Soul, Body, Mind Flashcards
What is Plato’s view of the soul?
• Described as a dualist because discusses the idea that the soul & body are separate.
• The physical body is in a constant state of change/flux, we are changing, aging and decaying. The physical body is impermanent.
• It is the soul which is real. This is the essential part of us that can reason and access the true reality of the World of the Forms.
• The body imprisons the soul - the soul longs to escape and return to the World of the Forms. It is suggested this is why Socrates was happy to die, as his soul could return to the World of the Forms and grasp knowledge of Justice. SEEN IN PLATO’S ‘MYTH OF ER’
• Uses an analogy of a chariot. Suggests there is a struggle between the body & soul. The charioteer is like reason, who is trying to control the horses which represent spirts (emotions) and physical appetites. The charioteer finds it difficult to control the horses, thus our bodily desires/urges take over. Although there is at times harmony.
• The Argument from Recollection suggests the soul has previously witnessed the Forms before being incarnated into a physical body, this is how knowledge is gained. When using reason, the soul recalls what it is to know about the permanent, immutable and perfect Form. There is a recollection of innate knowledge (anamnesis).
What are the criticisms of Plato’s view of the soul?
• Analogy of the Chariot: describes the human experience. For example, many people often report an ‘inner battle’ between desires and reason. For example, your rational soul knows you should revise/complete your NEAs, however, your emotive desires encourages you to socialise and engage in other activities.
• Lacks Empirical Evidence
Abstract and outlandish theory, unconvincing especially to a modern audience as we havent experienced the WOTF.
There are other explanations, rooted in stronger evidence than a ‘conflicting soul’. For example, there is a growing body of evidence exploring procrastination being the result of a constant battle in our brain between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex.
• Plato’s ‘Argument from Opposites’ suggests that we recognise opposites e.g. light/dark, life/death. For Plato, the body/soul are opposites and since life is something, death must also be something i.e. the moving of the soul to the World of the Forms. Seems logically coherent.
Plato’s argument from opposites posits that just as physical opposites like hot and cold or asleep and awake transition into each other, life and death must also transition into each other. This cyclical process suggests that the soul is immortal, continuing to exist through cycles of life and death.
• Brian Daws also criticises Plato for his argument of opposites, suggesting that there isn’t always an opposite of something e.g. the colour yellow. Just because a body exists, it does not conclusively follow the soul does too. Moreover, materialists like Dawkins would reject notion of a LAD and thus the idea that an immaterial soul that lives on postmortem.
• Peter Geach rejects Plato’s distinction as he questions how the soul is able to have knowledge of the forms when the body gives the soul its sight and senses. We know that ‘seeing’ is a physical process, requiring the body.
• Favour Ockham’s razor: we should not believe explanations that are unnecessarily complicated (e.g WOTF), when we have a simpler theory that works.
What is Aristotle’s view of the soul?
- Uses empiricism, observation and sense experience to conclude that a soul exists.
- Suggests that everything is the result of four causes - material, efficient formal and final.
- Suggests that the soul is the formal cause. The soul is the way the body behaves and lives - it animates the body and gives it its characteristics and form. The soul cannot be separated from the body - Not strictly dualist or materialist (soul is still incorporeal).
- Analogy: if our bodies were an axe our soul would be its ability to chop – one can’t exist without the other.
- When the body dies, the soul dies - no person left.
- Like Plato, suggests all living things have a soul. The soul has 3 main faculties/abilities. The soul: vegetates (grows), appetites (fulfils desires) and rationalises (reasons). Different living things have different souls e.g. a plant would have a vegetative soul, whereas a lion would have both a vegetative and appetitive soul and a human has a vegetative, appetitive and rational soul.
- Aquinas was influenced by and interpreted his beliefs:
- ‘It is clear that man is not a soul only, but something composed of soul and body’
- We are not our souls. Soul are the first principles of life in living things ‘animate’ means havi
What are the criticisms of Aristotle’s view of the soul?
Empirically verifiable: Aristotle suggests the soul and body cannot be separated, as when the body dies, so does the soul. This explains the differences between that can be observed when somebody/something dies. This change can be empirically verified.
Francis Bacon: form is unscientific.
• Francis Bacon (17th century), called the father of empiricism, was instrumental in influencing the development of modern science.
• He criticised Aristotle, claiming that formal causation as no place in empirical science but is a metaphysical issue, since purpose is a divine matter. E.g ‘whiteness’ - science can investigate how snow results from air/water, but this only tells us about efficient cause, not the form of ‘whiteness’ which is beyond scientific investigation.
