Soul mind and Body Overview

Soul - understood as a non-physical essence of a person

Substance - subject that has different properties associated with it

Dualism - Belief reality can be split into two part, physical and non physical

Substance Dualism - Belief that mind and body exist as 2 distinct and seperte realities

Materialism - Belief that only phusical matter exists, the mind is merely chemical activity

Reductive materialism - View that mental events are identical with physical processes in the brain, our brains chemistry and action is us

Was a dualist, soul is eternal and essential. Soul leaves the body after death, example of a car being driven where the car is the human body and the soul is the driver, the driver eventually gets out and moves on. Believed in a chain of Rebirth: life, death and rebirth to live again

Metaphor of the chariot, appetite and emotion are the horses and reason that governs the two horses is the driver. The guiding hand is needed to avoid overindulgence. The horses represent the needs of the body and the driver the soul.

Also suggested Myth of Er, Er is dead for 12 days but didnt rot and reawakens. Tells the observers of his visit to the afterlife. Good deeds earned rewards and the soul was judged before being reborn

Dualism suggests some part of permanent and some temporary, and he linked this to the world of Forms. To him the soul is the reasoning aspect of our being that revisits the world of forms and is reborn again.

Disagreed with Plato, Materialist. though some disagreement over if he truely was a materialist. Considered the soul to not be invisible object that leaves us after death, its a part of us that grants the body its abilities. It is the essence of humans. Example that an Axe is an Axe because it has the essence of a An axe which is chopping

Proposed 3 types, Plants have vegetative souls that can reproduce and self nourish, animal souls can experience and sense the world with pleasure or pain and the human soul can reason and make moral decisions. It is our characteristics not a separate entity

Example of the eye, its 'essence' if it had its own soul would be to see. WIthout this ability it is merely matter that looks like an eye but is not one.

Body and soul are inseperable, after death the soul also dies. Popular belief with non-religious followers and philosopher

Was a dualist, saw a clear distinction between soul and body in Discourse and Meditations.

Set out to know what we could prove with certainty. Proposed Hyperbolic doubt, Rejecting everything that had even a small about of doubt to its trueness. This method allowed him to establish what endured and was stable. He concluded that the only certainty was his reasoning existed, as he could not be decieved about that. 'Cognito ergo sum'. Basically our senses could be decieved so we cant know anything but our abilty to reason is real

But our knowledge of the body is based off sense, so we cannot prove it exists with certainty. this told him that our Mind and Body must be different substances, we cannot doubt the existence of the mind but we can the body

Also suggested the body, or physical self, could be divided into parts while the mind, spiritual self, could not. Suggested the pineal gland, a small gland in the very center of the brain, was the 'seat of the soul'. As we have doubles of everything else, lungs, kidneys, hemispehres etc but only one of that and in the very center it must be the link between material body and immaterial soul.

Flew (2001) in his book 'Merely mortal: can you survive your own death' argues talk of life after death with the soul living on is non sensical. Compares it to 'Alice in wonderland' and the fake grin of the Chesire Cat, makes no sense to say a Grin exists without a face for it to be on

Aristotle - Believed our intellect lived after death, soul describes our form and makes us recognisable

Ward - Gensis shows humans are more than just mental or physical, God breathed life into us and that relationship persists

Swinburne - Materialism doesnt explain logical reasoning, complex thought or morality. The soul is all that truely explains it

Hume - Cannot say that thinking is anything other than a physical process as we have no evidence to suggest otherwise

Dawkins - rejects all spiritual soul ideas 'there is no mystic jelly'