Soul, mind, body Flashcards
(21 cards)
Plato’s aspects of the soul
- Reason — rules the soul
- Spirit — emotion, moral compass, courage, trainable (the ally of reason)
- Desire — seeking both necessary and unnecessary pleasures
Analogy of the charioteer
- Constant conflict taking place among the faculties of the soul
- Reason rules the soul and tries to control conflict between spirit and desire
Plato quote on body
“The body is the source of endless trouble”
Homunculus fallacy
Attempting to solve a problem but really just restating the issue
Phantom limbs
Show that your body and soul aren’t linked?
Epiphenomenalism
Mental states and events are caused by physical states and events
David Chalmers
- Easy problem = what brain processes are responsible for mental effects
- Hard problem = what brain processes are responsible for consciousness itself
BDF Skinner
Human thoughts are learnt behaviours
John Hick
Replica theory
HH Price
Dream worlds
Anthony Flew
Soul outliving body is nonsensical eg Alice in Wonderland Cheshire cat
Ryle dispositions to behave
- “Mental” effects just refer to a certain type of behaviour
- Mental terminology refers to physical things
- Behaviour can be anticipated in certain circumstances through dispositions to behave
James Ward
- Panpsychist
- Criticised Ryle’s dispositions to behave
- What about pretending? You’d exhibit the same disposition to behave on the outside, but not the inside. There seems to be a difference between mental states and dispositions to behave, then
- Also argued that, robbed of the soul, human morality would suffer
Dawkins in the Selfish Gene
“Genes are forever”
Idealism
The theory that our bodies are unreal and an illusion. Rather, our minds are the only reality
Hume
- Criticised dualism
- Even if we KNOW we’re individual living beings, that doesn’t help us know that our thinking is separate from physical
Swinburne
- There are fundamental truths in each individual that cannot be explained physically
- The soul is unique and capable of logical thought, as well as moral obligation
- We’re able to recognise goodness because we have souls
Reductive materialism
- Mind is identical with the physical brain
- Mental states simply correspond with chemical reactions happening in the brain
Emergent materialism
- Physical complexity means that new properties emerge, properties that can’t only be material
- Mind is not utterly seperate from the physical but still somewhat has its own existence
Plato - the body
‘The body is the source of endless trouble’
Peter Geach
How can disembodied souls “see” the forms when seeing is linked to the senses
