BODY, MIND AND SOUL

WHAT THE EXAMINERS SAY

WE NEED TO STUDY

(a) Distinctions between body and

soul in the thinking of Plato,
John Hick and Richard
Dawkins.
(b) Different views of life after
death.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
 In practice these thinkers have probably
been chosen because they are representative
of some mainstream views. Plato is a
dualist. Hick believes that life needs to be
talked about using a sophisticated interplay
of both mind and body talk. Dawkins is a
materialist. Between them, they do not
represent all of the points of view that
exist.We will look at others.
THREE FOUR LETTER WORDS
 BODY
 MIND
 SOUL
 Beware: until we are clear about what
a particular thinker means by these
three terms, it will not be clear what
their relationship to one another is.
SOME PRELIMINARY
D.I.Y. DEFINITIONS
 BODY seems straightforward enough.
Any suggestions?
 MIND is less easy.
Any suggestions?
 SOUL is positively tricky!
Any suggestions?
 Perhaps the best strategy is not to attempt
definitions at all, but to ask how these terms
have been used by various thinkers.
The MIND-BODY Problem
 The context for much of the discussion had
historically been the so-called mind-body
problem.
 How does the mind operate on matter and
matter on mind?
 Answers to this have been as much the
province of theology as philosophy.
MONISM AND DUALISM
MONISM DUALISM
 The doctrine that there  The doctrine that there
is only one ultimate are two ultimate
reality.
realities.
 Major candidates
 The major candidate is
include:
 GOD MIND & MATTER
 MIND
 MATTER
Two species of monism
 If you reckon that  If you reckon that
everything that is everything that is
MIND can be reduced MATTER can be
without remainder to reduced without
MATTER, or to put it remainder to MIND, or
another way, to put it another way,
explained (away) in explained (away) in
terms of Matter, this terms of Mind, this
makes you a makes you an
MATERIALIST. IDEALIST.
MATERIALISM (1)
 If you believe that
everything is
ultimately explicable
in terms of matter, you
are a materialist.
 This is HOBBES. In
the 17th century he
proposed a strictly
materialist account of
mind.
MATERIALISM (2)
 There is a tendency for those who celebrate
the advances that science has made to assume
that this is in some way a vindication of the
materialist viewpoint.
 This is a mistake. Science and its methods
may or may not be consistent with the
philosophical outlook of materialism. The
view that science can offer a complete view of
the world is sometimes termed scientism.
MATERIALISM (3)
 An outspoken
contemporary materialist
is the biologist who
currently is the Professor
of the Public
Understanding of
Science at Oxford.
 This is RICHARD
DAWKINS
IDEALISM according to
SPINOZA
 SPINOZA took the view
that in the final analysis,
everything was God.
 All mental and physical
substances are in fact
aspects of the same
ultimate reality.
 This is a form of
PANTHEISM.
CARTESIAN DUALISM (1)
DESCARTES was in
no doubt that the
thinking self was
indubitable. This is the
essence of his famous
Cogito ergo sum
(Latin)
Donc je suis
(French)
CARTESIAN DUALISM (2)
 Descartes was also convinced that Matter
as well as Mind was an ultimately real
substance but radically different from it.
 But these two substances were seen as
fundamentally different. In the
metaphysics of the day, the word
substance referred to basic irreducible
stuff.
 This leads to the question: “How do they
interact?”
CARTESIAN DUALISM (3)
 Descartes solution
to the problem of
how these two
dissimilar
substances interact,
was to claim that
mind engaged with
body (matter) via
the pineal gland in
the brain.
DUALISM ACCORDING TO
MALEBRANCHE
 In the 17th cc he popularised the
view that mind and matter do
not interact at all!
 God intervenes to make the
(apparently) mentally caused
physical events coincide with
them.
 This curious doctrine is called
OCCASIONALISM.
LEIBNIZ’ PSYCHOPHYSICAL
PARALLELISM
 Minds and bodies may
seem to be coordinated,
with one causing the other.
 But in reality this is not so.
They are wholly separate.
 God establishes a harmony
between the two at
creation, then leaves them
alone.
EPIPHENOMENALISM
 Another form of dualism which says that any
interaction is entirely one way.
 Physical events cause mental events.
 But mental events do not cause physical events.
 Mind is a convenient and possible comforting
epiphenomenon. I may think I am free, but I am
not. I may think I cause parts of my body to move,
but I don’t.
MATERIALISTIC SCIENCE
Remember we noted the common
assumption made by those holding a secular
humanist or naturalistic worldview, that
science is somehow inherently materialistic.
That is to say, because there is no place for
‘mind talk’ or for that matter ‘God talk’ in
the working methodology of science, there
is no ontological place for either mind or
God either. This is a non sequitur.
EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE
 Similarly, belief in the evolutionary process
and the relatedness of all living things has
led some to the view that because our
origins are material, that is all that we are in
the final analysis.
 Where could non-physical minds have come
from?
 Does the evolutionary account necessarily
eliminate mind as an irreducible category?
However…
 Minds remain irritatingly resistant to the kind of
investigation that is only concerned about physical
entities and forces.
 Whilst there is a profound, complex and
interesting relationship between mind and brain,
we know very little about what this is. We know
even less about the way that mental events cause
physical ones – assuming that they do, which we
cannot help but assume in daily living.
BEHAVIOURISM
 Behaviourists
effectively denied that
there is a mind.
 Mind talk translates
into talk about public
dispositions and
tendencies.
 To quote Ryle, “There
is no ghost in the
machine”
Problems with Behaviourism
 If it is true, then all we have
are the observable behaviours.
 There is no difference
between being happy and
pretending to be happy.
 It ignores qualia, the inner
feeling of being in a particular
state of mind.
PHYSICALISM
 Sometimes called
Mind/Brain Identity
theorists.
 Although the language
we use to talk about
minds and brains is
different, the truth is:
MINDS = BRAINS
PROBLEMS
 Claims that ‘in principle’ we can explain minds
by say, neurophysiological means, is a matter of
faith.
 In fact, mental stuff seems unlike brain stuff,
even though brains may be needed to support
minds.
 Subjective (mind) and objective (brain) may be
necessary but complementary accounts.
 The relationship between the two remains
mysterious and in some ways quite
unfathomable.
FUNCTIONALISM
 Uses a familiar computer
analogy.
 Brains are like hardware;
minds are like software.
 Thoughts exist but not in
the same sense as brains. To
confuse them would be a
category mistake. Mental
states are functional states.
Conclusion..?
 The mind body
problem remains one
of the most
challenging in
philosophy and related
disciplines.
 To be honest, we are
nowhere near
bottoming this
conundrum!