Soul, mind and body

Aristotle
links the soul to the 4 causes

  • the soul is the way the body behaves and lives
  • the soul is the way the body behaves and lives, it contains our functions and capabilities, which are bound up in our body
  • therfore the soul is the form of the body or our formal cause
  • “soul is the form of the body”
  • soul animates our body and gives it life, so it is our efficient cause as well: it makes us a human as opposed to a corpse
  • soul allows us to form our telos, meaning it is our final cause (the human telos is to be moral)
  • the human soul allows us to reason which allows us to be moral
  • he though that all living thing have souls, including plants and animals, but their souls are different to human souls
  • cannot separate the soul from the body, so no afterlife
  • the soul is NOT the material cause, that is our body

Materialism

Main question: is the soul/mind seperate from the body, or is it part of the body?
mind-body problem: the problem of wether the mind and the body are the same thing or are they different, how do they work together/interact?

  • Substance dualism = mind/soul and body are seperate substances, one is immaterial (Plato and Descartes)
  • materialism/ physicalism = all things are physcial, including the mind (Dawkins and Ryle)

Plato: substance dualist

  • soul and the body are seperate
  • the body is temporary and dies
  • the soul is immortal and after death goes to the world of forms to contemplate and gain knowledge of the forms
  • myth of er: shows Plato’s view that when we die we get to choose our next body, philosophers benefit above everyone else
    evaluation for immortal soul
  • support: one over many argument, we can recognise the one form in many particulars - which shows that our soul must have knowledge from before we are born
  • challenge: Tabula Rasa and empiricism
  • support: argument from opposites, life comes from life and death comes form life - endless cycle
  • support: souls essence is life, its analytically true that the souls live forever because it’s part of the definition of a soul that it is life giving essence
  • support: theory of recollection, meno meant to demonstrate that we have innate knowlege in us which is recollected from before we are born
    ANY CHALLENGE TO DUALISM CAN CHALLENGE PLATO

Descartes, Cartesian dualism

  • Descartes is a substance dualist
  • hyperbolic doubt, doubting everything that is not certain
  • doubted the body as his senses cannot be trusted but he said we cannot doubt the mind as he is sure he is thinking, so a mind must exist
  • he uses Leibniz’s law to argue that the mind and body must be different as they have different properties

Reductive materialism, Mind-brain identity theory
Materialist view that says the Mind=Brain
2 issues: violates Leibniz law, multiple realisability objection, therfore the mind is not equal to th brain


challenges and support

  • Ryle’s category error, dualist think the mind is a separate thing in the same way team spirit isn’t the same as the team
  • Dawkins, soul 1 and soul 2
  • Flew, Cheshire Cat , its ridiculous for the grin to ecxist independently of the cat
  • only materialism can explain the interaction between the mind and the body!!
  • consistency with science

Dualism

  • religious support
  • our language suggests a separate soul
  • Leibniz’ law
  • no motivation for morality without a soul
  • the knowledge argument Qualia, Mary’s room

Soul mind and body

Background, Plato and Aristotle

Substance dualism PLATO AND DESCARTES

  • distinction between substance and properties
  • mind and body are separate substances which both exist
  • substance dualists believe a human has two substances (mind and body) separate and distinct
  • believe that these two interact to form a human being

Materialism

Evaluation points

Consciousness and the mind-body problem

  • we have an internal awareness of self that continues and does not rely on sensory experiences
  • we can relate to the experiences we describe and others describe it in a way that feels real
  • we seem to have a subjective inner life and not always dependent on direct stimuli
  • we are capable of complex, irrational and emotional thought
  • there is something that it is like to be us, but not to be a machine
    This leads to the idea that there is some kind of non-physical element to us, that is seperate to our body

Soul mind and body scholars

Peter Geoffrey Smith: single felled organisms developed functions that became more and more complex until they formed braisn that had a level of consciousness “the mind evolved in the sea”

The mind is substance that has properties (intentions emotions..)

