Life and Death Flashcards

Question

What is a soul according to Aristotle?

Answer 1

A soul is what makes a body work. These souls are not bits of special spiritual stuff which have been placed inside the living body. They are sets of powers, capabilities and faculties. To have a soul is like having a skill; it is not a part of you which functions independently from any other part.

Answer 2

For Aristotle oak trees and ostriches had psyche [or soul] as much as monkeys or men. The word 'soul' did not meant he same as 'mind'. Rather, everything that lives has a psyche, but human beings are at the top of creation; it is this hierarchical arrangement which makes it difficult to say that Aristotle had one single definition of soul.

Answer 3

"One should not ask if the soul and body are one, any more than one should ask it of the wax and the shape, or in general of the matter of anything and that of which it is the matter"

Answer 4

Aristotle argued that soul and body are inseparable; the soul cannot exist without a body nay more than walking can happen without legs. He also believed that a soul is not the kind of thing that can survive a person, as how could my skills, my character, or my temper survive me? The soul is the essence of form of the body, it is not immortal.

Answer 5

He is seen as having a 'materialist' view of humankind because he rejects the Platonic idea of a spiritual soul, and takes a biological attitude towards life.

Answer 6

Aristotle did not think the soul can somehow come in from the outside. The only thing he saw as coming in from the outside is 'thought' and 'intellect'.

Answer 7

In Aristotle's philosophy, thought is an aspect of soul that is almost divine and immortal, but yet belief in personal immortality is impossible.

Answer 8

His view of an immortal intellect depends on the view that thinking does not involve any bodily activity, yet in his general account of the soul he makes it clear that thinking is something done by "natural organic bodies." It is difficult this see how this can be consistent.

Answer 9

1. Who or what are we after death? Are we a soul separated from the body? Is it just our 'thought' that continues? 2. Who or what are we now? Are we a more developed version of plant and animal life? Or are we human because we have a soul, or spiritual element in us?

Answer 10

He takes a dualist view that mind exists independent of matter. He believed in a split between body and mind.

Answer 11

1. He argues that mind is a 'non-corporeal' (non-bodily substace, which is distinct from material or bodily substance 2. Every substances has a property or a special character. So, for instance, the property of mind-substance is consciousness and the property of bodily or material-substance is length, or breadth or depth.

Answer 12

Although Descartes could doubt that he had a body, there was one thing that it was impossible to doubt- the fact he was doubting. This led to his famous saying, cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore i am). As he can doubt the body, but not thought (or the mind) it lead him to believe that the mind can exist independently of matter.

Answer 13

"From this I knew that I was a substance the whole essence or nature of which was simply to think; and which, to exist needs no place and has no dependence on any material thing"

Answer 14

1. If Descartes wants to start with doubt, his initial starting-point should have been 'there are doubts', rather than showing that from this you can take the existence of a personal self for grantes 2. THere is the problem of how the two distinct substances of body and mind interact to form what we call a person. How can a material substance affect a non-material substance?

Answer 15

Cartesian is the adjective describing Descartes' philosophy

Answer 16

He rejects Aristotle's idea of the soul or mind as that which animates the body, but argues that the mind does not influence the body like a switch or a button which sets the body into motion. He insists on a much closer union in which the mind directly moved the body and directly experiences, rather than observes the pleasures and pains of the body. "My soul is not in my body as a pilot in a ship; i am most tightly bound to it..."

Answer 17

The view that thinking is a purely physical activity of the brain; whatever exists is either matter itself, or is dependent on matter for its existence.

Answer 18

The view that the brain is the centre of consciousness but that it's conscious states are not just physical. In other words your body, and your brain as a part of your body, is not just physical. It is an object with physical and mental aspects.

Answer 19

They tried to explain the functions of people in terms of 'mental faculties' such as reason, will, memory and emotion.

Answer 20

They promoted the view that only experiments on observable 'matter' were valid.

Answer 21

"The time seems to have come when psychology must discard all reference to consciousness"

Answer 22

He dismissed the study of consciousness, mental states, mind and soul, and claims that all psychology could be carried out in terms of stimulus and response. His was a scientific view which looked only at how people act to explain what a human being is, and claimed that human behavior could be controlled scientifically. He was a behaviorist.

Answer 23

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed...and I'll guarantee you to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select."

Answer 24

1. He attacks humanity's inner 'freedom' to have internal states of knowing, will and destiny. Human beings are not autonomous or independent. 2. People are completely controlled by an enviroment. We are not the result of our religious views, and neither are we free to shape our own destiny. Skinner believed in the power of a totally controlling environment; operant conditioning

Answer 25

He accepts that human consciousness exists, but; 1. Because consciousness is private, it is foolish to say that it is any different from the world outside 2. Human consciousness is a social product, which arises when people interact with each other. It does not exist when you are on your own. Human nature is simply the behaviour a person exhibits.

Answer 26

"The picture which emerges from a scientific analysis is not of a body with a person inside, but of a body which is a person in the sense that it displays a complex repertoire of behaviour" "Man is much more than a dog, but like a dog he is within range of a scientific analysis." "Man is a machine in the sense that he is a complex system behaving in lawful ways, but the complexity is extraordinary"

Answer 27

1. It reduces humankind to a collection of behaviours and therefore dehumanizes us 2. It suffers from a lack of reality in its assessment of people. The rich inner lives of people, including imagination, creativity and faith it God, cannot be dismissed in terms of conditioning behaviour. How can you measure this? 3. The more persuaded behaviourists are inconsistent in that they use their own awareness to dismiss the self-awareness of those they observe. Thus human nature is reduced to suit the psychologists assumptions.

Answer 28

"Behaviourism is indeed a kind of flat-earth view of the mind. Or to change the metaphor: it has replaced the anthropomorphic fallacy- ascribing to animals human faculties and sentiments- with the opposite fallacy: denying to men faculties not found in lower animals. It has substituted for the erstwhile anthropomorphic view of the rat, a ratomorphic view of man"

Answer 29

He took the view that we can have real knowledge of the world in which we live; in fact, this is the only area where we can have true knowledge, because it is through our experience that we come to understand things.

Answer 30

1. The material cause- what is it made of? 2. The efficient cause- what agent brings it about? 3. The formal cause- The characteristics that make the object fit into whatever category it fits into 4. The final cause- The ultimate reason for its purpose.

Answer 31

As a 'substance'; he saw the body as being the matter of a living thing, and the soul as its 'form', understood as its characteristics and covering every function of living things, including sensation, movement and reproduction. The soul is the structure of the body, its function and its organisation.

Answer 32

It depends on the kind of living thing that it is, and these are arranged in a kind of hierarchy. Plants for example, have only a vegetative sort of soul, whilst animals are above plants, and their souls have appetites as well as the powers found in plants, so animals can have desires and feelings which allows them to move. The human soul is at the top as it has the power of reason.

Answer 33

Through the working of the soul, people develop their intellects and their ethical characters.

Answer 34

He gives an example of an axe. If it were a living thing, he says, then the matter from which it is made is its 'body', the wood and the metal. Its soul would be the things that make it an axe, rather than just wood and metal: its capacity to chop.

Answer 35

"Suppose then that the eye were an animal- sight would have been its soul...when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name- it is no more a real eye than the eye of a statue or of a painted figure"

Answer 36

For Aristotle, the body and the soul are no two separate elements, but are different parts or aspects of the same thing. He claims that a dead animal is an animal in name only; it has its body, its matter, but it no longer has its soul. When it is dead, it has lost its capacity to do all the things that animals of its kind usually do.

Answer 37

All the faculties of the soul are inseparable from the body, he thought, with the exception of reason. He's discussion of the different aspects of reason and the extent to which they are dependent on the physical body, are among the most obscure and more debated or all his writings. It is unclear whether the reason was believed to be immortal, but perhaps Aristotle said it was. If the reason lives on after death, it does not seem to be in a personal, individual way; we could not say that this person is immortal, with a recognizable identity.

Answer 38

According to Plato's thinking, because we have concepts of the ideal Forms, without having experienced them, our souls must have know the Forms before we were born. This leads him to the belief that people must therefore have immortal soul.

Answer 39

"Language cannot get on without general words such as 'cat' and such words are evidently not meaningless. But if the word cat means anything, it means something which is not this or that cat, but some kind of universal cattiness. This is not born when a particular cat is born, and does not die when it dies. In fact, it has no position in space or time, it is 'eternal'."

