Soul, Mind and Body

What German Philosopher asks the question of what it is to be human?

Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the mind body problem?

The question of how the mind, a non-physical property, can interact with the body, a physical property.

What is monism?

The view that humans are made up of only a single substance. Also called materialism.

Explain the history of monism?

Earliest form practiced by the Eleatic school of Greek philosophy. They based their view on the idea of the monad- the Greek word for ‘Single’ or ‘without division’. Several greek philosophers described reality as monistic and explained this by taking one aspect of the world as something that unified everything- thales chose water, heraclitus chose fire.

What are the two types of monism?

Idealistic monism and materialistic monism

What is idealistic monism?

Argues only the mind exists and the external physical world is an illusion created by the mind.

What is materialism monism?

The single reality is matter made up either only of atoms or of some world-forming substance. The essential view is that all states may be reduced to the physical. Emotion is a physical state and does not exist outside physical reactions

What is behaviourism?

Holds that all mental states are simply descriptions of behaviour that can be observed. Mental thoughts and emotions are process of the body and we have no mind or soul.

Explain the view that the mind and brain are the same thing?

What we call the mind is simply the brain activity and there is no need to suggest some non-physical mind or soul. The existence of emotion, consciousness and freedom of the will can all be explained in terms of physical activity in the brain

What is dualism?

The idea that humans are made up of two substances- a physical or material substances (the body) and a non-physical non-material substance, often called the soul or the mind.

What is the main problem with dualism?

How do these substance interact- how can a physical body related to or be influenced by a non-physical soul. There must be interaction as when i feel hungry i move to the fridge and get something to eat.

What three main arguments does Plato put forward in Phaedo?

Argument from opposites, arguments from recollection, argument from affinity

Explain the argument from opposites (cyclical argument)

Plato sets out the argument that everything comes into existence from its opposite in Phaedo. Plato makes the point that someone who is alive was previously dead because living is the opposite of death and vice versa. This implies a constant chain of birth, death and rebirth where the constant is the immortal soul.

Explain the argument from recollection?

Plato questions an uneducated slave boy to answer some geometry problems- this showed that information must have been recollected or remembered from the boys previous life and therefore they came from the soul which must be immortal

• additionally we have ideas of perfect concepts of love and justice, despite never seeing this before. This is recollection of the forms in the realm of the forms

• We now have a dim recollection of those perfect forms, called ‘anamnesis’.

Why does Plato’s argument from recollection fail for concepts such as love and justice?

• Hume counters that justice and beauty were subjective, though Plato’s argument could still function on the geometry examples, since maths is not subjective.

• However, Hume claims we can actually create the idea of perfection ourselves.

• Through abstract negation we imagine imperfect circles ‘not imperfect’, which creates the idea of perfection.

Explain the argument from affinity?

If the soul is immortal it must be constant and not capable of breaking because if this were the case, the soul could not carry anything from one life to another. A soul cannot change in any way which makes it different to other things as everything else in the world is constantly changing. Plato distinguishes by saying: ‘soul is most similar to what is divine, immortal, uniform, unvarying and constant in relation to itself; whereas the body is most similar to what is human, mortal and never in constant in relation to itself’

Explain the difficulties with Plato’s dualism?

In argument from opposites- fallacy of equivocation (meaning or words in argument change)- first part he gives examples such as larger and smaller things (children grow taller to be adults) but then talks about states of being such as dead or alive (you cannot be aliver or deader)

The argument from recollection does not necessarily prove that souls exist after death- simply only before birth

Argument of affinity- plato believed there was only a fixed number of souls, this may be due to his time as he couldnt know there were millions of other people but it does not explain the modern ever-growing population

Explain Aristotles materialist view point ?

Believed that the soul (psyche) was possessed by all living beings, not just humans and was not immortal. It was a substance, the form or essence of each existing thing. The soul made the difference between person or animal so it can be thought of as the life force of all things that exist. The soul is what is responsible for the activities of a living thing.

Formal cause- inseparable from the body -This view is called hylomorphism.

What were the three types of soul that Aristotle believed in?

The nutritive soul (plants) capacity to take in nutrition so they can grow and reproduce

The sensitive soul (in animals) had the capacities of the nutritive soul plus being able to move and perceive the world around them and react to stimuli

The rational soul (in humans) had the capacities of the other two types of soul plus the ability to think and make qualitative moral judgement

‘What does Aristotle say about the soul and body?

‘ the soul neither exists without a body nor is a body of some sort.’ It belongs to a body and for this reason is present in a body. Although it is not material substance it cannot be separated from the physical body, it is the form of the body not a separate substance within another substance. The soul of one human is the same of any other human there are no individual souls .