Contemporary materialists/modern scientists would go further in rejecting Aristotelian thought. Instead, they would argue that the body can be explained by physiological processes and that we are merely physical matter. the body is just material structure – there is no ‘form’ or ‘essence’ of it. Rational thought is just caused by brain processes, we don’t need the idea of a soul. Death is just the physical body ceasing the function. Russell argues ‘when we die, we rot’.
BUT science cannot currently explain how conciseness or reason reduces to material brain processes. The brain is so complicated and while some of it is understood a bit, processes like reason and consciousness have not even begun to be understood. So modern science cannot yet justifiably dismiss Aristotelian soul & form as the explanation of reason.
Chalmers: distinguishes between hard and easy problem of consciousness.
o Easy = figuring out which brain process is responsible for which mental process such as memory, perception or emotion.
o Hard = what brain process is responsible for consciousness itself.
o Chalmers says that neuroscience has helped with solving the easy problem of consciousness but it hasn’t even begun to explain the hard problem of consciousness.
o So, scientists like Dawkins can’t claim to know that consciousness is just a physical bodily thing, since science doesn’t currently have a scientific explanation of consciousness.
However, there is scientific evidence at least linking the brain to reason, since if the brain is damaged then reason and other mental faculties can be damaged too. Ockham’s razor - seems more reasonable to follow scientific route.
What is Descartes’ view of the soul? What are his arguments?
Cartesian Dualism
Descartes is often ascribed the label of substance dualist as he argues that the mind and body are two different substances/types.
The Argument from Doubt
• Foundation of Descartes’ philosophy; suggests the soul exists because of our ability to think. Descartes states: • We can doubt our bodies exist as sense experience can be illusionary, yet we cannot doubt that the mind exists. This is because merely by doubting our minds exist, we are showing ourselves it does exist, by thinking. • Therefore, because we are thinking, our minds must be separate from our bodies and exist - thus, 'I think therefore I am'.
The Argument from Divisibility and Non-Divisibility
• For Descartes, bodies are extended in space and can therefore be divided. A body can be seen to exist in a three dimensional manner and therefore is divisible (E.g we can amputate a leg) • However, Descartes suggests that minds are not extended in space and are therefore not divisible, so minds are radically different from bodies and are separate entities. • If the mind and body are separate substances, there needs to be a link between the body and mind. Descartes suggests this link is in the pineal gland, in the centre of the brain. He suggested this gland was the home of singular thought, imagination and common sense. • Adheres to Leibniz’s Law ‘cannot be separate entities which have all their properties in common’- thus mind and bodies have different properties so are separate.
What are the overall criticisms of Descartes’ view of the soul?
Suggests there must be something more than a physical/material brain. Chalmers (1996): it does not make sense to reduce the individual to wholly neural activity - although neuroscience can understand how decision making occurs through examining parts of the brain, it doesn’t tell us how it occurs, we need a thinking self, there must be some form of ‘I’.
- Further supported by the idea that not all experiences can be understood through description - there is an element of consciousness which helps experiences to be processed. Wittgenstein: try describing the smell of a cup of coffee.
This could be linked to the notion of personhood. As a thinking being, you consider yourself to be a whole person, the mind/consciousness is the part of me that holds the essence of who I am. For example, if I am given a face/body transplant, I am still the same person, because the mind is the same.
☹: Descartes’ interactionist thinking concerning the mind/body meeting at the pineal gland is illogical. Un-scientific: said Pineal Gland is the site of connection between mind and body, now know that it carries out other functions e.g produces melatonin (no way Descartes could have known this). No evidence that it links to an immaterial ‘mind’. Thus, if the foundations of his thinking are incorrect, does this lead to invalid conclusions?
Dennett rejects the thinking of Descartes and others who support him. This is because, he suggests substance dualists describe the mind as a Cartesian theatre. This is the idea that the mind is like a theatre and ‘I’ the audience of 1 is observing/looking out inside my head. For Dennett, this is not how the mind works. For example, there is no place within the mind where thinking/consciousness can happen.
What are the criticisms of Descartes’ argument from doubt?
- Hume’s law: Doubt Argument relies on idea that ‘anything I can conceive of is logically possible’ (Descartes can conceive that he can exist without a physical body existing). Most philosophers reject this on the basis that conceivability is not sufficient for logical possibility - just because Descartes can think of his mind existing without his body, this doesn’t mean that his mind really can exist without his body.
☹: Many Monists/Hard Materialists e.g. Dawkins would reject the notion of dualism this is because they advocate a view that we are merely one substance/one material body.
