Soul, Mind and Body

Question 1

Plato:

Answer 1

Body and soul are separate, death is freeing the soul, the soul wants to get to the world of the forms, the body is a distraction to this goal because it has needs, the soul has three parts - logic, appetitive and spirited, logic tries to control the other two parts to direct towards the world of the forms - dualist.

Question 2

Aristotle:

Answer 2

The soul is the form - the characteristics and functions of the body, can’t be separated from each other, like a wax seal - the body is the wax and the soul is the imprint, or like an eye - the physical thing is the body, sight is the soul. Hierarchy of souls - all living creatures have them, but some are better - vegetative (plants), sensitive (animals, which have desires so can move) and rational (people, which have reason). Dead things aren’t the thing they were, only in name, because the function is gone so the soul is gone. Reason is the only thing that lives on, but not in a personal sense, because it’s more like the nature of Karen the Toaster. Not quite materialist, but not very dualist either.

Question 3

Descartes:

Answer 3

c

Question 4

Gilbert Ryle:

Answer 4

d

Question 5

Dawkins:

Answer 5

e

Question 6

John Locke:

Answer 6

f

Question 7

John Hick:

Answer 7

g

Question 8

Plato’s arguments for the soul and criticisms:

Answer 8

1. Everything depends on opposites for existence - there is no concept of large without small, so from life comes death and vice versa, so we must have a soul to be reborn - but how do we know Everything has an opposite?
2. We have innate a priori knowledge so we must have gotten this from the world of the forms so a soul must exist to get that knowledge - but can it ‘see’, since it has no physical body, and are we a person without a physical body? Also depends of flawed world of the forms theory