What analogy does aristotle give to describe the soul and the relation to the body

• Aristotle illustrates that the soul is like the imprint left in wax by a stamp, whereas the wax is like the body. The imprint is not actually a thing itself, but gives characteristic to the wax.

• Similarly, the soul is not a distinct entity. It can’t be separated from the body but gives us rational thought..

What were the issues with Aristotles materialism

Placed a great deal of importance on causality (idea that everything must have cause). The idea that everything must have a final cause that gives purpose to everything in the world is refuted because some would say that the only purpose of the universe is to simply exist and this is not sufficient reason to say that everything in the universe has an individual purpose

He contradicts himself- if everything in the universe is caused to come into existence there is one thing- the unmoved mover that is not caused into existence. His whole argument for causation depends entirely on the unmoved mover so this logical contradiction shows it fails as a convincing argument

Explain the counter of causality in regard to aristotles arguement

• Enlightenment scientist Francis Bacon rejected formal causation, arguing only material and efficient causation are inductive and thus scientifically valid.

• Today, we understand the world is composed of material atoms and efficient forces. Things having form or ‘essence’ is unscientific.

• When we scan brains, we notice certain types of mental states correlated with certain types of brain states. J J Smart argued Ockham’s razor shows the simplest explanation is that mental states like rational thought are just brain states.

• So modern science suggests rational thought is just brain processes, not a soul.

Evaluation

• This critique of Aristotle is successful because we have developing evidence of how various mental states reduce to brain states.

• By contrast, we have no evidence for Aristotle’s theory.

• So although we can’t fully prove it, we have more reason to expect the mind and reason will be explained by a future developed neuroscience.

• Aristotle’s theory of the soul is obsolete.

Explain how Aquinas thought about the soul?

Heavily influenced by aristotle. The soul is the ‘first principle of life in living things’. It is the opposite of the material body as it is immaterial’. The soul can exist apart from the body and after its death due to its incorruptibility. Criticism- souls in others (animals) cannot exist without body but humans can (he believed that soul was the reason that humans can use intellect yet he also believed movement was from the soul and animals can move).

Explain how Descarte thought about the mind?

Substance dualist

• Descartes is a rationalist who used a priori intuition to find what was absolute certain beyond doubt. He argued intuitions can provide the foundation for knowledge, from which we can construct deductive arguments to gain further knowledge. 

• Our own existence is the first thing we can know for certain. We cannot doubt our existence, since we would have to exist to doubt we exist. Doubting is a type of thinking. Descartes concludes ‘cogito ergo sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’.

• The ‘I’ specified here is a thinking mind. The body on the other hand could be doubted, as we could just be dreaming about having a body or confused by an evil demon. This is the first indication for Descartes that there is a distinction between mind and body. Thought is intuitively inseparable from what we are, but that’s not true of the body. 

Explain descartes indivisibility of the mind argument

• All extended things are divisible, because they could in principle be divided at some point along the area they occupy. Since extension doesn’t seem essential to the mind, it can’t be divisible for that reason. Descartes adds that his mind doesn’t seem to be composed of parts. He concludes the mind is indivisible.

• P1. Physical substance is divisible (since it’s extended).

• P2. The mind is indivisible (since it’s non-extended).

• P3. Leibniz’ law is that identical things must have the same properties.

• C1. The mind therefore cannot be identical with any physical substance, such as the body.

• This argument uses a logical principle which came to be known as Leibniz’ law of identity: identical things must have the same properties. The physical has the property of being divisible but the mental does not. If the body and mind were identical, then that one identical thing would be both divisible and indivisible, which is impossible. Therefore, the mind and body are not identical.

• Descartes’ justification for the mind being indivisible is that it is not composed of parts. Also that thinking is one essential thing to it, not any extended body. All extended things are divisible.

Give a counter argument to Descartes argument of indivisability

• The stronger and successful counter-example is the modern evidence of split-brain patients. 

• The human brain has two hemispheres which are connected by a single band of neurons. The right hemisphere controls the left arm, and the left hemisphere controls the right arm. Sometimes as a treatment for epilepsy, doctors cut the connecting neurons, separating the two hemispheres.

• In patients who have undergone that procedure, it appears that their mind has been divided into two.

• For example, one patient would pick up food with one hand, and then the other hand would hit it out of that hand. 

• Another patient was with his wife and one hand reached out to hug her, the other hand to push her away.

• So, this is good evidence that Descartes is wrong to think the mind cannot be divided.

