EXTRA - Textbook Flashcards
Evaluation of Platos idea of soul
-the sense of souls true home being elsewhere is found in the NT and is view of many Christians
idea of soul as seeking escape from body isn’t typical of Christian thinking:
-Yet for many this idea of essential separateness of the soul fits in with feeling on looking at corpses that something has left it
-there is however no good evidence for metaphysical world of forms
Evaluation of Descartes argument for existence of the soul
- view stated in support of platos dualist ideas apply to Descartes argument
challenges to each of Descartes proof:
-against first proof most philosophers view consciousness or mind as product of brain which itself is a part of physical body
-against second, neuroscience dhows close correlation between mind and brain
-third proof viewed by many as circular argument
Hume challenged the argument- Descartes
-claim that consciousness comes from non material subjects is in fact circular argument
-thought may have a material explanation: this is also most common view of mind in modern thinking
-since souls aren’t located in space how do we know theres only 1 soul
Evaluation of Aristotle idea of soul
-against it is view held by many Christians that at death the soul leaves body to return to its true home
-however many people including many Christian’s think of themselves as an integrated unity
-mind/soul distinct from but at same time inseparable from body
Evaluation of Descartes interactionism
Descartes’ location of the interaction in the pineal gland has been discredited.
• The pineal gland’s function is now known.
• In any case, at best Descartes’ suggestion says where the interaction takes place; it does not explain how.
This is a real problem, given that substance dualism speaks’ of two totally distinct entities.
Gilbert Ryle assessed Descartes’ theory as ‘the Ghost in the Machine’.
• Ryle accused Descartes of making a ‘category mistake.
• Ryle’s point was that we should not expect to find an extra something in the form of a mind over and above the different parts of the body.
To talk of the mind/soul is not to talk of some ‘disembodied ghost’.
Evaluation of hard materialism
• It seems certain that mind and body are closely related. Physical conditions, for instance, often have a strong effect on mental states.
• But hard materialism’s reductionism is very determinist. This is a problem for belief in free will and moral responsibility.
• It rules out any idea of survival after death other than as a memory or through passing on DNA. This is unacceptable for most religious believers.
• There is also what is known as the ‘Hard Problem of consciousness. Consciousness seems so different from the physical brain that it is hard to see how the latter can produce it.
• The physical brain cannot account for qualia, which are the subjective experiences everyone has as a conscious being.
• Dawkins makes sweeping statements.
Richard Dawkins
Dawkins is a hard materialist/functionalist. He argues that:
• Humans are simply carriers of DNA:
• The role of the body is to be a survival machine for genes.
• The good genes survive and the bad ones die out.
• There is no such thing as an immortal soul guiding us. o This is just wish-fulfilment.
• Our only guidance comes from our genetic inheritance. o The only way in which we survive after death is through the DNA that we have passed on.
The only kind of soul that Dawkins considers consists of high intellectual and mental powers.
• But this cannot be separated from the brain.
Consciousness developed due to its survival advantages, but when the body dies, so does consciousness.
Evaluation of DAM
-Dual-aspect monism then can be seen to provide an answer to the issues raised by both dualism and physicalism.
-Dual-aspect monism can combine with Process Theology to provide a different but clear view of life after death, perhaps through objective immortality’ where every person’s experiences would be remembered forever in the mind of God.
• But this seems to rule out any sense of personal existence after death, such as is believed in by most Christians.
• Although some think that God could still grant believers a personal existence after death.
The single substance that underpins mind and body is not yet known.
• But something similar can be seen in quantum theory, where quarks are unobservable, but their existence is essential to particle physics.
Quantum theory also helps in describing the complementary relationship between mind and matter.
Ideas about personal identity
-There are three broad can explore the idea of categories under which we personal identity, though
many people will believe a mixture of these to be the case.
1 Personal identity is physical.
-The physicalist view is that a functioning brain is essential to being a person.
-There are many changes to the body throughout life.
-So bodily identity’ is about spatio-temporal continuity.
2 Personal identity is metaphysical.
-What is real about individuals is their unchanged conscious awareness.
-Campbell used the example of hearing Big Ben striking the hour to argue that there is such a thing as a conscious, self-aware mind.
3 Personal identity is psychological.
-A well-known example of this can be seen in the views of Derek Parfit.
-During our lives there is connectedness to the past and the future, but no deeper and enduring level of ‘self’.
-There is genetic and, in recent cases, psychological continuity with ancestors and, after death, with offspring and descendants.
Possibility of physical existence after death: hard materialist/ physicalist
Hard materialists would say that there is no continuing personal existence after death.
• It makes no sense to think of someone surviving death.
• A person’s identity is linked inextricably to the physical body.
• When our physical life ends, all mental activity comes to an end.
• Functionalism contains ideas of minds being transferred from the brain to be stored and, once the technology is developed, reactivated
• But this is not about the continuation of personal existence after death.
O It could be argued that it is not about any real form of physical survival.
Bertrand Russell
Concepts about surviving death result from the instinctive fear of death.
• The continual change in each of us means that there can be no distinctive identity.
• We are simply a collection of experiences that arises out of memory and habit.
Antony Flew
The concept of life after death is linguistically incoherent.
-Talk of life after death is effectively talking about ‘dead survivors’, which is self-contradictory.
• In speaking about someone, we are referring to a particular person, not a disembodied soul.
• Personal pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘you’ can refer only to living organisms that we can experience or with which we can interact.
Evaluation of hard materialist rejection of belief in LAD
The existence of life after death is incapable of empirical proof.
• But it cannot be proved that there is no life after death.
• Near-death and reincarnation experiences might support the possibility.
-Many Christians believe that Jesus’ resurrection was an actual event.
Hicks replica theory
-Hick was a soft materialist. For him, humans are a psycho-physical unity: when the body dies, so does the soul.
-hick did believe in LAD
-believed claims about LAD are cognitive statements and as such can be debated.
• There were three scenarios to his thought experiment. Note that in each case, the transmitted person/replica had continuity of identity with the person in the first place.
1 A living person transported in the blink of an eye from one part of the world to another.
2 A dead person in one part of the world and the appearance of a
‘replica’ in another.
3 A dead person on earth and his/her appearance as a resurrected person in another sphere.
• Hick did not believe that life after death would be like the third scenario. He was simply trying to stimulate debate by showing that life after death was a logical possibility.
Evaluation of Hicks Replica Theory
If Hick was right in his belief that God is omnipotent, then bodily resurrection must be logically possible.
• His belief, expressed in his theodicy, about future states of existence fits in with beliefs about reincarnation.
• But there are many unanswered questions about the details of the scenarios. For example, the possibility that God could create a number of replicas, each of which would have a different consciousness.