Mind, Body & Soul

• dualism

  2 parts of the body
• materialism

  the body is one
• Plato - dualism

  • 2 aspects - soul and body
  • soul is immortal
  • the soul is more important than the body
  • the body distracts us from our telos
  • the charioteer analogy
• Plato’s charioteer analogy

  two horses, will and appetite, are controlled by reason

  • white horse, will
  • black horse, appetite
  • charioteer, reason
• Geach (against plato)

  • sight is a sense
  • how can the soul see the forms if it has no senses?
• Dawkins - dualism

  soul = mythological concept

  (soul 1 - spirit and personality & soul 2 - ‘an intellectual or spiritual power’)
• Aristotle - Materialism

  • the soul is a formal cause
  • the soul can’t be divided
  • the soul is not separate from the body
  • there are levels of the soul
  • no soul without the body
  • the soul is not material (monism)
  • 3 elements of the soul
• Ryle - materialism

  • the idea that the body and soul are separate is a “categorical mistake”
  • separation of the two would be needless and improper
  • ghost in the machine analogy
• Hick - materialism

  • influenced by St. Paul
  • mind and brain depend on each other
  • replica theory, God recreates us in the afterlife
  • traducianism, souls given by parents not God
  • allows for life after death
  • rejects substance dualism
• Hick’s replica theory

  once we die, a replica of ourselves is created and the body becomes an inanimate object
• Aquinas - materialism

  the soul is to be united with the body
• Substance Dualism

  • the body (physical) and soul (mental) are completely separate
  • seperate substances with independent existence
• Descartes - Substance Dualism

  • ‘cognito ergo sum’ = i think therefore i am
  • mind (self) is entirely distinct, can exist without it
  • body can be doubted but the soul can’t
  • the soul is not physical
  • the body is physical
  • reason tells us reality
• Russell

  ‘without footballers, football could not exist’, the soul needs the body to exist
• Geach

  ‘a man is a sort of body, not a body plus an immaterial somewhat’
• Aristotle’s 3 elements of the soul

  1. vegetative, share will all living things
  2. appetitive, passions and emotion
  3. intellectual, thinks and decides actions
• the soul in the past

  the soul was in the realm of the Forms and has knowledge of the before being pulled down to earth by appetitives
• the soul in the present

  the soul is incarnated in a body and experiences all the tension of conflict between the body and the soul
• the soul in the future

  the soul will be freed from the body and will be reincarnated into another body or return to the realm of the Forms