Mind Body and Soul
Materialism
Does not accept a seperate part of the body called a soul when body dies thats it
Hard Materialism
there is nothing more than the physical comciousness is just the brain
Soft Materialism
Accepts not all charecteristics are physical ones ie the conciousness
property dualism
Swinburn- the ignition os the gunpowder is different from the explosion
Dualism
There are two seperate parts to the a human :body and soul
body is contingent but mind/ soul is immortal
No scientific evidence for the soul
Gilbert Ryle 'ghost in the machiene'
Soul is a catagorie mistake like team spirit or saying you have a right hand glove a left hand glove and a pair
Richard Dawkins 'bytes and bytes of digital information'
Darwinian Evolution
Athiest
Humans refuse to accept that suffering has no purpose so beleive in the soul
Purpose of life is DNA survival we are like robot vehivcles carrying genes, conciousness just helps us undersatnd bad consequences
The Selfish Gene 1979
Humans contemplating the meaning oflife is more magnificent than any creation
Human thinking has gone awry as people try to find meaning in life
meme
human culture that results ?
Plato and the forms
the spiritual and material realm
the soul comes from the spiritual realm
The soul wants to understand heaenly ideas but is distracted by the bodys physical wants
aim of the soul to break free from matter and spend eternity contemplating the forms
Aristotle
did not belive in the immortality of the soul
the mind 'nous' is the part of the soul that reasons
Soul 'anima' gave the body life
dog has a doggy soul
The Greeks
the psyche , our sensations were of the body ie hunger is of the body but the soul would look at the concept of hunger
Often immpossible to look just at the body or just at the soul
Rene Decartes
the rational mind = soul and is seperate from the body
the soul meets the body at the pineal gland
we cannot doubt our own existance 'I think therefoer I am'
the physical takes up space and the mind is of a different substance - not empirical
mind= non corporeal
Every substance has a special property ie mind-substance is consiousness and body is physicality
Belived our mind could survive death as we con change the way we look drastically without changing personality
Christians cannot accept Decartes becaus the bible represents a psychosomatic view
Phsychosematic ( unified body and soul)
St Thomas Aquinas
agreed the soul was the anima
only divisible things decay and the soul isnt diisible therefore it is immortal
each soul through its link with a human body becomes individual to a person