Soul mind and body

• Dualism


  seeing mind and body as two different things that interact
• Substance Dualism


  The notion that mind and body consist of two fundamentally different kinds of stuff, or substances.
• Materialism


  Humans are made of one substance and it is physical (material).
• What is a soul?

  The human soul is a spiritual substance that has power to think and to will. The human soul is immortal.
• What is Plato's belief of the soul

  - Essential part of a human

  - Once in the world of the Forms and lives forever

  - Tripartite - appetite, emotion, reason ( charioteer )

  - Uses argument from recollection and argument from opposites
• Plato's argument from recollection

  1)- we somehow do have knowledge of perfect, eternal and unchanging concepts. (i.e) beauty, justice, mathematics, geometrics [perfect circle]

  2)- we have never experienced these concepts of perfection so, we must have gained this knowledge a priori. (makes plato a rationalist).

  3)- we must have somehow gained these concepts before we were born. - therefore there must be a part of us (our soul) which existed in a realm where there were perfect forms.
• Plato's argument from opposites


  - Nothing is the opposite of living

  -Death and life are opposites

  - There must be a soul for there to be an opposite of living
• Criticisms of Plato's argument from recollection

  -Hume respondsthat we can actually create the idea of perfection in our minds even if we have never experienced it. We have take our concept of ‘imperfect’ and simply conceive of its negation: ‘not imperfect’ to gain the concept of ‘perfect’.

  -Justice and beauty are subjective.
• Criticism's of Plato's dualism


  -Brian Davis‘Not everything has an opposite’therefore there does not have to be a permanent part of a person.-Contradicts the Christian view that God created each soul anew, before conception. This is because Plato’s view is a soul without beginning.-Peter Geachquestions what it can mean for the disembodied soul to know the Forms, given that seeing a process that is linked to the body and experienced through one’s senses
• What is Aristotle's ideas of a soul?

  - The soul is a substance ( essence of a thing )

  - 3 types of soul

  - Formal cause of the body
• Aristotle's 3 types of soul

  - Vegetative - ability to provide nourishment (plants)

  -Perceptive

  - Human soul
• Stamp in wax analogy

  A stamp in wax is inseparable from the matter of wax just like the body and soul can't be separated and the soul can't survive without the body
• Aristotle's other examples


  Axe- the soul would be it's capacity to chop, a toy axe does not have the capacity to chop but is still an axe by name
• Criticism's of Aristotle's materialism


  - Does not correspond to any religious tradition-Bernard Williams:If the mind is not linked to the body we would not make things happen in the world- Plato's ideas of the soul
• What was Descartes dualist argument?

  - two distinct substances, mental and physical. A substance is a fundamental type of existence which can't be broken down into anything else. The essence of mental substance is thinking, the essence of physical substance is extension. A thing is extended if it takes up physical space, is located, has coordinates.
• Descartes' Indivisibility Argument


  1) A body is divisible

  2) A mind is indivisible

  C) The mind and the body must be separate substances
• Criticism of the indivisibility argument


  -The mental is divisible.The mind can be divided into perception, memory, emotions and so on. So, the mind and body share the same property of divisibility and thus could be identical.
• Descartes' Conceivability Argument


  1) if my mind is identical to my body then my mind and body would have all the same properties

  2) my mind and body do not have all the same properties

  therefore my mind is not identical to my body
• Criticism's of Descartes conceivability argument


  Masked man fallacy.Arguments reliant on inferring possibility from conceivability are susceptible to the masked man fallacy. Imagine someone heard about a masked man robbing a bank. They can conceive that it’s not their father, but if it really was their father then it’s impossible for it to not be their father, yet that was what they conceived. Therefore, we can conceive of the impossible. In that case, something’s being conceivable does not mean that it is possible.
• -Descartes response


  The masked man fallacy only showswe can conceive of the impossible due to ignorance. The person in the example is ignorant of who is under the mark which is what allows them to conceive of the impossible. However, Descartes would argue that there is no analogous ignorance when it comes to our knowledge of our own mind. In the case of our mind, once properly understood through clear and distinct intellectual perception, there remains no ignorance that could lead to the conceiving of something impossible as happens in the masked bank robber case.
• What is the interaction problem?

  - a criticism towards Descartes' arguments for dualism

  • Physical objects interact through physical properties

  • Mental objects lack physical properties

  • Therefore, mental objects cannot interact with physical objects
• How does Descartes solve the interaction problem

  Descartes tried to solve the interaction problem by suggesting that the mind and body interact at the pineal gland.
• What is reductive materialism?


  Mental states can be classified into different types eg happiness, pain, these link to activities in different parts of the brain.

  Chemical reactions don't cause the emotions they are them.

  Consciousness is physical.
• How did Ryle criticise Descartes?

  ' Ghost in the machine ' - view
• Category error


  A problem of language that arises when things are talked about as if they belong to one category when in fact they belong to another

  - e.g ' where is the team spirit
• Category error related to the mind body problem

  According to Ryle, Descartes baselessly assumes the mind is in the category of 'things' and when he finds that it's not a physical thing he concludes it must be a mental thing. Ryle proposes another option, our word 'mind' does not refer to a thing at all, it actually refers to a sets of behavioural dispositions. Ryle is a philosophical behaviourist.
• Dawkins ideas of the soul

  - Two souls- Soul one the view that the soul is a real thing separate from our body, which Dawkins rejects due to lack of evidence.-Soul two ametaphoricalidea of the soul, as a metaphor for the deep part of our mind and personality where the essence of our humanity is. For example, someone who doesn’t believe in a soul might still say “I felt that in my soul”
• Chalmer's criticism of Dawkins

  distinguishes between the 'easy problem of consciousness', which means figuring out which brain process is responsible for which mental process such as memory, perception or emotion, and the 'hard problem of consciousness', which is what brain process is responsible for consciousness itself.

  -This could be a dualist mental property, but Chalmers admits it could also be a materialist physical property or thing we've not yet discovered.
• Materialist critiques of dualism

  Dualism isn't 💯 because..

  •Flew– life after death where the soul lives without a body makes no sense. He compares it to having a grin without a face. The mind/soul refers to the body's behaviour and therefore makes no sense without the physical body.

  • Explaining the supernatural when describing what it means to be human isn't useful.

  • It isn't tangible, thus we can't experience it empirically and verify that there's a soul to begin with

  • Maybe it's not just recollection that brings knowledge, perhaps experience does.

  -Ryle – dualists are making a category mistake by talking about the mind as if it were separate from the body.
• Dualist critique of materialism

  -Swinburne– truths about people cannot be explained in purely physical terms. The soul is unique and has a sense of morality and rationality. This is what gives us consciousness and is much more than physicality. It is the soul that survives death.

  -Ward– without belief in the soul there are problems with moral choices, they simply become a matter of personal opinions. Take away the purpose of moving towards God.

  -The whole is more than the sum of its parts – a university is more than buildings, there is also a quest for knowledge and understanding. Dualists are not making a category error but seeking to explain something intangible which is still real and important.
• Is the concept of 'soul' better understood metaphorically, or as a reality?

  - Metaphorically (an empty house); no soul refers to no warmth may be better understood to avoid difficulties