plato + dualism

dualism

• The view that a person consists of two distinct substances: the mind/soul  and the body 

• The mind/ soul is immaterial  

• Body is physical 

• Survival after death is possible if the soul can survive death 

• Humans have composite nature -> the body simply carries the soul 

plato’s view of the soul

• he soul is distinct from the body, is immortal and eternal 

• A human person is a soul ‘imprisoned’ in a body  

• Soul as simple without parts -> cannot be split up  

• However, soul IN the body is ‘complex’

• Injustice comes from disharmony in the soul (e.g. if desire overpowers reason etc) 

world of forms

• the goal of the soul is the world of forms, which can only be seen indirectly in the physical world 

• Real knowledge of forms comes from the soul as when we learn, we are actually just recalling back to the knowledge about the forms that the soul had before it was incarnated in the body 

• Soul was in the realm of the forms before being pulled down to earth by the appetites 

diff aspects of the soul

• Different aspects of the soul 

• Rational -> searches for truth + rules the soul 

• Spirited -> being honourable, anger, indignation 

• Appetitive -> responsible for basic desires 

plato’s argument from knowledge

• Plato argued that learning is a matter of remembering what the soul has previously known in the world of Forms 

• Evidence for this is that when people come to understand something they are actually recognising it to be true (e.g. ideas of mathematics are true long before/ regardless of the fact that we learn they are true) 

• Justifies how will/ intention arises 

• Therefore, soul must be immortal, as it must have seen these forms before 

plato’s argument from opposites

• Physical world consists of opposites (light and dark, sleeping and waking) 

• Opposite of living is death -> for death to be a thing rather than ‘nothing’, the soul must exist so that one can talk of living and death as opposites 

WEAKNESS: Geach + problem of disembodied survival 

• Geach, in ‘What do we think with?’ questions what it can mean for the disembodied soul to see the Forms, given that seeing is a process linked to the body and experience through one’s senses 

• He argued that it's illogical to assume an immaterial mind could have the same sensations and experiences as a physical being. 

• Plato's theory of Forms suggests that we can access the realm of Forms through reason, but Geach argued that reason itself requires a physical brain and body to function, making the separation between the world of Forms and our world less clear. 

• Geach argued that if the mind were truly disembodied and separate from the body, it wouldn't be the same person as the one with a physical body and experiences. 

• He suggested that a disembodied mind, devoid of bodily sensations, would not be a person in the same way as its conscious, bodily self. This raises questions about the continuity of personal identity in the face of a radical separation between mind and body 

COUNTER to geach

Geach might take Plato's metaphorical language about the Forms too literally, failing to recognize that he's using language to explore abstract concepts that are beyond the reach of our senses. 

WEAKNESS: aristotle 

• Aristotle’s central criticism is that Plato’s soul is overly abstract and detached from the body.  

• While Plato sees the soul as a prisoner within the body, using the body’s senses to understand the world but ideally seeking to escape it, Aristotle maintains that the soul is not a “thing” that resides in the body like a pilot in a ship. Instead, the soul is the actuality of a body that has life potential—meaning it cannot exist apart from the body. 

STRENGTH of aristotle

Anthony Kenny (The Aristotelian Ethics, 1978) explains that for Aristotle, the soul is not a substance in the same sense as the body, but a set of capacities and functions that make a living body alive. Thus, it cannot be thought of as a ghostly substance existing independently

STRENGTH: SWINBURNE 

• Richard Swinburne supports the concept of a non-material soul from a dualist perspective.  

• In The Evolution of the Soul, he suggests that consciousness cannot be explained entirely in physical terms and that mental states are not reducible to brain states.  

• Swinburne’s Cartesian dualism lends philosophical support to the idea of a soul akin to Plato’s