Mind, Body and Soul - Everything Flashcards

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1
Q

What did Plato believe in?

A
  • Substance Dualism
  • Cannot be destroyed, the soul does not have pieces to be broken into
  • The soul moves from body to body
  • Realm of the Forms
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2
Q

Quote Plato in the Phaedo dramatising Socrates death, how nothing is to be feared of death

A

“The soul is the very likeness of divine… indissoluble, and unchangeable”, “body is in the very likeness of human… dissoluble and changeable”

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3
Q

What are some problems with Plato’s theory, or substance dualism in general

A
  • How does the spiritual body interact with the material body
  • Plato gives little insight to how this is done - he assumes our mind know how to do something and the whole body just does it
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4
Q

What is the assumption Plato makes when speaking about the relationship of the body and soul?

A
  • Assumes reasons are causes, does not explain how the soul does anything
  • A reason is the result of a mental thought
  • A cause is my conscious decision to act on my reason
  • ‘I give you a present because I like you’, ‘I like you’ is a reason not a cause for my action
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5
Q

Why is Plato’s view not a Christian view?

A
  • For Plato the soul is without beginning, in Christianity god creates the soul
  • To say nothing can destroy a soul would deny the omnipotence of god
  • Immortality of the soul to a Christian would be a gift, not a right just granted
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6
Q

Which of the 4 causes does Aristotle say the soul is?

A

The soul is the formal cause of the body, the body is animated by the soul which gives it life

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7
Q

What happens to the soul after death for Aristotle?

A

You are a lump of matter, there is no person left. Matter needs the soul to animate it

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8
Q

What are the 3 elements of the soul according to Aristotle

A

The vegetative soul - shared with all living things, including plants (everything)
The appetitive soul - passions and appetites, e.g hunger. thirst, sexual desire and emotion (humans + animals)
The intellectual soul - rational and directive, decides actions, includes memory power and reflection on past and future (humans only)

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9
Q

What did St Thomas Aquinas believe about the soul (Quote)

A
  • He closely followed Aristotles view that the soul is the principle of life
  • “not a body, but the act of a body” - Summa Theologica
  • Not material and should be understood as the mind, not something separate
  • ‘my soul is not me’ it is the principle of life
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10
Q

What does René Descartes believe about the soul?

A
  • Extreme Substance Dualism
  • The Pineal Gland is the seat of imagination and common sense, the link between body and soul (Treatise on Man)
  • Believes sense experience is often mistaken and may be misled by a malicious demon
  • Only thing you are sure of is yourself (Cogito, Ergo Sum) therefore body and soul are divided
  • Note his notion of damaging your brain causes impairment of senses etc, showing mind is in brain (pineal gland)
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11
Q

Quote Descartes on the distinction between mind and body

A

“great difference between mind and a body, because a body by nature is divisible, but the mind is not” - Meditation VI

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12
Q

What are some problems with Descartes view of the soul

A
  • Tells us nothing of how the link is made

- Conversion of mental into physical remains unexplained

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13
Q

What does Gilbert Ryle accuse Descartes of doing wrong?

A
  • ‘The Concept of Mind’
  • Making a Category Error, assuming that ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are of the same logical type - assumes sentences about causes, sensations or events are either mental or physical, not both
  • Describing something as mental does not suggest it is something different from what I as a whole do
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14
Q

Give examples Ryle uses when discussing the category error made by Descartes

A
  • Foreigner at a cricket game, having read about it he sees the stumps, the bails, the umpire and fielding positions but asks “But where’s the team spirit?”
  • A pair of gloves being different from a matching left and right hand glove
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15
Q

Quote Peter Geach on the body and soul question (‘What Do We Think With’, God and the Soul”)

A
  • “In truth a man is a sort of body, not body plus an immaterial somewhat”
  • “The only tenable conception of the soul is the Aristotelian conception of the soul”
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16
Q

What is John Hicks views?

A
  • ‘Soft Materialism’, we are our bodies but have a spiritual dimension - no mind without matter
  • Opposes the Platonic view, un-Christian and believes death is before God and something to be prepared for
  • Not reductionist thinking, more than a behaviourist reaction to stimuli
  • ‘my soul is not me’ - similar to Aquinas
17
Q

What are G.E.M Anscombe’s views? (Quote)

A
  • Pointing, a description of her gesture would show how she is pointing but not why, Chess piece example
  • It is still my body, action would be impossible without it, a disembodied soul could not point
    “this bodily act is an act of man qua spirit”, the action of a human as a whole
18
Q

What is Richard Dawkins views?

A
  • Materialist thinker, but not just reductionism
  • Rejects disembodied soul due to lack of empirical evidence
  • Has faith in scientific DNA research to explain the mystery of consciousness
  • Soul 1 - Separate substance of traditional thought - not primitive superstition
  • Soul 2 - Intellectual, spiritual powers and higher development of the moral faculties - precise nature yet to be scientifically explained
19
Q

What is B.F. Skinner’s view (Quote) ?

A
  • Behaviourism
  • What we consider mental events are simply learned behaviours
  • A separate mental state separated from the body is a radical misunderstanding
  • He uses experiments in relation to animals behaviour to support this - Pavlovs dogs - Animals are conditioned to particular behaviours
    “An organism behaves as it does because of its current structure, but most of this is out of reach of introspection” - About Behaviourism
20
Q

How does Daniel C. Dennet object to Skinners theory (Quote)

A
  • Article ‘Skinner Skinned’
  • Skinner simplifies the human consciousness, assumes what is true of a pigeon is true of humans
  • Human thinking moves beyond the initial desire, ex of book, Skinner’s theory is basic
    “we would have to agree we had no freedom and dignity”
21
Q

What are John Cottingham’s objections?

A
  • We are made up of 3 body, soul and spirit as it would be too hard to put passions, emotions and sensations into just either mind and body
  • There are no precisely straightforward definitions of mind, body, soul, consciousness and etc.
22
Q

Who was Plato influenced by and why did he believe what he did about the soul

A
  • Deeply influenced by Pythagorean thought

- Sought something permanent from the impermanent world we live in

23
Q

What is the issue of ‘Am I my body’?

A
  • ‘I feel pain when my hand is hurt’
  • Grammar separates the ‘I’ who has the pain from both my hand and the pain
  • The hand now sounds like a possession, is it something I have or is it something I am?
  • If my leg is amputated am I any less me? If I gain weight am I more myself?
24
Q

What is the issue of ‘Am I my consciousness’?

A
  • Suppose you see a photograph of yourself as a baby, you do not have any conscious recollection of yourself at that point
  • Only connection between the baby and ‘me’ is based largely on what other people have told me
  • I look nothing like that baby, my cells have died and regrown, am I more ‘me’ now or more ‘me’ when I was a baby?
  • If I develop dementia am I any less a human?
25
Q

What is the ‘mind-body question’?

A
  • Asks about the relationship between body and mind
  • If we cut open and see a brain it is merely an organ, complex, yet reduced to a physical greyish mass
  • What is the connection between this mass and conscious thought?