Soul, Mind and Body

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Plato and The Soul
Thought there was no permanence in visible things = seeked for a permanent and certain thing. Permanence cannot be sought in this visible world/ must exist in the spiritual world. Adopted the soul as immortal = cannot be destroyed
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Plato: Phaedo
‘The soul is in the very likeness of the divine and immortal, intelligible and uniform’
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Relationship of Body and Soul in Plato
Soul = physce How does the spiritual body interact with the material body? – Plato fails to answer with clarity Soul – desires to get out of it inferior body Plato’s Forms (especially the Good) is based on assumptions – he assumes brain knows
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What is a Phantom (Plato)
ignorance, fear, violent desires and other human ills. However a polluted and impure soul leaves the body it is bewitched with physical desires and pleasures to the extent to which nothing else exists except the physical.
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What creates a Phantom
If the soul is accustomed to hate and fear and is dim and unintelligible the soul doesn’t escape pure and by itself. In fact it leaves heavy, ponderous, earthy and visible. It looks dragged back to the visible region in fear of the unseen and Hades.
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Cont...
It wonders around graves and monument as shadowy phantoms like a ghost. Plato therefore believes ghosts as impure souls who have left the body unreadily with bodily parts still attached to them. They then cannot face Hades and instead wonders graves
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Plato and Christianity
His view = non Christian /soul – eternal by nature /undestroyable /simple substance The soul is without beginning / however Christians believes God created every soul from new (conception) / Plato’s thinking denies omnipotence /
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Cont...
says nothing can destroy a soul = denying the existence of God / immortality in a soul considered a gift from God not a right to every soul
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Aristotle and the soul
Aristotle thought the formal cause of the soul = to give life/is the body Otherwise we are just material causes = body/flesh/bones/meat
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What did he think the characteristics of the soul where?
The soul = not simple / not immortal When the soul dies = life dies / the person has gone Believes reason lives on rather than the soul More materialist view on the matter / matter needs too the soul to live - heirachry of the soul
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Similarties in Plato's thinking
• The belief that the soul has the 3 elements • The vegetative soul – shared with all living things (inclu. Plants) • Appetitive soul – find passions and appetite e.g. hunger thirst anger, sadness – found in animals and humans •
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Intellectual soul
• Intellectual soul = rational/directive / thinks about things and decides our actions /includes memory and reflection of our past – only humans have this
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Substance Dualism
Dualism: the view that we are we made up of two different elements – a material body and a spiritual soul however they are both linked
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Monism
: the view that we simple and single beings – ‘I am a body’ rather than ‘I have a body.’- thinking is just something human bodies do E.g. Amoeba (organism) splits itself in two for physcological and biological reasons
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Descartes and Substance Dualism
Believed Mind and brain = different substance / mind and body have interaction 4. Says sense experience may be mistaken and sense may be misled by a, malicious demon 5. Therefore the body and the material world may be an illusion 6.I think therefore.
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Difficulty with Descartes
If the mind is spiritual and we have bodies, which are non-spiritual and material, how do they interconnect? Body is referenced in mechanical terms Claims the penal gland = where imagination and common sense = link between the body and soul = link?
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Gilbert Rye
"The Concept of the Mind" says soul = 'ghost int he machine'/ As an analytical philosopher he was not trying to create an alternative theory – attempted to provide clarity Not a materialist as he considered the reduction to the material to be mista
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Why did he reject Descartes theory
Work = exploration of consciousness Thought Descartes was guilty of category error – assumed the mind and the body is of the same logical type
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Examples:
1. A foreign visitor went to Cambridge – shown different aspects of the University – museum the colleges and the offices but asks where is the university – category error. He believes the University is separate – fails to realise that all = uni
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Why is Descartes guilty of this error?
Descartes guilty of the error = assumes that causes, sensation or events must either be mental/physical – presupposed unjustified assumption Ryle’s argument = holistic – not a denial of the mental or saying that the mental is just material
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Peter Geach
‘It is savage superstition to suppose that a man consists of two pieces: body and soul
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John Hick
Rejected Plato = thought bodies had a spirtual dimension Reductionist: no mind without matter/ to be a person is to be a thinking material Behaviorist: mental depends on the body – more than a reacti0on to stimuli We are just material being
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G.E.M Anscomber
She considers the phenomenon pointing If you point at something = the mere action of the body is not the whole meaning Not clear whether you are pointing at the texture or the design feature Meaning and significance cannot be deduced by the gestu
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Cont...
but by the physical description could describe how a body is working however not why it is working Impossible to point without a body – e.g. a disembodied soul Argues that the act is ‘man qua spirit’ – the act of a whole human
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Materialism
- Philosophical view that that only physical matter exists. In terms of humans we are only made up of blood nerves and cells. - We are only made up of physical processes s - Rejection of substance dualism does not entail materialism
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Richard Dawkiins
Materialist = rejects disembodies soul referenced by descartes and Plato = no empiricalecidene for such entity = mocks reliious believer Acknowledges the mystery of consciousness - however scientific enquiry into DNA which should explain phenome
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Soul 1 and Soul 2
One is the separate substance of traditional thought – rejects this as primitive superstition Soul two = intellectual and spiritual power/higher development of feeling and imagination – rooted in the body/ precise nature yet to be explained
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Behaviourism
Another type of materialism Sees human thought as simply learned behavior B.F. Skinner – believed mental events = learned behavior / rejected the idea of the mental state is separate to the body Supported his work with much scientific work – Pavlov
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Objections to Behaviourism
Daniel Dennett – argued that skinner over simplifies human consciousness Skinner Believed conscious was the same amongst all living things Dennett argued that there are not similarities between humans believed futher expl not learned behaviour
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Counter Critics: John Cottingham
: challenged Descartes as a dualist - argues that we are made up of body, soul and spirit If we are made up off two substances – mind and body according to dualists- then passion emotions and sensations cannot be reduced to one category C
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His viewpoint..
also direct us to the fact that there are no precise definition of the body, soul, mind, consciousness Plato’s view = largely influenced by his search for certainty in an uncertain world
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Descartes/Skinner View
flows from his model of enquiry, which begins with consciousness and contrasts it with the external world Skinner based his interpretation on animal experiments
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Against Dualism
Many disagreed with Anthony Flews materialist view of the soul/ thought body dualism = nonsensical /soul exists as a separate substance / mind = material E.g. the grin of the Cheshire cat = like the soul / separate from the cats face
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Cont
Some may argue with reductive materialism – that we are more than living, thinking, feeling beings – more than just bodies. Emotions give rise to physical symptoms (e.g. stress)
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Supports Dualism
Swinburne: human soul = unique / capable of logical, ordered, complex thought / aware of its freedom / moral obligations / can recognize the goodness in others / conscience tell us what is right
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2-
Argues that the mind and the body cannot be identical because they have different properties / the body has a thought / the mind does not = difference
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3-
Ward and Swinburne argue that the soul is more than just word for physical behavior – capable after the death of the body
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4-
Ward = without being in the soul/ morality becomes a personal choice/taste / no special dignity between humans and animals / no final purpose for a human/ Materialist views (Dawkins) diminishes our moral currency because there is no SOL
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

Plato: Phaedo

Back

‘The soul is in the very likeness of the divine and immortal, intelligible and uniform’

Card 3

Front

Relationship of Body and Soul in Plato

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What is a Phantom (Plato)

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What creates a Phantom

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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