soul, mind and body

Question 1

what is dualism?

Answer 1

soul and body are two different substances (totally separate)

Question 2

what’s materialism?

Answer 2

there is no such thing as a soul

Question 3

what’s monism?

Answer 3

soul and body are one (can’t be separated)

Question 4

plato’s view on the soul?

Answer 4

dualist,sopul and body are two different substances
believes the souls divided into three different parts (tripartite soul)

Question 5

what does the tripartite soul consist of ?

Answer 5

• the logical
• the spiritual
• the appetitive
  spoke about in his book The Republic

Question 6

what’s the logical aspect of the soul?

Answer 6

a rational mind thinks, analyses and gauges for the best outcome
- Plato believes all philosophers have a logical soul and that this is what the ruling class should be comprised of,uses a priori knowledge so they must have deeper access to the logical part
- when the logical part is dominant the person can easily distinguish between fantasy and reality which helps to understand realm of the forms

Question 7

what’s the spirituted aspect of the soul?

Answer 7

gets angry when it perceives injustice, loves to face and overcome great challenges - loves victory and winning
- represents the heart and military class
- plato means spirited in the sense of having lots of energy and power

Question 8

what’s the appetitive aspect of the soul?

Answer 8

symbolises the stomach, represents commoners - desire is ruled by sexual gratification,greed for money and comfort foods
- these individuals are just fulfilling there day to day obligations rather than reaching a higher goal

Question 9

what is the charioteer analogy?

Answer 9

the main goal of the charioteer is to ascend to divine heights, but the black horse always poses problems and keeps falling back to earth regardless of the white hose trying to fly
- high horse (spirited)
- black horse (appetitive)
-charioteer (rational)

Question 10

what’s the message of the charioteer analogy?

Answer 10

the souls seeks spiritual attainment but the worldly cares of the universe pull it back from its divine goal.Plato believes the whole purpose of the soul was to attain perfect knowledge - believing in reincarnation and that the soul perfects itself with every reincarnation

Question 11

what are the criticisms of Plato?

Answer 11

• Plato disregards human desire - but this is what has kept us alive
• Plato assumes that children and animals don’t use rational thinking but fails to prove any base in his dialogue,no proof that they don’t (entitled view?)
• Undermines the rights of an individual with regards to a wider society - our souls should benefit us first (John Lock and Emmand Kant critics by emphasising on notions regarding the rights on the individual,’always recognise that human individuals are ends and do not use them as means to your ends’)
• ## Platos first argument relies on the idea that every quality comes into being from its own opposite eg we must have a soul because we have a life, when we are die we are people that were once alive so when we are alive we must be someone thats died but why does everything need an opposite

Question 12

what’s anamnesis ?

Answer 12

most important aspect of human knowledge is remembering as this proves the soul is separate as we have genuine knowledge of truth, goodness and beauty as we have experienced this in the realms after death

Question 13

which scholar agreed with Plato that the soul was governed by pleasure principles with sexual being the only source on energy for the id ?

Answer 13

Sign Freud

Question 14

Aristotles view on the soul?

Answer 14

based his views on empiricism using observations and sense experience to conclude that there must be a soul but differently to Plato, believing the body needs a soul to animate (hylomorphism)

Question 15

what is hylomorphism?

Answer 15

the belief that the body needs a soul to animate - a soul is what makes the body alive

Question 16

why does Aristotle believe the soul can’t be separated from the body? analogies

Answer 16

• uses the analogy of the imprint of the seal of wax that cannot be separated from the wax it is imprinted on, likewise the body needs the soul to make it what it is
• also uses the axe analogy ,its body being what its made from but its soul being what makes it an axe eg its capacity to chop (formal cause)

Question 17

what made Aristotle come to this conclusion?

Answer 17

he observed that everything was made of matter (the material cause- body)and has a form (formal cause- soul)

Question 18

what three faculties of the soul did Aristotle identify?

Answer 18

• vegetative, refers to the characteristic of growing (plants)
• appetitive, refers to the ability to act and fulfil desires fro food, reproduction and so on (animals)
• rational abilities, intellect only found in human souls, the ability to reason (humans, have all functions)

Question 19

what does Aristotle mean when he says the soul is ‘the actuality of a body that has life’ ?

Answer 19

the soul is what enables a body to engage in the necessary activities of life.The idea of intellect surviving death would go against his reliance on the sense experience because there is no way to observe intellect surviving death instead it would be that there is no person left and the soul does not go anywhere

Question 20

evaluation of Aristotle?

Answer 20

• goes against popular belief of christian soul/afterlife
• materialists would argue that we are only made of matter, no need to assume there is a soul
• argues that when the Body dies the soul dies which explains the differences we observe when something dies as the soul dies as well as the body
• Nichemachean Ethics, ‘for the soul rules the body with the rule of a master’
• Aquinas Summa Theologica ‘the soul is defined as the first principle of life in living things’

Question 21

Descartes belief of the soul?

Answer 21

believed in substance dualism, the idea that the soul and body are two different substances so the soul can leave the body after death
- Descartes represents the most extreme form of substance dualism referred to as cartesian dualism, these views are found in his books Meditations and The passions of the soul
- similarly to Plato he distrusts the sense (believing they could be misled by some malicious demon)
- concludes the only known piece of knowledge is the cogito (the mind) which is usually interpreted as ‘I think therfore I am’

Question 22

what do Descartes views naturally result in ?

Answer 22

a division between body (can’t be trusted) and spirit (can trust)
- the mind is invisible whereas the body Is divisible (broken into parts) so they have different attributes and cannot be the same

Question 23

what does Descartes say in Meditations?

Answer 23

‘that the mind is wholly different from the body’
‘a body is divisible by nature, but the mind is clearly not’
he also tries to explain how the soul and body interlink, suggesting that there is a little gland in the brain where the soul exercises its functions more particularly than in other parts of the body
in Treatise on man he claims the pineal gland is the seta of imagination and common sense

Question 24

Daniel Dennetts opinon on Descartes?

Answer 24

its wrong as we are not spectators of what happens and instead experience different things

Question 25

main criticism of Descartes?

Answer 25

medical research has now found the use of the pineal gland (regulates sleep hormones, unlikely place for the soul) - but it seems Descartes felt pressured to find a link

Question 26

Ryles criticisms of Descartes?

Answer 26

accuses him of making a catergory era which he illustrates through the analogy of a university, a university is made up of libraries, halls and colleges but not one actual university itself, someone may ask where the is the university after seeing all of these which would be a category era as it assumes that the university is one thing rather than a collective of all of those things collectively
- Ryle says that Descartes makes a similar category era by putting the soul and body in different categories as they actually both belong in the category of human

Question 27

support for Descartes?

Answer 27

• supported by Leibniz’ law of identity, that for something to be the same it must have the same properties at the same time eg all fruits have seeds
• the mind and body are different things as they can be treated differently, but the mind is immaterial where as the body is physical - the body can be divided but the mind is a singular whole
• as a thinking being you think of yourself as a whole person - the mind is what holds the essence of personhood