Answer 40

"The body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us all power of thinking at all"

Answer 41

Of different elements, including the physical body, the mind and the immortal soul.

Answer 42

The body is the physical component of each person. The body is the part of a person that others can see and hear, the part that presents an appearance. It is through the body that we receive our senses experiences.

Answer 43

Through our body we receive our sense experience, so that our minds are able to form our opinions. Our minds are also able to achieve an awareness of the eternal truths beyond the physical world, in the realm of ideas, or Forms.

Answer 44

The mind wants to understand ideas, to gain real knowledge of the Forms; but the body is interested in sense pleasures, and it has needs such as eating and sleeping which are constantly interrupting intellectual pursuits. Often the demands of the body are so great that they take over completely.

Answer 45

It is the directing force of the body. He compares it to a charioteer, in charge of two horses, the mind and the body. The soul tries to guide the two together, rather than allowing them to contradict and be pulled in opposite directions.

Answer 46

It has to pre-exist the body because it is unchanging and part of being unchanging means that it cannot come into existence or go away, it has to stay the same. This concept is also connected with Plato's view that all real knowledge is remembering, recollection.

Answer 47

The soul is divided into three different parts, roughly translated as reason, emotion and desire, and Plato becomes less certain about which parts of the soul are immortal.

Answer 48

1. The argument from the Cycle of Opposites | 2. The argument from Knowledge.

Answer 49

This relies on the idea that every quality comes into being from its own opposite. It depends on the existence of its opposite, or it would not exist at all. Plato argued that it follows the death must come from life, and life from death. That is, people who are dead are just people who were in the past alive but then experienced the change we call dying, and people who are alive are just people who were among the dead but then experienced the change we call birth. This suggests an endless chain of birth, death and rebirth.

Answer 50

Plato believed that knowledge is really just remembering what we already knew. Plato believed that this knowledge of the Forms must be innate, and must have been gained by our souls before we were born. For Plato, this was evidence that the soul pre-existed the body.

Answer 51

His other ideas about duality; he thought of existence in terms of two levels

Answer 52

He explains it using the metaphor of sight. He argues that sight needs not only the eye and an object to look at, but also light. Without the light, the object cannot be clearly seen. The light is compared to the form of the Good; a knowledge of true, essential goodness allows the soul (the eye) to gain real understanding, clarity of vision. Without any light, with no perception of the Form of the Good, the eye cannot see very much, at all, and has to be satisfied with poor appearances. At death, the soul is released fromt he trap of the body where it can re-enter the world of Forms and renew its knowledge of the form of the good.

Answer 53

He sees it as simple- it cannot be split up into different parts but at the same time it has different aspects: 1. Reason- rules the soul and seeks truth 2. Emotion- can be trained and controlled 3. Desire- seeks pleasure for oneself Plato says that we should seek to harmonise the soul so that all the parts work together.

Answer 54

His evidence comes from internal conflict- our desires cannot be fulfilled so we become frustrated as we are not allowing reason to rule.

Answer 55

Plato's ideas about the soul depend on his theory of forms and knowledge being a recollection of things that we already know, which can be challenged.

Answer 56

1. It is hard to accept that there might be ideal forms of negative qualities such as jealousy or spite, and harder still to accept that every physical thing in the world has an ideal form 2. There is no evidence for the world of Forms/Ideals 3 It is unclear how far the forms relate to specific items 4. Plato does not value experience enough 5. The Third man argument 6. Memes 7. His definition of learning seems inaccurate 8. Not everything has an opposite

Answer 57

The existence of any other world apart from the world of appearances cannot be proved and he does not seem to provide any convincing argument for the realm of ideals. Many would also say the physical world has a very definite reality; and many scientists would claim that the physical world is the only reality there is. E.g. Richard Dawkins believes it is nonsense to talk of a transcendent 'other world' beyond the physical.

Answer 58

Plato is not very clear about how far the forms relate to the specific items in the 'world of appearances'. Is there an ideal form of animal, to which all animals relate? Or do Forms have to relate to specific animal species? Is there a form of pig in general, or a separate Form for each variety of pig? SOme argue that the Forms then stop being 'universal' and degenerate into something of little meaning or use.

Answer 59

Is Plato wrong to say that our senses cannot give us true knowledge? In daily life, most people gain knowledge from experience of the world, which is necessary for survival. Moreover, scientists argue that the physical world is worth studying in its own right and can give us true insights into the nature of reality. Such scientific investigation has led to discoveries such as penicillin and electricity, which is true valuable knowledge which benefits us in our daily lives.

Answer 60

This criticism of the theory of Forms is put forward by Aristotle; suppose that a man is a copy of the Form of the man. What is the origin of the Form of the man? Well, the Form of the man is a copy of a previous Form of a man. That is three men. In effect, Aristotle was saying that a copy of a Form could turn out to be an infinite series that never stopped; that would render the Theory of Forms meaningless.

Answer 61

This is an idea put forward by Richard Dawkins. Forms could just be ideas in people's minds that they pass on to others such as friends and children. Richard Dawkins has referred to the passing on of ideas like this as 'memes'.

Answer 62

Learning usually means acquiring new knowledge, not just remembering

Answer 63

The argument from opposites does not work as not everything has an opposite. We can think of many things that are not 'brought about' by their opposite; black does not bring about white. We might recognise things for what they are because of their opposites, for example we know when something is warm because we understand coolness, but this does not necessitate any kind of cycle. In otherwords, life can be the opposite of death, without it meaning that life must be brought about by death.

Answer 64

1. Plato's theory encourages us to question in order to learn and not to accept things at face value 2. Plato had a profound influence in shaping Christian Philosophy 3. It explains why we all recognise the same essential elements in something 4. Plenty of philosophers would agree that we have an intuitive knowledge of what goodness, or justice is 5. Plato is not really interested in the Forms of material objects; he is interested in the Forms of concepts. 6. Plato rarely discusses the Forms of material objects; whilst he does mention the Form of a bed in the Republic, it is no clear if this is a serious remark- Charles Griswold has suggested this was a joke.

Answer 65

He thought that we have ideas such as the meaning of the 'perfect circle' or 'absolute equality', not because we have ever seen any examples of them but because these ideas are already with us from a previous existence. As a person discovers different elements of the physical world, this begins a process of remembering.

Answer 66

Because it is changing and is not the same in one moment as it is the next

Answer 67

The view that humans are a single unity of body and soul/mind. The monist approach suggests the soul cannot be separated from the body- humans are a unity, and it is as a unity that they survive death, if at all.

Answer 68

The dualist approach says that humans are made up of two parts, a body and a soul/mind. It suggests that the soul can be separated from the body.

Answer 69

The belief that the soul of a person is reincarnated after death into a new body.

Answer 70

The view that humans are solely physical beings.

Answer 71

A hindu term for the real self or soul

Answer 72

The Hindu belief of the cycle of birth, death and rebirth

Answer 73

The final release of the soul from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth into a state of bliss.

Answer 74

The belief in an immortal and eternal soul (atman) that passes from existence to existence depending upon the kind of life lived.

Answer 75

Rebirth is different from reincarnation. Rebirth rejects the idea of an eternal soul, but says that there is a consciousness generated by experience and the life stream. At death, the consciousness which has become attached to life, possession and people, craves to continue and so attaches itself to another body.

Answer 76

In Buddhism, this is the final release from the cycle of rebirth attained by extinction of all desires and individual existence, culminating in absolute blessedness.

Answer 77

The teachings of the Buddha.

Answer 78

Judgement day at the end of time when God will decide the fates of all individual humans according to the good and evil of their earthly lives.

Answer 79

He says that it does not make sense for the soul to see the Forms, and that sight is a sense experience linked to the body.

Answer 80

Elements of culture or behaviour that may be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, e.g. imitation

Answer 81

Literally the idea that we are able to exist in some form without our bodies. Resurrection and reincarnation talk about being away from a body for a very short time before acquiring another one or resurrecting soon after death in the same body.

Answer 82

Whether the notion of disembodied existence is coherent?

