that we are a thinking being - that does not establish that out thinking is separate to our physical nature.

Question 26

How do Dualists challenge Materialism?

Answer 26

Neuro science cannot explain how an opinion or emotion can be physical. Swinburne - complex parts of us cannot be explained physically e.g. complex thoughts. We are more than the sum of our parts (response to Ryle). Ward - need soul to makes sense of morality - biblical support God breathes into Adam.

Question 27

What does Dawkins say about humans?

Answer 27

“survial machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”

Question 28

Where does Aristotle write about the soul?

Answer 28

In his book “De Anima”

Question 29

What did Aristotle say about the body and the soul?

Answer 29

They depend upon each other - they cannot be separated - soul is the driving force of the body (boat and oarsman), it gives the body its pupose (axe chopping wood), it is the personality of the body.

Question 30

How does the soul relate to the four causes?

Answer 30

Soul is the Formal, efficient cause and final cause of the body

Question 31

What does Aristotle say about Humans, plants and animals?

Answer 31

They all have souls but the souls of each have different functions - plant - nutrition, animals - nutrition, perception and desire - human - same as animal but also reason.

Question 32

How does Wittgenstein respon to Gilbert Ryle?

Answer 32

If the religious community understand what they mean by a soul and that does mean something which is immaterial and separate to the body, then that is meaningful to them. So Ryle is wrong to argue it is a language mistake for them because they don’t mean the soul as something which is part of the body, they do mean that it is separate.

Question 33

How does Hume respond to Dualism?

Answer 33

He argues that just because we may think we have a part of us which is not physical, it does not mean that we do

Question 34

How does Flew respond to dualism?

Answer 34

Flew - to refer to a “soul” is to refer to the behaviour of a person and nothing more.

Question 35

How does Davies respond to Descartes idea that we have a clear and distinct idea of ourselves as a thinking thing?

Answer 35

He argues against Descartes by saying that our thoughts about ourselves can be wrong. For, example, just because I think that I am non material does not mean that I am

Question 36

How does Davies respond to the idea that we can often have thought without displaying them through our bodies?

Answer 36

Davies argues against this by saying that eventually we will show through our bodies what we are thinking.

Question 37

How does Davies respond to “I think therefore I am”?

Answer 37

He responds to this by arguing that just because you doubt something, it does not mean that it is not the case.

Question 38

What is Descartes Cartesian Circle?

Answer 38

Descartes suggested that he might be being deceived by an evil deceiver but stressed that he he had the concept of God as a supremely perfect being implanted in his mind. Since God ,being perfect, could not deceive him he could trust his mental faculties.

Question 39

How does Peter Smith support Aristotle?

Answer 39

We might say that Jack needs a big shirt, as though his build is separate, but Jack could not go without his build and so it is not separate.