SDA

Question 1

What is the philosophical problem associated with SDA?

Answer 1

• Whether the mind and body are one of the SAME nature ( a monist/materialist view) or different natures (dualist view)
  -What happens when a person dies

Question 2

Describe the dualistic view

Answer 2

• Dualists believe that there are two aspects to a human being - physical body and non physical soul (self/psyche)
• The non-physical aspect of the body goes on to experience ‘eternal life’ after physical life

Question 3

describe the monist/materialist view

Answer 3

• Human beings are made of one substance which is the physical body
• They believe in human beings being made up of matter - one substance
• A person’s identity is inextricably linked to their physical body so when they die their life ends
• They are likely to reject LAD as without a physical form ‘life’ cannot be supported

Question 4

Describe plato’s beliefs about the soul/body after death

Answer 4

• Plato was a dualist
• the soul is immaterial and the real self that has lived before - its real home is the world of the forms and it is trapped in a physical body
• The physical body belongs to the world of senses, the should belongs to the world of the forms
• It is pre-existent and immortal
• We come back during our next life as something better/worse depending on how we behaved in this life, until we fulfil our potential and reach heavenes

Question 5

Describe Aristotle’s beliefs about the soul/body after death

Answer 5

• Humans are made up of two things: body (matter) and soul (form)
• the soul is an integral part of the body
• You cannot have one without the other - the should animates the body, by organising a potential living body into an actual living body - aquinas took on these ideas. we live and think and that is what makes us humans
• The soul is the essence of a human being which gives us life and it is an essence which is distinct from but also inseparable from the material body

Question 6

Who was Descartes and what did he try to establish?

Answer 6

• he was a substance dualist, who believed the should is a distinctly separate substance from the body
• He argued mind and body are separate substances with distinguished properties - matter/extended substance, vs mind/metnal substance

Question 7

Describe what Descartes meant by ‘I think therefore I am’

Answer 7

• reflects his certainty about the existence of a thinking mind
• He believed that even though everything else could be doubted/questioned, the existence of the thinking self was undeniable proof of his existence as a conscious being

Question 8

Describe what Descartes said about the Pineal gland

Answer 8

• The small portion of the brain that lies between the two hemispheres
• He considered this to be the point at which the mind controlled the body
• God facilitated this interaction
• His suggestion doesn’t work because locating mind-body interaction anywhere int he brain doesn’t solve anything
• It doesn’t tell us how, it merely states - it interacts here

Question 9

Describe descartes’ belief about animal souls

Answer 9

• distinguished between animal and human souls
• he ebleievd animals were complex machines lacking rational souls and humans possessed rational should capable of consciousness, thought and self awarenessq

Question 10

Describe descartes’ beleifs about the immortality of the soul

Answer 10

• the human soul is immortal and can exist independently of the body after death

Question 11

Describe descartes’ argument from doubt about the existence of the soul

Answer 11

• He began by doubting everuthign he could possibly doubt.
• He realised he could doubt the existence of the external world, his body and god, but not his thinking self - the mind
• This led him to conclude: ‘ I thinl therefore I am’ - the very act of doubting required a thinkign mind, so the mind/soul is distinct from the body

Question 12

Describe descartes’ argument from clear and distinct ideas about the existence of the soul

Answer 12

• some ideas a re clear and distinct - so self evident that they can’t be false
• he argued that the idea of the mind as a thinking, non-material substance was clear and distinct, whilst the idea of the body was a separate, distinct idea
• since the mind and the body had different natures, Descartes reasoned that they must be distinct substances - the mind is non material and possesses the property of thought, whereas the Body is material and lacks the capacity for thought - therefore, the mind and the body are two separate substances with the mind being the essence of the soul

Question 13

Describe descartes’ argument from divisibility about the existence of the soul

Answer 13

• physical susbtances like the body could be divided into smaller parts, the soul cannot
• ## because they have different properties he contented they must be distinct substances distinct from each other

Question 14

describe Hume’s criticisms of descartes

Answer 14

• the whole idea of a substance is confused - Hume stated that Descartes’ argument that the should emerged from a conscious substance doesn’t solve anything and instead raises the question of how a substance can think - the response that a substance can think because the soul is a thinking substance was to Hume a circular argument
• Thinking cannot tell us what is actually the case: the cause of thought could actually be a material substances
• The logic of descartes only establishes that there is thinking, rather than that there is an ‘I’ who thinks

Question 15

Describe Gilbert Ryle’s criticism of descartes

Answer 15

• ridiculed it, calling it the ‘ghost in the machine’
• We should not expect to find a mind over and above various elements/components of the body - university analogy

Question 16

Describe physicalism

Answer 16

• The philosophical idea that everything can be explained in terms of matter and so the soul is not needed to describe the nature of a person
• For a physicalist, there is no body soul relationship because there is no soul
• It is a reductive philosophy - the mind can be reduced to the brain, which is subject to physical decay - eg dementia
• Therefore experience is related to physical causes and science can provide all answers

Question 17

Describe how physicalist theories criticise Descartes mind-body dualism

Answer 17

• if mental substance is different to physical substance there is no way in which they can interact
• Physicalist theories make an obvious but valid point that if there are no physical bodies there are no minds as minds are fundamentally linked to matter
• There is no affect that mind-altering drink and drugs affect the way that the mind thinks

Question 18

Give the strengths of dualism

Answer 18

• Matter doesn’t exclusively control our minds, but our minds control our bodies - therefore its still considered by many to be true today
• Still the most popular religious approach to the mind
• Compatible with conventional religious thought - eg christians believe we have souls that survive the death
• evidence fo dualism in near death experiences

Question 19

Describe the Qualia argument

Answer 19

• to refer to qualia is to ask ‘what is it like’ , which is a subjective and personal question
• Eg Wittgenstein said that ‘when describing the smell of a cup of coffee’, nobody could experience that smell by hearing a description of it
• This suggests qualia have to be experienced, push back neurological states of the brain as we cannot fully explain what they are and they must be personally experienced
• this is known as the hard problem of consciousness - consciousness implies dualism exists in some form

Question 20

Describe Thomas Nagel’s argument - what is it like to be a bat

Answer 20

• All mammals have conscious experiences in different ways which are unimaginable to us - that organism cannot be reduced to a physical description of its functional states so in the same way no functionalist theory can explain qualia in purely physical terms

Question 21

Define dual-aspect monism

Answer 21

Fundamental reality is a single substance with mental and physical aspect

Question 22

Describe D.A.M

Answer 22

• One aspect (mind) is first person subjective awareness, so is the perception of consciousness. If we take qualia we cannot know their subjective feeling