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Soul, mind and body - Coggle Diagram
Soul, mind and body
Materialism
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Gilbert Ryle calls Descartes theory 'the ghost in the machine'. There is no mind which exists as a separate entity to the body.
Ryle says the brain and the mind belong to different logical categories and have been mistakenly associated together.
The Oxford / Cambridge analogy: Searching for the mind in the brain is like searching for the University in the colleges.
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Mind-body identity theory: Though we have different words for mental events and physical events, the material underpinning them is the same. Neurologists can attribute physical actions to fMRI activity in the brain.
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Issues with materialism
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Dennett's counter-argument: Consciousness is 'a bunch of tricks in the brain'. We are not experts in our own thinking and our minds are constantly fooling us, giving us the sense of intention or thought.
Dualism
René Descartes
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Leibniz' law - If two things are the same, then they must share all he same properties.
Since we have know of our mind but doubt the existence of our body, we can assume they are separate substances.
The key difference is that the body is material and extended in space, whereas the mind is unextended.
Substance dualism fails to explain how the two substances interact with each other. How does the brain cause actions in the body. Descartes suggests this interaction occurs via the Pineal Gland in the brain but there is no evidence for this.
Leibniz' law cannot truly be applied to Descartes scepticism as the differences in the objects are results of the mind viewing itself from within.
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Richard Dawkins - categorises theories of the soul into two types - soul one: the traditional, separate soul and soul two: the intellectual, spiritual power and moral decision maker.