self, death and afterlife

Aristotle and his three part way for looking at the soul

• the soul is the form of a living thing in actuality

• level 1 - first potentiality - a natural body i.e. matter

• level 2 - second potentiality = first actuality - the soul i.e. capacity to live

• level 3 - second actuality - growth, decay, movement etc i.e. living

Aristotle hierarchy of soul functions

• vegetative soul - reproduction, growth - plants

• sensitive soul - mobility, sensation - animals

• rational soul - thoughts, reflection - humans

• there are qualitative differences in organisation that limits and determines the ways the matter can exist

Aristotle’s soul is not…

• separable from the body

• a substance itself - instead it is the capacity for life and represents what it is to be alive

• individual - we are different human beings animated by the same capacity for life

• eternal - instead there is a continual state of flux and there is nothing more of you once you die

link Aristotle’s soul to his virtue ethics

• as seen in virtue ethics, he argued that all living things have souls, and a creature’s psyche is its ‘principle of life’ - that which distinguishes it from a corpse or other inanimate thing

Aristotle’s eye analogy with quotes

• a soul is what gives something its essential nature

• ‘suppose that the eye was an animal - sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance of the eye…the eye being merely the matter of seeing..'.’

• ‘the soul is the Form (essence) of the body’

• ‘as the pupil plus the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the soul plus the body constitutes the animal…the soul is inseparable from its body…’

Aristotle context

• as in Aristotle’s day there was no practical distinction between science and philosophy, he represented the start of what we may now see as a ‘scientific’ and rational view; examining the distinctive features of human life

Descartes context

• initiated ‘modern’ philosophy

• doubted everything, except that he was a thinking being - ‘I think, therefore I am’ (cognito ergo sum')

• Cartesian dualism - mind and body are separate substances with distinct properties

Descartes proof 1: argument from doubt

1. I can doubt that my body exists

2. but I cannot doubt that I exist as a thinking thing (doubt is a form of thinking)

3. therefore (because I am a thinking thing) I am not identical with my body

COUNTER

• Daniel Dennit - consciousness is just an output of what our brain processes, like windows on a computer screen

Descartes proof 2: argument from divisibility and non-divisibility

1. all bodies are extended in space (res-extensa), and are therefore divisible

2. minds are not extended in space (res-cogita), and are therefore not divisible

3. minds are therefore radically different from bodies

COUNTER

• modern neuroscience shows that there is a close correlation between mind and brain; when the brain is damaged, the mind can be damaged also, and to that extent it can be ‘divided’

• brain damage in car accident can lead to memory loss, neurodegenerative diseases, behavioural changes etc.

Descartes proof 3: argument from clear and distinct perception

1. whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive as two different things can be created by God as two different things

2. I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a non-extended thinking thing

3. I have a clear and distinct idea of my body as an extended non-thinking thing

4. so I am my body can exist apart from each other

5. so I am distinct from my body

COUNTER

• Descartes elsewhere deduces the existence of God from having a clear and distinct idea of what God is (the Cartesian ontological argument), but now he wants to deduce the reliability of our clear and distinct perceptions from the existence of God

• ‘Cartesian Circle’ - circular argument

Gilbert Ryle’s criticism of Cartesian dualism

• the ‘ghost in the machine’ i.e. mind controlling the physical

• Descartes is making a category mistake

• Ryle argued that you should not expect to find a ‘mind’ over and above all the various parts of the body and its actions; the mind is not a substance, the same way a ‘university’ is simply a title of many components.

• made the mistake of thinking that mental events are in the same logical category as physical matter - this is known as the Para mechanical hypothesis