Soul mind and body

Question 1

Define: Soul

Answer 1

Often but not always understood to be the non-physical essence of a person

Question 2

Define: Consciousness

Answer 2

Awareness or perception

Question 3

Define: Substance

Answer 3

A subject which has different properties attributed to it

Question 4

Define: Dualism

Answer 4

The belief that reality can be divided into two distinct parts i.e. good/evil

Question 5

Define: Substance dualism

Answer 5

The belief that the mind and body can exist as two distinct or separate realities

Question 6

Define: Scepticism

Answer 6

A questioning approach which does not take assumptions for granted

Question 7

Define: Materialism

Answer 7

The belief that only physical matter exists, and that the mind can be explained in physical terms such as the chemical activity of the brain

Question 8

Define: Reductive materialism

Answer 8

otherwise known as identity theory - the view that mental events are identical with physical occurrences with the brain

Question 9

Define: Category error

Answer 9

A problem of language that arises when things are talked about if they belong to one category when they in fact belong to another

Question 10

Inference / context

Answer 10

metaphysics
Plato - the republic
Aristotle - De anima

Question 11

Scholars

Answer 11

Dawkins - materialist
Plato - Dualist
Aristotle - Property dualist
Descartes - Substance dualist
Rhyle- Category error

Question 12

Conclude

Answer 12

State your side of the argument

Question 13

Plato

Answer 13

Dualist - body and soul two separate substances
-Soul immaterial essence trapped in physical body

Question 14

Plato explain

Answer 14

In Phaedo - mouthpiece of Socrates about immortality of soul
-Forms - immaterial eternal realm
-soul allows us to grasp true knowledge (episteme) – innate knowledge of the world of forms.

Question 15

Support Argument of opposites

Answer 15

Argument of opposites
-Things depend on opposite to have existence
- something is big as we have smaller things
-Qualities depend on status relative to each other
-Life comes from death, death comes from life

Question 16

Support of Plato - meno

Answer 16

Slave boy is given a geometry puzzle and through questioning could work out answer
-learning just a matter of remembering (anamnesis)
-already had innate knowledge before birth

Question 17

Plato’s tripartite view

Answer 17

Soul consist of three elements: appetite, emotion, reason
-Chariot analogy

Question 18

Strengths of Plato

Answer 18

Logical as explains how young children have knowledge of justice

Question 19

Criticism of the Forms

Answer 19

-Illogical - inductive leap of logic
-Beauty and justice - subjective
-Little empirical evidence

Question 20

Bernard Williams criticisms of Plato’s views of the soul

Answer 20

we know that the mind is dependent on the brain - eg drugs have an effect on the mind and body. if the mind and body wasn’t linked, they wouldn’t operate

Question 21

Third man argument to critique the forms

Answer 21

Aristotle
you need a form of the forms to explain what the forms have in common and so forth leading to an infinite regression

Question 22

Conclusion of Plato

Answer 22

if criticisms succeed then undermines the whole concepts of the Forms as absolute standards do not in fact exist and without the Forms Plato has no evidence of the soul’s existence as a reality, as his evidence concurred that the soul brought these absolute standards into the physical world

Question 23

Aristotle soul and identity

Answer 23

rejected the idea of a non-physical soul but instead believed the soul to be an ‘essence/substance’

Question 24

What did Aristotle say in De anima

Answer 24

‘The soul is in some sense the principle of animal life’
-what distinguishes a dead person from a living thing

Question 25

Hylomorphism (Aristotle)

Answer 25

Soul is the body’s ‘form’ (Formal cause) - gives function and organisation
- Gives a living thing its essence so that it is not just matter
-Gives capabilities and characteristics that distinguishes from non-living things
(axe analogy)

Question 26

Criticisms towards Aristotle’s soul

Answer 26

Ability to reason disproved by neuroscience
-claims that rationality can be reduced to brain processes and thus cannot be the formal cause of a human

Question 27

Counter to the criticism of neuroscience

Answer 27

a new science and so cannot justifiability dismiss the soul as an explanation for a human’s ability to reason

Question 28

Strength of neuroscience counter

Answer 28

scientific evidence linking the brain to reason, since if the brain is damaged than reason and other mental facilities cannot work too.
-much about the brain we don’t understand, it’s more reasonable to think that mental faculties like reason are reducible to the material causation of brain processes in a way we don’t yet understand, rather than requiring some other type of physical explanation such as Aristotelian form since there is no evidence for that