- Category mistake: Gilbert Ryle. Ridiculed the Cartesian account of the body-mind relationship by calling it ‘the Ghost in the Machine - Descartes is placing mind and body incorrectly in same logical category: implying things must be mental or physical when in reality they could be both. They’re not mutually exclusive. Likened asking questions about to mind to asking ‘where is Oxford university?’ when walking around a campus. Monist, mind doesn’t ‘exist’: describes a set of feelings, behaviour, and biological predispositions. We are our bodies, not a ‘ghost in a machine’.
- But reducing the mind merely to dispositions doesn’t seem to satisfactorily capture why conscious awaremess at least ‘feels’ like it exists in some sense. Seems overly reductionist and minimal to regard it merely as existing as dispositions to behaviours. Ryle was a philosophical behaviourist which is a controversial version of materialism (???)
What are the criticisms of Descartes’ argument from divisibility?
- Hume - empiricist: if souls are not in space and are invisible, how do we even know that one body had just one soul? How do we know we have a soul at all? It is merely an assumption.
- Un-scientific: said Pineal Gland is the site of connection between mind and body, now know that it carries out other functions e.g produces melatonin (no way Descartes could have known this). No evidence that it links to an immaterial ‘mind’.
- Lacewing (2014): Mind can be divided: e.g people with mental illnesses such as multiple personality syndrome may indicate that the mind can be divided.
- Freud’s theory of conscious/unconscious and id, ego and superego: suggests mind is subdivided into pleasure, reality and morality principles. Makes rational/logical sense: people may believe or desire one thing consciously and the opposite thing unconsciously.
What is materialism? What are Dawkins’ and Dennett’s views?
Materialism = idea that mind and consciousness can be fully explained by physical or material interactions)
Dawkins
The contemporary materialist Richard Dawkins, argues that there is no part of a person that is not physical.
o Rejection of a soul as a spiritual substance: all human experiences are reducible to biological processes.
There is no extra aspect of a human called a ‘soul’ and no physical existence after death.
“There is no [..] mystical jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes of information”.
Religious beliefs such as immortality of the soul, have no sound basis, they are beliefs which are based on wish-fulfilment & fear their own mortality.
Dennett
Suggests all mental activity is centred in the brain. Suggests conscious thought is just lots of brain processes in the physical brain, brain scans have been used to track neural activity which shows many areas are used simultaneously for processing information.
Dennett rejects the thinking of Descartes and others who support him. This is because, he suggests substance dualists describe the mind as a Cartesian theatre. This is the idea that the mind is like a theatre and ‘I’ the audience of 1 is observing/looking out inside my head. For Dennett, this is not how the mind works. For example, there is no place within the mind where thinking/consciousness can happen.
What are the criticisms of materialism?
Materialism uses scientific methods to advocate for its ideas. For example, functional magnetic scanners can detect changes in the brain when somebody’s attention moves to a different image. This ‘thinking’ is therefore evidenced as physical events in the brain, nothing ‘extra’.
However, the scientific method is yet to suggest how this thinking comes about and the intention behind it. Nerve endings cannot have desires or intentions, so how does the process work?
Chalmers: distinguishes between hard and easy problem of consciousness.
o Easy = figuring out which brain process is responsible for which mental process such as memory, perception or emotion.
o Hard = what brain process is responsible for consciousness itself.
o Chalmers says that neuroscience has helped with solving the easy problem of consciousness but it hasn’t even begun to explain the hard problem of consciousness.
o So, scientists like Dawkins can’t claim to know that consciousness is just a physical bodily thing, since science doesn’t currently have a scientific explanation of consciousness.
o Counter-intuitive: depth of our human emotion seems to contradict idea that we are just a collection of physical parts. (But feeling something must exist is not reason enough to believe that it does).
Materialism is biologically reductionist, reducing all human experience to the physical. Neglects a holistic approach - there are many who point to a feeling of something more than the material, a feeling of a sense of self. Moreover, many claim to have experienced life after death. Offering some evidence for there being ‘more’ than the physical.
o Semantics: refer to ‘my leg’, ‘my eyes’, implies we have ownership over our own bodies therefore are separate from them. The mind is the ‘me’ we speak of when we refer to ourselves. (Could just be convenience rather than a display of our ‘inner selves’).
What is Ryle’s theory of a category mistake?
- Contemptuous of Descartes + substance dualism, questions how an immaterial mind can communicate and interact with a physical/material body.
- Describes as ‘Ghost in a machine’ - suggests we are physical machines being operated by an invisible mind - doesn’t make sense.
- Sought to dissolve, rather than solve, the mind body problem.
- This problem arises because of a category mistake - a logical error with the use of language where language is applied to the wrong type of category. The use of the term ‘soul’ suggests that it is something extra that can be seen.
- Oxford University example
- Thus, Descartes makes a category error