Answer 83

Price maintains that post-mortem perceptions might be broadly similar to 'experiences' in dreams. In dreams, our image producing powers provide us with a multitude of objects. A world, he maintains, formed out of such mental images which had been acquired during bodily life could include images of our own bodies and perceptions of the world we have experienced during life and which would be available after death through. He sees no reason why the image world would not be tactile, auditory, and smell images within a 3 dimension world. It would be just as real as the world in bodily life. In other words, we have effectively carried out world with us in memory.

Answer 84

The image world would not need to be completely private as Price maintains that it would be possible to communicate by telepathy. There could be groups of telepathically interconnected minds which, together, could form their own worlds.

Answer 85

He maintains that "it is easy enough to conceive that experiences might occur after one's death which are linked with experiences before death in such a way that personal identity is preserved."

Answer 86

He argues against the view Price puts forward, saying that if we all live life after death in our own mental self-created worlds, then we have little genuine contact with each other. Hick questions the quality of this sort of life and asks whether it really meets the definition of 'living'"

Answer 87

"...this amounts to a very truncated sense of being alive, in comparison with normal waking life...in the post-mortem world that we are now imagining his social environment would be unreal and his commerce with other people delusory. This consideration must, surely, count to some extent at least against a theory of this kind"

Answer 88

In support of the dualist position on life after death, he considered that he could think of himself without a body but he could not deny that we was a thinking thing- "I think therefore I am". As the body can be doubted, and the soul cannot, it follows that the body and the soul cannot be one and the same.

Answer 89

The flaw in this argument is pointed out by Brian Davies who argues that the fact that one considers themselves to be sober, does not mean that they are.

Answer 90

"If it were valid to argue 'i can doubt that my body exists but not that I exist, ergo I am not my body,' it would be equally valid to argue 'i can doubt that there exists a being whose essential nature is to think, but i cannot doubt that i exist, ego, I am not a being whose essential nature is to think." Descartes is hoist with his own petard.

Answer 91

If the brain is the same as the mind and if consciousness is entirely a matter of material states, then it seems difficult to explain human freedom. If there is no mind, and just simply matter, consciousness would either be entirely determined or random. yet, the fact most people accept human beings are free seem to make more likely the claim that mind and the consciousness is more than simply a product of a series of electrical impulses.

Answer 92

He dismissed the idea of a separate soul as 'the ghost in the machine'. Our minds and consciousness are thus said to be made up of physical matter, just like the rest of us. For him, studying consciousness through neuroscience assumes that a person has no soul. The alternative theory Ryle proposed was 'philosophical behaviourism'- the view that supposed mental events really just refer to a complex patterns of behaviour. Our interior mental terminology is just a way of referring to something physical (behaviour), e.g. when we say that someone is 'happy' we are referring to the behaviour pattern they show.

Answer 93

He argues that continuity of the body or body parts like the brain is not sufficient for continuity of the person. According to Swinburne, although a critical part of our current existence our body is not something we are. We need some sort of immaterial substance for continued identity.

Answer 94

He creates the story of a mad surgeon who informs you that he will transplant your left brain into one brainless body, and your right into another, and that you can noew choose which body will be tortured and which will be made happy after the transplant. But how can you determine which transplant will be you? THe fact that continuity of brain parts does not clearly establish which person is you shows that such continuity is insufficient for personal identity.

Answer 95

He argues that the one sure key to identity is spatio-temporal continuity- this means the continuity of the body through space and time. Bodies are constantly changing throughout a person's life, yet there is a single, changing, moving developing person that moves through space and time with this process. At death the body dies and rots: it disintergrates or ceases to exist.

Answer 96

He argues that acceptance of spatio-temporal continuity as being necessary for identity would effectively rule out belief in life after death as on death or disembodied existence, spatio-temporal continuity is broken.

Answer 97

Raymond Moody recorded more than a 100 accounts of people who claim to have had NDE's; most found that due to the experience their lives radically changed, so money and things no longer mattered, and relationships an people became central. THis is a phenomena that materialism seems unable to explain.

Answer 98

He developed the NDE Greyson scale which identifies the stages in DE to determine the type of experience a person had.

Answer 99

They argued that there is no evidence that NDE's are anything more than a function of the brain, an illusion created. She claims that we have all the information in our memories to create such an experience, and all NDE's can be explained by brain function and chemistry. E.g. THe 'feel good faction' is created by the fact that under stress, and with lack of oxygen, the body releases a massive surge of endorphin es, which create good feelings, take away pain, and makes a person feel positive and good about everything.

Answer 100

He argued that our purpose in life is to attain the highest good (summum bonum) in which virtue meets with happiness. However, not everyone is able to reach this goal in their lifetime. God would surely allow us all the change to realise this good, therefore we must survive death. Therefore, for practical reasons the soul exists and is immortal.

Answer 101

1. Why must perfect goodness ever be realised? | 2. Often goals and ideals towards which a person strives, may be, at best, only partially realisable.

Answer 102

A word used for the souls passage or journey to another soul after death

Answer 103

The principles of actions, deeds and effects, that our actions in this life affect the next. Regarded as the law of the universe.

Answer 104

God or the absolute in Hinduish

Answer 105

The illusion or the unreal world of separate consciousness

Answer 106

The belief in the existence of one God

Answer 107

Reincarnation is the transmigration of the soul from body to body. It involves the idea that we have lived before, possibly many times, and we may live again. The soul is eternal and lives in many different bodies.

Answer 108

1. How a person lives when they are embodied affects the next incarnation 2. A good person may be reborn as somebody wealthy or successful, where as a bad person could be reborn to poverty or suffering, or even as an animal. 3. THe process is operated by the law of Karma

Answer 109

That brahman is pure consciousness or thought. THe universe is temporal and is in a sense, unreal. The Hindu word for this is Maya. However, all living things have a soul or 'atman' which is in some way united with the physcail matter surrounding them. The aim of the consciousness is for the atman to be liberated from the repeated cycle of death and rebirth and to be united with Brahman.

Answer 110

Ultimately the atman is part of brahman. For many hindus, the separateness of individual consciousness or soul is an illusion. Hence, individuality is an illusion and ultimately life after death is not the personal survival taught by Western monotheistic faiths.

Answer 111

1. It solves the problem of evil | 2. Memories of past lives

Answer 112

It suggests we are suffering as a direct result of our past actions.

Answer 113

It is claimed that some people remember past lives, such as in twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation written by Ian Stevenson. He took examples mainly from India, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and Brazil, of children who had 'memories' of past lives, and whose memories bore an unusual resemblance to the lives of deceased people they have never met.

Answer 114

That the vast majority of cases from from cultures where reincarnation is already a widely held and accepted belief.

Answer 115

1. Most cases appear to come from countries where reincarnation is already an accepted belief 2. Religious objections 3. Some may criticize the fact it relies on an immaterial soul 4. Is it still me? Personal identity? 5. Does not solve the problem of evil- is unjust

Answer 116

If they are members of other faith which have different teaching about life after death, they would object theories of reincarnation. In particular, Christianity, Islam or Judaism teaches that each individual is given one life which is of prime importance as the determinant of our future salvation or condemnation; teaching about reincarnation is incompatible with teaching about the resurrection of the body.

Answer 117

In order to be able to claim to be the same person, at least one of these aspects- body, memory or personality should be present. With reincarnation, you do not have the same body and there are many people who have a similar personality, so the key identity might be memory, but this causing problems. If all these links fail, we are left to argue that it is the soul that provides continuity, but this cannot be verified.

Answer 118

They argue that trauma at birth and death cause memories to be buried deep within our consciousness. We do not remember most of the events of our first two years of life, yet we don't dispute that it was us.

Answer 119

Past life memories seem to be more problematic- some people do claim to have experience of past lives but these are sometimes vague and vigorously disputed by most scientists.

Answer 120

He rejects reincarnation because there is no connection between the brain of the newborn and the dead person. There is no way of saying that the soul is actually of a particular person as there is no direct link between them.

Answer 121

On the grounds that a link with the person who has died cannot be established. He asks, 'How is the new body you if it lacks your body, memories, experiences and feelings?' Reincarnation rules out any possibility of memories being the link between the dead and the new person.

Answer 122

He gives the example of an old man dying and his soul being reincarnated in a new-born baby. He questions what link there could be between the two, given that, as a person, the old man was a unity of both body and experiences and memories gained through life. If the baby is you reincarnated, how is the baby you if the baby lacks your body, memories, experiences, feelings and so on?

