Body and Soul Philosophers Flashcards
what was the approach of Rene Descartes
- to disregard all previous philosophy
- ignores Aristotelian view of soul as principle of life
- asking whether there is any knowledge so certain that no one may doubt it
- notes how sense experience may be mistaken or mislead by a malicious demon
- might mean the material world and even his body might be an illusion
why did Descartes come up with cogito ergo sum
- he knew for certain he had a mind because he couldn’t possible doubt it without contradiction
- infinite chain of thinking about you thinking
- he couldn’t be certain he had a body
- therefore two distinct substances
- i think therefore I am
- I knew I was a being whose whole essence or nature is simply to think and which does not require any place or depend on any material thing in order to exist
why did Descartes believe the mind and body were separate
- different properties: thought and extension respectively
- mind can’t be doubted but the body can
- the body is by nature divisible but the mind is not
what problems arise from Descartes way of thinking
- if the mind is simply spiritual and we have non-spiritual bodies, how do they interconnect
what did Descartes think about the pineal gland
- he conceived the body in almost mechanical terms with muscles acting like ropes and cables
- he thought pineal glad ( small organ in centre of brain) had something to do with the connection between body and soul
- he thought it contained air like animal spirits which controlled imagination, sense perception, bodily movement and memory
- thought it was the principle seat of the soul although not clear about how it worked
how did Gilbert Ryle describe Descartes’ concept of the mind
the ghost in the machine
what type of philosopher was Gilbert Ryle
- as an analytic philosopher he is not attempting to create an alternative theory but to provide conceptual clarity
- often describes the role of the philosopher as a cartographer who maps the territory but doesn’t create it
- crudely inaccurate to label him as a materialist because he considered reductionism to the material to be mistaken
- work as an exploration of phenomenal consciousness
what is Gilbert Ryle’s criticism of Descartes
- that he is guilty of category error assuming that mind and matter are of the same logical type
- he thought that traditionally people tend to think that they are somehow ‘harnessed together’ but that they are separate after death but Ryle argues this doesn’t fit with what we know about psychology and neuroscience
what is Gilbert Ryles example of the category error that he believed Descartes made
suppose a foreign visitor went to Cambridge to look at it sights. He is shown the different colleges, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the library and so on. At the end of the tour he asks but where is the university. he is guilty of category error because he assumes that the university is something separate from and other than all those individual bits which are collectively the university
what wasn’t Gilbert Ryle rejecting in relation to Descartes
- he wasn’t rejecting the idea that people have minds or personalities or consciousness or a soul but he was rejecting that it was a separate part or aspect of humans
- just as the team spirit is not found in addition to the team but is a way of describing how the soul works, the soul is not an addition to the physical person but a way of describing a person’s functions
what is Gibert Ryle’s style of argument `
- it is holistic
- not a denial of the mental or saying that the mental is just material
- his opposition is to the needless and improper separation of the two
- his philosophy is possibly monist but not materialist though to say he is monist probably over simplifies the issue
what did the devout roman catholic peter geach argue about substance dualism
- it is savage superstition to suppose that a man consists of two pieces, body and soul, which come apart at death
- aggravated by conceptual confusion
- it gained accidental support from spiritual language
- a man is a sort of body, not a body plus an immaterial somewhat; for a man is an animal
- the only tenable conception of the soul is the Aristotelian conception of the soul as the form or actual organisation of the living body
what were the criticisms against substance dualism of G.E.M Anscombe
- if i point at something the mere action of the body i not the white of its meaning, it is just a gesture
- feature like colour and texture cannot be identified by bodily gesture alone even if the most complete physical description. it also doesn’t explain why body is working just how
- we need a description of the thought
- a disembodied soul could not point. It is my body that points. She argues that this bodily act is of man qua spirit, the act of a human as a whole
what were the criticism against substance dualism proposed by John Hick
- strongly opposed the platonic view of the soul as un-christian
- for Hick my soul is not me
- his outlook not dissimilar to Aristotle
- soft materialist
- we are out bodies, but those bodies have a spiritual dimension
- there is no mind without matter, to be a person is to be a thinking material being
- not reductionist thinking, the mental depends on the body but is more than simply behaviorist reaction to stimuli
- that we are necessarily material beings does not mean we are just material beings
- hick opposed to the any approach assumes to die is not something to be feared. we should be prepared for death because it brings us before God to be bestowed eternal life.
what is the approach of Richard Dawkins
- materialist thinker yet on analysis his approach is much more subtle than crude reductionism
