essay about body and soul

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Created Body and Soul

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Human beings are made up of both body and soul, which are distinct but inseparable except in death, both being equally important for human life and experience.

Human beings are made up of both body and soul. These two parts are distinct but inseparable in our nature state. They will be separated in death, but this is a result of the curse and will not continue indefinitely. The body is not ethically inferior, as some unchristian sources hold it to be, but neither is it the totality of the human person. The soul is immortal, not naturally but by virtue of God’s will, and possess faculties such as reason, will, and the various emotions. The body and soul function inter-dependently and together make up the human person. The heart is a common biblical metaphor for the human person, while whether the intellect or the will holds primacy within the person is a matter that has been debated for some time.

In his correspondence with the Corinthians, Paul provides two different but complementary accounts of the resurrection, in one emphasizing the resurrection of the body from the earth and in the other the descent of resurrection from above. In 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrection is a recreating of the body at death and decomposition, which Paul denotes as a “spiritual body,” imperishable, with its distinct “glory” (15:41). This is guaranteed by the resurrection of Christ, through whom believers shall be made alive. This is in contrast to our present condition of having “earthly bodies,” made “of dust” (15:47–8), mortal, and liable to decay. Our “present body” is referred to by Paul as a “tent” (2 Cor. 5:4). Spiritual bodies are “immortal,” a sign that “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor .15:54). This doctrine is meant to have ethical consequences. If our inevitable death were final, and there is no resurrection, then it would is rational “to eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (15:32; probably a quote of the poet Menander).

In his second account (2 Cor. 5. 1–10) the emphasis is on heaven, our “heavenly dwelling,” which we are to “put on,” at which point the mortal “may be swallowed up by life.” Here it is not so much that the resurrection of Christ is the guarantee of resurrection life but rather the work of the Spirit in our lives in the present era (5:5).

We can draw some general inferences about the body and the soul from these accounts, which are corroborated throughout Scripture. First, there is no ethical inferiority of the body as distinct from the soul. The body is not “unspiritual.” Both body and soul are equally the gift of the Creator. The term “flesh” in the New Testament can be as in “flesh and blood,” while “flesh’ more often, in Paul’s writings, is a word for ungodliness, as in Galatians 5:16.

Ascribing a lower ethical place to the body has pagan sources, for soul and body together comprises the image of God according to Scripture. The togetherness of body and soul is stressed in the first account of the creation of man. Man is not a soul “captured” in the body, despite the biblical analogy of the body as a “tent” (2 Cor. 5:1) or a “prison-house” as Plato maintained. The analogy of a tent indicates that the body is perishable in the present phase of its life, but in the life to come it will be imperishable, a “spiritual body” (1 Cor. 5:25). The problems of continuity between this life and the life to come are formidable. What it will be like to be disembodied and then to possess a “spiritual body” does not seem to have been revealed to us yet. Given that it is already true that that the believer’s body is the temple of God in which the activity of God takes place (Eph. 2:21), it is not transparently clear what the phrase “a spiritual body” entails, since it refers to an eschatological era not yet experienced. Yet we can say that it is a feature of the present phase of Christian life that it does not compare with “the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). The believer presently has the “first fruits” of the Spirit and “groans inwardly” as he awaits the redemption of his body (Rom. 8:23), so whatever else will be true, the “spiritual body” will be a present unimaginable enhancement of our present “lowly body” but modelled on the “glorious body” of the glorified Savior (Phil. 3:21).

It is a mistake to say, “I am a soul and I have a body.” Your body is unique to you, and so it is not like a pair of glasses or an artificial heart or a wig. If your body is injured, you are injured. Your growth in maturity from infancy is made possible by the growth of the body. It is unique to you, and in this life it is you, while in the life to come it will be you again.

The soul endures the death of the body: is it, then, immortal? Yes and no. Scripture points to its immortality, but it is not so immortal that even God could not end the life of a soul. But it is immortal because it is the will of God that it be so. Only God has necessary immortality; he is the source of the immortality of every immortal creature (1 Tim. 6:16). The Bible does not present a clear statement of the human soul’s immortality, but there are general statements supporting immortality (Eccl. 3:11), especially in Scripture’s accounts of the resurrection of the dead, which includes both the lives of the wicked and the godly (e.g. John 5:20, 1 Cor. 15:49, Phil. 3:21, and 2 Tim. 4:8).

The soul could be said to be physically “simple” in that it does not consists of parts, as the body does, but possesses powers of intellect, will and others. The physical heart is distinct from the lungs and other bodily parts, and each plays a vital role in the life of the body, physical life. The soul does not have physical parts but consists in faculties such as reason, will, and the various emotions. It also has the operations of the memory and the conscience. However, in the present life the soul is intimately related with the brain; there is a wonderful and presently little-understood interaction and adaptation between the two. An injury to the brain leads to the inhibiting of the soul, and its healing or growth, as an infant becomes a child, affects the operation of the soul. The brain affects the soul by occurrences such as losing consciousness by injury or by the operation of an anesthetic, or an inability brought on by something like suffering cruelty in childhood. When the body is at rest, or immobile following a stroke, the soul can still be active in dreams, and other mental activity, which can have an input from the memory. The memory is wonderful, a storehouse of facts, and of skills. The intimacy of the connection of the brain and the consciousness is also seen by the fact that the soul commands the soul in repertoires of what have been called “basic acts,” acts which are immediately producible. If the eye is working properly, a person can see a tree when looking at the tree. She does not have to make preparations, to perform an act in order to bring about another act, like the moving of a hand to write a signature with a pen.

The Bible often uses the term “heart” in a metaphorical sense to denote the center of a person’s self. As in “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he” and “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9). There are references to the reason (Isa. 1:18) and to will (2 Pet. 1:12) and to conscience (Rom. 9:1), understood as a reflexive and secret “operation” of God, and to the memory (John 15:20). There have been different views as to which of these has primacy, a contest between those who give primacy to the intellect (“intellectualists”) and those to the will (“voluntarists”). Some who have been affected by Stoicism have sought the suppressing or the taming of the passions, as being “unruly,” tending to irrationality. Jonathan Edwards took a more positive line, arguing that “true religion lies much in the affections”. One should note that in the New Testament, “passions” have a negative flavor.