Answer 123

Others feel that reincarnation does not solve the problem of evil but postpones it as there is no adequate explanation as to why we experience suffering in the first life.

Answer 124

Some would argue that it is unjust for someone to suffer bad consequences as a result of crimes that they cannot remember committing. Even in the space of one lifetime, it might be argued that it is unjust to punish people for the wrongs that were committed long in the past, when they are different people now and have learned a lot since then. How much more unfair is it, then, if someone suffers for something unremembered, done in a previous life, in a previous body?

Answer 125

He pointed out that the doctrine of karma is claimed to explain the problem of suffering, in that people suffer because of sins in their past lives. However, Davis notes that a question arises about this situation. What is the connection between the person suffering and the past life? If the person suffering now has no memories of a past life and the link is only the immaterial soul, how is it just that the person suffers now for sins committed by a different person in a previous life?

Answer 126

He argued that there was no such thing as life after death and that it was just wishful thinking on the part of human beings. He argues that a person is the experiences that are connected together in the memory of an individual; he suggests that memories are linked to the brain just as a river is associated with its bed. If the river bed is destroyed, so is any meaningful sense of the word river. Likewise, at death, a person's brain ceases to function and their body states to decay. At this point, the memories that make them who they are are also lost, because the brain, likfe the rest of the body, dies and rots.

Answer 127

He says that 'fear of death' is 'instinctive' and the result of this fear is that people believe in life after death. However, he argues that the universe is indifferent to people and there is no evidence of life after death.

Answer 128

"All that constitutes a person is a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities of the sort we call habit"

Answer 129

He argues against belief in an afterlife, as he points out that people are mortal. The minds of human beings are united to a physical body and the body is mortal. As far as anyone can tell mental processes do not survive physical death. Furthermore, Flew suggests that "people are what you meat", meaning that when we talk about someone we mean a particular physical body. For Flew, talk of life after death was "self-contradictory"; it made no sense.

Answer 130

Although the two concepts seem similar, Buddhists believe in rebirth but not reincarnation. They believe everything in the universe is transient or impermanent (anicca) and so do not believe in a permanent soul that is reincarnated into other bodies.

Answer 131

The teach the doctrine of Anatta which literally means "no self". Due to the changing of nature around us, there is no unchanging self that journeys through time.

Answer 132

Rebirth is not a continuation of the person's identity. The new person is not identical to the old nor completely different. They are simply aspects of the continuing stream of consciousness. It is the awareness of these truths followed by right living and meditation that may enable one to escape the cycle of rebirth and reach Nirvana.

Answer 133

It is the promise of post-death existence in a re-created (i.e. perfect) body (not disembodied soul). It is a monist theory, in that a physical body is required for redemption.

Answer 134

A belief in the continuation of human existence after death has always been central to Christians. The Christian belief is in the resurrection of the body- a belief in the afterlife that involves the embodied existence of individuals- is based upon the belief Jesus rose from te dead. The resurrection is interpreted by Christians as a sign that death is not the end of human existence.

Answer 135

Jesus was seen as a physical person, walking around. He could be heard and touched, although even the people who had been Jesus' closest friends did not always recognize him immediately, suggesting that his appearance had changed in one way. Nevertheless, it suggests that Jesus had more than a spiritual ghost-like body.

Answer 136

"Now, since our message is that Christ has been raised from death, how can some of you say that the dead will not be raised to life? If that is true, it means that Christ was not raised; and if Christ has not been raised from death, then we have nothing to preach and you have nothing to believe"

Answer 137

"This is how it will be when the dead are raised to life. When the body is buried, it is mortal; when raised, it will be immortal. When buried, it is ugly and weak; when raised, it will be beautiful and strong. When buried, it is a physical body; when raised, it will be a spiritual body. There is, of course, a physical body, so there has to be a spiritual body."

Answer 138

The resurrected body of Jesus had different powers: according to scripture, he walked through walls (Luke 24:36), was not easily recognised yet was still sufficiently physical to need food and drink.

Answer 139

The resurrection of the body happens at the end of time when Jesus returns, this is called the Parousia. The Bible indicates that the dead in Christ will rise first followed by those who are still alive at the time of his coming (1 Thessalonians 4:16). Many Christians would argue that although the body dies, the soul is immediately united with God. They point to biblical teaching such as the bandit on the cross next to Jesus. Jesus promises that the bandit would be with him in paradise that day.

Answer 140

The RCC believe that most souls go to purgatory (a state or place where souls are purified before entering heaven). Here they experience punishment or purification in order to prepare them for beatific vision (the immediate sight and vision of God in heaven). The souls are then ready to be united wit a resurrection body. The timeless Beatific vision is the final end of humans.

Answer 141

He believed that a person is a composite of both body and soul; so logically only after the state of purgatory can we be said to be a person again.

Answer 142

"We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day"

Answer 143

They are more varied than Catholic ideas; some thinkers interpret the resurrection as a spiritual event that involves the soul going to God but does not require a physical body; others argue that a resurrection body is distinct from present bodies in the same way that Paul argues in 1 Corinthians. They also tend to envisage a heaven that is more like a community where people meet and recognise one another.

Answer 144

This is the parable of the sheep and describes how there will be a separation between those who have treated other people well and those who have selfishly ignored the needs of others "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life"

Answer 145

There is no empirical evidence for resurrection. On that basis, supporters of the verification principle, such as A J Ayer, would reject it.

Answer 146

Christian arguments about creation or the resurrection of Jesus will not be pervasive to non-believers; they are based on scripture along. These arguments seek to persuade those who are already Christians, and not those who do not believe in any sort of afterlife.

Answer 147

1. Since Jesus was resurrected, so too should Christians hope to be resurrected. 2. Since God has created many types of bodies in nature, we should believe that he is able to make human bodies perfect.

Answer 148

The idea of eternal resurrected bodies creates philosophical difficulties. It suggests that life after death must happen in some kind of space, since bodies take up room. The idea that our post-death existence involves having a body implies that heaven must be a physical place. Would it have a climate? Would we need some kind of clothing, housing and food, just as we do now?

Answer 149

"If Christians are in a physical, resurrected state and physical environment, will they have to queue to see Jesus? Where will this physical existence be? And what will they be doing all the time?"

Answer 150

He said that the resurrection of Jesus was not a "conjuring trick with bones", implying it was not so much literal, but instead having some deeper meaning to be explored through faith.

Answer 151

That the resurrection lies "on the frontier of any possible language". It is a difficult, mystical idea, but part of Christian faith. Williams might be right, but is it acceptable to believe in something which cannot be described?

Answer 152

If our resurrected bodies are like the bodies we have now, do we still have the same physical needs? Would we still age? If someone dies at 103, will they be resurrected in this body? Alternatively, if someone dies a baby, are they forever in infancy, or do they have a body they never had in real life? Can a resurrected body grow, change, get hurt? Will we still have bodily imperfections and disabilities in our resurrected bodies? Others might argue that we are better off as non-material souls or spirits as the body could be seen as a source of limitations.

Answer 153

They usually respond to questions like these that we will all be perfected versions of ourselves, and that we will all be given the ability by God to recognize each other despite a change in appearance.

Answer 154

He suggests that resurrection is the only meaningful way in which one can speak of life after death. He states this view on the grounds that a person could not be meaningfully identified with a spiritual existence after death. Instead, he suggests that because people are a unity of body and soul, the only meaningful way to talk about survival after death is to say that souls can be reunited "to such a body as would reconstitute a man identifiable with the man who died."

Answer 155

This is the theory that our bodies are unreal, and an illusion- our minds are the only reality

Answer 156

They do not accept that there is a separate part to the human body called the soul. An individual is a living, physical body, and nothing more. At death, the body dies and therefore the whole person ceases to exist.

Answer 157

He argued that the idea of the soul, which he described as the "ghost in the machine", was a "category mistake". He argued that it was a mistake in the use of language. It resulted in people speaking of the mind and the body as different phenomena, as if the soul was something identifiable extra within a person. He argued that any talk of a soul was talk about the way in which a person acted and integrated with others and the world. It was not something separate and distinct.

Answer 158

He gave the example of a foreigner watching a cricket game and asking "But where's the team spirit?" The foreigner expected "the team spirit" to be something identfiably extra to the plays, umpires, scores and equipment.

