Soul mind and body

Question 1

soul

Answer 1

often understood to be the non physical essence of a person

Question 2

consciousness

Answer 2

awareness/perception

Question 3

substance

Answer 3

a substance is distinct from its properties.

a thing-in-itself is a property-bearer that must be distinguished from the properties it bears

Question 4

scepticism

Answer 4

a questioning approach which does not take assumptions for granted

Question 5

reductive materialism/identity theory

Answer 5

the view that mental events are identical with physical occurrences in the brain

Question 6

materialism

Answer 6

the belief that only physical matter exists and that the mind can be explained in physical terms as chemical activity in the brain

Question 7

substance dualism

Answer 7

the belief that the mind and body both exist as two distinct separate realities

Question 8

category error

Answer 8

a problem of language that arises when things are talked about as if they belong to one category when they belong to another

Question 9

dualism

Answer 9

the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing

Question 10

idealism

Answer 10

the mind is the only reality and the body is unreal

Question 11

plato materialist/duallist?

Answer 11

dualist
2 separate entities
the body is temporary and houses a permanent eternal soul
the soul is assigned to the body to guide it

Question 12

plato’s argument for the soul living on after death

Answer 12

‘death comes from life and life comes from death’
they are related to each other as their qualities are understood by their relation to each other e.g. big and small
every quality comes into being from its opposite

Question 13

plato

slave boy experiment

Answer 13

an uneducated slave boy was asked a maths questions and was able to solve it, this suggests that the soul has previous knowledge from a life before the boy
the soul has experienced the world of the forms

Question 14

plato

the soul after death

Answer 14

the soul lives on, it is constant and unchanging, exists before birth and after death
after death the soul lives on in a state where it still has thought and intelligence
after death it will be undisturbed by bodily demands so it can reach its highest state
(the body gains knowledge through sense experience but that cannot be trusted)

Question 15

plato’s tripartite theory of soul

Answer 15

reason: highest of the three elements, allows us to gain knowledge and distinguish from right and wrong and understand the forms
emotion: allows us to love and inspires us to act out of courage. needs to be kept in check or we become reckless and conceited
appetite: encourages us to look after physical needs of our body. needs to be kept in check

Question 16

aristotle materialist/dualist?

Answer 16

materialist
the soul and body are inseparable
the soul is a substance that remains the same whilst the physical and emotional person changes throughout their life

Question 17

aristotle: living things

Answer 17

living things are defined by their capabilities
distinguishing between living and dead is distinguishing between what can and cannot be done
‘the soul is the capabilities of the living humans’

Question 18

aristotle: living things

plants

Answer 18

vegetive/nutritive soul
capability to get nourishment for themselves and ensure the reproduction of their species but no ability to reason or make plans

Question 19

aristotle: living things

animals

Answer 19

perceptive souls
they have senses to experience the world around them and they react to different stimuli
enough intelligence to distinguish between pleasure and pain

Question 20

aristotle: living things

humans

Answer 20

high degree soul

ability to reason and tell right from wrong

Question 21

plato and aristotle

similarities

Answer 21

both agree on the existence of the soul

both hold a possibility of god

Question 22

plato and aristotle

differences

Answer 22

plato: dualist, aristotle: materialist
plato: soul existed before birth, aristotle: soul is directly linked to body
aristotle: soul is a substance, plato: eternal

Question 23

gilbert ryle

criticism of descartes/dualism

Answer 23

materialist
in “The Concept of Mind” (1949), he argued that the idea of the soul, which he described as “The ghost in the machine” was “a category mistake”.
he argued that it was a mistake in incorrect use of language, it resulted in people speaking of the mind and body as different phenomena as if the soul was something identifiably extra within a person.
he used the example of someone watching a cricket game and asking where the team spirit was.
in this way, Ryle argued that talk of the soul was talk about the way a person acted and integrated with others in the world, it was not separate and distinct.
to describe someone as clever or happy did not require the existence of a separate thing called mind or soul.
the mind or spirit does not exist hence the phrase there is no ghost in the machine

Question 24

descartes context

Answer 24

17th century scientific revolution
wanted philosophy to have the same kind of certainty and precision mathematics has
believed there was no earthly substances in contrast with heavenly substances
the earth is not uniquely special in its construction, has the same fundamental physical laws of nature

Question 25

descartes books

Answer 25

discourse

meditations: should demonstrate that there is a clear distinction between the soul and the body

Question 26

descartes hyperbolic doubt

Answer 26

wanted to know what could be known with certainty as the senses can sometimes be mistaken, so adopted hyperbolic doubt
by using this method he may be able to establish which beliefs have both endurance and stability
god could be deceiving us
evil demons could exist and be deceiving us
cannot be 100% certain that we are not being deceived about everything

Question 27

descartes: cogito ergo sum

Answer 27

he could not doubt his own existence as a thinker because he would have to exist as a thinker in order to be able to do the doubting: ‘i think, therefore i am’ - ‘cogito ergo sum’