The Intellect

All acknowledge that the intellect has a two-fold role, as contemplative or theoretical on the one hand, which has the task of acquiring true beliefs about the world, and the practical on the other hand, in which the reason has the task of acquiring the knowledge the best way to gain a certain end. This is known as the practical reason. Such views naturally give the primary role to the reason in the mind. Most Reformed theologians, following Aquinas, take the reason to be the central power of the soul, which is present in humans but absent in non-human animals. Variant accounts of the image, as residing in the man-woman relationship, or in the inter-Trinitarian relations, have been proposed more recently, though a Trinitarian emphasis occurs as early as Augustine.

A certain amount of attention has been given to the disembodied life of the consciousness post mortem, taking a cue from dreams in sleep. The body is the source of many of our emotions at present, and in the moments after death there will not be a bodily experience, such as tiredness or fear, or the action of though they may be remembered. We know little about these matters, but the believer knows that he or she will be transformed into Christ’s likeness, for “we shall know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

Friday essay: what do the 5 great religions say about the existence of the soul?

Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland

Disclosure statement

Philip C. Almond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Queensland provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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A recent survey found almost 70% of Australians believed in or were open to the existence of the soul — meaning they believe we are more than the stuff out of which our bodies are made.

The soul can be defined as the spiritual or non-material part of us that survives death.

Western pop culture is currently bewitched by what happens to us after death with TV shows such as The Good Place and Miracle Workers set largely in the afterlife. And the Disney film Soul depicts the soul of a jazz pianist separating from his earthly body to journey into the afterlife.

Read more: Disney Pixar's Soul: how the moviemakers took Plato's view of existence and added a modern twist

The five great world religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism — all believe in some version of a “self”, variously named, which mostly survives death. But they imagine its origin, journey, and destination in some quite different and distinctive ways.

The origin of the soul – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

These three religions all believe there was a time when souls were not. That is to say, before God created the world, there was nothing at all.

Within Christianity, how the soul was united with its body was a matter of uncertainty. But all were agreed that the soul was present within the foetus, if not at the moment of conception, then within the first 90 days. When it comes to contemporary Christian debate about abortion, this moment is a crucial one. Most Christians today believe the soul enters the body at the time of conception.

Christianity adopted the Greek philosopher Plato’s view that we consist of a mortal body and an immortal soul . Death is thus the separation of the soul from the body.

According to Judaism, the soul was created by God and joined to an earthly body. But it did not develop a definitive theory on the timing or nature of this event (not least because the separation between body and soul was not an absolutely clear one). Modern Judaism remains uncertain on when, between birth and conception, a human being is fully present.

Similarly, in Islam, the soul was breathed into the foetus by God. As in Christianity, opinions vary on when this occurred, but the mainstream opinion has it that the soul enters the foetus around 120 days after conception.

For all three religions, souls will live forever.

The origin of the soul – Hinduism and Buddhism

Within Hinduism, there has been never been a time when souls did not exist. All of us have existed into the infinite past. Thus, we are all bound to Samsara – the infinite cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

Our souls are continually reincarnated in different physical forms according to the law of karma — a cosmic law of moral debit and credit. Each moral deed, virtuous or otherwise, leaves its mark on the individual. At the time of death, the sum total of karma determines our status in the next life.

Like Hinduism, Buddhism accepts there was no time when we were not bound to the cycle of birth and rebirth. But unlike Hinduism, it does not believe there is an eternal, unchanging “soul” that transmigrates from one life to the next. There is nothing permanent in us, any more than there is any permanence in the world generally.

Nevertheless, Buddhists believe our consciousness is like a flame on the candle of our body. At the moment of death, we leave the body but this flame, particularly our flame of moral credit or debit, goes into a new body. In Buddhism, this “karmic flame of consciousness” plays the same role as the “soul” in other religions.

The destiny of the soul – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Within Christianity, it is believed the soul continues its existence immediately after death. Most believe it will do so consciously (rather than in a sleep-like state). At the point of death, God will determine the soul’s ultimate fate — eternal punishment or eternal happiness .

Still, by the end of the first millennium, there was a recognition that most of us had not been sufficiently good to merit immediate happiness, nor sufficiently evil to merit eternal misery. Catholicism thus developed an intermediate state — purgatory — offering the slightly or moderately wicked a chance to be purified of their sins. All souls will be reunited with their resurrected bodies on Judgement Day when Christ returns and God finally confirms their destiny.

Judaism remains uncertain about the consciousness of the dead in the afterlife, although the dominant view holds that, after death, the soul will be in a conscious state.

Orthodox Judaism is committed to the idea of the resurrection of the body on Judgement Day and its reunion with the soul, together with heavenly bliss for the saved. Liberal forms of modern Judaism, like modern liberal Christianity, sit lightly on the idea of the resurrection of the body and emphasise spiritual life immediately after death.

Within Islam, souls await the day of resurrection in their graves. It is a limbo-like state: those destined for hell will suffer in their graves; those destined for heaven will wait peacefully.

There are two exceptions to this: those who die fighting in the cause of Islam go immediately into God’s presence; those who die as enemies of Islam go straight to hell.

On the final Day of Judgement, Muslims believe the wicked will suffer torments in hell. The righteous will enjoy the pleasures of Paradise.

The destiny of the soul – Hinduism

In the modern West, reincarnation has a positive flavour as a desirable alternative to the traditional Western afterlife. But the Indian traditions all agree it is the ultimate horror — their aim is to escape from it.

They do, however, differ radically in their views of the destiny of the soul beyond the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Within Hinduism, we can distinguish four different schools of thought on this.

In the first of these, known as Samkhya-Yoga , the aim is to realise the essential separateness of the soul from its material body, thus enabling us to live in the here and now without attachment to the things of the world. At death, the liberated soul will exist eternally beyond any further entanglements with the world. Modern Western postural yoga derives from this, although it is intended, not so much to remove us from the world, as to enable us the better to function within it.

The second view, known as the Dvaita Vedanta school, is completely focused on the soul’s loving devotion to God, which will help liberate souls beyond death. As George Harrison sang , by chanting the names of the Lord (Krishna and Rama) “you’ll be free”. This is the dominant philosophy underlying the Hare Krishna movement and of all the Indian traditions, most closely resembles Christianity.

The third view is that of the Vishishtadvaita Vedanta school. Here, liberation occurs when the soul enters into the oneness of God, rather as a drop of water merges into the ocean, while paradoxically maintaining its individual identity.

