Self Death and Afterlife Flashcards
what was Aristotle and platos view on the soul ?
- Plato was a dualist and saw that there was a psyche and a physical body. Plato holds that the soul is separate from the body but animates and directs it
- Aristotle is a materialist the soul or mind is the essence or form of a human being, an essence that is distinct from but also inseparable from the material body
What is a qualia?
The qualities of a subjective conscious experience: for example, what it feels like in your mind to experience redness, or the smell of rose.
Where did Descartes state that the soul and body connected through?
The Pineal Gland
What are reasons to support dualism?
- Popular and accepted by many religions as they believe in the afterlife and the soul
- The qualia argument, qualia can never be described through physicalism
- Obvious that our mind control our bodies rather than the other way around if i want to raise my hand my hand will raise because my mind decided so.
What is one problem dual-aspect monism avoids that dualism doesn’t?
That is how separate mental and physical substances can interact, because there is no separate substances only one substance with two aspects- mental and physical.
What does the word Panpsychism mean ?
The view that there is a level of consciousness/ mentality in all entities in thee universe, down to and including quantum particles
What is Thomas Nagels what is it like to be a bat trying to show?
Bats live through echolocation something so vastly different from human that we can never understand fully how it is like to live like that. Therefore and physicalism cannot explain it in just physical terms like it can with the body so the qualia argument can be used to support dualism.
Nagel is trying to say that the mind body relationship cannot be understood without characterising objective and subjective experiences (we cannot do away with subjectivity and qualia)
How does consciousness and the hard problem in a way support dualism?
Consciousness implies in a way that dualism is correct as consciousness is complex and can’t be fully understood through functionalism or physicalism . It is clear that consciousness is different from the body which is what dualism tries to say . This is also linked into the qualia argument
What is Hicks replica theory?
Hick wants to give a philosophical defense of the Christian concept of bodily resurrections. John Hick suggested that if someone dies and appears in a new world with the same memories and physical features then it is meaningful to call this replica the same person. He uses the famous analogy of Mr.X
What is Swinburne’s light-bulb argument?
Swinburne is a substance dualist. He uses a light-bulb analogy to explain how the soul relates to the body and how it may survive death. Soul is is like a light bulb and the brain is like an electric light bulb, if the socket is damaged the light will not shine. The light which is the soul can move into other places (sockets). Therefore this shows Swinburne supports and believes in life after death
Give two examples of things that support reincarnation?
- Past-life regression= a technique used by hypnotherapy where the therapist uses a variety of techniques intended to locate the causes of a patients present mental states in a supposed past life
- Direct past-life recall= occurs most often in young children who may confuse their parents for example by apparently remembering a different set of parents
What are 4 characterises of Near death experiences?
- Seeing a light of the described as being brighter than the sun
- moving along a dark tunnel with the light in the distance
- a different understanding of the nature of death and the afterlife
- meeting relatives who have died previously
What is price’s views on disembodied souls when talking about the possibility of the existence after death of the conscious self?
He stated the afterlife would be mind-based like a dream like state. Price suggested that their environment would correspond to the individual souls deepest desires and strongest memories
Price stated these disembodied souls could communicate telepathically
Proves evidence lies in how people claim to be mediums (capable of communicating with the spirits on the afterlife)
What are some evaluations of reincarnation?
- frequently alleged against Stevenson (main scholar who look at reincarnation) had a predisposition to believe what he was told about reincarnation
- may be a tendency for people to encourage each other to provide testimony to support their beliefs
- crypto amnesia shows that people can believe events , whereas in reality they are memories that are forgotten
When talking about functionalism what does the phrase ‘Multiple Realisability’ mean
The argument that minds/mental states can run on a variety of different platforms, including for example computers.
This argument is similar to link into Swinburne’s light - bulb argument later when we look at the possibility of the existence after death of a conscious self.
