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.
Soft materialists agree to a point but their key belief is that everything emerges from the physical, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that everything can be reduced to the physical. They would argue that material is the base of everything and the mind emerges from the material - this is backed up by the example that while there would be no thoughts without brains, thoughts can’t be simply reduced to the brain as a material object. Gilbert Ryle is an advocate of Materialism and argues that talking of the soul is a ‘category mistake’. He argues that the soul is not a quantifiable phenomena that can be
Alex Sale Ms. Mittleman 11/18/09 To Live Free From Society Or Die A Conformist Transcendentalism began when some philosophers started challenging the state of culture and society. Transcendental ideas are the keys to a better future. One must rely on his/her own self, in essence self-reliance, and from the reliance of the self comes self-assertion, and putting yourself out into the world. Transcendentalists believed that one should not rely on anyone else but his/herself, and that one should be free in his/her thoughts. The most important aspect of the transcendental self is the concept that one should free itself from society’s boundaries.
“Free will is an illusion. What seems to be freely chosen behaviour is really the result go internal and external forces acting upon the individual” Discuss this view. Quite simply, the idea of free will is that individuals have complete control over their life and their destiny. Believers of free will are of the opinion that human behaviour is the result of choices which each individual makes for themselves; external factors do not influence behaviour in any way. In total opposition to this belief is determinism, the theory that all behaviour is pre-ordained and we cannot chose our destiny so to speak.
This happens because new philosophers focus more on the concept of memories and not those of consciousness. This causes their views to be distorted and not capture Locke’s original ideas. Schechtman an alternative method to analyzes Locke’s view that focuses on the importance of self-understanding. This new insight on his views focuses more why the consciousness is so essential to personal identity without basing it purely off the
Hicks Replica Theory states that the soul cannot be separated from the body and at the point of death on earth, God creates an exact replica of that person in another space. They would look the same and have the same memories; however there are many problems with Hicks ideas. First of all it could be argued that if the replica has the same ‘consciousness, memory, emotion and, violation’ as the original it is then logically possible to identify the replica as the original. Further to this Bernard Williams argues that Hick’s portrayal of an endless life of replications would be a meaningless life. It might prove a boring
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.
I will be approaching this from a Dualist point of view and I will be referring to Dualism and it’s supporting arguments, namely; the indivisibility argument and the conceivability argument which explain how, logically, alternatives to dualism are not feasible. These logical arguments offer a firm base to support Descartes’ theories but there is a problem with explaining the interaction between the mind and brain if they are not identical. However, the difficulty in understanding how an interaction can occur does not automatically lend itself to providing evidence that the mind and the body are identical. Descartes believes that the body is intrinsically the same as other material objects in the world. It is an extended thing: reg extensa and has physical properties: its size, its shape and the fact it takes up space out there in the world.
An adequate account of concepts is especially important (and challenging) for Empiricist philosophers (such as Locke, Berkeley and Hume), as they cannot rely on a Rationalist-style belief in ethereal, inbuilt intellectual content . Hume follows Berkeley in his rejection of general abstract ideas – both arguing that concepts are always connected to one
Dawkins is a materialist, and a monist, meaning that he believes that the soul and the body are inseparable entities. . This would put him in agreement with the statement that death is no more than wishful thinking, because we cannot physically prove it, and because he believes that the soul cannot be separated from the body. This would slightly point towards him believing that there is no life after death, however he does believe in the concept of us carrying on our lives through children, memories, photos, and such like. Dawkins pokes holes in the Christian argument for the concept of afterlife, because there is little mention of life after death in the Old Testament of the bible.