The final view of the destiny of the soul within Hinduism is that of the Advaita Vedanta school. Liberation is attained when the soul realises its essential identity with Brahman — the impersonal Godhead beyond the gods.

The destiny of the karmic flame – Buddhism

Although there are divinities galore in Buddhism, the gods are not essential for liberation. So, it is possible to be a Buddhist atheist. Liberation from endless rebirth comes from our realisation that all is suffering and nothing is permanent, including the self.

In Theravada Buddhism (present in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos), the realised person enters Pari-Nirvana at death. The flame of consciousness is “extinguished”. The “soul” is no more.

In Mahayana Buddhism (in Japan, Vietnam and China, including Tibet)), liberation is attained when the world is seen as it really is, with the veil of ignorance removed — as having no ultimate reality. This means that, although at one level the many gods, goddesses, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas can assist us on the path to liberation, they too, like us, have never really existed.

At the everyday level, we can distinguish between truth and falsity. But from the perspective of what is ultimately real, there is only Emptiness or Pure Consciousness. Liberation consists of coming to know that the idea of the individual soul was always an illusory one. In short, the individual soul never really was. It was part of the grand illusion that is the realm of Samsara.

The practice of Buddhist “mindfulness”, now becoming popular in the West in a secular form, is the continual attentiveness to the impermanence or unreality of the self and the world, and the suffering caused by thinking and acting otherwise.

The meaning of the soul

Within the Christian tradition, the idea that each individual was both mortal body and immortal soul distinguished humans from other creatures.

It made humanity qualitatively unique; ensuring the life of each individual soul had an ultimate meaning within the grand, divine scheme. However, even without a belief in the transcendent, atheistic humanists and existentialists still affirm the distinct value of each human person.

The question of souls is still one that matters. It is, in effect, wrestling with the meaning of human life — and whether each of us has more ultimate significance than a rock or an earthworm.

This is why the belief in souls persists, even in this apparently secular age.

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What Is the Difference Between Soul and Body According to Descartes? Essay

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One of the most significant concepts of Descartes’s philosophy is the distinction between soul and body. This concept stipulates the basic theoretical framework into which more data is to be integrated. Of central significance for understanding that soul and body unities are understanding of the soul and the distinctions between act and strength, matter and form, and proper and common sensible. Descartes underlines that all creatures possess the faculty of sensation (one of the abilities of the sensitive soul), and this operates through the body organs.

Descartes describes that the figures appear on the surface of the pineal gland by the departing animal spirits “must be taken for ideas, that is to say, for the forms or images which the reasonable soul considers immediately when united to this machine, she imagines or senses some object” (Descartes cited Grene 33).

For Descartes, mind and the imagination, as faculties of the soul, are reliant upon the intactness and unity of the physical body for their ability to exercise their functions, but also he refrains from identifying either of them with a specific physical organ. There are some indications in the physiological statute that he took the heart to be the seat of the mind. Even if one does concede that the heart is the seat of common sense, as some commentators suggest, it would still not be identical with the heart considered as a physical organ but would be a power or actuality of the heart (Cottingham 65).

There is some controversy over whether Descartes should be interpreted as saying that human beings possess three souls (nutritive, sensitive, and rational) or only one, but the view that we possess only one (with the rational soul bringing with it the powers of the two lower souls, which were then called “faculties” of the soul) was defended by Aquinas. Descartes would have been taught, Aristotle. Despite the controversies about the relationship between the rational soul and its sensitive and nutritive faculties, however, the Aristotelians were still united in their belief that the soul is the form of the body and not a distinct substance, and they regarded sensation as one of the powers of the soul, albeit one that the soul necessarily exercises in and through corporeal organs (Grene 13).

Following Descartes, unlike plants, animals have sense organs that can receive the forms of objects without their matter. This is possible both because of the physical constitution of the sense organ and the fact that it is part of a living being with a sensitive soul; the soul can exercise its faculties only inappropriately organized matter. In the case of senses that involve an external medium, the material organ must be composed primarily of the element that serves as a medium for that quality and must be in some sense neutral with regard to the extremes of the qualities it discerns (Grene 19). Descartes writes:

Finally, it is known that all these movements of the muscles, and likewise all sensations, depend on the nerves, which are like little threads or tubes coming from the brain and containing, like the brain itself, a certain very fine air or wind which is called the ‘animal spirits” (Descartes cited Grene 88).

This can take the form of a complete absence of the quality it discerns (as the water in the eye is colorless), or it can take the form of having the quality but being in the middle range between extremes. Thus the flesh cannot be too hot or too cold, too hard or too soft. Although a physical change occurs in the sense organ when it takes on the form of the sense object, the sensation is not to be understood as identical with that change (Cottingham 46).

The same is true of the faculty of imagination that, while having a physical basis in the movements conveyed inward from the senses, is nonetheless not merely reduced to some spatially localized body part. Descartes attempts a radical simplification of the scholastic theory of perception. He declines to give a complete account of what the mind and body are, or of how the body is informed by the soul, since he wishes to “make no assertions on matters which are apt to give rise to controversy, without first setting out the reasons which led me to make them.” Indeed, one thing that is striking about his brief discussion of perception in Rule XII is the frequent occurrence of disclaimers of this sort.

These indicate that despite the superficial similarity between his view and those of the scholastics, Descartes anticipated opposition from them, which he is attempting to head off (Grene 87). In addition, he is already trying to move the reader in the direction of thinking in a quantitative method as opposed to the way the Aristotelians thought about physics, and he continues to do this throughout his discussion of perception.

Although any theory of perception must account for the fact that a malfunctioning body can cause perceptual errors, Descartes’ sharp dualism makes this problem particularly intransigent, especially since he has eliminated the “forms” that served as a kind of bridge between intellect and world and left the mind confronting figures traced in the imagination — and these are clearly something physical. Thus, the danger that our knowledge of the world will come to be regarded as indirect is particularly serious for Descartes (Cottingham 97).

The problem as Descartes understands it is how to transmit the retinal images to the brain since he believes that the soul has its seat deep within the brain. This belief, in turn, is based on such evidence as to the fact that damage or disease of the brain impedes sensation even though the rest of the body is intact, and damage to the nerves going from, say, the foot to the brain, prevents our having any sensations from the foot. Descartes’ main argument for believing that a merging of the two images must take place on a physiological level is that he believes it is necessary to account for the fact that we see one object although there are two retinal images conveyed inward to the brain.

