1.1B- Different perspectives of the soul, mind and body Flashcards
Plato’s ideas on the soul
-described as a dualist
-argues our bodies are controlled by the unreliableand imperfect senses, which decieve us
-body is constantly changing; which means there must be something more permanent
-For Plato, the soul is the real, essential part of us, it longs to return to the Realm of the Forms
Plato’s Phaedo
In the book, Plato uses Socrates as a mouthpiece for his belief and to demonstrate the fact that Socreates has educated peoples, post-execution.
‘Socrates’ aruges that the soul lives after death, where it has thought and intelligence, it reaches a higher state post-death.
A soul must continue living as it gives life by definition
It’s contradictory to die
Plato’s Chariot analogy
-Uses a metaphor of a charoit, 2 horeses are ‘appetite’ and ‘emotion’, controlled by the charioteer, or reason.
-without reason, we can be lead astray
-Plato’s view of the soul is called a ‘tripartite’ view.
Plato’s arguments from opposites, recollection and affinity
Opposites:
-everything comes into existence from it’s opposite (rough exists because soft exists)
-The contrast in this cycle in the soul
Recollection:
-explains Plato view of how someone knowing information they should not be expected to.
Affinity:
-To clarify, Plato advanced an argument to distinguish between the Forms and matieral things
-The soul is the only unchanging thing in a changing world.
Aristotle’s ideas on the soul
Aristole’s Dualism-
-His dualism and view of the relationship between the body and the soul was very different from Plato’s
-believed the soul (psyche) was possessed by all living things and not immortal.
-the soul was a substance, the essence of each existing things the ‘life force’.
Aristotle’s De Anima (on the soul)
-Aristole wanted to discover how the world worked.
-He had a written peice, a major treatise, on the soul; he thought the idea of a body without a soul was unitelligible.
Aristotle’s different types of substance
3 kinds of substance-
-Matter (that has potential)
-Form (that has actuality)
-A compound of matter and form
Aristotle’s different types of soul
3 types of soul-
-The nutritive/vegative soul (in plants): have the capacity to take in nutrition, so they can grow/reproduce.
-The sensitive soul (animals): have the capacities of the nutirtive plus being able to move and percieve the world and react to stimuli
-The rational soul (in humans): have the capacities of the other 2 and the ability to think and make qualitative moral judgements.
Ariostotle’s soul
-For him, there are not individual souls there is only ‘soul’
-Different people with a different composition are made alive by the same sense of capabilites, e.g.- the same kind of soul.
Aquinas and the soul
-For him, the soul is “the first principle of life in living things”.
-By this, he means that the soul is the opposite of the body. The body is material, the soul is immaterial.
-He says that the soul can exist aprt from the body after the bodies death because of it’s incorruptability.
The issue for Aquinas
-Aquinas’ conclusion here causes a problem for him
-On one hand, he beleived that the soul is the form of the body, and on the other hand, believed that the ability of humans to use their intellect and reason comes from the soul, not the body
-The issue is that all souls ina body except humans, cannot exist without their body
Substance dualism
-the view that the mind and the body are seperate substances which both exist
-the mind is not physical and is not extended, but has the properties of thought; the physical body vice versa.
Descartes
-favoured a dualistic philosophy
-‘Discourse’, published anonymously, discusses ideas of knowledge, existence of God and the relation of the mind and body.
The pineal gland
Descartes put forward the idea the pineal gland, located within the brain is “where the soul exercises it’s functions”.
Materialism
-Philisophical view that there exists ony physical matter. This means that everything said about a person is absolutely reduciable to setneces about physical processes.
-Some philosophers question whether every act of what we call consciousness is reduciable in this way.
-The modern materialist view assumes that there is no part ofa person that is non-physical
