Mind, Body and Soul - Everything

Question 1

What did Plato believe in?

Answer 1

• Substance Dualism
• Cannot be destroyed, the soul does not have pieces to be broken into
• The soul moves from body to body

Question 2

Quote Plato in the Phaedo dramatising Socrates death, how nothing is to be feared of death

Answer 2

“The soul is the very likeness of divine… indissoluble, and unchangeable”, “body is in the very likeness of human… dissoluble and changeable”

Question 3

What are some problems with Plato’s theory, or substance dualism in general

Answer 3

• How does the spiritual body interact with the material body
• Plato gives little insight to how this is done - he assumes our mind know how to do something and the whole body just does it

Question 4

What is the assumption Plato makes when speaking about the relationship of the body and soul?

Answer 4

• Assumes reasons are causes, does not explain how the soul does anything
• A reason is the result of a mental thought
• A cause is my conscious decision to act on my reason
• ‘I give you a present because I like you’, ‘I like you’ is a reason not a cause for my action

Question 5

Why is Plato’s view not a Christian view?

Answer 5

• For Plato the soul is without beginning, in Christianity god creates the soul
• To say nothing can destroy a soul would deny the omnipotence of god
• Immortality of the soul to a Christian would be a gift, not a right just granted

Question 6

Which of the 4 causes does Aristotle say the soul is?

Answer 6

The soul is the formal cause of the body, the body is animated by the soul which gives it life

Question 7

What happens to the soul after death for Aristotle?

Answer 7

You are a lump of matter, there is no person left. Matter needs the soul to animate it

Question 8

What are the 3 elements of the soul according to Aristotle

Answer 8

The vegetative soul - shared with all living things, including plants (everything)
The appetitive soul - passions and appetites, e.g hunger. thirst, sexual desire and emotion (humans + animals)
The intellectual soul - rational and directive, decides actions, includes memory power and reflection on past and future (humans only)

Question 9

What did St Thomas Aquinas believe about the soul (Quote)

Answer 9

• He closely followed Aristotles view that the soul is the principle of life
• “not a body, but the act of a body” - Summa Theologica
• Not material and should be understood as the mind, not something separate
• ‘my soul is not me’ it is the principle of life

Question 10

What does René Descartes believe about the soul?

Answer 10

• Extreme Substance Dualism
• The Pineal Gland is the seat of imagination and common sense, the link between body and soul (Treatise on Man)
• Believes sense experience is often mistaken and may be misled by a malicious demon
• Only thing you are sure of is yourself (Cogito, Ergo Sum) therefore body and soul are divided
• Note his notion of damaging your brain causes impairment of senses etc, showing mind is in brain (pineal gland)

Question 11

Quote Descartes on the distinction between mind and body

Answer 11

“great difference between mind and a body, because a body by nature is divisible, but the mind is not” - Meditation VI

Question 12

What are some problems with Descartes view of the soul

Answer 12

• Tells us nothing of how the link is made

- Conversion of mental into physical remains unexplained

Question 13

What does Gilbert Ryle accuse Descartes of doing wrong?

Answer 13

• ‘The Concept of Mind’
• Making a Category Error, assuming that ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are of the same logical type - assumes sentences about causes, sensations or events are either mental or physical, not both
• Describing something as mental does not suggest it is something different from what I as a whole do

Question 14

Give examples Ryle uses when discussing the category error made by Descartes

Answer 14

• Foreigner at a cricket game, having read about it he sees the stumps, the bails, the umpire and fielding positions but asks “But where’s the team spirit?”
• A pair of gloves being different from a matching left and right hand glove

Question 15

Quote Peter Geach on the body and soul question (‘What Do We Think With’, God and the Soul”)

Answer 15

• “In truth a man is a sort of body, not body plus an immaterial somewhat”
• “The only tenable conception of the soul is the Aristotelian conception of the soul”

Question 16

What is John Hicks views?

Answer 16

• ‘Soft Materialism’, we are our bodies but have a spiritual dimension - no mind without matter
• Opposes the Platonic view, un-Christian and believes death is before God and something to be prepared for
• Not reductionist thinking, more than a behaviourist reaction to stimuli
• ‘my soul is not me’ - similar to Aquinas

Question 17

What are G.E.M Anscombe’s views? (Quote)

Answer 17

• Pointing, a description of her gesture would show how she is pointing but not why, Chess piece example
• It is still my body, action would be impossible without it, a disembodied soul could not point
  “this bodily act is an act of man qua spirit”, the action of a human as a whole

Question 18

What is Richard Dawkins views?

Answer 18

• Materialist thinker, but not just reductionism
• Rejects disembodied soul due to lack of empirical evidence
• Has faith in scientific DNA research to explain the mystery of consciousness
• Soul 1 - Separate substance of traditional thought - not primitive superstition
• Soul 2 - Intellectual, spiritual powers and higher development of the moral faculties - precise nature yet to be scientifically explained

Question 19

What is B.F. Skinner’s view (Quote) ?

Answer 19

• Behaviourism
• What we consider mental events are simply learned behaviours
• A separate mental state separated from the body is a radical misunderstanding
• He uses experiments in relation to animals behaviour to support this - Pavlovs dogs - Animals are conditioned to particular behaviours
  “An organism behaves as it does because of its current structure, but most of this is out of reach of introspection” - About Behaviourism

Question 20

How does Daniel C. Dennet object to Skinners theory (Quote)

Answer 20

• Article ‘Skinner Skinned’
• Skinner simplifies the human consciousness, assumes what is true of a pigeon is true of humans
• Human thinking moves beyond the initial desire, ex of book, Skinner’s theory is basic
  “we would have to agree we had no freedom and dignity”

Question 21

What are John Cottingham’s objections?

Answer 21

• We are made up of 3 body, soul and spirit as it would be too hard to put passions, emotions and sensations into just either mind and body
• There are no precisely straightforward definitions of mind, body, soul, consciousness and etc.

Question 22

Who was Plato influenced by and why did he believe what he did about the soul

Answer 22

• Deeply influenced by Pythagorean thought

- Sought something permanent from the impermanent world we live in

Question 23

What is the issue of ‘Am I my body’?

Answer 23

• ‘I feel pain when my hand is hurt’
• Grammar separates the ‘I’ who has the pain from both my hand and the pain
• The hand now sounds like a possession, is it something I have or is it something I am?
• If my leg is amputated am I any less me? If I gain weight am I more myself?

Question 24

What is the issue of ‘Am I my consciousness’?

Answer 24

• Suppose you see a photograph of yourself as a baby, you do not have any conscious recollection of yourself at that point
• Only connection between the baby and ‘me’ is based largely on what other people have told me
• I look nothing like that baby, my cells have died and regrown, am I more ‘me’ now or more ‘me’ when I was a baby?
• If I develop dementia am I any less a human?

Question 25

What is the ‘mind-body question’?

Answer 25

• Asks about the relationship between body and mind
• If we cut open and see a brain it is merely an organ, complex, yet reduced to a physical greyish mass
• What is the connection between this mass and conscious thought?