soul mind and body Flashcards
The mind body question
connection between our physical mass and the vividness of conscious thought
many argue soul is real you and what goes onto the afterlife whereas some take materialist view towards body and that there’s no ‘me’ beyond and above meat,bones etc of my body
Plato’s view of the soul?
Deeply influenced by Pythagorean thought
Distinction between psyche and material body
Plato sought something permanent so adopted the idea of the soul in the spiritual world as immortal
Difficulty with Plato’s theory ?
Interaction between the dualism of mind and body…Plato’s soul ultimately desires to get out of the inferior body in which it is trapped
For Plato death is nothing to fear and a chance to return to the pure essence of things
Plato and Christianity
Plato believes the soul is mortal so Christian’s would argue this contradicts the omnipotence of god
Plato influences on Scientology : soul = good body= not good etc
Aristotle and the soul?
He doesn’t believe in personal survival after death
Believes soul has three elements
Aristotles three elements of the soul
Vegetative appetitive and intellectual
Vegetative soul?
Shared with all living things including plants
Appetitive soul
Where we find passion and appetites e.g. Sexual desire and emotions
Animals and humans only
Intellectual soul
Rational and includes power of memory etc
Belongs only to humans
Aquinas and the legacy of Aristotle
’ the soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body; just as heat… is not a body but an act of the body’
He doesn’t say that the soul IS me also like Aristotle
’ the human soul is incorporeal ‘
What is dualism
The belief that we have two elements - body and soul
What is monism
The view that we are one substance not two
Descartes and substance dualism
Found in meditations (1641) :
‘ I think therefore i am’ - cogito
Substance dualism : two elements are wholly different substances
Gilbert Ryle
1900-76
Used term ghost in the machine to describe Descartes view…mind is the pilot of the body when the body is a mechanism itself
Complaint against Descartes: category error
Ryles category error
Mistakingly treating something as being of one type when it is of a different sort
John hick
1922-2012
Opposes platonic view of soul as in Christian
‘ soft materialism’
Not reductionist but more than behaviourist
We are material beings but that doesn’t mean we are only material beings
Reductionism
Belief that everything can be reduced to statements about physical bodies
Behaviouralism
All mental states are simply leaned
Materialism
Philosophical view that there exists only physical matter
Anything said about a person is absolutely reducible to sentences and physical processes
Richard Dawkins
1941 to now
Materialist thinker
Rejects notion of disembodied soul and even mocks religious believers
Objections to behaviourism
Daniel c dennet
Humans don’t just learn behaviour for we do things out of human desire