Question 28

descartes: cogito ergo sum in relation to body and mind

Answer 28

descartes knew he had a mind because he could not possibly doubt it without a contradiction, but he could not be certain he had a body. therefore it seemed for descartes that the mind and body had to be two distinct substances
descartes also asserted that the mind and body cannot be the same thing because they have different properties
the body has different parts (head, legs, ribs etc) whereas the mind does not

Question 29

descartes pineal gland

Answer 29

descartes theorised that the pineal gland at the centre of the brain contained air like animal spirits which controlled imagination, sense perception, bodily movement and memory
other parts of the head are double (eyes, ears, hemispheres) but there is a singular pineal gland in the centre of the brain
the singularity on the pineal gland strongly suggested that is could be the connecting point between the material person and the immaterial soul

Question 30

materialist criticism of dualism

criticism of descartes

Answer 30

he has done nothing to demonstrate that the mind is a substance, merely asserted it
it could be argued that his view creates big difficulties such as how the mind and body interact in the way that they do
-we do not just notice our bodies are damaged when we are hurt in the same way we notice a dent in a car, we actually feel the pain and it causes mental consequences such as distress
-substance dualism cannot explain how mental thoughts can cause physical responses such as how my mental decision to go somewhere can result in me walking or how my feelings of embarrassment can cause me to blush.
-substance dualism also creates what is known as ‘the problem of other minds’ if the mind is separate from the body then we can only perceive that other people have bodies but we have no way of knowing that they have minds

Question 31

materialist criticism of dualist

antony flew

Answer 31

to speak of someones mind/soul/personality as if it were a substance is a misuse of the term
for flew to refer to a mind/soul/personality is to refer to the behaviour of the material physical person and no more
so there could not be a survival of the mind/soul/personality after the death of the physical body because the physical body no longer has any behaviour

Question 32

dualist responses to materialist criticisms

response to antony flew

Answer 32

those who believe that the soul is linked with but not identical to a persons physical body maintain that it can make sense to speak of a soul or a personality surviving death and continuing to live a new mode of existence
plato/descartes/swinburne argue that the soul is more than just a physical behaviour and can be capable of independent continued existence after the death of the body

Question 33

dualism: language

Answer 33

some people may argue that we can see a flaw in reductive materialism if we think about the way we use language
we may talk about ‘emily’ and also ‘emily’s body’ but the terms are not used in exactly the same way.
we would not say that ‘emily’s body went to the theatre’ because this would imply that her mind was elsewhere, and if we were told that police had found emily’s body in her back garden we would not assume that she was gardening but that she was dead.
perhaps this demonstrates that when we are living, thinking, feeling beings we are more than simply bodies

Question 34

keith ward

against materialism

Answer 34

the bible says ‘god took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live’
for keith ward it is important that people do not abandon the idea of the soul because in his view if we take a the materialist view that we are no more than physical matter then our moral currency is very much diminished and we no longer think of each other in the terms of the sanctity of life

Question 35

dualist responses to materialist criticisms

speaking of the soul as a metaphor

Answer 35

speaking of the soul metaphorically may talk of an empty house with no furniture/artwork as having no soul or may say someone has put their heart and soul into a project.
we would be using the term soul metaphorically to refer to warmth or effort
the soul is better understood as a metaphor as a way of trying to capture what it means to be human, the importance of human life and the impressiveness of human
the could avoid issues of where the soul is located or how it is attached to the body or where it comes from

Question 36

does discussion of a mind body distinction always involve a category error (ryle)

Answer 36

someone being shown around the colleges of oxford university and then asking ‘but where is the university’ not realising that the university of oxford was not a separate and distinct thing in itself but was the whole collection of colleges and faculties
many people would support this view and say that to think of the mind and body as distinct things is just the result of taking the metaphor of the soul or mind too literally (materialists)
others may disagree saying that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and perhaps this is true of the human person. it could be argued that a village is more than just the buildings and numbers of individual inhabitants, but there is also something extra: a community spirit and history which are intangible but part of what it means for a village to be a village
perhaps people who speak of human beings being something more than just the physical body are not just making a mistake but are trying to express something intangible which is nevertheless real and important

Question 37

richard dawkins

Answer 37

the god of the gaps, fills in where we dont have answers and will disappear when science can answer

Question 38

richard dawkins materialist/dualist?

Answer 38

following on from aristotle, consciousness is a physical phenomena, there is no possibility of life after death

Question 39

richard dawkins: the selfish gene

Answer 39

humans are nothing more than survival machines

humans are the vehicles of genes only interested in their survival through reproduction

Question 40

richard dawkins soul 1 and soul 2

Answer 40

soul 1: he rejects, it is distinctive, spiritual and supernatural, capable of knowing god and surviving death
soul 2: he accepts, it is aristotlean, a view of our personality, identity and choices.

Question 41

richard dawkins on religious beliefs

Answer 41

wishful thinking of those fearful of death and lacking courage