Soul Mind and Body

Question 1

Plato - substance dualism

Answer 1

Influenced by Pythagorean thought - soul and body different
material/changing - body
immaterial/immortal/immutable - soul (can access The Forms)
Soul and body opposites - two separate substances

Question 2

Support of Plato

Answer 2

Leibinez Law - Object A and B are the same if they have two identical properties - material and physical differ vastly so must be two things not one

Question 3

Criticisms of Plato’s substance dualism

Answer 3

-Dismisses important value of body as it is a vital part of how we survive and gives identity
Williams

Question 4

Plato’s chariot analogy

Answer 4

Rational soul controls appeptites and desires of the body

- body disallows us accessing true identity in the Forms - perfect concepts and true knowledge

Question 5

criticism of the forms

Answer 5

Popper: beauty and permeance
Russel: life after death
Becker: wanting to conserve our biological entities

Question 6

Descartes

Answer 6

Hyperbolic doubt
Meditations:
1)possible to doubt all (evil demon)
2) Cogito ergo sum ‘ I think therefore I am’

Mind is independent from body - one proved other cannot
-body is mechanical - muscles like ropes/cables
connection is pineal gland in the brain where soul exercises its functions

Question 7

Criticisms of Descartes

Answer 7

• no evidence
  -Gilbert Rhyle - ‘ghost in the machine’
  category error - Descartes views the mental and physical as separate when they are not

Man walking around university is seeing buildings and then asks where the university is
- two parts of the same

Question 8

Dawkins (materialism)

Answer 8

Concept of consciousness yet to be explained 
- soul 'not explanation' but 'evasion'
two souls 
soul one: seperate substance 
soul two: intellectual/ spiritual 

rejects soul one and yet to explain soul two

Question 9

Support for Dawkins

Answer 9

• consciousness is no more than electrochemical events within the brain - no person is capable of surviving brain death
• Aristotle - ‘shouldn’t accept the first conclusion presneted

Question 10

Criticisms of Dawkins

Answer 10

Anscombe

• physical actions have mental processes when we point at something we point at the texture/colour
• meaning cannot come from action as not raising finger meaninglessly

‘bodily act is an act if a man qua spirit’

2) Physics are philosophy to a degree making inductive leaps of logic before proof
3) Cottingham - if made up of just mind/body an are of human experience cannot be reduced to either category

Question 11

Aristotle - property dualism

Answer 11

Body is the animation of the soul and cannot be separate is body was an ‘axe’ its ability would be to ‘chop’

Question 12

Aquinas support of Aristotle

Answer 12

‘soul not the body but the act of the body’

soul is the principle of life and life needs a body - gives us characteristics and purpose

Question 13

Skinners criticism of Aristotle

Answer 13

Thoughts are learned behaviours like animals we have adapted to survive

Question 14

Dennett reply to Skinner

Answer 14

oversimplifies as animals and humans differ vastly

i.e. reading book is not a learned response