Mind And Body Problem

Question 1

What is the mind and body problem

Answer 1

Consider the quote ‘I feel pain when my hand is hurt’ the grammar of the sentence seems to separate the ‘I’ who has the pain from both the hand and the pain itself. My hand sounds like a possession but is it what I have or what I am. If I say that the hand is part of me then it seems that I am a total sum of what makes up me. Then suppose my leg was amputated am I any less me than I was before. If I put on three kilos weight is there more of me than there was previously even if mentally I feel diminished. These considerations suggest that the real me is not the totality of my body and feelings but a separate thing, my consciousness

Question 2

What is the consciousness problem?

Answer 2

If i show someone a photo of me as a baby and tell them that baby is me but I have no recollection of me or my consciousness at that point. The only connection between that baby and me which I experience now is awareness based on what others tell me. In my current state I am more than a baby as I have grown and developed so I am I now more truly me than I was as a baby. Suppose I develop dementia and my memory disappears do I become less me

Question 3

What was Plato’s stance on the soul

Answer 3

He was influenced by Pythagorean thought which emphasised the distinction between the spiritual soul and the material body

Question 4

How does Plato arrive to the conclusion that the soul is immortal

Answer 4

In the world around us everything decays and nothing material is permanent. Plato sought after something permanent and if it cannot be in this material world it must exist in the realm of the spiritual and from this he adopted it is immortal

Question 5

What type of substance does Plato believe the soul is and what does that mean

Answer 5

He believed it’s a simple substance in that it cannot be destroyed because to be destroyed is to be broken to bits which something simple like the soul has no parts so can’t happen to. It was not created and it’s immortality lies in it not having a beginning or end

Question 6

According to Plato where was my soul and where will it go

Answer 6

He believed that people’s souls move from one body to another so when I die it will inhabit another and before it was initially in the world of forms.

Question 7

What did Plato write in phaedo about the soul’s nature

Answer 7

‘The soul is in the very likeness of the divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble and unchangeable’

Question 8

What is Plato’s response to the link between body and soul

Answer 8

For Plato the soul is trapped in the body and desires to get out. However he doesn’t establish the link rather assumes it and assumes if our mind knows the right thing to do then somehow the person will do it

Question 9

What problem does Plato fall into in his assumption of the link between mind and body

Answer 9

He falls into the problem of assuming reasons are causes for example if I say ‘I am giving you a present because I like you’ is ‘I like you’ the cause of my action or just the reason for it. A reason is the result of a thought and the cause of my action is based on a conscious decision to act on my reason and do something about it. The action now seems a separate process from any reasoning about it but Plato doesn’t make this separation between the reasoning and the action which enabled us to understand he thought if we knew the right action to take we would be bound do it

Question 10

What did Aristotle think of the soul

Answer 10

He believed the soul is the formal cause of the body otherwise I am just matter - meat bones etc (the material cause)

Question 11

What does Aristotle believe happens when we die

Answer 11

For him the soul is not simple and immortal but when we die our soul dies and we just go back to being a lump of matter and there is no person left. He doesn’t believe it goes to another world and doesn’t believe in personal survival after death

Question 12

What are the three elements of the soul and what do they mean according to Aristotle

Answer 12

The vegetative soul - shared with all living things including plants
The appetitive soul - where we find passions and appetites like hunger and thirst as well as emotion
The intellectual soul - rational and directive and it thinks about things and decides the actions we might take and it also includes the powers of memory and reflection on our past and future

Question 13

What is dualism

Answer 13

The idea that we are made of two separate and different elements, a material body and a soul

Question 14

What problem is brought with dualism

Answer 14

It begs the question of how the physical is linked to the spiritual as there appears to be some link as my body is affected by my mind and vice versa

Question 15

What is monism

Answer 15

The view that there is simply one being for example I am a body not I have a body

Question 16

What problem comes with monism

Answer 16

In this way of thinking human consciousness is just something our human bodies do just as an Amoeba splits into two new creatures however the Amoeba splits for biological reasons but our consciousness has qualities like imagination and artistic skill which go beyond biological necessity

Question 17

What is materialism

Answer 17

The belief that the only substance is a material one

Question 18

What was descartes

Answer 18

Perhaps the most extreme from of substances dualist

Question 19

How does he begin his philosophical work

Answer 19

He beings by asking whether there is any knowledge we can be certain of because he notes how experiences and everything around him could be misled by some malicious demon that could be providing an illusion to him so everything he experiences is fake. He says there’s only one thing I can be sure of and that is ‘I think therefore I am’ cogito ergo sum.