What sensation we experience depends on which nerves are stimulated (those from the ears make us hear sounds, those from the tongue savors, etc.) and upon the good pleasure of God who connected various color sensations with particular sorts of motions in the brain. Descartes’ thinking about which model to employ is still in flux in the optical writings, and as a result, the distinction between what we perceive by sense and what involves judgment by the mind is not sharply drawn (Grene 43).

It should also be noted here that here the extent that Descartes’ account of situation perception relies on the soul’s ability to be present in the hands or eyes and to direct its attention out from them in straight lines, it is in tension with his position in the preceding discourse (Grene 77). In the fourth part of the discourse of the Dioptrics , he states that the soul senses inasmuch as it is present in the brain where it exercises the faculty of common sense and that while remaining in the brain it can, by means of the nerves, receive impressions from external objects. The notion of the soul using the body, however, harks back to the older form of philosophical dualism in which the soul is radically non-spatial and therefore does not fit well with Descartes’ form of dualism, in which the soul is localized at the pineal gland (Copleston 33).

Descartes supposes that people do not simply have motions in mind to go on, as it were, since God has conjoined souls and bodies in such a way that these motions give us an awareness of the position of various parts of our bodies. This is an institution of nature; we do not need to retrace the nerves to our extremities or engage in any sort of geometrical calculations — the awareness is simply given to us. It forms the foundation of our ability to know the direction in which objects lie relative to the body.

“Having thus considered all the functions belonging solely to the body, it is easy to recognize that there is nothing in us which we must attribute to our soul except our thoughts” (Descartes cited Grene 33).

Since situation perception is a component of the mechanisms described as natural geometry, this enables Descartes to assimilate vision to touch in a way that downplays the explicitly mathematical elements in his account of distance perception. Another possible reason for Descartes not drawing a sharp distinction between seeing and judging might be that drawing this distinction is not particularly central to his own purposes in the optical writings (Grene 76).

So long as he is able to explain vision without recourse to the scholastic conceptual apparatus and to make suggestions for the improvement of vision based on his theory, he regards his theory as successful. And if he finds it necessary to draw the distinction between seeing and judging differently in some other context (as he does in his Sixth Replies), he believes he can do so without thereby radically altering his basic theory of vision in the Dioptrics (Copleston 31).

Descartes’ omission of situation perception is symptomatic of a deeper change — namely, his complete omission of our awareness of the spatiality of our own body as a significant factor in visual-spatial perception. With it goes the assimilation of vision to touch that plays such an important role in Descartes’ earlier discussion of distance and situation perception. In line with this downplaying of the role of the body, those means of distance perception that do not involve a clear, rational calculation (e.g., physical changes) drop out, signaling progress in the direction of involving the homunculus model in all sensitivity.

It is natural to read Descartes as believing that what is given on the second level of soul is, in the case of interaction, a pattern of isomorphic relations with the retinal image, but he does not explicitly say this. It is, though, hard to see what else it could be, since colors are perceived as spread out in space and not as all-pervasive like odors, and based on his physiological theory people would naturally expect them to be arranged as they are in the retinal image. Descartes does, though, do better when it comes to clarifying the problem of whether the corrective judgments are cognizant or not (Grene 81).

In sum, Descartes sees the soul and body as union and dependent parts which comprise the human. Descartes makes advances in vision, and his theory is of great significance for other philosophies and to the genesis of early modern theories of perception. Descartes can be criticized from two directions. Descartes’ understanding of body and soul suffers from some subjectivity and tensions.

Explaining soul perception Descartes puts a strain on his theory, which he tries to explain either by utilizing a kind of inner object that threatens to entangle him in an infinite retreat or by retreating in various methods from his official dualism. For him, the mind interacts with the body only at the pineal gland. Descartes underlines that the mind spreads throughout the body, thus enabling the soul to be present in the eyes or hands to know the places where they are and to direct its attention out from these places.

Works Cited

Cottingham John. Descartes . Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Copleston Frederick. A History of Philosophy . Book 2, vol. 4. New York: Doubleday, 1985.

Grene Marjorie. Descartes . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

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A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

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Plato’s view of the soul

Plato is a dualist – the view that the mind/soul and the body are different types of thing/existence.
Plato thinks the world of forms is the real world and this physical world, including our body, is not the real world.
So, really we are a soul, not a body.
Plato’s argument from recollection – we have ideas of perfect things – like a perfect circle or perfect justice – but we have never seen a perfect circle or perfect goodness.
So, we must have got these ideas from the world of forms – where there are perfect forms of circles and goodness.
So, there must be a part of us – our soul – which was in the world of forms before we were born.
We now have a dim recollection of those perfect forms, explaining our knowledge of perfect concepts.
Hume claims we can actually invent the idea of perfection ourselves – even though we haven’t experienced it.
We take our idea of imperfect beauty or imperfect circles that we have experienced, and simply imagine them without the imperfection – to arrive at the idea of perfection.
So, just because we haven’t experienced perfection, doesn’t require the existence of a soul or realm of forms to explain how we got the idea.
So, Plato’s argument for the soul seems to fail

Evaluation:

It’s hard to really tell for sure whether Hume is right about how we got our idea of perfection.
However, his theory is a simpler explanation. We can use Ockham’s razor to justify accepting Hume’s theory. This claims that we are justified in believing the simplest explanation that works. Plato’s realm of forms idea is an unnecessary hypothesis.