The body is a substance that has properties of physical things, these properties have EXTENSION

  • substance dualists do not believe that the mind has extension (a non-physical, non extended substance)

Plato

Aristotle

Cartesian dualism

  • hyperbolic doubt and extreme scepticism
  • can doubt everything physical including our bodies
  • can’t doubt the mind as we can critically think
  • “i think therefore i am”
  • apply Leibniz law, two things with different properties cant be identical
  • body has extension, body can be broken up, body not a certain piece of knowledge
    Therfore body and mind are different substances entirely

how do these interact?

  • Descartes: pineal gland was the seat of the soul which enabled the interaction
    (this is scientifically incorrect)

property dualism - JS MILL

  • only one kind of substance (physical)
  • but two kinds of property, physical and mental
  • emergent materialism
  • physical substance demonstrates physical proper telos but as it becomes more complex, new properties which cannot be reduced simply to the physical
  • the mind has its own existence in relation to these properties bit isn’t entirely separate
  • peter Geoffrey smith our minds evolved in the sea

JS Mill

Evaluation of property dualism:

  • How can mental properties cause physcial properties
  • only physical matter can act upon physcial matter
  • causal closure of the physical world
  • if that is so, the consciousness is not part of the physical universe and is therefore epiphenomenal (consciousness plays no role in our behaviour and just a by product)
  • if mental things CAN cause physical things, then there are two causes for everything, causal overdetermination

Reductive materialism

  • mind-brain identity theory
  • mind not distinct from the physical brain, but identical to it
  • all our mental states correspond to activity in the brain
  • when our brain released a chemical we have a feeling or experience
  • The event and feeling ARE THE SAME THING
  • boring argued that chemical events do not cause mental events but ARE mental events

Boring

Smart

challenges to materialism

  • violates Leibniz law
  • multiple realisability theory, creatures with different brain states to use can have them same mental states

challenges to dualism/support for materialism

  • Gilbert Ryle
    Category error
    soul not a seperate substance but necessarily a part of the overall body
    team spirit
    like talking about someone’s sake as seperate to their body

Gilbert Ryle

  • Richard Dawkins
  • consciousness is in no way separate from the Brain
  • everything can be explained in physical terms
  • living beings are survival machines
    soul 1 and 2
    soul 2 = the correct one, more Aristotelian view, ongoing personality and identity
    awe inspiring as evolutionary process impressive
    Betrand Russell
  • religious belief in immortality of soul have no sound basis in logic
  • flew
    unfalsifiable

specific materialist critiques of dualism
1) phenomena that dualism cant explain e.g how our mental thoughts cause physical consequences
the problem of other minds (dualism cant let us prove other people have minds)


2) Anthony Flew
nonsensical to talk of a mind existing separately to the body, likened to the Cheshire cat
when we talk of the soul we really mean emotions


3)peter smith
we have the notion of a soul due to the way we talk, e.g someone’s pleasure
This is just our language


4)Dawkins
survival machines, vehicles that carry genes


5) choosing between causal overdetermination or epiphenomenalism


6) Phineas Gage

Dualist support/response to materialism
1) our use of human language suggests a separate soul
emily vs Emily’s body, one sounds like a corpse vs alive


2) from religious belief


3) logical possibility of existing without a body (Swinburne)
We can imagine it, which means there must be something separate
VS Elizabeth anscombe just because we can imagine something doesn’t mean it can exist


4) huge differences between body and soul, cannot be the same the sings as have such different properties
body has extension but mind doesn’t
if they were identical they would have same properties
COUNTER: no need to even separate the two and set them as equal, the mind is just a feature of the body, an illusion made up of hormones and electrical purposes


5) without immaterial soul, morality is just a choice
Keith ward morality would be a matter of opinion rather than driven by God - no ultimate purpose


6) Qualia

Swinburne

Keith ward

Descartes