Soul, Mind And Body Flashcards
What is another word meaning the soul?
Self
What is the soul to religious believers?
The part that is capable of having a relationship with God
What is the paradox of Theseus’ ship?
If Theseus had a ship and replaced every part one by one each year until all had been replaced,
Then an energy collects the pieces and made their own ship would it be the original?
What is dualism?
The view that there are two different types of existence: mental and physical
What is substance dualism?
Descartes’ version where the two different types of existence are also different substances
What is monism?
The view that there is one kind of existence
What is materialism?
The view that the one kind of existence is a physical substance
What did Plato believe the body was?
A prison for the soul
What analogy for Plato explains the make up of the soul?
The Charioteer analogy
What is the charioteer analogy?
Two horses (will and appetite) are controlled by the charioteer (reason)
Unless the charioteer controlled the reins the stronger horse (appetite) would take over
What type of connection did Plato believe the soul mind and body had?
Dualism
What did he believe the soul was?
Non-material
(Therefore indestructible)
What did Socrates believe the soul was?
The essence of life
Why did Socrates believe that the soul couldn’t die?
It is what gives a body life
From the chariot analogy what was Plato’s view of the soul called?
‘Tripartite view’
(Three elements : reason, will, appetite)
As life follows death and death follows life where did Plato believe the soul travelled to?
Realm of the forms
What is the life following death analogy called?
The cyclical nature of existence
What is the Myth of Er?
A soldier called Er died on a battlefield
10 days later fighting had stopped
2 days after that he woke up and claimed to experienced the afterlife
He went in front of judges who judged if you were good or not
What would’ve happened if you were good?
You could choose your next life
What would’ve happened if you were bad?
You received 10x the inflicted pain you put on others
Then given a different life
What did Plato believe non philosophers went in a cycle of?
Reward the punishment
Why did Er say we couldn’t remember the forms?
We drink a liquid that makes us forget
Did Aristotle agree with Plato?
No
What type of connection did Aristotle believe the mind body and soul had?
Materialism
Why did Aristotle reject the realm of the forms?
Lacked empirical evidence
What cause was the soul for Aristotle?
The formal cause
Who disagrees that the formal cause is unscientific?
F. Bacon
What can science not yet understand?
Reason and conciousness
What examples does he give to show the body and soul cannot be divided?
An axe (body) and it’s ability to cut (soul)
An eye (body) and it’s ability to see (soul)
What is an analogy showing how the body and soul can’t be separated?
The wax and seal analogy
It’s impossible to separate the imprint of the seal from the wax
What’s Aristotles hierarchy of being?
Where different things haven’t different elements making up their soul
What elements do plants have to their souls?
Vegetative
What is the vegetative part of the soul?
The ability to gain nutrition
What elements do an animal have to their soul?
Vegetative and appetitive
What is the appetitive part for?
Involves movement and desires
What do human souls have?
Vegetative
Appetitive
Ability to reason
Does Aristotle believe in the afterlife?
No
What is the metaphysics of consciousness?
We cannot know whether someone’s pain is the same as our own
What is logical privacy?
No one other than me can know my thoughts
I cannot know the thoughts of others
What is subjectivity?
Conscious expiriences are from a first person point of view
What does qualia mean?
A term used by philosophers to describe how an experience feels to the person who has an expirience
What does non-spatial mean?
Our consciousness does not take up any space
What type of connection did Descartes believe the mind body and soul had?
Substance dualism
What are the three point Descartes says we could doubt all things?
What if senses were always unreliable
It’s hard to know the difference between dreaming and being awake
An evil demon could be deceiving us
What phase proves that we exist?
I think therefore I am
What is I think therefore I am translated from?
Cogito ergo sum
What is the essential property of physical substance?
Extension
What can you do to anything that is extended in space?
Divide it
What can the mind not be?
Divided
What is Leibniz’ law?
That identical things must have the same properties
What does this mean for Descartes?
The mind and body are not identical
What is a criticism of this?
The mind can be divided into perception memory emotions
How does Descartes respond?
By the mind he means consciousness which are not divisions of it
What modern science disproves this?
Divided hemispheres
Can result in having two separate people in the body
What is the conceivability argument?
What is conceivably separate is possibly separate
What is possibly separate is actually non identical
Therefore the mind and body are non identical
What is the masked man fallacy?
There’s a masked man that is robbing the bank and we can conceive that it’s not our father but if it was it’s impossible that it it wasn’t our father
Therefore what is conceivable doesn’t mean it’s possible
But what does the masked man fallacy also show?
We can conceive the impossible due to ignorance
Where did Descartes believe the soul was located?
Pineal gland
What is the interaction problem?
If dualism is correct then how is it possible for the mind and body to interact
How does Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia argue against dualism?
Only physical things can interact with other physical things
If the mind is non physical it cannot interact with the physical
But the mental can cause the physical to move
Therefore dualism is false
How does Descartes try to solve the interaction problem?
He says that the mind and body interact at the pineal gland
Why does this not solve the problem?
It says where but not how
He wrongly thought that the pineal gland was only in humans but it’s in animals too
What type of dualism did John Stuart Mill believe in?
Emergent materialism
What is emergent dualism?
Physical things become more and more complex and new properties emerge from them
What is property dualism?
The mind and body have different properties but the same substance
What is reductive materialism?
The mind is not distinct from the physical brain but identical with it
What does Richard Dawkins argue about the soul?
That it’s a mythological concept invented by the ancients to explain conciousness
What is another mythological concept he argues is similar?
Thunder and ‘the gods are angry’
What does he instead believe the soul could be used as?
A metaphor
What does Gilbert Ryle call Descartes theory?
‘The ghost in the machine’
What is it to search for a separate mind to the body?
A category mistake
Why does Ryle argue that it the mind doesn’t have to be separate?
It may not be a thing in itself
What is the analogy Ryle gives to explain this?
A foreigner is shown around Oxford or Cambridge campuses and colleges
They then ask where’s the university
They mistook the university for just a building rather than a collection of buildings
What does Ryle think we talk about when we talk about the mind?
Behavioural dispositions
What is an example of a behavioural disposition?
We can’t locate the brittleness of glass but it is brittle
What is Ward’s criticism of Ryle?
We can pretend to be angry and have the same behaviour as someone who’s angry but not feel the same in the internal state
Why do some people believe the soul is separate?
They have out of body expiriences
What does Susan Blackmore argue consciousness can be explained by?
Memes
What are memes?
Ideas that can be passed down through evolution