Aristotle’s materialist view of the soul

Aristotle thought plato was wrong to think that ‘form’ existed in another world.
Actually, form is an inseparable part of objects – it is their ‘formal cause’ – e.g. the shape of a chair.
Aristotle believed in a soul – but thought it was the formal cause of the body.
For humans, our soul gives us rational thought.
A thing’s formal cause is its defining feature/essence – which for humans is reason.
So, the soul is the formal cause of the body
Stamp in wax analogy – soul is like the imprint left by the stamp, the wax is like the body.
The soul has no separate existence in itself – it can’t be separated from the body, but it does give form (rational thought in our case) to the body.
Modern science would reject the idea of formal causation – Francis Bacon argued that only material and efficient causation are scientifically valid.
There are only material atoms and other particles, and efficient forces operating on them.
Aristotle thought that rational thought must be our ‘form’ – but modern science would say rational thought is just the result of the material and efficient causation going on in brain processes.
Rational thoughts are just neuronal activity.
So, there is no basis for belief in a soul, even of Aristotle’s description.
This critique from Bacon is successful because modern science has been seen to powerfully explain so much of the world.
It doesn’t fully yet understand the brain, but it’s reasonable to expect that once it does we will have a full understanding of how the mind works.
So, it’s reasonable to conclude that there is nothing more to being human than being a particular collection & structure of atoms.
There’s nothing additional that could make up or provide justification for belief in anything like a soul.

Descartes’ view of the soul

Descartes thought the mind and soul were the same thing.
Descartes was a dualist – a substance dualist – he thought that the mind and body were distinct substances – meaning distinct fundamental types of existence.
The Indivisibility argument
P1. Physical substance is divisible (since it’s extended).
P2. The mind is indivisible (since it’s non-extended).
P3. Leibniz’ law is that identical things must have the same properties.
C1. The mind therefore cannot be identical with any physical substance, such as the body.
This argument uses Leibniz’ law: that identical things must have the same properties. The physical has the property of being divisible but the mental does not. If the body and mind were identical, then that one identical thing would be both divisible and indivisible, which is impossible. Therefore, the mind and body are not identical.
At the time, Descartes was criticised with the argument that the mind can be divided into feelings, thoughts, memories, etc. However this criticism misunderstands what Descartes means by the mind. He means consciousness – our sense of awareness. This seems indivisible.
A stronger criticism is the modern evidence of split-brain patients.
The human brain has two hemispheres which are connected by a single band of neurons. The right hemisphere controls the left arm, and the left hemisphere controls the right arm. Sometimes as a treatment for epilepsy, doctors cut the connecting neurons, separating the two hemispheres.
In patients who have undergone that procedure, it appears that their mind has been divided into two.
For example, one patient would pick up food with one hand, and then the other hand would hit it out of that hand.
Another patient was with his wife and one hand reached out to hug her, the other hand to push her away.
So, this is good evidence that Descartes is wrong to think the mind cannot be divided.
It is good evidence that the mind is the brain and if you divide the brain, you divide the mind.

Descartes’ 2nd argument: conceivability argument

Things that are identical cannot be imagined as separate – e.g. you can’t imagine a triangle separate from three sides.
Descartes says he can imagine the mind without a body.
E.g. imagine being a ghost walking through walls
If we can imagine the mind without the body, that shows it’s possible for the mind to exist without the body.
So, the mind cannot be identical to the body.
So, the mind and body are separate.
The masked man fallacy shows that we actually can imagine impossible things.
If someone hears about a masked man robbing a bank – they can imagine that it’s not their father – but if it really was their father, they just imagined the impossible.
So, when Descartes says he can imagine the mind without the body, that doesn’t prove that it’s possible for the mind to exist without the body – it doesn’t prove that they aren’t identical.
The person in the masked man fallacy story imagined a possibility where in reality there was none. Descartes could be doing the same when he imagines the mind separate to the body.
Descartes could be imagining something impossible in that case.
So, Descartes’ argument fails to prove that the mind and body are separate substances.

G. Ryle’s ‘category error’ critique of dualism

Ryle rejected dualism as making what he called a ‘category error’.
A category error is when you talk about a concept as if it belonged to a category that it doesn’t belong to.
E.g. if I was to ask ‘what is the colour of twenty’ – that is a category error, treating the concept ‘twenty’ as if it belonged to the category of ‘things which have a colour’.
Ryle illustrated this with someone being shown round a university – saying that they see the physics building and the biology building but then saying they want to be shown the university now! They have mistakenly put ‘university’ into the category of ‘individual buildings’ when really the university is in the category of ‘collection of buildings’.
Descartes’ arguments essentially work by saying that the mind/soul is not like a physical thing. It’s not divisible, for example.
Descartes thinks this shows the mind is not in the category of ‘physical things’ so Descartes concludes that it must be in the category of ‘non-physical things’.
However, Ryle objects that Descartes assumes that the mind must be in the category of ‘things’ and that since it’s not a physical thing, it must be a non-physical thing.
But this assumes that the mind must be a thing!
Ryle is influenced by verificationism (though he isn’t strictly a verificationist..). Verificationists argued the mind itself is meaningless except insofar as it manifests in behaviour which is scientifically observable.
This prompts Ryle to conclude the mind is not a thing – he thinks it is a set of dispositions towards certain behaviours.
Ryle is a ‘soft’ behaviourist – he thinks language about the mind is only valid when explained in terms of behavioural dispositions.
Talking about the mind is only valid when talking about it in terms of behavioural dispositions.
E.g. if I say someone is ‘angry’ what that really means is that they are disposed to raising their voice and shaking their first.
Talking about the mind as if it were a ‘thing’ is like suggesting there is a ghost in the machine of our body – Ryle rejects that as unscientific nonsense.
Descartes has thus mistakenly put the mind in the category of ‘things’ and concluded that since it’s not a physical thing, it must be a non-physical thing. His mistake was to think it must be a thing at all.
Ryle makes an analogy with the brittleness of glass. This refers to the disposition of the glass to behave a certain way under certain conditions.
Think about how Descartes’ arguments apply to brittleness. Where is the brittleness of the glass? Is it divisible? Clearly not – but Descartes thought that in the case of the mind, that showed the mind must be a non-physical thing. Clearly when applied to brittleness though, we aren’t tempted to think brittleness is a non-physical thing, because we recognise it is not a thing – it is a disposition. Ryle concludes the same about the mind.
Ryle’s claim that the mind is not a ‘thing’ seems extreme. My mind ‘feels’ like a thing – it seems that my mind exists as a thing. Ryle, like most behaviourists, is counter-intuitive in going against the common-sense view of the mind as a real thing that exists.
Ryle may not be a verificationist strictly speaking, but he still relies on their approach that it’s scientifically invalid to talk about the mind by itself. This has come to be regarded as an overly-restrictive extreme form of empiricism.
It may be difficult to scientifically analyse the mind, but that doesn’t justify reducing it to merely a set of behavioural dispositions.

