Soul, mind and body

Aristotle, De anima

‘It indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from the body’

Richard Swinburne

Evolution of the soul

• soul separate from body, gives identity

• awareness of freedom, moral obligation and goodness

  • consciousness

Keith Ward

• if soul abandoned, morality = personal choice and taste

• need moral claims that soul recognises as coming from God to progress and achieve special dignity of being human x animal

Descartes

‘I certainly do possess a body’ Meditation VI

Scruton

soul can ‘lift human action out of web of causal reasoning in which it is ensnared by science’

Ryle

‘ghost in a machine’

Leibniz

‘2 things are identical if and only if every property of one is a property of the other’

Dawkins

‘survival machines’ (The Selfish Gene)

only interest = reproduction and survival

vehicles of genes/ mixture of chemicals

Dawkins

‘Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information’ (River of Eden)

Examples of NDEs and OBEs

Dr Susan Blackmore

Pam Reynolds

Case of Phineas Gage

hardworking → belligerent jerk after iron rod through skull

Frank Jackson

thought experiment ‘Mary’

epiphenomenalism

• physical can give rise to mental

• mental can’t give rise to physical

• physical state = see colour

• mental state = wow

Colin McGinn

mysterialism

• q of consciousness

• mind understood → reflection

  • personal and subjective

• understanding brains and bodies → objective and verifiable

David Chalmers

neuroscience only made progress for easy not hard problem fo consciousness

easy p = finding what brain processes responsible for which mental processes

hard p = what brain processes responsible for consciousness