RE: Body & Soul (Part 1)

What is Plato’s views on the Soul? (1)

• There is a soul and the soul is immortal.

• Souls are trapped inside bodies and long to be free of them.

• Soul truly belong to a transcendental realm called the realm of the forms. This realm exist metaphysically, not physically.

• Metaphysics is the study of what lies beyond or outside of the ‘material’ realm that we live in now, the world we know through our sense. The material realm can be studied through science etc.

What is Plato’s views on the soul? (2)

• The Soul therefore belongs to the study of metaphysics, not science.

• The Soul has to exist as there is no other way for knowledge of the forms to cross the transcendent, intelligible realm into the physical realm.

• The soul can be divided into 3 parts: reason (nous), emotion/spirit (thymos) and appetite/desire (eros). Our emotions and appetites (desires) pull us in separate directions and reason must control them (like a charioteer controlling two wilful horses) but each of these has a function in a peaceful and well-balanced soul.

Aristotle on the Soul (1)

• There is a Soul, but the Soul is not immortal. Unlike Plato and the medieval religious tradition. Aristotle did not consider the soul to be a separate, immortal occupant of the body; just as rower needs a boat to row, the soul ceases to exist at the death of the body.

• The Soul, which Aristotle calls ‘de anima’, is the animating force in our body. Unlike Platio, Aristotle believes the soul dies with the body.

Aristotle on the soul (2)

• He argues that the soul has to exist as there is not other way to explain movement. The body cannot move itself, so movement must originate in some other place.

• Aristotle argued in his book De Anima that the soul finds it’s source in the heart (i.e. it is not made by God).

• Aristotle believed in a sort of souls - with a human soul being the highest, followed by animals and vegetables. He argued that it is rationality that gives our souls this higher status.

Descartes on the Soul (Dualist) (1)

• He uses ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ interchangeably.

• Through a process of scepticism, known as the 3 waves of doubt, Descartes concludes that the existence of a sensory world (including bodies) is open to doubt.

• However, as long as we experience doubt we are thinking and therefore the existence of the ‘mind’ (i.e. an immaterial self) cannot be questioned.

Descartes on the Soul (2)

• Descartes explains the relationship between body and soul through his ‘intermingling thesis’ and uses the analogy of a pilot and ship to illustrate his point.

• Descartes adds that the soul is ‘incorporeal’ (no-bodily) and immortal, as it cannot be destroyed.

Kant on the soul

• The existence of an immortal soul is one of the three postulates of practical reason in Kantian Ethics.

• The other postulates are the existence of God and the possibility of free will (autonomy).

• Kant argues that there has to be a soul for the reward of the summum bonum to be received as the s.b. cannot be given in this life, while decisions are still being made. Furthermore, the happiness of the summum bonum is too much to experience in a mortal lifetime.

Ryle on the Soul

• Ryle openly mocked the Platonic idea of a soul being ‘trapped’ inside a body, using the term ‘ghost in a machine’ to point out the absurdity of something immaterial (not made of matter) living within something material (i.e. a body).

• Ryle also used the example of someone looking for the whereabouts of the team spirit during a cricket match to highlight the incoherence of the soul.

Dawkins on the Soul

• The evolutionary biologist (and Professor of Popularising Science at Oxford University) argues that the soul is an incoherent concept.

• As a materialist, he argues that all things are made of matter. As the soul is immaterial (i.e. not made of matter) then it cannot exist.

• He sees all metaphysics as wishful thinking, ways of coping with the ultimate meaninglessness of life and death.

• As a humanist he argues we should live life to the full and accept that after death the only immortality we can experience is through our genetic legacy i.e. the survival of our DNA