Dawkins’ view of the soul

Dawkins is a scientist. He claims there is no scientific evidence for the soul. He thinks we are just DNA and flesh and bones – there is nothing to being a human being other than physical matter.
He thinks people make up the idea of a soul because they are afraid to die.
He says the only valid way to talk about a soul is metaphorically.
He points out the dictionary has two definitions of a soul – soul 1 is the literal view of a soul – that actually exists as a part of us. He rejects that.
Soul 2 is the metaphorical view. Dawkins thinks it’s fine to use the word metaphorically to refer to our deep human feelings and our humanity.
E.g. if I said ‘that is a soul-less person’ – that would be metaphorical. This doesn’t mean souls actually exist, the word ‘soul’ is just a metaphor.
Dawkins thinks the mind is just the brain and that’s all. When you die, you cease to exist.
David Chalmers distinguishes between ‘the easy problem of consciousness’ and ‘the hard problem of consciousness’
The ‘easy problem of consciousness’ means figuring out which brain process is responsible for which mental process such as memory, perception or emotion.
The ‘hard problem of consciousness’ refers to what brain process is responsible for consciousness itself.
Chalmers says that neuroscience has helped with solving the easy problem of consciousness but it hasn’t even begun to explain the hard problem of consciousness.
So, scientists like Dawkins can’t claim to know that consciousness is just a physical bodily thing, since science doesn’t currently have a scientific explanation of consciousness.
Dawkins is premature in his dismissal of a non-physical aspect to our existence.
Chalmers could be right. However, it’s still more reasonable to expect that science will one day fully explain consciousness.
This is because there’s still so much about the brain that science is yet to discover.
If science fully understood the brain, but still didn’t understand consciousness, that would be a problem for Dawkins.
However it’s more reasonable to expect that the explanation of consciousness resides in the as of yet unexplored part of our understanding of the brain.

Plato’s dualism

Critique of the argument from recollection

Arguably there is no such thing as perfect goodness – what someone thinks is good depends on their culture.
Perfect goodness will mean different things to different people.
So, there cannot be a perfect form of goodness – so his argument for the soul fails.

Aristotle’s view of the soul

Aristotle is a materialist – thinks only one type of thing exists – material/physical things.
But he still believes in a soul as part of our material body – the soul is the ‘form’ of the body.
The soul is what gives our body rational thought.
It’s not a separate thing to our body – it is the form of our physical body.
Stamp in wax analogy – the body is like wax and the soul is like the imprint in wax left by the stamp.
The imprint is not a separate unique thing itself – it is just the form the wax has. Same goes for the soul.

Modern science’s rejection of formal causation

Modern scientists would reject Aristotle’s theory. They would say the body is just material structure – there it has no ‘form’.
Rational thought is just caused by brain processes, we don’t need the idea of form, so we don’t need the idea of a soul.

Descartes’ substance dualism

Descartes is a substance dualist. A substance is a type of existence that cannot be broken down into anything else.
He thinks the soul is our conscious mind. The mind (mental substance) is a different type of substance to the body (physical substance).
His arguments for this claim that the mind does not seem like a physical thing.
Physical things can be divided, but the mind cannot be divided. The mind doesn’t really have a location.
So, the mind cannot be a physical thing.

Responses to Descartes

The interaction problem – if the mind and body are such separate types of thing – how come they are able to interact with each other? When I have a desire to move my arm, my arm then moves. It looks like my mind caused my body to move – but how can a non-physical thing causally affect a physical thing?

Ryle’s category mistake critique of Descartes

Ryle is a materialist who doesn’t believe a soul exists and thinks there isn’t anything non-physical about the mind.
Ryle criticises Descartes’ theory by calling it the theory of the ‘ghost in the machine’.
Descartes argument is that because the mind is not a physical thing, it must be a non-physical thing.
However – Ryle says Descartes has not realised that there’s another option.
The mind might not be a thing at all…
Descartes has made a ‘category mistake’. He has put the mind in the category of ‘things’ when it might not be in that category.
Ryle illustrates this with someone being shown round a university who says they have seen the physics building and the biology building etc, but now they want to be shown the university! This person has made a category mistake – they haven’t realised that the term ‘university’ belongs to the category of ‘collection of buildings’ rather than ‘individual building’.

Critique of Ryle

Ryle is saying that the mind is not really a ‘thing’ – it’s not in the category of ‘things’ – but this doesn’t feel right, my mind does feel like a thing.

Dawkins’ scientific rejection of the soul and metaphorical view of it

Dawkins is a materialist and scientist
He argues that our current scientific view of what we are is that we are merely material physical beings composed of DNA. That is there is scientific evidence for, so we shouldn’t believe in anything supernatural as a soul.
He said that there are two types of soul – one is valid (metaphorical) and one is invalid (literal).
Soul 1 is the view that the soul is a real thing separate from our body, which Dawkins does not agree with due to lack of evidence.
Soul 2 is a metaphorical idea of the soul, as a metaphor for the deep part of our mind and personally where the essence of our humanity is.
For example, someone who doesn’t believe in a soul might say “I felt that in my soul” or “Hitler was a soulless person”. They are just using the term ‘soul’ metaphorically for our deep important human feelings, not for some non-physical part of soul 1. Dawkins thinks that everything about us, including our minds and consciousness, is nothing more than biological processes in our body and brain.
It’s not valid to think the soul ‘literally’ exists, it’s only valid to use the word metaphorically to describe deep human feelings.

Chalmers as a response to Dawkins (criticises Dawkins)

He distinguishes between ‘the easy problem of consciousness’ and ‘the hard problem of consciousness’
So, scientists like Dawkins can’t claim to know that consciousness is just a physical bodily thing, since science doesn’t currently have a scientific explanation of consciousness.

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The Spotlight

Mind, body, and soul: the importance of self care.

Sarah Jacobson , Editor-in-Chief | January 31, 2019

Some+options+for+self+care+include+journaling%2C+taking+a+bath%2C+reading%2C+or+exercise.

Sarah Jacobson

Some options for self care include journaling, taking a bath, reading, or exercise.

The busy schedules of many high school students inevitably lead to one thing: stress. We often spend so much of our day completing homework, writing essays, and studying for tests that we forget to spend time on ourselves. One of the best things we can do for our mental health is set aside a little bit of time everyday to assess how we feel mentally, and then address any negative emotions.

