Talk about the soul rests on a categorical error. Disscus

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  • Created on: 20-02-20 20:34

Talk about the soul rests on a categorical error. Disscus

Advantages

  • Gilbert Ryle - 'Ghost in the machine' - the idea of a soul is a category error - an incorrect use of language. The souls are not extra within a person. He uses the example of the cricket game - you cannot have the game without the team spirit - there is no separation. To talk of a soul is to describe the way someone acts much like a metaphor. No afterlife!
  • Flew - within his essay “can a man witness his own funeral?” He argues that it is nonsense to talk of the soul outliving the body, it is a misuse of term. The soul refers to the behaviour of  the physical. He uses the analogy of the Cheshire cat . He argues that there is no life after death.
  • Skinner - he is a behaviourist and believes that all thought and non physical events are learnt behaviours. Suggesting that the mind is separate from the body is a misunderstanding. There is no afterlife, it is just wishful thinking.
  • Dawkins - he argued that the view of people having an immortal soul is nonsense. He preferred the Aristotelian model of the soul. He didn't believe in the soul or any non-physical elements - only the physical. The only afterlife we have is in memory and DNA. He argued that we are “survival machines” and that life is just “bytes of information”, we are just computers made of meat and one day we will run out.

Disadvantages

  • Aquinas - he believed that the soul was the principle of life. Aquinas took a lot of his thinking off Aristotle by saying that the soul animates the body until death. The soul carries on into the afterlife and comes face to face with God (Beatific vision). It operates independently from the body. He does not suggest that animal souls live on but the human soul can. Although the soul can live independently it can not do its natural functions and so at the point of death it waits for God to reunite it with its body.
  • Descartes - “there is a great difference between a mind and a body”. He could doubt everything but his mind and his thoughts “I think, therefore I am”. He argued that the soul and mind are separate. He believed that the soul lives in the centre of the brain (pineal gland). The mind is private and non-observable with no extensions, it is the root of all feeling and sensations. Whereas, the body has extensions but not thought and is observable and public. He believes that the soul outlives the body and enters the afterlife.
  • Keith Ward - within his book ‘Defending the soul’ he argues that we need a soul to separate us from animals and that the soul gives us purpose . He further argues that there is a life after death.
  • Swinburne - within his book ‘The Evaluation of the Soul’ he argues that there is indeed an afterlife. He also says that the soul is separate from the body as the soul allows us to have a conscience. Swinburne also argues that there are fundamental truths that cannot be explained in purely physical terms.

Evaluation

The view that the soul is separate from the body is unsuccessful as he cannot completely verify it. As a result of this if someone uses the term soul suggesting that it is separate from the body and lead into an afterlife it is a categorical error. it is better to believe that the soul is a metaphor to describe someone's characteristics.

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