Question 20

What is his first argument

Answer 20

He argues in meditation VI ‘there is a very great difference between mind and body because a body is divisible but the mind is not’. Mathematically if x and y are identical this means they hold identical characteristics but if the mind is not divisible and the body is then they are not the same

Question 21

How does descartes respond to the question of if they’re separate how are they connected

Answer 21

In his The passions of the soul he mentions ‘there is a little gland in the brain’ he claims the pineal gland is the seat of the imagination and common sense and here it becomes the link between the body and soul but saying where it is doesn’t give us information about how it is

Question 22

What is descartes second argument

Answer 22

The second argument he puts forward is that of conceivability. The argument can be observed again in meditation VI I can clearly and distinctly understand what it would be like to have two separate things, if it is possible then there cannot only be one thing here therefore there must be a difference and they are not the same thing

Question 23

In his second argument what does descartes mean by clear and distinct

Answer 23

He means ‘open and present to an attending mind’ and ‘precise and separate from other ideas’

Question 24

What does Gilbert Ryle quote about the mind and soul

Answer 24

‘ either there exists minds or there exists bodies but not both’

Question 25

What is Gilbert ryles issue with descartes

Answer 25

His complaint is that he commits a category error by treating one thing as a type of another by assuming that mind and matter are of the same logical type which he deems incorrect. He assumes that sentences about causes sensations or events must be either mental or physical and this implies an unjustified precept that they can’t be both.

Question 26

What example does Gilbert Ryle give about the mind and body to refute descartes

Answer 26

When I think I will stop working I am I thinking I will stop working and therefore I do but to say ‘my mind thinks I should stop work’ does not mean the mysterious separate something is telling my body to stop

Question 27

What is an example of a category error

Answer 27

If I show a foreigner around Oxford university and I show them the library and classrooms and all the buildings and he then asks where is the university he is guilty of a category error as he thinks the university is separate but everything I just showed him is the university

Question 28

What is John Hicks view on the soul

Answer 28

He strongly opposes the platonic view of the soul for assuming that the soul is immortal and for him ‘my soul is not me’. It is similar to that of Aristotle and can be described as soft materialism. He believed we are our bodies but those bodies have a spiritual dimension and there is no mind without matter.

Question 29

What does G.E.M. Anscombe consider

Answer 29

In her essay ‘Analytical Philosophy and the Spirituality of Man’ she considers the phenomena of pointing. If I point at something that the mere action of my body is not the whole meaning. If I point at a king on a chessboard than my body is doing merely a gesture but the meaning (ie to point out its colour or texture) can be understood from just observing my body, observation of my body will only tell you how I am pointing not why. She then argues that a disembodied soul could not point and that this bodily act is an act of man ‘qua spirit’ the act of a human as a whole

Question 30

What is materialism

Answer 30

The view that there exists only physical matter. In the case of humans it means anything about a person is absolutely reducible to sentences about physical processes (reductionism)

Question 31

What is reductionism

Answer 31

The belief that anything about a person can be reduced to statements about physical bodies like writing a book or going to the pub can be reduced to statements about behaviours of brain cells and neurons

Question 32

What does Richard Dawkins think of the soul

Answer 32

He is a materialist thinker but is more subtle than crude reductionism. He rejects any notion of a disembodied soul as he finds no empirical evidence for such a thing and mocks religious believers. He does acknowledge the nature of this phenomena but says it should possible to explain through science I’d not now then eventually

Question 33

What distinction does Dawkin make about the soul

Answer 33

That there are two versions soul 1 and soul 2

Question 34

What are Soul 1 and Soul 2

Answer 34

Soul 1 is the separate substance that Dawkins rejects as primitive superstition
Soul 2 is intellectual and spiritual power, higher development of moral faculties and feeling and imagination. Of course these are rooted in the body

Question 35

What is behaviourism

Answer 35

It is a type of materialism which sees human thoughts as simply learned behaviours

Question 36

Who is B.F Skinner

Answer 36

Best known behaviourist

Question 37

What does B.F. Skinner think

Answer 37

Mental events are simply learned behaviours. He thinks the idea of a mental state separated from the body in any sense is a misunderstanding

Question 38

What example does Skinner give

Answer 38

Animals learn behaviours and are conditioned to particular behaviours as we know from the study of Pavlov’a dogs and for Skinner mental acts are caused acts explicable at a physical level. ‘An organism behaves as it does because of its current structure’

Question 39

Daniel C Dennetts objection to behaviourism

Answer 39

He argues that Skinner over simplified human consciousness because he assumes that what is true of the consciousness of a pigeon is also true to that of a humans. An animal want or desire may be explained as a learned behaviour but for Dennett a human isn’t the same. If I am reading a book and asked why I am reading it I would say because I want to and here I provide an explanation and to reduce this to learned behaviours misses the point because my reason for reading this book excludes other reasons because I am not reading it to get fit. Dennett observes that Skinner would be right if my explanation stopped at ‘I desire’ but human thinking moves beyond this basic theory

Question 40

What quote does Dennett say in response to Skinner

Answer 40

‘People are not like pigeons’

Question 41

Objection to descartes

Answer 41

John cottingham argues that we instead have body, soul and spirit because if we were made of only two then an area of human experience including passion, emotions and sensations cannot be straightforwardly reduced to either category