Body and Soul

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  • Body and Soul
    • Dualist = there is life after death
    • Materialists = tend to reject l.a.d but can believe in bodily resurrection
    • Monists = there is only one substance - matter, no l.a.d
    • Plato
      • Dualist - our souls have no beginnings and no ends.
      • Analogy of the charioteer in charge of two horses: there are 3 aspects of the soul REASON (charioteer), SPIRIT and DESIRE (horses)
        • The soul works best when reason is in charge as the horses try to pull different ways. A good persons soul is properly balanced
      • The soul enables us to have knowledge as it is 'simple' and cant change. i.e the knowledge of beauty is known
      • In the future the soul will be free and reincarnated into another body or returned to the realm of forms
      • Geach rejects Plato as it questions disembodies souls as seeing is a process linked to the body and senses
    • Aristotle
      • The soul is the formal cause of the body
      • the soul is the 'psyche'
      • The soul CANNOT be divided from the body... WE ARE BODY AND SOUL
      • If the body were an axe, the soul would be it's ability to chop
      • The  human soul has two parts the rational and irrational
        • Every living thing has a soul (plants etc) but their souls are just irrational
      • Does present a case that intellectual thought could possibly be eternal
      • The soul cannot survive after death
    • Descartes
      • Heir of Platonic thought
      • Realised that it could be logically possible to doubt the existence of the body (the matrix)
        • However it is not possible to doubt 'I' exist as a thinking thing as there must be something doing the thinking
          • There must be something doing the thinking = the mind or soul.. I AM MORE THAN JUST A BODY
            • Realised that it could be logically possible to doubt the existence of the body (the matrix)
              • However it is not possible to doubt 'I' exist as a thinking thing as there must be something doing the thinking
                • There must be something doing the thinking = the mind or soul.. I AM MORE THAN JUST A BODY
      • Gilbert Ryle
        • Descartes' belief in the soul was a category mistake
        • E.G. A foreign visitor is given a tour of oxford uni.. he sees the colleges meets the lecturers but then after asks "where's the university?"
          • So, just as the visitor makes a category mistake thinking there was something over and over what he'd seen, dualists make the same mistake with the soul
      • John Hick
        • Replica theory presents a way in which bodily resurrection can be understood
          • Essentially, if someone were to die, there is a possibility that their replica is recreated by God in another world and is identical
            • Christian link = close to what St. Paul teaches in 1 corinthians 15
          • A replica is NOT the same as a copy as copies can be made hundreds of time
            • There is only one 'replica' as each person can only exist at one place at one time, as people are individual
        • Rejects dualism but is a materialist
        • Hick does not completely rule out the possibility that the mind and body are different entities
        • We are 'psycho-somatic unity' = a unity of physical body and mind or soul
      • Richard Dawkins
        • We do not have a soul as he believes no part of a person is non-physical - we are a vehicle of genes
        • Consciousness is caused purely by physical phenomena - electro-chemicals in brain
          • Consciousness cannot be separated from the brain
        • Man is a special case wonderful aspect of evolution
      • MERRY CHRISTMAS

    Comments

    Grace Lidgett

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    I made a slight mistake on Dawkins, although at first glance he seemed like a monist, he is infact an extreme materialist.. sorry!!

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