Lesson 1 Flashcards
What is the philosophical problem?
Whether the mind and body are one of the same nature (monistic/materialist view) or whether they have two natures (dualistic view).
What happens when a person dies.
Dualist view
Two aspects to human beings, a physical body and a non-physical soul (psyche/self etc)
The non-physical aspect of a person experiences eternal ‘life’ after the physical life.
Monist view
Humans beings are made of one substance, the physical body
They believe in human beings being made up of matter -one substance
A person’s identity is inextricably linked to their physical body so when the body dies, their life ends
Likely to reject LAD because without a physical form ‘life’ cannot be supported
Who is plato?
His belief about the soul is that it is immaterial, and the real self.
It is pre-existent and immortal.
We come back in our next life as something better or worse depending on how we were during our previous life, until we fulfil our potential and enter a type of heaven.
Remember…Plato was a pre-monotheist religion scholar so language like ‘heaven’ ‘hell’ ‘sin’ would not be in his vocabulary.
Aristotle main beliefs
-Humans are made up of two things a body (matter) and a soul or ‘psyche’ (the form)
-The soul is an integral part of the body
-You can’t have one without the other (e.g. a cake cannot be a cake without its ingredients or form). The soul animates the body, by organising a potential living body into an actual living body. Aquinas took on these ideas.
Plato vs Aristotle differences
-For Plato, we have a separate body, conjoined with a soul that has lived before and will go on to live again. Its real home, if you like, is the world of the Forms, not this mundane world - it is trapped in a physical body.
-For Aristotle, the self is what animates you - you are body and soul together, a living, breathing, thinking being. You live and think - that is what makes you a human being.
-Both of those views have been hugely influential. The Platonic view seems to have dominated traditional western religion.
-The Aristotelian one is closer to the medical aspect, where we seek a more integrated view of the person.
Plato vs Aristotle similarity
-Both seem to fit our experience of encountering death:
-Some people, looking at a corpse, feel that the ‘soul’ has gone and that only a shell remains.
-The real person is no longer here and is utterly different from the body. They might therefore tend to take a Platonic view.
-Others sense that the body expressed the person during their life, but has lost its animating principle which made it the person they knew – a more Aristotelian view.
Plato - dualist
-Plato was a dualist.
-He contrasted the flux and change of the empirical world of sense experience with the perfection of the world of Forms - the world of perfect Ideas.
Plato empirical and forms
-In the empirical world, all things decay, but for all empirical objects, Plato reasoned that there exist metaphysical counterparts that do not decay or change.
-All things in the world are particular instances of universal Forms.
-The reason why we can understand that all dogs are dogs, despite the differences between the many different breeds, is that we recognise that Great Danes and Chihuahuas (for example) are particular instances of the Form, Dog.
-The Forms are eternal, perfect, timeless and metaphysical. The ultimate Form is the Form of the Good, because it defines all other Forms.
Plato - mind in forms
-While the physical body is part of the world of the senses, the mind is related to that higher reality of the Forms.
-Plato also argues that only composite things (things made up of parts) can be destroyed or naturally disintegrate.
-But while bodies are composite, souls are non-material and simple (without parts), and therefore cannot be destroyed. Once created, a soul is permanent and cannot die.
How did dualism become popular?
-Dualism became influential by being incorporated into Christian thinking as Christianity spread through the Graeco-Roman world.
-Dualism was a theory that dominated the mediaeval period and was subsequently represented in a rather different form by Descartes.
Plato - 3 parts of psyche
-Plato therefore presents a dualism of immaterial substance: soul (psyche), and physical body. By the time he wrote The Republic, however, Plato had decided that the psyche is more complex than he had previously presented it, and that it is composed of three parts:
1 the logical/thinking/reasoning part which seeks to learn the truth
2 thumos, which means the spirited part of the psyche for example natural pugnacity, courage, righteous indignation or righteous anger
3 the appetitive part, i.e. the appetites for sex, food and drink. So, overall, Plato holds that the soul is separate from the body, but animates and directs it.
Aristotle no distinction between science and religion
-In Aristotle’s day there was no practical distinction between science and philosophy, and most of his work would today be described as science.
-He sorted out living things into different species and categorised them.
-He applied logic and demanded that evidence should be used in putting forward theories.
-So, as we turn to Aristotle’s view of the self, remember that he represented the start of what we may now see as a ‘scientific’ and rational view, examining the distinctive features of human life.
What did Aristotle say was distinctive about humans?
-Aristotle argued that all living things have souls, and that a creature’s psyche is its ‘principle of life’ - that which distinguishes it from a corpse or other inanimate thing.
-But the distinctive thing about humans is that, as well as having a psyche, they are also capable of rational though
What did Aristotle say the should gives?
Aristotle suggests that a soul is what gives something its essential nature
