Soul, Mind and the Body

• The Soul:

  • subjects of mental states or spiritual states
  • often referred to the soul as 'self'
  • but self can include the mind and the body
  • presence of God or a higher being in an earthly life
  • enables personalities
  • enables relationships
• Plato on the soul:

  • believes the soul and the body are 2 separate entities
  • the body is temporary, the soul is immortal
  • soul is tramped/imprisoned in the body of humans
  • used Socrates execution to teach that he had not died in vain, because his soul would continue after death.
  • he argues our personalities and or qualities show we have a soul as we all act different
  • Plato argues that knowledge proves we have a soul, as we have knowledge from the World of Forms
• Aristotle on the soul:

  • the soul was a substance and or an essence
  • physical body is in a constant change of state but the essence is the same
  • psyche
  • the soul cannot be separated from the physical body
  • practical point of view
  • everything has a soul
• Aristotle's type of soul:

  He believed everything had a soul -> human, animal and vegetation

  There is a hierarchy of what souls can do, this is the hierarchy=

  1. Reason
  2. Appetitive (wants and desires)
  3. Vegetative (physical ability to grow)

  Humans have: 1,2,3

  Animals have: 2,3

  Vegetation have: 3
• Strengths and Weakness of Plato:

  + explains why we understand key beliefs as souls have been to the World of Forms

  + makes people less scared of death as their soul will live on

  + natural instinct of an immortal soul

  + consciousness

  -we don't know if the soul exists as it isn't physical

  -how can two substances exist as one

  -can't feel or see the soul
• Strengths and Weakness of Aristotle:

  + explains why we have different personalities as the soul defines who we are

  + explains why we don't know where the soul is as it's apart of us

  + explains why plants and animals behave in a certain way

  + no proof for soul's location needed

  + no living after death

  -the mind undermines his theory

  -we don't know if everything has a soul

  -not everything needs a purpose

  -where is a mortal soul

  -no sense of innate reasoning
• Descartes: He was a dualist from 1596-1650. Lived in the time of the Scientific Revolution, and he was a mathematical man. He believed all human knowledge was interlinked. No earthly substances, believed everything was made of the same matter. However, he had to be careful with what he said due the the Catholic Church condemning many who though differently.
• Descartes on the soul:

  • I think therefore I am
  • Mind and the body aren't the same as they have different properties
  • The body doesn't have thoughts but the mind does
  • Suggested the body is spatial but the mind isn't
  • Suggested the body is non-conscious but the mind is conscious
  • Mind influences the body through the pineal gland
  • Soul joins with God
• Substance Dualism is the name given to the view that the mind and the body are separate substances which both exist
• Substance: subject which has various properties
• Properties: can't exist on their own, they need a substance
• Extension: takes up space and has measurements
• The mind =>> intelligence and emotions, separate and thus known as spiritual
• The body =>> consists of physical matter, soul inhabits it
• property dualism: one kind of material, physical substance, but there are two kinds: mental and physical properties
• emergent materialism: physical things become more and more complex -> new properties emerge
• reductive materialism: theory of the mind which has a lot of different names such as identity theory. It means that the mind is not distinct from the physical brain but is identical to it.
• Gilbert Ryle:

  • he believed that dualism was a 'category mistake' as the mind and soul should not be classed as separate
  • he says there is not a 'ghost in the machine'
  • Ryle is not rejecting personalities, he just believes it is not through a spirit
• Ryle and the University:

  Ryle said that a visitor looks around Cambridge university, looking into each building like the library and lecture halls, and then they ask "where is the university?" The university is a collection of parts, not seperate things
• Peter Geach:

  • It is a savage superstition to suppose a man consists of two pieces, body and soul, which come apart at death
• Richard Dawkins:

  • atheist but also materialist
  • to him, DNA is all a person is
  • soul cannot exist, it is a mythical concept invented by primitive people
  • we are merely a product of our genes
  • favourable variation
  • DNA is not kind, it doesn't matter who it hurts
  • no life after a death
  • humans are great, as they are a evolutionary process
• Swinburne:

  • he believes in the soul
  • dualist
  • souls make us who we are
• G. E. M. Anscombe: criticisms of dualism

  • bodily act(s) is the act of man qua spirit => an act of a whole man
  • might describe how the body is working but not WHY the body is working
  • hence body and mind are needed
• G. E. M. Anscombe married to Peter Geath
• if the eye was an animal, then sight would be its soul

  Aristotle
• Aristotle believes the soul is actuality
• 20th Century philosopher David Furley believed that the soul is only ever mentioned when someones life is at risk => near death experience
• Homeric poems show that the soul was portrayed in 2 distinguishable ways:

  1. something that is lost in death
  2. something that travels to the underworld
• Supporter of Aristotle: Aquinas

  • soul is not me but the principle of life
  • life needs to be animated
  • soul is not material
  • the body is necessary for me to be me
• Against Dualism:

  Siddhartha Gautama on his journey to enlightenment nearly died due to to not eating -> given goats milk -> realised he had to keep the body going to reach enlightenment
• Thought and extension can be regarded as constituting •the nature of thinking substance and •the nature of bodily substance; and then they have to be considered as •thinking substance itself and •extended substance itself, that is, as •mind and •body

  Believed by Descartes
• Finally, distinctness of reason ·can be either of two things·.

  (1) There is distinctness of reason between a substance and some attribute of it without which the substance is unintelligible.

  (2) There is distinctness of reason

  between any two such attributes of a single substance. What

  shows us that we are dealing with a distinctness of reason

  of this kind is our inability to perceive vividly the idea of one

  of the two attributes separated from the other
• Pheado 


  Work by Plato, depicting the death of Socrates and introduces concepts of an afterlife. Also introduces the world of the forms
• Plato's Theory of opposites


  Every quality comes into being from its own opposite. Qualities then depend on their status relative to each other e.g. death comes from life
• Plato believes what about the soul?


  Soul split in three: appetite, emotion and reason
• De Anima


  Aristotle's book on psychology. Made clear human souls are unique because they can override instinct, move from potentiality to actuality, and make decisions
• John Searles Chinese Room Thought Experiment:

  • English speaker locked in a room with Chinese letters and a rule book
  • letters come through the door -->> rule book instructs the person to use the Chinese letters and respond in a certain way
  • Chinese speakers outside the door believe they're having a conversation with someone who understand Chinese although this is not the case
  • just like a computer, but opposite to the mind -> mind has thoughts and emotions
• The Turing Test:

  • Human judge has text conversations with both humans + a robot
  • robot ==> has to act like it has human intelligence
  • few succeeded -> trick judges
  • 'Eliza' ~ encourage people to talk more
  • humans attribute intelligence to those not intelligent
  • people are not formulated -> lack of adaptation