Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
body and soul - life after death - Coggle Diagram
body and soul - life after death
reincarnation, rebirth and resurrection
rebirth problems : WILLIAMS
goes against value for each individual life
removes hope - causes 'end of me'
scale of infinite time so no significance of each life
Karma means people punished for actions they did not commit
resurrection
a new heavens will form where everyone has resurrected bodies
Isaiah : "For I am about to create new Heavens and a new Earth"
BUT : what happens to sense of "I" immediately after death
COUNTER : different concept of time, body enters eternity where resurrection future has already occurred
Buddhism : reincarnation : no permanent self - stream of conscious being, actions of each life affect next one (karma), nirvana is breaking out this cycle and finding peace
AGAINST LIFE AFTER DEATH
HAWKING : ‘I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working after its components
fail. there is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers, this is merely a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.’
dualism
property dualism - mind is an emergent property of the body
HICK : mind has properties that are different from body’s properties, but body and mind will be resurrected after death, psycho-physical unit
substance dualism - mind and body are separate
Descartes : body is physical substance (main property existing in 3D space, mind is non-material (main property thinking)
Plato : body and soul distinct, soul ends up in realm of the forms
CRITICISMS
Conservation of energy : if mind alters affairs in physical world, mental energy must somehow be converted into physical energy but this would suggest total energy of cosmos would be either increasing or fluctuating, but this isn't true
COUNTER : mind may affect course of physical world but not break in upon them i.e. mind guides neural events
HUME : Descartes’ ‘cogito’ : even if this succeeds in showing consciousness not physical, does not show there is an ‘I’ or soul - subjective experience of mind can not act as evidence for metaphysical truth
pansychism
Galen Strawson : matter is the only thing, but a fundamental property to matter is consciousness, all matter possesses this
Consciousness : ability to experience things, extent to which you can experience yourself, different degrees
consistent with physicalism
CRITICISMS
The Homunculus Regress : Explain thoughts by a mind that does thinking for us, but what does thinking for the mind - leads to regress
How does immaterial mind interact with physical body
GAGE : Metal rod through brain - changed behaviour - suggests personality and behaviour can be reduced to physical processes (for materialism)
monism
idealism - only thing that exists is the mind (Berkeley)
materialism - we are just matter
identity theory
U.T. Place : Mind is identical to the physical events of the brain
BUT : Hilary Putnam (functionalist) : if brain states equal mental states, then why are mental states multiply realisable (mental states may be the same but occur from different brain states)
If other animals experience pain, how can same state arise from different brain
Dawkins : mental lives driven by evolution
functionalism
DENNET :
Mental states can be reduced to their function in their physical system : No immaterial consciousness
Mind is like a computer program on hardware : Behaviour and thought series of inputs and outputs
CRITICISMS
Nagel - 'What is it like to be a bat' : materialism cannot fully explain mind
Can know all the physical explanations of the bat but can not know what it is like to experience being a bat
Marys room
Mary has all knowledge possible about how the eyes work, colours but lives in a monochrome world, she then escapes and sees a red apple if she learns something new it suggests..
Knowledge of some things requires conscious experience - some facts go beyond the physical (supports dualism)
Qualia : instances of subjective experience