Soul mind and body Flashcards
Define: Soul
Often but not always understood to be the non-physical essence of a person
Define: Consciousness
Awareness or perception
Define: Substance
A subject which has different properties attributed to it
Define: Dualism
The belief that reality can be divided into two distinct parts i.e. good/evil
Define: Substance dualism
The belief that the mind and body can exist as two distinct or separate realities
Define: Scepticism
A questioning approach which does not take assumptions for granted
Define: Materialism
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
Define: Reductive materialism
otherwise known as identity theory - the view that mental events are identical with physical occurrences with the brain
Define: Category error
A problem of language that arises when things are talked about if they belong to one category when they in fact belong to another
Inference / context
metaphysics
Plato - the republic
Aristotle - De anima
Scholars
Dawkins - materialist
Plato - Dualist
Aristotle - Property dualist
Descartes - Substance dualist
Rhyle- Category error
Conclude
State your side of the argument
Plato
Dualist - body and soul two separate substances
-Soul immaterial essence trapped in physical body
Plato explain
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.
Support Argument of opposites
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
Support of Plato - meno
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
Plato’s tripartite view
Soul consist of three elements: appetite, emotion, reason
-Chariot analogy
Strengths of Plato
Logical as explains how young children have knowledge of justice
Criticism of the Forms
-Illogical - inductive leap of logic
-Beauty and justice - subjective
-Little empirical evidence
Bernard Williams criticisms of Plato’s views of the soul
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
Third man argument to critique the forms
Aristotle
you need a form of the forms to explain what the forms have in common and so forth leading to an infinite regression
Conclusion of Plato
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
Aristotle soul and identity
rejected the idea of a non-physical soul but instead believed the soul to be an ‘essence/substance’
What did Aristotle say in De anima
‘The soul is in some sense the principle of animal life’
-what distinguishes a dead person from a living thing
Hylomorphism (Aristotle)
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)
Criticisms towards Aristotle’s soul
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
Counter to the criticism of neuroscience
a new science and so cannot justifiability dismiss the soul as an explanation for a human’s ability to reason
Strength of neuroscience counter
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
Strengths of Aristotles soul
-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
Criticisms of Aristotle
- 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
Who does the Mind-body problem relate too
Descartes
Rhyle
Materialism
What was Descartes influential in
The Scientific revolution
Descartes - point
Meditations wrote that there is a clear distinction between the soul and body and made up of two substances
Descartes - explain
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
Evaluate Descartes
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.
Second criticism of Descartes
believed that God could do the logically impossible so plausible , that God could be deceiving his faculties in to believing his thoughts are accurate.
Conclusion
The justification of the sceptical method of doubting is too shaky to accept.
Descartes point two
Believed mind and body two distinct substances
one of extension and divisibility, the other non-corporeal and indivisible
Criticism of Descartes and evaluate (2)
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?
Descartes response (2)
Pineal gland in brain which is indivisible unlike other parts of body that come in pairs
-Capable of single thought - where interact
Evaluate Descartes response
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
Rhyles criticism of Descartes
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
Evaluate Rhyle
-Shows mind is like the Ghost in the machine an extra entity attributed when none is needed
Dawkins - point
Reductive materialist, who believed in the soul’s nonliteral existence and argues that there are two types of soul one valid the other invalid
Dawkins explain
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.
Evaluate Dawkins
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.
Chalmers criticism of Dawkins
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.
Evaluate Chalmers
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
Strengths of dualism
Gives satisfying conclusions on how the soul and body interact
-Neuroscience still not proven
-Religious perspective, the sanctity of life
Ward - moral currency diminished