Answer 159

"When two terms belong to the same category, it is proper to construct conjunctive propositions embodying them. Thus a purchaser may say that he bought a left hand glove and a right-hand glove, but not that he had bought a left-hand glove and a right-hand glove and a pair of gloves...now the dogma of the ghost in the Machine does just this"

Answer 160

Hard materialists do not accept that an individual's characteristics are anything more than physical ones. Any idea of consciousness is nothing more than brain activity. THe mind cannot be separated from the body. When the body dies, so does the brain.

Answer 161

Soft materialists do no accept that all characteristics are physical ones. Consciousness is more than just a brain process. The mind and body are related and do not act independently of each other, but the body often displays inner emotions. There is nothing that we can do independent of our bodies, and therefore, our personal identity must involve our bodies, so when the physical body dies, so does the mind.

Answer 162

1. Life depends on a functioning brain, nervous system and physical body 2. Death involves the destruction of the brain, the nervous system and the physical body 3. Therefore a person's life ends at death, as without a physical form life cannot be supported

Answer 163

As the physical body cannot be separated from the 'soul' (mind), there is only one way this could happen and that is if the whole body continues after death. THis survival would have to involve the resurrection of the body. For the materialist, it would have to be possible to recognise the resurrected person as the same individual before death, otherwise personal identity would not have survived death.

Answer 164

Hick argued that it would be possible that the dead could exist after death as themselves, if an exact replica of them were to appear. This replica could be identified as being the same person who had died, and therefore, according to Hick would be the same person. God is all-powerful and therefore it is no problem for God to create a replica body of the dead person, complete with all the individual's memories and characteristics.

Answer 165

Even if others can recognise me in my 'new' body, and I have the same memories as before I died, many philosophers do not accept that a replica body is still the same 'I' that died.

Answer 166

He imagined a man called John Smith who lived in the US. One day his friends watched as he suddenly vanished without a trace. At the same moment as he disappeared, an exact replica Smith appeared in India who. Hick argued that "after all possible tests have been made, and have proved positive, the factors leading his friends to accept 'John Smith' as John Smith would surely prevail..." He continued by supposing that John Smith died. God recreated John Smith in the next world and this re-created 'John Smith' was the same person.

Answer 167

If the physical world consists of 'ideas' rather than matter, and that matter is really spirit, than there is no physical body to decay at death. The illusion that we have a physical body is simply removed and we travel on to the next world in a spiritual form.

Answer 168

He agreed with Kant that we never experience the world directly through the senses. He accepted that the human mind imposes order on our experiences and, in reality, we do not know with certainty the source of the sensations that the mind organises. Therefore we cannot be certain of any set of material physical object.

Answer 169

He suggested that our minds are not ultimately real. There is a separate underlying Absolute Spirit, the rational soul of the universe. It is from this Spirit that our minds and other things in the world come. Therefore there is a unity to the whole of the universe, but we do not recognise this fact. History is the development of the Spirit thorugh time; it is through historical events that the thought-process of the Absolute Spirit will reach a satisfactory conclusion, as self-awareness and self-knowledge is achieved. In the later stages of history it will be easier to recognise the rational meaning behind past events as harmony develops in the world.

Answer 170

It has been adapted by many philosophers as proof of the possibility of life after death, and has been used by others to reject such a notion.

Answer 171

For the Greeks, mental activity (the nous, which is the thinking mind) was distinguished from the body and its sensations. Many Greeks thought that it was this aspect of the soul that survived death.

Answer 172

He agreed with Aristotle that it was the soul that animated the body and gave it life. He called the soul the anima, that which 'animates' the body. According to Aquinas, the soul operates independently of the body.

Answer 173

Aquinas believed that only things that are divisible into parts decay. The soul is not divisible and therefore, it is able to survive death. However, through the link with a particular human body, each soul becomes individual. So even when a body dies, the soul that departs retains the individual identity of the body to which it was attached.

Answer 174

1. The mind is a 'non-corporeal' substances, which is distinct from material or bodily substance. The mind and body are different things. 2. Every substance has a property or special character. 3. In contrast to the mind, the body is what which is extended. It has a material form, which can be described in forms of extensional features such as its size, shape, position or movement.

Answer 175

1. The mind is the place in which all feeling, sensations and thoughts are known only to the person experiencing them 2. The body performs all physical activities. These are observable to all. 3. The mind and the body interact with each other, as the mind can cause events to occur in the body and the body can cause events to occur in the mind 4. THe mind and body are separate

Answer 176

"Our soul is of a nature entirely independent of the body, and consequently...it is not bound to die with it. And since we cannot see any other causes which destroy the soul, we are naturally led to conclude that it is immortal."

Answer 177

1. Is our identity only the result of memories and actions in the mind? 2. What about the causal effects between mind and body? 3. Modern science has shown links between the mind and the brain, so how can the mind survive on its own? 4. If minds are non-physical objects, how can the mind cause anything to happen int he physical world?

Answer 178

He argued that memories are not a good guide to identity. Memories and personality can be fabricated and personal identity cannot be proved through mental activity alone. He believed that identity comes from physical characteristics as well. Personal identity depends on the way in which we recognise each other, and without our bodies we cannot be fully identified.

Answer 179

They deny there are souls but accept that there is an interconnection between each life lived by a person. Each life is interconnected with each previous life through the law of karma. The 'I' is not the person who is living his or her current life, but the union of all lives lived. There are causal connections between different lives, and it is thorugh this that each life is part of the same person.

Answer 180

1. Near death experiences (NDE) 2. Regression to past lives under hypnosis 3. 'Sightings' of dead people 4. Spiritualism

Answer 181

He realised that the descriptions by people of what happened to them when they were 'dead' were so similar that it must be more than coincidence. His research into the phenomenon of near-death experiences demonstrated that there were comon features to the experiences.

Answer 182

1. The individual might be recalling information gained in childhood and attributing it to a past life 2. There could be a cultural gene that passes down information about the lives of our ancestors 3. Some memories may result from psychological problems, and be manifested as memories of earlier lives when in fact they are suppressed events from this life.

Answer 183

He pointed out that bodies are comprised of energy. They may appear to be solid, but the truth is that they are in reality just an impulse of energy. When an individual dies, the energy field may retain their image and may be perceived as a ghost. He considered the 'ghost' to be an individual's consciousness, manifesting itself through the remaining energy.

Answer 184

1. Hoaxes or elaborate tricks could make people think that they have seen a ghost 2. The 'stone tape' theory suggests that just as magnetic tape is able to record events and play them back so, in certain conditions, stones will record dramatic events and 'play them back' when the same conditions are present 3. Ghosts could be the result of mistaken identity, or the power of suggestion could lead to the mistaken belief that a ghost has been sighted.

Answer 185

The belief that it is possible to communicate with departed spirits through a medium. A medium is an individual who is believed to have the ability to receive messages from thos in the spirit world and pass them on to the living.

Answer 186

Investigations of some mediums have proved that they are frauds. Others appear to be genuine, and to be able to demonstrate that something extraordinary is happening when they pass on messages. THis could be communication from departed spirits or it could be some form of telepathic access to the minds of those who are still living. THere is evidence to support both points of view.

Answer 187

1. If a person is revived at some future date, should they have been considered dead in the interim period? 2. If the person is considered to have been revived 'from the dead', then is this life after death? 3. The physical body might be revived, but will the soul return to the body?

Answer 188

The theory that an identical recreation of a person constitutes them being regarded as the same person

Answer 189

The memory of the subconscious

Answer 190

He suggested that the concept of life after death was contradictory. He likened the phrase 'surviving death' to 'dead survivors'. To classify the crew of a torpedoed ship into 'dead' and 'survivors' is both exhaustive and exclusive (i.e. it covers all possibilities and no one can be in both groups). Likewise with 'surviving death' it is self-contradictory and therefore meaningless.

Answer 191

Flew argued (in response to Schlick) that if 'you' are viewing your funeral', then what you are witnessing is not 'you' but your body. He argued that words such as 'you', 'her', 'i' 'peter, are person words referring to physical organisms and have meaning only in this context. They indicate actual objects which you can point at, touch, see, hear and talk to. Thus is is non-meaningful to apply such words to either an immaterial or a spiritual body created by God.

Answer 192

He claimed that ti was not only conceivable but also imaginable that you could witness your own funeral.