• It is good evidence that the mind is the brain and if you divide the brain, you divide the mind.

Counter Descartes conceivability argument

• The masked man fallacy shows that we actually can imagine impossible things.

• If someone hears about a masked man robbing a bank – they can imagine that it’s not their father – but if it really was their father, they just imagined the impossible.

• So, when Descartes says he can imagine the mind without the body, that doesn’t prove that it’s possible for the mind to exist without the body, so it can’t prove their non-identity.

• The person in the masked man fallacy story imagined a possibility where in reality there was none. Descartes could be doing the same when he imagines the mind separate to the body.

• Descartes could be imagining something impossible in that case.

• So, Descartes’ argument fails to prove that the mind and body are separate substances.

Explain descartes conceivability argument

• This argument works on the principle that things which are genuinely identical cannot be conceived as separate. E.g. you can’t imagine a triangle separate from three sides. But we can conceive of a mind without a body, so they cannot be identical.

• P1. I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking non-extended thing.

• P2. I have a clear and distinct idea of my body as a non-thinking extended thing.

• C1. These opposing properties allow us to conceive of the mind separate to and without the body. (We can imagine the mind without a body – e.g. imagine being a ghost floating through walls)

• P3. What is conceivably separate is possibly separate.

• P4. What is possibly separate is actually non-identical.

• C2. Therefore, the mind and body are not identical.

What did Gilbert Ryle think about Descartes concepts?

Called it the ‘ghost in the machine’ meaning that Descartes completely failed to explain the relationship between the body and the mind. He calls this a category error. He thinks that Descartes is mistaken because he makes the assumption that mental events and physical events were of the same kind of things. He dismissed the idea that the mind and body were separate parts of human bodies.

Define category error?

To confuse items or ideas from different categories. Descartes compared the mind which was immaterial with the body which is a material substance which was a category error

Cambridge university example

What is analytical school of philosophy?

Development in early 12th century, European philosopher that focused on attempting to make language as precise and clear as possible this included Gilbert Ryle.

Explain materialism?

The only things that exist are atoms and there can be nothing can exist other than physical atoms- no soul, no mind, no immaterial substance.

Explain Dawkins view on soul, mind and body?

• Dawkins argues there is no scientific evidence for the soul. He argues science has discovered what we are, which is just physical matter like DNA, flesh and bones. The mind is just a set of brain processes.

• Dawkins concludes the only valid way to talk about a soul is metaphorically. 

• The dictionary has two definitions of soul. Soul 1 is the literal view of a soul which actually exists.

• Soul 2 is the metaphorical view. Dawkins thinks it’s fine to use the word metaphorically to refer to our deep human feelings and our humanity. Similar to qualia

• E.g. if I said ‘that is a soul-less person’ – that would be metaphorical. This doesn’t mean souls actually exist, the word ‘soul’ is just a metaphor.

• Dawkins thinks the mind is just the brain and that’s all. When you die, you cease to exist.

What is ‘qualia’?

Quali is the name given to individual, subjective experiences that people have. Things such as religious experiences or having very vivid dreams or feeling energised after a workout

What criticism does David Chalmers make of Dawkins

• David Chalmers is a dualist who argues scientists have only explained the ‘easy problem of consciousness’, figuring out which brain part is responsible for which mental process like memory, perception or emotion. 

• The ‘hard problem of consciousness’ is what brain process is responsible for consciousness itself.

• Chalmers says neuroscience has not made comparable progress there.

• This makes Dawkins seem premature in his dismissal of a non-physical aspect to our existence.

What criticisms can be made of Dawkins?

He uses an non-technical definition of the word ‘soul’ which could undermine his credibility.

Starts discussion from a close viewpoint- he will not accept that universe is anything other than being totally physical and explicable by scientific methods. Anything that is not explicable by science must be false. From the start he prejudiced against religious view of the world and nothing can change his mind on this.

He says that science is killing or has killed religion but does not explain nor justify this statement with evidence. Which does not seem scientific.

If his suggestions of everything being physical is true then how can we explain how humans can have individual emotions

Explain cognito ergo sum

I think therefore I exist - Descartes

What criticisms did Descartes face?

If body and mind were separate how could they interact? He puts forward the idea that the pineal gland in the brain is where the soul exercises its function more particularly than in other part of the body. However he still stresses that the soul is joined to the whole physical body, not just any individual part of the body as the body and soul are an indivisible unity- the soul is simply more concentrated in the gland as it is the innermost part of the brain. However it is still unable to explain how the link between body and mind is made, simply explains it location