Question 29

Strengths of Aristotles soul

Answer 29

-derived from empirical observation
-Logical
-Flew Cheshire cat grin is a ‘thing in itself’ soul - behaviour of physical body without body - no soul just as grin is not a substance neither is a soul wihtout it

Question 30

Criticisms of Aristotle

Answer 30

• No clear evidence and even if appeals to senses no clear evidence that senses are reliable
  Religious person - only know things about the world through faith and revelation
  -Rules out afterlife and a God

Question 31

Who does the Mind-body problem relate too

Answer 31

Descartes
Rhyle
Materialism

Question 32

What was Descartes influential in

Answer 32

The Scientific revolution

Question 33

Descartes - point

Answer 33

Meditations wrote that there is a clear distinction between the soul and body and made up of two substances

Question 34

Descartes - explain

Answer 34

Developed method of hyperbolic doubt - reject anything that could not be known with certainty
-Arrived at ‘first certainty’ ‘ I think therefore I am’ (Cogito ergo sum)
-Known as the Cartesian circle that since God is perfect and image is within his mind he could not be deceived
whereas body not proven
=Must be separate

Question 35

Evaluate Descartes

Answer 35

The argument is fallacious as the concept of God in his mind relies on his mental faculties being correct and his mental faculties rely on the concept of God not being some evil deceiver.
argument is circular and so fails.

Question 36

Second criticism of Descartes

Answer 36

believed that God could do the logically impossible so plausible , that God could be deceiving his faculties in to believing his thoughts are accurate.

Question 37

Conclusion

Answer 37

The justification of the sceptical method of doubting is too shaky to accept.

Question 38

Descartes point two

Answer 38

Believed mind and body two distinct substances
one of extension and divisibility, the other non-corporeal and indivisible

Question 39

Criticism of Descartes and evaluate (2)

Answer 39

The issue surrounds how the two substances could be seen to interact. If the mental is non-physical then how can it ‘cause’ anything to occur? Rather like a ghost riding a bike it seems as though the mind is causally impotent. Yet this seems to be counter-intuitive. I am thinking about taking a sip of Green tea and Jasmine as I write. This is a mental event which will cause a physical event surely?

Question 40

Descartes response (2)

Answer 40

Pineal gland in brain which is indivisible unlike other parts of body that come in pairs
-Capable of single thought - where interact

Question 41

Evaluate Descartes response

Answer 41

obvious problems
Firstly he is still using a physical thing to explain the link between the mental or incorporeal and the body/corporeal. Secondly he seems to forget that we only have one tongue as a sense organ

Question 42

Rhyles criticism of Descartes

Answer 42

Category error
foreign visitor coming to see Oxford University and asking where the University was after being shown all the Colleges and offices
-Thinks mental and physical are separate when they are the same

Question 43

Evaluate Rhyle

Answer 43

-Shows mind is like the Ghost in the machine an extra entity attributed when none is needed

Question 44

Dawkins - point

Answer 44

Reductive materialist, who believed in the soul’s nonliteral existence and argues that there are two types of soul one valid the other invalid

Question 45

Dawkins explain

Answer 45

Soul one real and separate from the body – Dawkins rejects due to the lack of empirical evidence

Soul two is the metaphorical ideal of the soul which is where the essence of our humanity is. For example, someone might say “I felt that in my soul” where they use the term “soul” metaphorically for deep human feelings rather than something which is non-physical.

Question 46

Evaluate Dawkins

Answer 46

This is a strong point as it suggests that people have misinterpreted the word ‘soul’ taking it on a literal basis instead of metaphorically, which highlights thus the soul should be understood metaphorically.

Question 47

Chalmers criticism of Dawkins

Answer 47

However, Chalmers argues that the problem of consciousness has still not been solved by science. Perhaps this failure is due to science not yet discovering something radically different from our understanding, which could indeed be the soul.

Question 48

Evaluate Chalmers

Answer 48

Yet although Chalmers makes a good point this seems unlikely. Neuroscience is a new type of science and therefore still not much is known about the brain. Arguably the problem of consciousness will be understood when we have furthered the scientific understanding if the brain and its functions

Question 49

Strengths of dualism

Answer 49

Gives satisfying conclusions on how the soul and body interact
-Neuroscience still not proven
-Religious perspective, the sanctity of life
Ward - moral currency diminished