Answer 193

He questions whether the personal pronoun 'I' is a person word in quite the same sense as Flew's other examples. He argues that "there is a real difference between our subjective experience of our own selfhood and our objective experience of the individuality of others".

Answer 194

He commented that "If there could conceivably be disembodied spirits, the fact that it would not be correct to call them persons would not perhaps be of very great importance." In other words, the confusion in language does not automatically mean that the concept being expressed has no reality.

Answer 195

He draws an analogy with a chalk message written on a blackboard and then erased. Just as the message can be rewritten using chalk or some other mateiral, or even spoken, so God could recreate us after death. The criticism is that nothing survives of the original entity, so in what sense can it be considered the same? It would be more accurate to refer to it as a replica.

Answer 196

He acknowledges that there is a problem about continuity, but through three examples he argues that it is meaningful to call it the same person if someone dies and appears in a new world with the same memories etc. He uses the word 'replica' in inverted commas because he uses it in a particular sense- namely that it is not logically possible for the original and the 'replica' to exist simultaneously or for there to be more than one 'replica' of the same original.

Answer 197

1. Someone suddenly ceases to exist at a certain place in the world and the next instant comes into existence at another place. It would be reasonable to say this is the same person. 2. In the second instance, the person in London dies and a 'Replica' of him appears in New York- again it would be reasonable to regard this as the same person 3. The final case involves the person dying and reappearing in a different world; they would still regard themselves as the same person as the one who had died.

Answer 198

An an psycho-physical unity and therefore the body is a necessity.

Answer 199

He challenges Hick's conclusion, arguing that there can only be an automatic and unquestionable identification when there is bodily continuity. As soon as this is lost, then it is debatable whether it is correct to call the two people the same person. This would also raise the problem of the appropriateness of divine judgement on such a being.

Answer 200

He expresses it formally as 'the person A at time T2 is the same person B at some time T1 if and only if, among the experiences that A has at T2 there are memories of experiences that people B had at T1"

Answer 201

He argued that perhaps the next world is not in space. Instead it could consist of internal processes only- a dream world, where each person could have their own private dreams. However it could still contain real communication and interaction with other minds e.g. ESP. THe mental images acquired during the embodied existence would presumably be the source of the dreams. From the person's point of view the world would appear 'real' and 'solid' and existence may well appear to be bodily.

Answer 202

If the next world is fashioned by our desires, then it may not be pleasant. They might reveal our true characters, including those that have ben repressed. Ultiately this could be repugnant to our better nature. Hence we could develop our desires into something better and move to higher moral worlds.

Answer 203

He argues that if the mental worlds are created by our desires then it may be that many people will exist in isolation with no communication with others. In these cases he questions the quality of lfie and asks whether this is really 'living'.

Answer 204

He solves the problem of the non-identical private worlds by suggesting the creation of a common shared world from everyone's mental images. All are pooled to produce a common environment each contributing but not exclusively. Hick likens it to a superimposition of a great number of individual photos. However, this would be forever changing as new sets of desires were added with each new 'dead' person arriving

Answer 205

He argues that the spirits do not seem to speak our of the context of a continuing life; they seem to lack a credible environment of their own, a community of which they are part of, real next-world tasks, interests and purposes. They seem to be very much what they were in this world. For this reason he argues that they are not spirits from the next world but more akin to residues of memory and traits that persist after death and that some people are able to 'pick up', i.e. residues from this life, not the next.

Answer 206

1. Telepathy- the information given by the medium is gained by ESP from the living, not the dead 2. Evil spirit- this is the traditional Christian view, arguing that the spirit contacted is a masquerading evil spirit whose aim is to confuse and mislead people about the afterlife and God 3. Poltergiests are really the unconscious PK abilities of a living person in close proximity to the manifestation

Answer 207

He has commented that pilots do not recount NDEs when they suffer loss of oxygen in simulation practice. Equally, when the brain is disrupted you do not get clear vision or coherency.

Answer 208

1. Change of blood pressure can evoke a floating sensation 2. Oxygen reduction to the brain can cause hallucinations 3. Psychological response- a efence mechanism to disassociate our selfhood from our dying body 4. The effect of seemingly looking from above is really the creation of our world from memory 5. Accuracy of accounts may be due to ESP or knowledge of hospital life 6. The dark tunnel effect is the dim memory of transit through the birth canal

Answer 209

The mistake committed when an object or concept that belongs in one category is treated as if it belongs in a category of a different logical type.

Answer 210

This is qualitative and refers to felt experiences such as tasting a hamburger

Answer 211

'Qualia' and 'intentionality;

Answer 212

He explained it as "properties of the inside-out world which cannot be seen from-outside-looking-in"

Answer 213

It means "aboutness": I don't just think, I think about something.

Answer 214

He believed they can interact; he favours interactionism which holds that states of consciousness can be causally affected by states of the body, and states of the body can be causally affected by states of consciousness. He further reasoned that the point of interaction was in the brain, specifically the pineal gland. As to how these two natures interact he remains agnostic.

Answer 215

This holds that the mind and body are like two clocks, each with its own mechanism and with no causal connection between them, yet always in phase, keeping the same time. One clock had face and hands but no bells, whilst the other had bells but no face or hands. To an onlooker it would seem that there was a causal relationship between the two clocks since the bells of the one rung when the other showed the hours. However, it is because they were regulated and ran in parallel that they exhibted a harmony. It propsed a similar idea for the harmony of the mind and the body. The regulator was seen to be God.

Answer 216

This holds that bodily events can cause mental events. However, mental events cannot cause physical events, i.e. the mind cannot control the body. The mind is a by-product of brain activity. Electrical impulses move between brain cells and produce 'thinking', 'imagining' etc. Thinking etc. is not the electrical impulse. The mental is above those more fundamental processes of brain activity. A popular analogy is that of a shadow to the person. THe shadow cannot affect the person. THe causation is one-way.

Answer 217

In his research on epileptic patients the exposed brain tissue of conscious patients had electrodes applied to it. The result was a double consciousness. They were aware of their immediate surroundings and of vivid re-enacted scenes from their past. He concluded that "if we liken the brain to a computer, man has a computer, not is a computer"

Answer 218

He gave an example of a foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time and being shown a number of colleges, libraries, departments and offices. He then asks "But where is the University?" Ryle points out that this "was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong". He searches for the University (mind) but is presented with colleges and libraries (body). The mistake is that he searches for the University as thought it were a separate entity, when in fact he had already found it.

Answer 219

Philosophical behaviourism. THis saw all supposed 'mental' events as really a way of referring to a complex pattern of behaviour. He sees the term 'mind' functioning as a collective noun, like 'University', and so mind is no longer something internal but now comes to mean what we do with our bodes. We say someone is depressed because of the behaviour pattern they show, i.e. it is materialism because mental terminology actually means something physical (behaviour).

Answer 220

1. A difficulty arises when a person in a particular mental state (e.g. wishing) does not behave in any particular way. 2. It may be possible t refer to other people's mental states by reference to behaviour, but when we refer to ourselves, we are not referring to the way we behave. 3. What of someone who pretended? There would be no difference in behaviour between the pretender and the real.

Answer 221

By introducing the concept of a disposition to behave, where appropriate behaviour is regarded as potential and can be anticipated given certain circumstances. THus 'wishing' can be analysed in terms of physical behaviour even thought it is not translated on every occasion into actual behaviour.

Answer 222

It argues that mental and physical events are one and the same. The names 'mind' and 'brain' , whilst having different meanings, nevertheless refer to the same object. A popular example concerns the offices of the vice-president of the United States and the President of the United States Senate. They do not have the same meaning but they do refer to the same individual. Likewise, when I say "i have a pain", I do not mean the same thing as when I say "I have such and such a neural pathway", however they are identical.

Answer 223

Leibniz's law of identity maintains that if things are identical then they must share identical properties. THus opponents draw attention to such things as a wicked thought (mind), noting that a brain state (body) cannot be said to be wicked, and therefore Leibniz's law is not obeyed. However, supporters argue that Leibniz's law does not apply to intention states.

Answer 224

Analogies with computers are made where the software descriptions centre on their function. So in the same way mental states can be defined in terms of their function (job description) or causal role. Thus all mental states can be seen as having a causal role. The concept of the mental state is therefore of an internal state caused by certain sensory imputs (tissue damage etc.) and causes certain behaviour outputs (groans etc.). It is this sort of model that makes some researchers argue AI can think.

