C4: Soul, Mind And Body

Question 1

Psyche

Answer 1

A Greek term, which can be used interchangeably for ‘mind’ or ‘soul’

Question 2

‘The soul is the

Answer 2

Very likeness of the divine, and immortal’

Question 3

‘The mind is the very

Answer 3

Likeness of the human, and mortal’

Question 4

Substance dualism

Answer 4

The idea they two elements (mind and body) are wholly different substances.

Question 5

Plato’s view of the soul

Answer 5

• It is eternal
• It comes to the earth for a short while, before returning to the universe
• There is a contrast between the spiritual world of realities (The realm of forms) and the unsatisfactory physical world

Question 6

Aristotles view of the soul

Answer 6

The four causes
- The soul is the formal cause of the body

Question 7

The vegetative soul

Answer 7

Shared with all living things, including plants

Question 8

The appetitive soul

Answer 8

In which we find passions and appetites such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire as well as emotions such as anger or sadness

Question 9

The intellectual soul

Answer 9

Rational and directive

Question 10

‘The human soul

Answer 10

Which is called ‘intellect’ or the ‘mind’ is something incorporeal and subsistent

Question 11

Dualism

Answer 11

The belief that we have two elements - body and soul

Question 12

Monism

Answer 12

The view that we are one substance

Question 13

Materialism

Answer 13

The belief that the only substance is the material one

Question 14

Substance dualism

Answer 14

The idea that two elements (mind and body) are wholly different substances

Question 15

René Descartes

Answer 15

Substance materialist
Believed that as sense experience could be mistaken, the only thing he could believe in was his mind

‘Cogito ergo sum’
‘I think therefore I am’

Question 16

‘A body is by

Answer 16

Nature divisible, but the mind is not’ - Descartes

Question 17

‘There is a little gland

Answer 17

in the brain where the soul exercises its functions’
-Descartes

The pineal gland is the seat of imagination and common senae

Question 18

Gilbert Ryle

Answer 18

Philosopher who attempted to refute Descartes by claiming that he was guilty of a category error, assuming that Descartes used both ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ interchangeably

Eg in a pair of gloves, it would be an error to think that a ‘pair of gloves’ is different from a right glove and a left glove

Question 19

Category error

Answer 19

Mistakenly treating something as being of one type when it’s part of a different sort. It would be a category error to treat a rhino as a type of butterfly

Question 20

Gilbert Ryes example

Answer 20

He had 3 - one was

‘A foreigner goes to his forest game of cricket, having read a book about it. He is shown the stumps, the bails and the umpires. Then he asks ‘but where is the team spirit?’

Question 21

‘It is a savage

Answer 21

Superstition to suppose that man consists of two pieces, body and soul’ - Peter Geach

Question 22

Reductionism

Answer 22

The belief that everything can be reduced to statements about physical bodies

Question 23

Behaviourism

Answer 23

The belief that all mental states are simply learned behaviours of bodies. To say that a person feels sad means that they are behaving sadly.

Question 24

John Hick

Answer 24

Believes that we are our bodies, but these bodies have a spiritual dimension. There is no mind without matter

Question 25

Richard Dawkins

Answer 25

A materialist thinker, he rejects the idea of a disembodied soul. He acknowledges the mystery of consciousness, however believes that science will eventually explain it. Believes in Soul one and Soul two

Question 26

Soul one and Soul two

Answer 26

Soul one is the separate substance of much traditional thought. Dawkins rejects this notion as primitive superstition

Soul two is intellectual and spiritual power, higher development of the moral faculties, feeling and imagination

Question 27

G.E.M Anscombe

Answer 27

When saying ‘I am pointing at the door’ it is the body that does the pointing, not a disembodied spirit. A disembodied soul could not point, pointing is an act of the body as a whole
- Example of dualism

Question 28

B.F Skinner

Answer 28

Behaviourist who believes that mental events are learned behaviour eg Pavlovs dogs or Little Albert.
To Skinner mental acts are caused acts, explicable at a physical level

Question 29

Daniel C. Dennett

Answer 29

Objects to behaviourism stating that Skinner oversimplifies human consciousness- Dennett believes that there is more to human consciousness than cause and effect