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Ancient philosophical influences- Soul, Mind, Body, What did Plato…

- - - - platos beleifs about the soul
        -plato was a dualist and beleived that the soul is deformed through its association with the body
        -the soul is seperable from the body and as it is non material, it is, in a sense, indestructible
        
        platos arguments for the soul
        -the cyclical nature of existance
        
        as sleep follows waking, waking follows sleep. as death follows life, life follows death
        -the argument from knowledge
        
        plato claims we have innate knowledge that helps us make comparisons, which can only come from the world of the forms. so our souls pre existed our physical bodies in this world
        -as the soul (not the body) grasps the forms, then the soul must belong to that world too. so it is unchangeable and indivisible, juts as the forms are
  - - - BMW and human examples
        -in that sense, you cannot say that you have a BMW if all you have is a pile of BMW parts- they have to be connected together and functioning in the manner intended
        -equally, even if yiu have a collection of human parts, you cannot say that there is a soul or form of human there unless they all function together
        
        body and soul are inseprable
        -so in contrast to platos dualist position, aristotle does not hold that the soul is seprable from the body- that when the body dies, you cannot meaningfully speak of a form or soul of the body because deposition begins
        -an analogy to this is that of the eye
        
        aristotle says the soul of the eye is the sight. if the eye is not functioning, there is not sight. equally if the body is not functioning there is no soul.
        
        wax and seal analogy
        -another analogy aristotle gives is the wax and the seal
        
        when eated wax is imprinted with someones seal or stamp (to seal an official letter for instance) it is impossible to seperate the imprint of the seal from the wax. so the form of the body, the soul, is imprinted on it but is also inseprable from the working of the body iteslef
- - - - though experiment conclusion
        -while you can be decieved about the content of thoughts (eg that there is a world which is presented to your senses), you cannot be deceived that you are a thinking subject that seems to perceive things
        -in other words, there needs to be a subject- you- who is the subject of the deception
        
        Cogito ergo sum
        -descarted frames this as cogito ergo sum or 'i think, therefore i am'
        -so we can have certainty that there is a mental substance or 'thinking', and we can be sure that that is not the same as matter- how can we be sure of this?
        
        by application of Leibniz' law (if two things are the same thing, they must share all the same properties)
        
        argument using Leibniz' law
        -the argument here goes:
        
        i can be sure that my mind exists (see the evil devil experiment)
        
        i cannot be sure that my body exists (brain in a vat)
        
        by application of leibniz' law, mind and body must be two seperate substances (because if they were the same thing, we would be able to be certain the body existed as well)
        
        body and soul are not the same
        -so descarted has arrived at the conclusion tat mind and body are not the same things
        
        in fact, descarted says that the key diffrence is that metter (body) is extended in space and mind is unextended
        -this echos platos earlier dualism in which the soul (mind) is essentially non-material and indivisible
        
        evaluation of descartes' theory
        -substance dualism does account for some features of conciousness that materialism finds difficult to explain
        -descartes' theory fails to give a cohesrent account of how mind and body interact when one is physical/ spatial and the other non physical/ non spaical
        
        descartes claimed that the two interact via the oineal gland in the brain, but this is speculative
        
        descartes applysing Leibniz' law
        -Leibniz' law is not necessarily applicable to the diffrence between mind and body as it may be that the supposed diffrent in properties is the result of viewing our consciousness 'from within'
- - - - ryles philosophical behaviorism
        -gilbert ryle calls descartes theory 'the ghost in the machiene' (ghost=mind, machiene=body)
        -according to ryle, there is no such mind which exists as a seperate entity to the body and to search for one is to make a catergory mistake
        -by this, he means that the brain and mind belong to diffrent logical categories but have mistakenly been associated together
        
        ryles cambridge/ oxford analogy
        -one analogy for this is the foreigner who, visiting cambridge or oxford university for the first time is shown all the diffrent colleges and buildings but then asks 'where is the university?'
        -the mistake is that he is looking for soemthing seperate from all the buildings he has been shown withought realising that he has already seen the university
        -in the same way, Ryle argues that dualists are mistakenly searching for something over and above the brain, or behaviour, called the mind
        
        'mental' events =specific pattern
        -ryle was a philosophical behaviourist who saw 'mental' events as just referring to a specific pattern of behaviour. 'mind' is not longer internal; it is what we do with our bodies
        
        eg when someone is depressed or aangry or joyful, we look at the pattern of behaviour they exhibit in each diffrent case. we cannot see beyond this behaviour
        -sp mental terminlogy actually means something phyical eg behaviour
  - - - ryles explanation for wishing
        -ryle partly anticipates problematic states such as wishing, which seems to have no particular pattern of behaviour attached to it, by talking about 'dispositions to behave'
        -appropriate behavious is regarded as potential and can be anticipated given certain circumstances. so a person wishing to go on holiday may spend a long of time on travel websites, for instance
        
        Wards criticism of ryle
        -ward feels ryles account is inadequate
        
        firstly, what about pretending? someone who pretends to be angry and someone who is angry may exhibit the exact same behaviour, but onr of them is not experiencing the same internal state
        
        wards criticism of ryle
        -secondly we do know our experience from the inside. when we feel pain for instance, we know that such a feeling cannot be completely captured by a descriptionof the way we behave when we feel it
        -thirdly, what about self awareness? it is impossible to say how bring aware of yourself as a thinking being is capable of being described in terms of behaviour or a 'disposition to behave' in a certain way
- - - - limitations of materilasm
        -both of these properties of conciousness seem to point to something that current materialist theories are unable to account for
        -after all, it is hard to see how even very complex arrangements of physical 'stuff' can give rise to the felt experience of tasting a hamburger
        
        dennetts counter argument
        -but dennett says that conciousness is a 'bunch of tricks in the brain' and that, although it is temting to think so, we are not experts on our own thinking and our mins are constantly fooling us
        -this means we must be wary of assuming things like qualia cannot be explained withough positing 'mind'
  - - - sdawkins:soul one and two
        -in recent times, dawkings has labelled the poetic notion of the soul an aesthetic sense within us- 'soul 2' which contrasts with 'soul one'- the traditional non material essense
        -the concept of soul two or sould as a metaphor, is only the soul in a weak sense and is not a challenge or threat to amaterialistic sworldview
        -the sold in this snese is just an ability to react with awe or wonder to the natural world