SOUL, MIND & BODY Flashcards
What category is Plato?
A dualist.
What does Plato state about the body?
The body is subject to the empirical world so can change and decay so sense are not reliable guides to the truth.
Give a quote from Plato about the body.
“The body is the source of endless trouble … diseases… lusts and fears.”
Why is the soul more important than the body according to Plato?
It enables knowledge and is eternal.
What is the present for dualism according to Plato?
Tension between body and soul. The body is a prison, and at death, the soul will be liberated from it.
How is Plato’s view criticised?
A belief in the immortality of the soul depends on us accepting all of Plato’s beliefs about the forms and the nature of knowledge.
What does Aristotle disagree with Plato about?
The concept of ‘forms’.
What does Aristotle see the soul as?
The formal cause of the body; the characteristics and attributes that we all have.
What analogy does Aristotle use for the soul?
If the body were an axe, the soul would be its ability to chop - no soul without body.
How does Descartes critique Aristotle?
Not possible to doubt that I exist as a ‘thinking thing’ - when we think, there must be something doing the thinking.
What does Richard Dawkins believe about the soul?
We are purely a product of our genes which are only concerned with survival and replication.
What is soul one? How does Dawkins feel about this?
Traditional, view of a separate thing - he rejects this.
What is soul two? What does Dawkins state about this?
Dictionary definition - a meaningful description. Does not refer to a separate thing so Dawkins accepts.
What is monism?
Humans are made of one substance, the physical body.
Who is a monist?
Aristotle
What is soft materialism?
Do not accept that all characteristics are physical ones.
What is hard materialism?
Reject any notion of the mind being separate from the body.
Who is a dualist?
Plato.
What is dualism?
There are two aspects to human beings - a physical body and a non-physical soul.
Give an argument in favour of dualism.
There is an explanatory gap between what we know about consciousness as we experience it and how science describes it.
How does Swineburne defend the notion of a soul?
Fundamental truths about humans cannot be explained in purely physical terms.
What do materialists believe?
Only knowledge we come to empirically is real.
What is Plato’s overall belief of the soul?
Soul as the essential and immaterial part of a human, temporarily united with the body.
What is Aristotle’s overall belief about the soul?
Sees the soul as the form of the body; something which cannot be separated.
Who is a materialist?
Dawkins.
What does Swineburne argue?
Fundamental truths about humans are revealed which cannot be explained in purely physical terms.
What experiment supports dualism?
21 grams experiment.
What is Hick’s replica theory?
He suggests that it is logically possible for there to exist a separate world populated by resurrected persons (‘replicas’) who are brought back to life by God.
What does Williams say in criticism of Hick’s replica theory?
Endless life = meaningless life.