Answer 225

He told the story of the cobbler and a prince, where the two characters appear to wake up with each other's body. The 'cobbler' woke up in the palace and wanted to explain that he had not broken in but could not explain how he got there, but he looked like the prince. Meanwhile, the 'prince' woke up in bed next to the cobbler's wife and accused her of kidnap and demanded to be taken back to the palace. But he had the body of the cobbler. The problem is how do we decide which is the cobbler and which is the prince? What ingredient counts- the body or the memory?

Answer 226

1. Body- if there is continuity 2. Memory 3. Brain 4. Personality 5. Personhood- Perhaps the I is flexible and consists of a number of things, such as rational thought, consciouesness, emotion etc. 6. Soul- similar idea to personhood with the addition of freedom and moral responsibility, relationship to God and determination towards supreme value 7. Non-owner- suggests that the word 'I' does not refer to anything apart from a stream of experience that 'I' is supposed to own.

Answer 227

This is a widely held view, particular among CHine and some African religions, that the deceased exist so long as they are remembered. We achieve immortality by our living presence in the things of persons that continue after our death.

Answer 228

He concluded that "an historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterely inconceivable"

Answer 229

He believes there is no pre-existent soul which is by nature divine, "there is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic, mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes of digital information" We are just carriers of DNA.

Answer 230

"Alternatively, if there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sport? Is he trying to avoid overpopulation of the mammals of Africa? Is He manoeuvring to maximize David Attenborough's television ratings?"

Answer 231

His believes the theory of evolution. We are as we are because of our genetic make up, not the efforts of our soul to guide us towards the realm of ideas. Each change is due to evolution, "each generation is a filter, a sieve: good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or without reproducing"; there is no soul which continues, only the survival of DNA, the function of life.

Answer 232

He believed we exist because our genes need to replicate themselves. Evolution improves this process, it enables genes to survive and be passed on. "We are survival machines- robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes"

Answer 233

For Dawkins, a body is a colony of cells, better described as a colony of genes. Genes want to be replicated, and they find that they replicate more easily and efficiently if they worked together, in this way what began as a single celled organism evolves into the multi celled organism; this is the pattern of evolution, genes working together more and more, evolving into many celled organisms. This working together of our genes is based on the desire for survival of those genes. He addressed this feeling of indivuality within each human by arguing that this is because our genes are working together. We cannot perceive ourselves as a colony but as a whole.

Answer 234

If an act has bad results the animal will not repeat it, but if it has good results the animal will repeat it. Ultimately the colony of genes needs a central control in order for it to function so the colony devels the brain. Animals evolve so behaviour is no longer trial and error but they develop the capacity to siulate the future, the predict the results of a certain action. This enables them to choose how to behave. So as the genetic model becomes more complex it begins to think about itself as an individual and considers the consequences of its own actions; arguably then the soul is nothing more than a collection of genes so developed that they have become aware of themselves as a whole.

Answer 235

"Colonies of genes, they may be; in their behaviour, bodies have undeniably acquired an individuality of their own. An animal moves as a co-ordinated whole, as a unit. Subjectively I feel like a unit, not a colony. This is to be expected. Selection has favoured genes which co-operate with others. In the fierce struggle to eat other survival machines and to avoid being eaten, there must have been a premium on central coordination rather than anarchy within the communal body."

Answer 236

He claims that now that the consciousness has evolved, the genes' need for replication is no longer the driving force behind contemporary evolution. There is a new replciator; the evolution of the brain and its ability to predict events and to rebel against the genes has enabled human culture to develop; he calls this human culture "replicator" a MEME. Memes are tunes, catchphrases, quotes, teaching, they are heard, lode in the braina nd the brain then imitates them. The meme can be seen as a parasitic structure lodged in the brain. This ongoing continuation and development is now the driving force behind evolution. In otherwords, the body evolved as a means of DNA survival and continues as a means of culture survival, directly due to the development of individual consciousness.

Answer 237

"When we die there are 2 things we can leave behind us: genes and memes. We were built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes, but that aspect of us will be forgotten in 3 generations...our genes may be immortal but the collection of genes which is anyone of us, is bound to crumble away...we should seek immortality in reproduction but if you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea, or compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool."

Answer 238

1. Materialists support it 2. Support for claims that mental activity is fully explainable in terms of neurone activity in the brain has come from recent scientific discoveries: For example, researchers used a functional magnetic imaging scanner to detect, successfully, when people's attention was focused on different images. This strongly suggests that mental activities such as thoughts are in principle readable as they are caused by physical events in the brain.

Answer 239

He points to the fact that identitty theory has been criticized concerning how intentionality can be explained. By this, philosophers mean that brain activity consists of nerves functioning in the brain. WHen you as an individual made a decision you forma n intention. The challenge is that neural activitiy in the brain has no intentionality.

Answer 240

1. Neural activity in the brain has no intentionality 2. Philosophical criticisms argue that mental events do not have a physical location 3. SOme argue that by dismissing any ideas that do not fit in with his hard materialism his world view is limited 4. The idea that science will eventually explain everything is as much a belief as belief in the existence of the soul 5. The relation between consciousness and the brain remains a mystery to science 6. We may one day know the neural processes which underpin consciousness, but we will never know for certain whether consciousness is no more than physical chemical changes

Answer 241

1. A materialist (believes that human beings are solely physical beings) 2. A monist (believes that humans are a "psychosomatic unity which maintains the unity of body and soul)

Answer 242

He argues that when we talk about the soul we are really describing aspects of our persoanlity; what aperson is and what a person does. In Hick's words, 'behaviour dispositions' (what we are likely to do)

Answer 243

"The concept the mind is soul is thus not that of a 'ghost' int he 'machine' but of the more flexible and sophisticated ways in which human beings behave and have it in them to behave."

Answer 244

1. After death the body will be raised, but it will be transformed and it will become a spiritual body 2. Just as a seed dies and a plant is produced, the earthly body dies and a spiritual body is produced

Answer 245

He accepts that life after death is not something that can be proved but it is not unreasonable and something a rational person can accept. THe replica theory is a thought experiment to demonstrate that the resurrection of the body is logically possible.

Answer 246

He argued that it may not be correct to call the two people the same person when bodily continuity is lost. The body on earth that has died and the 'replica', although the same in every way, are two entities.

Answer 247

It seems logically possible for a number of replicas to be created. In this case, which one would be 'me? If there were multiple replicas then the individuality of the replica would be lost. Hick rejected this suggestion as not fitting with people's understanding of what a person is, "our concept of 'the same person' has not developed to cope with such a situation"

Answer 248

Any talk of life after death is limited by human beings' inability to talk about what lies beyond our sense experience. Where is the different space? What stage of life is ther eplica a copy of? If it is a copy at death, are terminal illnesses replicated? Hick acknowledged that discussion of the nature of life as a replica is impossible but suggested that one possibility might be that the healing of illness and disease takes place in the new existence as a replica.

Answer 249

He points out that you can not have "redness" without "red things". You can not have "beauty" without "beautiful things". SO you cannot have the "soul without the "body"

Answer 250

1. Have influenced Christian teaching about resurrection 2. Thomas Aquinas adopted Aristotle's idea that the human person has no truly independent soul, saying that the natural condition of the human soul is to be united with the body 3. Avoids the weaknesses of mind/body dualism

Answer 251

1. He has no concreate evidence in believing that this material world is the source of true knowledge 2. There could be other ways in which knowledge is gained apart from sense experience or reason, for example, revelation etc. 3. Not everyone agrees that everything which exist has a 'final cause' (purpose) 4. Aristotle's idea that reason can be separated from the soul is confusing and unclear

Answer 252

1. Moral responsibility- It is difficult to see how free will is compotable with the theory that all brain events are physically determined 2. Nature of the universe- Do we live in a causally enclosed physical universe or is there a metaphyiscal realm? 3. Life after death- Those who favour materialism have often argued for a replica theory approach

Answer 253

For Augustine, evil is a consequence of sin. He believed that all humans deserve to suffer as a result of the Fall and original sin. Ideas of the afterlife come into his thinking because he argues for salvation through CHrist, which is what enables the afterlife to compensate for the evil in the world. He does seem to imply that some are predestined to be saved, and others for eternal damnation.

