Soul, mind and body Flashcards
(39 cards)
What does Plato believe about the soul?
The soul and the body are two separate entities. The body is the temporary physical component, but the soul can leave the body and move on.
What does Plato believe about knowledge?
It’s innate.
What argument/example does Plato use to show this?
‘Meno’, a slave boy with no education is given a geometry puzzle to solve with no knowledge of geometry, yet somehow manages to solve it.
What does this show?
Souls have previously lived in the world of the forms.
What metaphor does Plato use about the soul?
A chariot being pulled by two horses.
What does this show?
The two horses are ‘appetite’ and ‘emotion’, without the guiding hand of reason we would be lead astray. The charioteer is reason, who is guiding them.
What can Plato’s view of the soul be called?
A ‘tripartite view’, as it consists of three elements (appetite, emotion, reason)
What didn’t Plato discuss about the soul and body?
How they may be different things or interact with each other.
If they are separate, why can the soul see the forms? Surely that is something limited to the senses.
What is the ‘myth of er’ that Plato introduced?
A soldier called Er died on the battlefield, yet he came back to life. He described the afterlife. Those who were good in their lives went up and rewarded, those bad were punished. Souls would choose a new life on earth.
What did Aristotle view the soul as?
A ‘substance’ and a matter of substance in the body. It gives a living thing it’s essence. It distinguished between a living thing and a dead thing.
What are the various kinds of a soul?
Plants have a vegetative or ‘nutritive’ soul. Can eat, but cannot use reason.
Animals have ‘perceptive souls’, have experience through the world.
Humans have a higher level of intelligence, have ability to use reason.
How does Aristotle try and describe what essence is?
An axe for example is just metal and wood, it being an axe would be it’s essence.
Eye- if the body was an eye, its spark would be seeing.
What would the soul of an axe be?
It’s ability to chop.
What does Aristotle use the stamp to show?
The soul is inseparable from the living body in the same way the shape stamped into block of wax is different to the matter of the wax.
What did Aristotle believe happened to the soul upon death?
The soul dies with the physical body.
Why do people believe humans are different to machines?
Humans have a conscience and ‘mind’, which allows us to have emotions.
What is dualism?
The view that humans can be consisting of two things:
- The physical body
- The non-physical mind
What is substance dualism?
The mind and the body are separate substances that both exist.
What is a property?
Something that cannot exist without substance. Like a rugs properties are it being soft and red. Something without substance cannot have property.
What do substance dualists view as properties of the mind?
Thoughts, intentions, feelings and emotions.
What are the properties of the body?
Height, weight, etc.
What was Descartes’ understanding of consciousness and the body?
He claims every kind of matter in the universe was the same kind of thing. No difference between heavenly substance or earthly substance.
What phrase did Descartes use and what did it translate to?
‘Cogito ergo sum’ ‘I think, therefore I am’. The only thing we can prove exists is our mind because we are thinking.
What was Descartes’ view on dualism?
We have a physical body and a spiritual mind.