Oxford Dictionaries defines self-care as, “the practice of taking an active role in protecting one’s own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress.” Self-care is any activity that helps improve a person’s mental health. This activity is completely up to the individual, and can be anything, from running to reading. In order for the activity to constitute as an act of self-care, it only needs to positively impact your mental state.

“[Self care is] taking care of yourself and making sure… that you’re staying healthy and that you put yourself first sometimes because that’s really important,” sophomore Michelle Li said.

The mental health benefits of self-care are extensive. The whole purpose is to provide yourself with a mental break from your day-to-day stress. According to the National Alliance of Mental Illness , stress can cause headaches, low energy, gastrointestinal issues, and insomnia. In addition, chronic stress can lead to mental illness, and is an overall negative component of a person’s life.

Taking regular breaks from stressful situations is important. To reduce the chances that your stress will lead to mental illness, you should plan some breaks throughout the school or work day, so that you can practice meditation, read, or do something that takes your mind off of your troubles.

“I value self care,” senior Alyssa Kovacs said, “because just like you would care of yourself when your body is physically sick, you should take care of your body when you’re not feeling well mentally.”

The physical health benefits of self care are not quite as plentiful, but they do go beyond just reducing the physical symptoms of stress. While self-care doesn’t always directly affect any particular aspect of your body, you benefit from a phenomenon called the relaxation response. Mosby’s Medical Dictionary describes the relaxation response as a protective mechanism against stress that can cause decreased heart rate, lower metabolism, and decreased respiratory rate. This response can be triggered through activities like yoga and meditation.

Self-care can be positive for physical health in more ways than just initiating the relaxation response. For example, if you rarely do stretches for physical therapy, then taking some time out of your day to do those stretches will not only provide a mental break but also some positive physical benefits.

“I practice mindfulness which means to grow an awareness of how our body communicates. I have learned to recognize what anxiety feels like in my body or what anger feels like in my body,” said science teacher Mr. David Dougherty, who advises the “Finding Peace Within” club during Spartan period. “When I recognize the experience, I stop and simply notice my breathing and focus on breathing and relaxing. It is a wonderful practice.”

When life gets stressful, sometimes the things we should be doing, like laundry, gets pushed aside in favor of work. Taking the time to make sure that your personal affairs are in order is just as much an act of self-care as doing a facemask. For some people, doing some chores or taking care of one’s physical health is more relaxing and beneficial.

“I make sure to take a few breaks between studying, and read a book or something to ease my mind, so I don’t have to think so much about everything that I’m stressed about,” Li said. “I make sure that I have specific routines during the evening to make sure that I’m not stressed out.”

Many people are often skeptical of self-care because they view it as selfish. This raises the question of whether or not it is selfish to put yourself first in some situations. In my opinion, it is absolutely not selfish. Sometimes you need a break from the fast-paced world around you, and it’s okay to recognize that and act upon it. In fact, self-care can, in some ways, be seen as a selfless act; if you’re not putting 100 percent into all that you do, then you are doing those around you a disservice.

Self-care is wonderful for everyone’s mental and physical wellbeing. Taking a break and making the time to assess and manage your mental health helps ensure that you are able to put your best foot forward no matter what life brings.

Alyssa Kovacs
David Dougherty
Michelle Li

Senior Sarah Jacobson is a third-year staff reporter, former Our World editor, and current Editor-in-Chief of the Spotlight. She is also the head of social...

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Home — Essay Samples — Religion — Soul — A Look At The Dualism Concept Between The Body And Soul As Depicted In Meditations On First Philosophy By Rene Descartes

A Look at The Dualism Concept Between The Body and Soul as Depicted in Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes

Categories: Rene Descartes Soul

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Published: Mar 14, 2019

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Body and Soul

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Soul, Mind and Body: Philosophical Language and Thought

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Compare and contrast Plato's concept of the Body and Soul with Aristotle's.

Compare and contrast Plato’s concept of the Body and Soul with Aristotle’s.

In this essay I will be comparing what Plato and Aristotle thought about the relationship of the body and Soul. The main fundamental difference between what Plato and Aristotle thought about the relationship between the Body and Soul is that Plato thought that the Soul was immortal; it was existed before the Body and its here when the Body dies.

Plato thought this to be true because of his theory of forms. Plato thought we had such ideas as a ‘perfect circle,’ or a ‘perfect chair,’ not because we have seen them before or they had been described to us, but the image was already known to us through the

world of forms. Plato adopted a theory that our Soul had already lived a life in the world of Forms and as the Body experienced things this unlocked memory from that world of Forms so the Body/Mind recognises objects as a ‘circle,’ or ‘chair’ but not a perfect a ‘circle,’ or ‘chair,’ because only the Forms we remember are perfect because in the material world things change making them imperfect.

Aristotle disagreed with Plato abut this. He thought that the Soul was a part of the Body, it was made with the Body, the body supported it and when the Body died there was nothing to support the Soul so it died too.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Aristotle thought more along the lines of a living being is a composite whole- the body is the matter and the Soul is its form. The form to Aristotle is considered to be many things: sensation; movement; and reproduction. The Soul is affected by what the living thing is. An animal for example has the ability to move, have feelings, and make decisions for themselves unlike plants which are in a constant vegetative state.

Aristotle does agree with Plato, that something does survive after death. It’s not the Soul itself, as Plato believes but it’s the reason of the living thing or object. The reason is the specific qualities that a person or object has. Aristotle wrote

“Suppose then that eye were an animal-sight would have been its

Soul… when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except

in name- its no more a real eye than of a statue or of a painted figure.”

Here Aristotle is saying that the Soul of the eye is dead, the body of the eye is dead,

but it’s the qualities of an eye that make it an eye that never die, they might not

work properly or at all but it’s the qualities that make it an eye.

Plato did mention the concept of form in his writings, but in the past life of the Soul, Aristotle uses form to describe part of the Soul. Plato also mentioned form as part of the Soul too,

“The Soul is divided into three different parts, roughly translated as

reason, emotion and desire.”

But Plato became less sure about which parts of the Soul are immortal. Considering Plato taught Aristotle this indecision might have influenced Aristotle as a philosopher, there is certainly logic and similarity between this uncertain thought of a separate immortal Soul, and Aristotle’s thought of form being immortal and the Soul not.

