Soul mind and body Flashcards
What is Plato’s understanding of the soul, mind and body?
- Plato has a dualist understanding of the soul and the body.
- Plato believes that the soul and body are seperate
Why did Plato believe that the soul and body were seperate?
Plato believed that the soul had the capacity to leave the physical body and move on after death.
- The body is a mere temporary vehicle for the soul
- The soul and the body are 2 seperate entities, that are temporarily united.
- The body is a temporary material part of a person-vehicle
- The soul is the eternal immaterial part of a person-the driver.
- > As the body is material/temporary, it eventually dies but the soul does not.
Why does Plato believe that the soul is improved by the death of the body?
This is because emotions/desires are products of the body , without this the soul can focus better on contemplation and thought.
What is the analogy that Plato uses to support his view that the soul is separate from the body?
The chariot analogy
- This states that there are 2 horses pulling a chariot.
- Reason is the charioteer, guiding and directing the horses of appetite and emotion, stopping them from running wildly.
- The soul is a source of knowledge, education is a process of remembering.
- The soul must aim for truth/wisdom through philosophy, shown through ‘myth of er-afterlife/reincarnation.
What is Aristotle’s understanding of the soul mind and body?
Aristotle contrasts with Plato.
- The soul is a substance, gives a living thing its essence, the soul is needed to survive, it is needed for a human to survive.
- The soul is not separate, it helps the body, helps a human fulfil its purpose as a human.
What is the analogy that Aristotle uses to support his view that the soul is not separate from the body?
The analogy of the wax.
- This states that when wax is soft and pressed with a stamp
- the wax is inseperable from the wax
- in the same way that the soul is inseperable from the body.
What supports Aristotle’s analogy of the wax?
The 4 cause support this analogy as
-the formal cause, gives something its shape
The soul is the formal cause of the body, without the soul, the body is just bones. Therefore, the soul and the body is together.
What is substance dualism?
Substance dualism is the view that the mind is and the body both exists as 2 distinct and seperate realities.
What is Descartes view on substance dualism?
Descartes argued that he had not way of knowing he had a body but was certain that he had a mind.
- As he was able to think using his mind, ‘I think, therefore I am’
- Therefore, if the existence of the mind is certain but the existence of the body is uncertain, the mind and body cannot be the same.
- the mind and body must somehow be attached, through the pineal gland.
- this allows the possibility of after death.
What is emergent materialism?
This is the view that new properties emerge from physical matter, the mind and body are different but not completely distinct, argued by Mill.
What is reductive materialism?
This is the view that the mind is not distinct from the body but identical with it.
-Mental events are identical with physical occurrences in the brain.
What are the criticisms of the dualist approach of the mind body problem?
- dualist approaches cannot explain how the mind and the body work together e.g. why feeling afraid mentally makes a persons heart race physically.
- our experiences do not support a dualist approach, as our mental and physical aspects are in unity rather than separated
- the distinction between mental and physical properties is not always clear cut.
What are the criticism of materialist approaches to the mind body problem?
- our use of language suggests that we are more than just a physical body
- Descartes observation that the mind and body have different properties and do cannot be the same substance is a valid point
- materialism cannot explain how a chemical reaction can cause consciousness and mental events.
