Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Body, Mind and Soul
- Key Terms
- Dualism
- The idea that there are two aspects to
human beings, the physical and the mental.
The mental may be identified with the soul.
- Materialism
- The idea that human beings are made up of one
substance, the word is often used synonymously
with materialism.
- Monism
- The idea that human beings
consist of physical matter
alone.
- Plato's beliefs
- Plato was a dualist. He believed that the body
would not survive death but the soul, the real
essence of the person would continue – and for
Plato this is our PERSONAL IDENTITY, which forms
the ‘I’.
- A human is a ‘soul imprisoned
in a body’
- The body is subject to change – so not
reliable guide to truth
- Real knowledge (of the forms) comes from the
soul
- The soul is immortal whereas the body is
mortal. - At the end of life the soul will be
set free.
- The body is a distraction to the
soul.
- The goal of the soul is the world of the
Forms.
- Chariot analogy
- Charioteer = reason
Black horse = desire
White horse = emotion
- Reason = searches for
truth and rules the soul
- Emotion =
aggressiveness, being
honourable and
emotions
- Desire = seeking pleasure
e.g. for what is necessary
and what is unnecessary
- Argument from knowledge
- The soul has knowledge of eternal ideas and is
able to recognise forms such as beauty.
- Plato uses the example of Socrates
questioning a slave boy about
geometrical problems he had never
faced before.
- The slave’s answers demonstrate an
awareness of Pythagoras’ theorem,
which demonstrates that the soul has
knowledge from its prior existence.
Learning is therefore remembering.
- Argument from opposites
- The body and soul are opposites. One makes the other
necessary just as the concept of light logically makes us
aware of the idea of darkness.
- Life and death are two opposite things. Plato argues that death is a
thing (rather than nothingness) and this leads him to suggest that
death is an event, the soul leaving the body.
- Weaknesses of beliefs
- Peter Geach – rejects Plato’s ideas. What can it mean for the
disembodied soul to see the Forms? Seeing is an experience
of the senses.
- Is learning really remembering? Is it
not new knowledge? Does the
argument from opposites really
demonstrate the existence of the
soul?
- Plato’s argument about the soul rests on theory of Forms, but the theory of
Forms is debatable.
- Aristotle's beliefs
- In his writings the soul is a translation of the Greek
word psyche So the soul is conceived as whatever
is the cause of something alive. Soul was seen as
‘life giving force of the body’
- The meaning did not correspond with the idea that
the soul is the centre of a person’s identity that
survives after death
- Substance
- For Aristotle the soul was a
‘substance’ which meant ‘essence’ or
‘real thing
- If the physical body is in a state of
change the ‘substance’ must remain
the same in terms of continuing
identity.
- This was called the soul The soul
gives something its telos -
purpose
- Analogy
- Aristotle used the analogy of a wax with a stamp in
it to illustrate his idea that the soul could not be
separated from the body
- The soul was not a distinct and
self-contained thing – the ‘soul’ of
something could be seen in its
function/purpose
- Aristotle used these
examples: Axe – axe
and chopping Eye – eye
and vision
- The soul cannot be separate from the body
– for example without the physical material
(eye, axe) there would be no vision or
chopping.
- The soul is the Form of the body
- The soul gives shape to the matter which is
the body
- The soul is the principle of life
or activity of the body
- The soul is merely a description of the essence or
properties of the body – personality and abilities
- The body is not just a prison for the soul
(Plato)
- Life after death
- The soul is perishable as it
is inseparable from the
body – so it does not live on
– our personality or identity
does not live on
- However – Aristotle believed that our
reason/intellect could be immortal –
therefore there is some form of intellectual
post-mortem existence
- Evaluation
- Emphasis on senses – but can we trust
our senses Religious people argue we
know the world through faith and
revelation
- Does the universe have a purpose/final
cause? Many argue there is no purpose
- Separation of reason from soul is confusing –
thought continuing is not personal identity
- Aristotle’s ideas
influenced Christianity –
resurrection (soul not
distinct from body, united
together)
- Descartes
- He was a rationalist – true knowledge can only
be gained through the use of reason and
rational thought. Rational thought led
Descartes to consider that the soul is
separate from the body
- ‘I think, therefore I am.’
- He doubted that everything else existed
including the physical body, the fact that
he was performing mental activity meant
that his mind existed.
- Mind