Soul, mind and body Flashcards
(17 cards)
Plato’s belief on the soul (Rationalist)
The soul is from the world of the forms.
Premise 1: we have a concept of perfect things.
Premise 2: these concepts are beyond our material world.
Meno the slave boy can recall knowledge (anamnesis) which his soul remembers from the world of the forms.
Who disagrees with Plato’s belief on the soul comin from the world of the forms?
Hume- he says we can understand perfect things by experiencing imperfect things.
Plato’s charioteer analogy
The charioteer represents reason and the two horses represent emotion and desire.
Alludes to the belief of a triparte soul- if you don’t use reason then you are trapped in a human body in the cave.
Aristotle’s belief on the soul (weak dualist)
He believed that the soul animates us.
All living things have souls; vegetive soul (plants) , appetitive soul (animals) and rational soul (humans).
What is Aristotle’s wax stamp analogy showing?
He suggests that we can’t have the imprint (soul) without the stamp (our body).
Descartes’ belief about the soul (Substance dualist)
Substance of the physical body (size,hair) and substance of the mind (emotions).
He believed the mind and body were connected through the pineal gland.
Descartes’ famous quote explained
‘I think therefore I am’ (Cogito ergo sum- Latin).
The only thing you can trust is that your mind exists; everything else is up for debate.
Criticisms of Descartes
Ryle- compares his belief to there being a ‘ghost in the machine’ in our minds. There is a category error as Descartes misuses language by calling the mind a substance.
Pineal gland- Science now proves that it has nothing to do with soul and it is all about the hormones.
Materialism
the belief that only physical matter exists and that the mind can be explained in physical terms.
Richard Dawkins belief on the soul (materialist)
He recognised the existence of two souls; 1- a mysterious life force that exists after death (‘mystic jelly’) and 2- just your personality (metaphorical soul).
What does Dawkins say that humans are?
We are nothing more than ‘survival machines’ which us why we follow our selfish gene as we are programmed by a selfish nature.
Criticism of Dawkins
He focuses too much on evolution and not how people think.
Blackmore’s belief on the soul (materialist)
She believes the soul is a metaphor for personhood.
The soul is not an extra spiritual or immaterial part of us. The physical body is the only thing that makes up a living being.
Blackmore’s belief that the soul is a metaphor explained
Consciousness is a delusion as we are looking for something that doesn’t exist.
Anthony flew’s criticism of the soul
Criticises every type of dualism as the soul cannot be separate from the body.
‘the absurdity here arises from the fact that grin is not a word for a substance’
Daniel Dennett criticism
Her was critical of substance dualism like Ryle.
It describes the mind as cartesian theatre- the mind doesn’t work like this, there is not one place in the mind where you exist.
Reductive materialism
a theory that the mind is not distinct from the physical brain but it’s identical with it.
