OCR Philosophy: Soul, mind & body

Plato’s view

• Dualist: soul & body are fundamentally different

• Rationalist: based on reason/logic

• The soul is imprisoned in the body and will return to the WOF after death

• Soul = immortal (support from Socrates & the dialogue of Meno)

Plato: quality of opposites

Every quality has its opposite

• Life and death

• Dark and light

Life comes from death as death comes from life- in an endless chain of rebirth and death

Plato: tripartite soul

Metaphor of Chariot & horses

• The two horses are ‘appetite’ and ‘emotion’

• The Chariot (guider) is ‘reason’

Aristotles view

• Materialist: nothing exists except physcial matter

• Empiricist: verified by the senses

• The soul is the essence of the body; they are co-dependent and cannot live separately

• The soul cannot survive death

• The soul will eventually be explained by scientific evidence

Aristotle: analogy of the axe/eye

• If the body is an axe, it’s soul is its ability to chop

• If the body is an eye, its soul is its ability to see

Aristotle: hierarchy of souls

• Plants: vegetative soul (ability to gain nutrients)

• Animals: appetitive soul (ability for movement/desires)

• Humans: rational soul (consciousness) - separates humans from animals

Descartes view

• Substance dualist: the body and soul are two separate substances so must be separate (Leibniz Law)

• Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore i am)- hyperbolic doubt

• Our senses are unreliable (hallucinations, dreams, mythical demon)

Descartes: differences between soul and body

• Body = divisible (amputations), soul = indivisible

• Body = can doubt, mind/soul = cannot doubt

Challenges to Descartes

• Case study of Phineas Gage challenges Descartes belief that the mind/soul is indivisible

• Masked Man Fallacy: can doubt that the man is your father, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is

• The ghost on the bicycle- how do the non-physical and physical interact?

Dawkins materialist view

The ‘soul’ is a mythical concept used to explain the mystery of consciousness in the same way the God’s being angry was an explanation for thunder

• Soul 1- traditional idea of life

• Soul 2 - intellectual/spiritual power

Soul 1 will eventually be explained by science

Ryle’s materialist view

To speak of the ‘body’ and ‘soul’ as separate is a category mistake, therefore the mind-body problem comes from a misuse of langauge

Blackmore’s materialist view

The soul is the ‘last great mystery of science’

• Just as evolution can be explained through genes, our minds/soul can be explained by memes/cultural ideas (meme machine)

Challenges to Plato

• The example of Meno may be explained as the result of leading questions- he didn’t have genuine knowledge of Pythagoras Theorem (unconvincing)

• Ryle: Cambridge/Oxford university- see all the amenities and asking ‘where is the uni’ (category error)

Evaluation of Materialism

• Dawkins idea of soul 1 being explained by science is coming to fruition- ex: explaining depression in terms of brain chemistry

• Ockham’s Razor: simplistic explanation is usually correct

• Popper’s falsification principle- empirical methods = scientific