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Soul, Mind and Body - Coggle Diagram
Soul, Mind and Body
Key Words, Knowledge and Case Studies
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Most people, whether theist or atheist, believe that humans have a soul.
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Consciousness- the state of being awake, thinking and knowing what is happening around you.
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Property dualism- the belief that there is one substance but it has different properties (for example the brain had physical and mental properties).
Materialism- the belief that there is only one substance and it is physical; the belief that only physical matters exist and there is no spiritual world. Materialists argue that modern science has shown links between the brain and the body.
No dualist has ever been able to give an account on how the body can affect the brain, or how the brain can affect the body.
Phineas Gage was a happy man who suffered an accident and had a pole impale his head. Following the removal of the pole, he became Ann angry man. The fact that the presence of the pole changed his personality shows that psyche is liked to the physical brain.
Plato
Plato believed that the material world, including our bodies was impermanent. He adopted the idea that the soul is immortal and and belongs to the realm of the forms.
Plato, a dualist, believed souls have no beginning or end.
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Our learning is simply our recognition of what we know before in previous lives and when we encountered the forms in-between lives.
Plato argued that bodies are particulars- corruptible and changeable but that our psyches ar forms- eternal and imperishable. He believed that the human person has different elements the physical body, the mind and the immortal soul.
The Myth of Er; it identifies that Plato believed in the transmigration of the soul. The souls that went into the heavens were rewarded for their good deeds and were able to encounter the forms. Those who went into the ground were punished for their deeds and clearly had poor experiences. Upon choosing a new life each soul forgets everything that has happened, thus when we learn we are recollecting what we once knew. The 20th Century philosopher Anthony Kenny argued in favour of the notion of the psyche.
Aristotle
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As Aristotle believed in monism, he rejected the notion of the soul as a separate substance. He believed in a hylomorphic body/ soul; there are one thing and that the soul can not be separated from the body.
For Aristotle, the soul is one aspect of the whole person.
According to Aristotle, a living creature is a 'substance'.
Jonathan Barns believed having a soul was like having a skill, there is no transmigration.
For Aristotle, everything is made of matter (the material cause), everything has a form (the formal cause), the body is the material cause of humans and the soul is the formal casue.
There is no need for a soul as an explanation, the brain as part of the body makes the person. Some people, such a Buddhists, believe that there is no soul. Religious believers teach of an afterlife.
Descartes
Descartes believed that he could easily be decieved and that everything could be an illusion. He believed we couldn't trust the world around us and even said that his body could be an illusion and not exist.
He said: 'I think therefore I am'. He believed he could only be certain of the fact that he was a thinking being and therefore this was evidence of his existence.
Your mind feels the pain of your body, your body can get physically ill when your mental health is bad, when your body needs fuel your mind feels hungry and your thought to do something makes your body move to do that thing.
He was a rationalist and he did not use God to back up his arguments. He was also a substance dualist who believed that the human body was animated by the soul.
Descartes believed that the part of the body which had the most concentration of the soul was the pineal gland which is located at the base of the brain. He chose this as the place where the soul was most concentration because it was the only unique element of the brain he could find.
Richard Dawkins
He said there was no immortal soul, but human dignity is passed on to future generations through on individual's genetic code.
The thirst for knowledge of the meaning of life is more extraordinary in itself than any creation myth.
Human thinking has gone awry trying to figure out a meaning of life through religion. Without this, people would become better humans. 'Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade thought'.
Unweaving the Rainbow- God didn't promise Abraham eternal life as an individual. (Genesis 17) Abraham was in no doubt that the future lay with his seed, not his individuality.
Beliefs About the Soul
John Locke gave the example of a prince and a cobbler who woke up in each other's bodies. When the prince went to the palace the guards threw him out as he was in the body of the cobbler. This example demonstrates how one's consciousness is one's self.
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