Critically assess the claim that the soul is distinct from the body The claim that the soul is distinct from the body is a dualist belief supported by Descartes and Plato, but is refuted by monists like Aristotle and materialists such as Richard Dawkins. I believe that the soul is distinct from the body because the soul is eternal and continues in the after life, whereas the body is temporary and decays. Descartes supports his belief as he argues that the body is spatial meaning that is exists in space, whereas the mind or soul is conscious meaning we have knowledge of it. This is a dualist view as he argues that although the body and the mind/soul are separate, they interact with the brain. A strength of his argument is that it allows for mental continuity between life and the afterlife because the soul as well as the body interacts with the brain.
Miller maintains that what ensures personal identity is the soul. He tells Weirob that “your mind or soul is immaterial, lodged in your body while you are on earth” (Perry 7). Miller expounds on this assertion by saying that the body is separate from the soul. Because they are separate Miller believes it stands that a body is not needed to equal survive as long as the soul continues to exist. Weirob, however, disagrees with this view, instead believing that it is the body that ensures identity.
INTRODUCTION The mind-body problem is one of the problems in philosophy and it concerns the question whether a valid distinction can be made between the mind and the body. If such distinction can be made, then we can ask whether in fact any things exist to which we can apply either term, or both terms. Also if there are things to which both terms can be applied, we can, for those cases, ask what the relationship is between the mind and the body. In this paper, I shall present the Cartesian dualism in contrast to monism vis-à-vis the mind-body problem. THE CONCEPT OF THE MIND The mind is the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will, and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive process.
Ethical statements, Ayer said, cannot be verified analytically or synthetically so the truth of such phrases is unknowable and the language used is non-cognitive. Instead, ethical propositions can be no more that the expression of an emotion which will always be personal or subjective. For example to say “Abortion is good” is to express a subjective opinion about the moral issue of Abortion. For Ayer such statements can be no more than an expression of subjective emotion – leading some to label this approach to ethical language as the “boo hooray” theory. But does this strictly subjective understanding of ethical language and statements accurately reflect what is going on when we use such language?
Critically assess Dawkins’ claim that since life is no more than DNA reproducing itself, there can be no life after death. Richard Dawkins strongly rejects the notion that there is a life after death, and similarly that humans have no ‘soul’ – as in the traditional sense of a soul being a spiritual object which is distinct from our bodies. He argues that we are purely a product of our own genes, and all that our genes are concerned about is surviving and reproducing, meaning that we are no different from a plant or an animal. Personally, in my opinion, it seems realistic that Dawkins’ claim is true, because of the evidence of neuroscience, as well as the fact that it provides the most scientific explanation. Those that would argue against Dawkins’ ideas may consider themselves dualists; the most famous dualist would be Plato.
Wisdom does not require any kind of experience beyond normal experience. Empirical sciences require experience. Deny truth altogether: subjective Truth is subjective: it’s whatever you think it is Self-fulfilling: statement “there is no truth” would mean that statement is false…therefore there is truth. Subjective vs. objective Relative vs. absolute Way of
Rand says “Reality, the external world, exists independent of man’s consciousness, independent of any observer’s knowledge, beliefs, feelings, desires or fears…” (qtd. The Ayn Rand Institute 1). Consciousness, therefore, is to distinguish reality, not to fashion or form it around a personal belief. Consequently, Objectivists reject all forms of a supernatural or any beliefs unfounded in fact. In the quote below Rand explains why she rejects religion outright, and she believes man himself deserves the attention: Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man’s reach.
Before I can really explain why I believe this, I should write a little bit about the two thoughts in general. Someone who is a substance dualist believes, as Rene Descartes did, that the “universe consisted of two different kinds of substances that he termed res extensa (extended things physical things) and res cogitans (thinking things)” (mindcreators.com). In general, the dualist believes that Good and Evil (or God and the Devil) are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Substance dualism claims that immortal souls occupy an independent “realm” of existence distinct from that of the physical world. As for Materialism, it’s completely different.
Hence, our conception of one substance would be understood via an external property in relation with the other substance. Since substances cannot be understood in terms of external properties in relation with each other then they cannot be said to account for one another either because they do not relate to each other. Hence, since they cannot account for another, then they cannot cause or produce one another. From this line of reasoning Spinoza provides the corollary that substance cannot be produced by anything outside of it because there only exist substance and their
Moral Relativism cannot and does not accept the idea that an objective moral system exists. If it did, you could evaluate other ethical systems meaningfully. A moral relativist would ask such questions as ‘what do we mean by wrong?’ when making a decision on something deemed wrong. Relativism is in direct contrast with absolute morality that is deontological, referring to looking at the action in itself. A moral relativist would believe that there is no definite set of rules that apply universally.