Answer 254

1. Eternal punishment is unjust 2. Hick- hell is incompatible with a belief in a God of love 3. What is the point in eternal punishment? 4. Predestination removes free will 5. Can the existence of hell, with eternal punishment that can never be escaped, be compatible with the existence of a perfectly loving and perfectly just God?

Answer 255

It might be hard to think of any sin that we could commit where eternal pain with no chance of parole would be a fair punishment. David Hume raised this problem, suggesting that the whole idea of hell calls God's justice into question because a finite sin can never deserve an infinite punishment.

Answer 256

Hick rejects the traditional doctrine of eternal hell, because in his view, it is incompatible with belief in a God of Love. He argues that this belief was developed as a form of social control, encouraging people to be fearful of disobeying the teachings of those in religious authority, but that it is not conceivable that a God of infinite love and mercy would consign his creatures to a punishment from which they had no hope of escaping.

Answer 257

When a loving parent punishes a child, even if severely, the punishment does not go on forever, but just for long enough to teach the child a lesson- so surely a loving GOd would not allow eternal punishment in hell? And what would this achieve, if there was no possibility of redemption? Eternal punishment might be, in the end, as boring as eternal pleasure. We might become immune to pain and suffering and stop feeling it any more.

Answer 258

Augustine's view on heaven and hell are further damaged by his belief that God predestines some to be saved. This seems unjust and contradicts the view that humans have free will.

Answer 259

Evil is beneficial and has an instrumental role as it enables us to understand what good is. He acknowledges however that evil clearly makes life difficult (it 'multiplies the perils' that we face). Eventually, however, evil and suffering will be overcome and everyone will develop into God's likeness, living in glory in heaven. This justified temporary evil.

Answer 260

He argues that we will in our future life after death be able to understand how our pain was justified by its outcome, and will understand what it is all for and where it was leading us. He accepts that the existence of life after death is not provable, but arguest that this is not an unreasonable believe.

Answer 261

He suggested that humans are created in the image of God but as they are spiritually immature they need to grow into the likeness of GOd, which enables them to have a relationship with God. He suggested that we were made at a distance from God- a distance of knowledge- an epistemic distance. Moral evil was the result of free will. Hick suggests at death some of us will process into heaven, and those who have not completed their development will continue their soul-making journey after death but may enter the kingdom of heaven, so he supports universal salvation.

Answer 262

1. The concept of heaven for all seems unjust 2. What's te point in doing good? 3. There is too much suffering 4 D Z Philips- suffering can never be an expression of God's love 5. Bernard Williams- Heaven would be boring

Answer 263

If God has the power to judge people, and the knowledge of what people have done, God's goodness and justice can be challenged if God fails to judge and punish people appropriately. Some modern thelogians have argued that God's mercy demands that all people are purified and forgiven, Swinburne has noted that this sort of belief in universal salvation is not traditional belief and was almost unheard of before modern times.

Answer 264

Irenaeus' view that everyone will go to heaven has been criticized as this seems unjust as immorality is not punished. It makes moral behaviour pointless: if everyone is rewarded withe heaven, what is the point in being good? We are left with no incentive to make the development into God's likeness.

Answer 265

We may accept that some evil is needed to develop into God's likeness as suggested by Irenaeus, but does our world need to contain the amount and severity of suffering found in events such as the Holocaust.

Answer 266

D Z Philips says that it would never justifiable to hurt someone in order to help them. Suffering can never therefore be an expression of God's love. When we consider the amount of suffering in the world, this problem is all the more serious.

Answer 267

He argued whether an eternity in heaven would really be desirable? Surely it would become boring after a while? Williams argued that the pleasure of living is making choices about what we will do with our limited lifespans, and setting ourselves challenging objectives which we might or might not be able to achieve, so that if and when we do achieve them, we feel a sense of pride. However, if we have time to choose absolutely everything, and have infinite time so that eventually everything is achieved, the pleasure is gone.

Answer 268

Some respond by saying that in heaven, God would make sure that this does not happen.Perhaps we might miraculously never be bored, just as we would never be sad and never suffer. However, if our minds and emotions are going to be controlled and programmed like this, we would lose our free will. THis raises the question of why God did not make us like this in the first place, so that we were never bored or sad or suffering in this life either.

Answer 269

1. For a Hindu, Karma works with perfect justice. It is seen as a natural law, rather than as a reward of punishment decided upon by any God. 2. memory of past lives is considered to be a skill which is perfected by those with the greatest wisdom, so suffering for an unremembered sin would simply be indicative of the ignorance of the person suffering.

Answer 270

1. It is unjust | 2. It does not solve the problem of evil

Answer 271

Some would argue that it is unjust for someone to suffer bad consequences as a result of crimes that they cannot remembering committing. Even in the space of one lifetime, it might be argued that it is unjust to punish people for the wrongs that were committed long in the past, when they are "different people" now and have learned a lot since then. How much more unfair is it, then, if someone suffers for something unremembered, done in a previous life, in a different body?

Answer 272

He has also pointed out that the doctrine of Karma is claimed to explain the problem of suffering, in that people suffer because of sins in their past lives. However, he notes that this raises the question about what the connection is between the person suffering and the past life? If the person suffering now has no memories of a past life and the link is only the immaterial soul, how is it just that the person suffers now for sins committed by a different person in a previous life?

Answer 273

Reincarnation could provide a solution to the problem of evil but suggesting we are suffering as a direct result of our past actions, but others feel that reincarnation does not solve the problem of evil but postpones it as there is no adequate explanation as to why we experience suffering in the first life.

Answer 274

The view that a human person consists of two distinct elements: the mind/soul and the body. The mind/soul is immaterial whereas the body is physical

Answer 275

The belief that human beings are a single unity of body and mind. The mind's existence is dependent on the body.

Answer 276

1. What must survive of me if I am to talk meaningfully of life after death? 2. Is belief in life after death coherent? 3. Is belief in life after death possible?

Answer 277

The view that human beings are physical beings rather than consisting of a physical body and an immaterial soul

Answer 278

The word soul originates from the Greek word psyche. It is translated as soul not psyche because in ancient Greek psyche means life or the principle that keeps a person alive.

Answer 279

He questions what it can mean for the disembodied soul to see the Forms, given that seeing it as a process that is linked to the body and experience through one's senses.

Answer 280

He states that the soul is "the cause and principle of the living body", that the soul is the Efficient cause of the body (it causes movement and life in the body) and it is the Formal and Final cause of the body (it gives Form to the matter of the body and it causes growth and development in the body)

Answer 281

He says that Aristotle's writings about the intellectual faculty of the soul are "inconstant" by which he means that what Aristotle thought about the soul surviving death is unclear and some of these ideas conflict with other ideas of his.

Answer 282

"He didn't promise Abraham eternal life as an individual...Abraham was left in no doubt that the future lay with his seed, not his individuality. God knew his Darwinism"

Answer 283

A retributive theory of justice is one in which people who commit wrong acts are punished by law in a way that is proportionate to their wrongdoing. The strength of a retributive theory of justice is that ti emphasises that justice invovles punishing the wrongdoer, and leaving the good person in peach.

Answer 284

The cycle of birth, death and rebirth in Hindu belief.

Answer 285

A Hindu term meaning 'self'. It can refer to body, mind or soul, despending on context. Ultimately, it refers to the real self, the soul. Sometimes referred to as 'Jiva'

Answer 286

1. Belief in an afterlife is the product of human wishful thinking 2. There is no evidence to suggest that people do survive death 3. It makes no sense to talk of a person surviving death, since a person is a physical entity

Answer 287

He questions whether the ethical beliefs that led to types of activities such as witch-hunts and the persecution of heretics are really from God, particularly from an intelligent creator God. Second, Russell questions whether people really want those who do conduct events such as with-hunts or pogroms to live forver. He suggests that the world is better understood without God and an afterlife, because if there is evidence in the world for "deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend"

Answer 288

As a state of fulfilment of all human longings | As the ultimate goal or end of human existence

Answer 289

1. A state of separation from God 2. A place of punishment by GOd 3. As an aspect of God's judgement

Answer 290

A traditional Christian belief in a place where all people who die in relationship with GOd, but who are not yet perfect, are purified after death.

Life and Death Flashcards

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