Body & Soul

Not the best but its the most I could think of at this point in time, sorry :).

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  • Created by: Charlotte
  • Created on: 16-05-13 21:03
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  • Body & Soul
    • Plato
      • Substance Dualist
        • body (physical world) and soul (realm of the forms)
      • Charioteer
        • EAR - Emotion, Appetite & Reason. The two horses represent emotion and appetite and they lead the reason. E & A are bodily desires and reason is a soul desire.
        • Illustrates the divide between the sou'd desires and the bodily desires. The soul is the chariot being lead by mind and body (2 horses). Both of these pull in different directions, but the soul tries to direct them in harmony.
      • Soul is unchanging, eternal, immortal and simple (cannot be broken down)
      • Body is physical and the soul is spiritual. The body is everchanging and cannot gain knowledge from it. Soul is eternal, unchanging and temporarily attached to the body. - suggests reincarnation?
      • Soul lives on and body dies after death. The soul can survive disembodied, which is without a body (time between old body and new body). **essential for soul to exist after death as life is the essence of what a soul is.
      • 'Psyche' = real part of the person that is temporarily attached to the body, immortal and lives on after death. Consists of hopes, motives, opinions and emotions.
      • Arguments: Argument from oppisites and Argument from knowledge
        • Argument from oppisites: qualities exist by depending on the oppisite, e.g. dark comes from light and life comes from death etc. This has to be true for them to have meaning.
        • Argument from knowledge: our encounters of the physical world are actually memories and knowledge that our soul experiences before birth, e.g. slave boy in Meno. This supports immortality of the soul and gives evidence to show our souls once lived in the world of perfect forms disembodied.
    • Aristotle
      • Soul is the form of the body e.g. wax stamp as they are inseparable.
      • Hierarchy of souls = nutritive, perceptive (humans, capacity for appetite and emotion) and vegititive (plants, these have powers of growth etc).
      • There is no definition of the soul, because it is absurd to give a general definition like Plato does.
      • The soul animates the body, to organise a potential living body into an actual living body.
      • The soul is an integral part of the body and you cannot have one without the other.
      • Soul is a 'substance' (essence) and it remains the same whilst the body changes.
      • Analogy of the axe - If an axe were a living thing then its body would be made of wood and metal. However, its soul would be the thing which made it an axe i.e. its capacity to chop. If it lost its ability to chop it would cease to be an axe – it would simply be wood and metal.
      • No life after death because the body and soul are inseparable.
    • John Hick
      • 'Replica' theory: John Smith
        • At the point of death, God creates that person (replica) and put into another space with the same memories (key to identity). But an person with altzeimers still a person.
        • First : John Smith in London, he dissapears and reappears in NY and is accepted as John Smith. Second: John Smith dies in London and a replica appear in NY. Third: John Smith dies in London and a replica appears in an outside world.
        • Only one replica because God created that replica. and not copy because there can be more than one copy...
        • Pyscho-somatic unity = we are a mind/body unity but emphasis on personality.
      • Materialist (body + mind = 1)
      • Believed in God and life after Death
      • Fatal Flaw: Hick admits that the fatal flaw is that the replica would have to be in the condition of the dying person, e.g. amputee. Hick says personality is most important, why do we need a physical resurrection?
    • Dawkins
      • Materialist
      • Soul 2 - is more likely to be closest to the soul. Result of evolutionary process. It is intellectual or spiritual power. High development of the mental facilities.
      • Soul 1 - killed by science, DNA etc. Immaterial. (the floaty soul)
      • Meme is an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture e.g. fashion. - We evolve through culture.
      • No life after death as there is evidence of the body perishing after death. There is no empirical evidence to suggest an afterlife. No meaning for human existence once dead. Consciousness is caused by purely physical phenomena & this ends at death.
      • The selfish gene - evolution occured through the survival of competing genes.
      • There is no soul, life is just made up of DNA.
      • No part of a person that is non-physical. The consciousness cannot be separated from the brain because nothing exists except matter.
    • Aquinas
      • the soul is what makes us living.
        • first principle of life for humans
      • influenced by Aristotle.
    • Descartes
      • You can define a body 'this is  body' but cannot say 'this is a mind' because a mind isn't by nature divisible.
      • Pineal gland is the seat of imagination and common sense, so it can be the link between body and soul. His argument is that all parts of the brain are in pairs, aswell as limbs etc, therefore because the pineal gland is singular part of the brain, then it is home of the single thought.
      • Descartes held that one has a mind and a body, each of which is a separate and distinct "substance.
      • The mind is non-corporeal (non-bodily) substance, which is distinct from the material or bodily substance.
    • Gilbert Ryle
      • Rejects the idea of the soul. All mental events are physical events interpreted in a mental way. But what if for example we were wishing? This is not a physical event. He believes that an individual is a physical living body and no more, and so when the body dies that’s it, the whole person is dead.
      • 'Ghost in the machine' - dualism has made it sound as if it is a ghost (soul) rattling around in the machine (body).
      • Criticises descartes
      • Descartes is making a category error because mind/soul is not the same category as body. e.g. university example, if you see the canteen and the classrooms, you can't say 'where's the university?' You can pinpoint the canteen but not the uni.
      • Problems with dualism because they try to make distinctions e.g. pair of gloves/ left & right glove.

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TheLiterary

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Very detailed- thanks!

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