The Body/Soul Relationship Flashcards
(7 cards)
What do physicalists believe about the body/soul relationship?
-Physicalists reject the idea that there is any real relationship between the body and the soul because they do not believe the soul exists at all
-Physicalism is the view that everything about a person, including thought, consciousness and identity, can be explained purely in terms of physical matter
What do physicalists believe about mental processes?
-According to physicalists, mental processes are simply brain activity, and the mind can be reduced to the brain, which is physical and scientifically observable
-For example, age-related memory loss or dementia can be explained by progressive brain deterioration, and changes in thinking or perception caused by drugs or tiredness can be traced back to brain chemistry
-These experiences, which dualists might interpret as evidence of a separate soul, are explained by physical causes alone
-This leads physicalists to conclude that there is no separate mind or soul interacting with the body. Instead, what we experience is entirely the result of brain processes, and science can answer all important questions about human consciousness without needing to appeal to a non-physical soul
What would functionalists believe about a body/soul relationship?
-Functionalism, as a physicalist theory of mind, rejects the idea of a separate soul and instead explains mental states in terms of how the brain processes information
-It focuses not on what the mind is made of, but what it does—comparing the human mind to a biological computer that receives inputs (like sensory experience), processes them, and produces outputs (like behaviour)
-For example, when we feel cold, our body might react with goosebumps or shivering, which is a direct physical outcome of sensory input
-Functionalists argue that there is no need to talk about a soul to explain how we think or act, because all mental activity can be understood through brain functions
What is “Qualia argument” and how does it argue the soul does exist?
-A powerful support for dualism is the Qualia Argument, which highlights how some aspects of consciousness cannot be fully explained in physical terms
-Qualia refer to personal, subjective experiences, like the feeling of pain or the taste of chocolate, which must be lived to be understood
How did Wittgenstein illustrated the Qualia argument?
-Wittgenstein illustrates this difficulty by asking, “Describe the aroma of coffee. Why can’t it be done? Do we lack the words?”
-This captures the idea that no physical or linguistic description can truly convey what it feels like to experience something
-This limitation suggests that there is more to consciousness than just brain activity, since physical processes alone cannot account for what it is like to be a conscious subject
-For dualists, this gap between explanation and experience points toward a non-physical aspect of the mind, implying that the soul, or something like it, must exist independently of the body
How does Thomas Nagel’s argument illustrate how the brain is more than just processes?
-Another powerful defence of dualism comes from Thomas Nagel’s essay What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, which challenges the idea that physical science can ever fully account for subjective experience
-Nagel argues that even if we knew everything about a bat’s brain, behaviour, and biology, we would still not know what it actually feels like to be a bat
-This is because consciousness has a first-person, internal quality that objective facts cannot capture
-He explains that “there is something it is like to be that organism,” and this something cannot be reduced to physical data or functional states
-This irreducibility of conscious experience suggests that mental life involves more than just brain processes.
-It supports the dualist claim that the mind is a distinct, non-physical reality—one that cannot be explained away by science alone
Dual aspect
