Soul, mind and body

Question 1

What does Plato believe about the soul?

Answer 1

The soul and the body are two separate entities. The body is the temporary physical component, but the soul can leave the body and move on.

Question 2

What does Plato believe about knowledge?

Answer 2

It’s innate.

Question 3

What argument/example does Plato use to show this?

Answer 3

‘Meno’, a slave boy with no education is given a geometry puzzle to solve with no knowledge of geometry, yet somehow manages to solve it.

Question 4

What does this show?

Answer 4

Souls have previously lived in the world of the forms.

Question 5

What metaphor does Plato use about the soul?

Answer 5

A chariot being pulled by two horses.

Question 6

What does this show?

Answer 6

The two horses are ‘appetite’ and ‘emotion’, without the guiding hand of reason we would be lead astray. The charioteer is reason, who is guiding them.

Question 7

What can Plato’s view of the soul be called?

Answer 7

A ‘tripartite view’, as it consists of three elements (appetite, emotion, reason)

Question 8

What didn’t Plato discuss about the soul and body?

Answer 8

How they may be different things or interact with each other.
If they are separate, why can the soul see the forms? Surely that is something limited to the senses.

Question 9

What is the ‘myth of er’ that Plato introduced?

Answer 9

A soldier called Er died on the battlefield, yet he came back to life. He described the afterlife. Those who were good in their lives went up and rewarded, those bad were punished. Souls would choose a new life on earth.

Question 10

What did Aristotle view the soul as?

Answer 10

A ‘substance’ and a matter of substance in the body. It gives a living thing it’s essence. It distinguished between a living thing and a dead thing.

Question 11

What are the various kinds of a soul?

Answer 11

Plants have a vegetative or ‘nutritive’ soul. Can eat, but cannot use reason.
Animals have ‘perceptive souls’, have experience through the world.
Humans have a higher level of intelligence, have ability to use reason.

Question 12

How does Aristotle try and describe what essence is?

Answer 12

An axe for example is just metal and wood, it being an axe would be it’s essence.
Eye- if the body was an eye, its spark would be seeing.

Question 13

What would the soul of an axe be?

Answer 13

It’s ability to chop.

Question 14

What does Aristotle use the stamp to show?

Answer 14

The soul is inseparable from the living body in the same way the shape stamped into block of wax is different to the matter of the wax.

Question 15

What did Aristotle believe happened to the soul upon death?

Answer 15

The soul dies with the physical body.

Question 16

Why do people believe humans are different to machines?

Answer 16

Humans have a conscience and ‘mind’, which allows us to have emotions.

Question 17

What is dualism?

Answer 17

The view that humans can be consisting of two things:
- The physical body
- The non-physical mind

Question 18

What is substance dualism?

Answer 18

The mind and the body are separate substances that both exist.

Question 19

What is a property?

Answer 19

Something that cannot exist without substance. Like a rugs properties are it being soft and red. Something without substance cannot have property.

Question 20

What do substance dualists view as properties of the mind?

Answer 20

Thoughts, intentions, feelings and emotions.

Question 21

What are the properties of the body?

Answer 21

Height, weight, etc.

Question 22

What was Descartes’ understanding of consciousness and the body?

Answer 22

He claims every kind of matter in the universe was the same kind of thing. No difference between heavenly substance or earthly substance.

Question 23

What phrase did Descartes use and what did it translate to?

Answer 23

‘Cogito ergo sum’ ‘I think, therefore I am’. The only thing we can prove exists is our mind because we are thinking.

Question 24

What was Descartes’ view on dualism?

Answer 24

We have a physical body and a spiritual mind.

Question 25

What did Descartes believe connect the mind and body?

Answer 25

The pineal gland

Question 26

What is property dualism?

Answer 26

There is only only one kind of material, physical substance. There are two distinct properties: mental and physical.

Question 27

What is a popular version of property dualism?

Answer 27

Emergent materialism- as physical things become more and more complex, new properties emerge from them, which cannot be reduced simply to material.

Question 28

What is reductive materialism?

Answer 28

The mind isn’t distinct from the physical brain but is identical with it. Has no room for the concept of life after death.

Question 29

What is Gilbert Ryle’s theory named?

Answer 29

‘ghost in the machine’

Question 30

What does the ‘ghost in the machine’ show?

Answer 30

• Any talk of a ‘self’ or ‘soul’ is a mistake
• He made fun of Descartes talk of a soul separate of the body by claiming it’s like a ghost in the machine, like we’re physical machines led by a ghost.

Question 31

What term did Ryle use to describe a mind and body distinction?

Answer 31

A ‘category mistake’

Question 32

What was Ryle rejecting?

Answer 32

Minds and personalities and consciousness are a separate aspect to a human being.

Question 33

What are Richard Dawkins’ materialist views?

Answer 33

There is no part of a human that is non-physical.

Question 34

What is Richard Dawkins’ book?

Answer 34

The selfish gene

Question 35

What does Dawkins view humans as?

Answer 35

‘Survival machines’

Question 36

What souls does Dawkins write about?

Answer 36

Soul one and Soul two

Question 37

What is soul one?

Answer 37

The typical and generic view of a soul

Question 38

What is soul two?

Answer 38

Refers to someone’s personality and individuality.

Question 39

What did Dawkins argue about belief in the soul?

Answer 39

It’s simply wish-thinking.