soul, mind and body Flashcards
What was Plato influenced by.
Pythagorean thought.
What did Plato define a simple substance to be.
That which cannot be broken into smaller parts.
Plato on Socrate’s contemplating the soul.
“The soul is the very likeness or the divine.”
What does Plato address poorly/vaugely.
How the spiritual body interacts with the material body.
What is Plato’s souls ultimate desire.
To escape the inferior material body it is in.
Plato’s philosophical mistake.
Mistaking reason for cause.
The formal cause and the soul.
A person is a person because the body is animated by the soul which gives it life.
Aristotle’s soul and immortality.
The soul dies when the matter does.
The vegetative soul.
Shared with all living things.
The appetative soul.
Where we find all passions, appetites and emotion.
The intellectual soul.
Rational and directive area of the soul.
Aquinas’ interpretation and carry of Aristotle.
That the soul needs the body to be animate, and is something immaterial and incorporeal.
Aquinas on the soul.
“It is clear that man is not a soul only, but something composed of soul and body.”
Dualism.
Belief we have the two elements of soul and body.
Monism.
Belief we are one substance.
Materialism.
Form of monism which believes the only substance is a material one.
Problem with materialism.
That we have a consiousness with abilities which sucseed our biological or physical benefits/impulses.
Main substance dualist.
Descartes.
Substance dualism.
Belief that the two elements of mind and body are wholly different substances.
Descartes critcism of sense experience.
It can be mistaken, possibly misled by some demon.
Cogito.
‘I think therefore i am.’
How does Descartes suggest the mind and body are interconnected.
A pineal gland in the brain.
How does Ryle describe Descartes view of substance dualism.
“The ghost in the machine”.
What type of philosopher is Gilbert Ryle.
An analytic philosopher.
What is the purpose of an analytic philosopher.
To provide conceptual clarity.
Ryle’s critique of Descartes.
Descartes is guilty of a category error.
Category error.
Assuming two things to be of the same logical type when they are of different types.
Peter Geach on substance dualism.
“It is a savage superstition to suppose that a man consists of two pieces.”
John Hick on the soul.
We are our bodies but our bodies have a spiritual dimension.
Reductionist.
Belief everything can be reduced to statements about physical bodies.
Behavourism.
Belief all mental states are simply learned behaviours of bodies.
G.E.M Anscombe’s contribution.
That statements about the physical body can describe what we do but not why we do it.
Dawkins’ soul one.
Seperate substance of traditional thought.
Dawkins’ soul two.
Intellectual and spiritual power, morality, feeling and imagination.
Dawkins on consiousness.
That it is a mystery but will someday be able to be explained through enquiry into DNA.
B.F. Skinner.
Believes what we call mental states are merely learned behaviours connected to be body.
Daniel Denett’s book criticising behaviourism.
“Skinner skinned.”
Dennett’s criticism of Skinner.
That he wrongly assumes what is true for animals is true for us.
Cottingham on Descartes.
Suggests he can be read differently, as arguing we are made up of body, soul and spirit as experience of passions, emotions, etc cannot be directly categorised into either body or mind.
Language issue in discussion of the soul.
There is no unanimous agreed definition.
