Critically access the view that humans have immortal souls (35 marks) People who support the idea of an immortal soul think that that the soul is a distinct and immortal entity within the body (dualism) which can survive the death of the body and ascend to the afterlife. However, this theory would be greatly opposed by those who believe in materialism, the belief that we as humans exist as a single unit of body and soul which cannot be separated. The first major argument in favour of an immortal soul was given by the philosopher Plato. Plato believed that the soul was imprisoned within the body and that the ultimate goal of the soul was to be released at death back to the world of the Forms where it could be reunited with the Form of the Good (God). Thus the body which is purely material dies for Plato and the soul returns to the world of the Forms and is immortal.
Plato’s views on the soul are more convincing than Aristotle’s – discuss. Plato and Aristotle were both Greek philosophers who wrote alternate views upon the soul. When discussing Plato and Aristotle we must deduce that Aristotle’s views are likely to revolve around empirical matters whereas Plato’s will be mostly based upon The World of the Forms. Plato wrote about his dualist views upon the soul that state that the soul is ‘imprisoned’ in a body waiting to be freed by knowledge, to Plato, the soul is immortal and lives on when the body dies. Aristotle has a monist approach to the soul, unlike Plato he says that the soul cannot exist without the body.
He asserts that when we die it is not permanent because our souls are reincarnated. Socrates second argument for the immortality of the soul is the Theory of Recollection. He proposes that that we possess some non-empirical knowledge at birth, implying the soul existed before birth to carry that knowledge. He asserts that all learning is just a matter of recollecting knowledge we already know. He claims that we forget a lot of our knowledge when we are born.
Compare and contrast two types of belief about life after death (18) Death is frequently defined as, “the complete and permanent cessation (ending) of all vital functions of a living creature, the end of all life”. However, some argue that death is not the end of all life, because, for example people live on in the form of inherited genes and in other people’s memories, therefore the latter part of this definition is disputed. Two views with respect to life after death are Immortality of the Soul and Rebirth, however I will compare and contrast Ressurection and Reincarnation. If this definition of death is accepted, is there reason to reject the idea of life after death in the form or reincarnation or ressurection? This argument is not just a religious issue, as many non religious believers find the prospect of a post mortem existence highly desirable.
By engaging in dialectic with two of his friends, the Thebans Cebes and Simmias, Socrates explores various arguments for the soul's immortality in order to show that there is an afterlife in which the soul will dwell following death. In total, Socrates presents four arguments for the immortality of the soul. The first three, though convincing, are insubstantial. These may be referred to as the cyclical, recollective, and affinity arguments. While valuable to the reader as examples of both invalid arguments and the difficulty of proving such a claim as the soul's
Those that would argue against Dawkins’ ideas may consider themselves dualists; the most famous dualist would be Plato. Following on from his Theory of the World of the Forms, he argued that the soul is, in fact, more important than the body. This is because the body is a part of the physical and empirical world, and will eventually decay; whereas the soul is a separate entity, and is eternal, immortal and unchanging – like those things which belong in the World of the Forms. Plato uses two arguments to suggest why the soul must exist outside of our bodies: firstly, the argument of knowledge: many mathematical problems are true in all circumstances, whether this is in the physical world or the World of the Forms. Therefore, learning is actually only remembering what the soul already knew from the World of the Forms.
With that said it can be argued that this is not true because a large amount of people know that the soul is immaterial rather than a contingent object. Plato is a dualist like Descartes but focuses on the immorality of the soul therefore showing its existence. The first argument is the cyclical argument, which simply says that the soul must be immortal since the living come from the dead. The argument from recollection argues that it is possible to gain information out of a person who seems not to have any knowledge of a subject, a priori knowledge therefore suggesting that this
The concepts in The Symposium, speech of Aristophance showed the birth of desire, and dialogue between Diotima and Socrates showed that what is love and same-sex love, and Michel Foucault idea, showed that what true sex is. Love desire is the force to fulfilling lack but we can’t just remain in this level. We need to seek for good such as wisdom to become immortal. We should not get trapped in our stereotype, male and female. This kind of stereotyping just created by our society, by our culture.
The ancient Greeks were the first who tried to explain it "scientifically." The philosopher Aristotle related to the activity of the heart and an "evaporation on the process of nutrition". Likewise, Plato also related dreams with the waking hours and the mental operations (Rizzo, 1998). Even in the Old Testament and Hebrew literature, dreams are particularly important because they considered them as divine revelations. Sleep is a physiological state in which the level of surveillance is diminished and the individual rests.
Megan Ishibashi April 16, 2012 Philosophy 160 Balmer “The First Night” In “The First Night”, a passage from A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immorality, the author John Perry makes it clear that Gretchen Weirob is seeking for an argument that personal survival after death is conceivable. Miller tries to prove that survival after death is possible by claiming that people are identical to souls, not bodies. He stated “what is fundamentally you is not your body, but your soul or self or mind” (6); if this theory is valid, then survival after death is achievable because even though your body dies, your soul lives on. Weirob challenges this by stating that the soul is defined as immaterial, something that can’t be seen, felt, touched, or smelt; yet all we have access to are material bodies, things that can be seen, felt touched, or smelt. Souls cannot be seen or sensed in any way because they are inaccessible from the outside.