Plato tells us that the human person has different elements: the physical body; the mind; and the immortal Soul. Aristotle totally disagrees with this, he wrote:

“We can totally dismiss as wholly unnecessary the question whether

the Body and Soul are one: it is meaningless as to ask whether the

wax and the shape given to it are one.”

The Soul and Body as Plato thought aren’t two separate substances, but are different parts of the same object.

Plato doesn’t provide any convincing argument to back up his theory to say there is an existence of forms that our Soul exists in before/after the life of the Body. It is logical to think that there must be a perfect circle or a perfect chair so that we may understand the world and objects around us, but it still does not explain why Plato thought there would be a different existence for these forms outside this material World. Aristotle criticises Plato on his belief in the world of forms, when he has no evidence for any other world outside this one.

Personally I think that Plato’s philosophy is more believable than Aristotle’s. Also my Religious beliefs push my decision towards Plato because I believe the Soul leaves the Body after death. There are points of Aristotle’s philosophy on the Body and Soul that seem true to me.

“The particular nature of any Soul will depend on the living thing

that it is.”

This line basically says that the living object has an effect on the Soul. For example if a human is unhappy, he/she will have an unhappy Soul. To me this seems a logical philosophy of the Soul, and how it can be affected by the living thing that it was part of.

According with Plato’s philosophy I believe that after the Body is dead and the soul is released, but I believe the Soul keeps the characteristics of the Body it belonged to and doesn’t die with the Body. But I disagree with Plato and I don’t think that the spirit goes to the realm of forms.

Even though there two philosophers have many different ideas on the Soul’s relationship with the Body, they do have many points of agreement. Plato taught Aristotle, and in many points it is clear to see how Plato influenced him in many ways, even in his indecision in the purpose of the soul. Aristotle gets himself confused when it comes down to the minor points of his Philosophy, but both philosophers had their downfalls and their triumphs.

Compare and contrast Plato's concept of the Body and Soul with Aristotle's.

Document Details

Word Count 991
Page Count 3
Level AS and A Level
Subject Religious Studies & Philosophy

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Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism

1995, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies

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This article uncovers some of the intricate story-telling patterns in the Histories of Gregory of Tours (ca. 538–594 CE). In The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, Meir Sternberg outlines a method of interpretation useful for approaching a literary artifact whose self-classification is history, identifying three principles operating interdependently within any narrative work: the ideological, the historiographical, and the aesthetic. These principles produce a complex network of linkages which make up the narrative as a mode of communication. Using Sternberg’s model as an instrument of interpretation, this analysis identifies narrative devices as functional structures for the Decem Libri Historiarum, such as intentional gaps, repetitions, and time manipulations. Gregory’s narrative demonstrates a flexible poetics, serving the purposes of history and ideology side-by-side. Narrative devices otherwise functionally at odds with one another (omission vs. repetition) are combined to produce a unitary artistic logic.

Andrei Desnitsky

LXX can be studied in its wider historic and cultural context. Sometimes it is not enough to say that a certain expression or a word was translated in a certain way. It is also important to regard LXX as a coherent text, not as a sequence of words and phrases. As a text, it had its own esthetics and played a non minor role in the history of Greek literature, especially in the Christian tradition. A careful analysis makes us believe that at least some of the LXX translators tried to imitate in a sense some formal features of the original Hebrew poetry, such as rhythmic and phonetic repetitions. In fact, the difference in translating prose and poetry (however we define these two groups of the Old Testament texts) is not as prominent as the difference between individual translators’ style. The tendency to choose similarly sounding words obviously influenced translators’ choice. In many cases, as exemplified in the second chapter, the quest for more phonetic and rhythmic similarity seems to be the best explanation for some non-standard equivalents found in LXX. At least one can be sure that these features, so far mostly neglected by modern scholars, were not neglected by the LXX translators, even if they applied them unconsciously. The statistical analysis presented in the third chapter proves that the degree of rhythmic repetitions in some LXX texts is above the random distribution and their degree in classical metrical poetry. To some extent, however, these features coincided with similar features in the Greek rhetorical prose. If we approach them in the wider context of the history of Greek literature, we will also see that this experiment had a great future. This sort of poetry was widely imitated by early Christian hymn writer; in the end, a new system of versification was established; now it was based on counting syllable and stresses. It is hoped that this survey will be useful in two respects. First of all, it may enrich our understanding of LXX and broaden the methods of its analysis which are employed by modern scholars. Those who study the LXX translation technique or are involved in the Old Testament textual criticism can approach the LXX evidence more carefully, taking some new nuances into consideration. On the other hand, the study of the history of Greek literature and, in general, cultures of Pax Romana in the last centuries B.C. – first centuries C.E. can more profoundly consider this example of cultural interaction. It may also present an interesting typological parallel to scholars who study other literary traditions.

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Philosophy > Soul Mind & Body AO2 and Essay Plans > Flashcards

Soul Mind & Body AO2 and Essay Plans Flashcards

‘I am a body’ makes more sense

-Dawkins- humans are merely carriers of DNA, ‘bytes and bytes of digital information’ Purpose of life is DNA survival/consciousness. -No empirical evidence for religious belief so no basis for believing their factual truth. Dawkins/Bertrand Russell - religious belief in ideas such as the immortality of the soul have no sound basis (AJ Ayer- Verification. - Belief in a soul comes from a human inability to accepot that evil and suffering have no purpose (Freud/Feurbach) -Aristotle- the soul does not survive after death. (Russell - “when i die - i rot”) -Gilbert Ryle- Dismissed dualism, calling it a category mistake.

‘I have a body’ makes more sense

Plato- soul separate from the body, the body was mortal, whilst the soul was immortal. This world is not the end WOF.
Plato’s belief gives a reward for living a virtuous and honest life
Near death experiences (Raymond Moody)- Many people have used the idea of near death experiences and out of body experiences as proof that another world exists.
Descartes- ‘ I think therefore i am’. Our immortal soul provides us with a conscious life
Richard Swinburne: we can imagine a situation where we could exist without a body, and if we can imagine it , then it is a coherent concept. HH Price- agree with Swinburne, He argued for the possibility that our mind may survive the death of our body and exist in a mental world.

Substance dualism is convincing

Descartes - ‘i think therefore i am’. We know for certain he had a mind, because he can think, but it is not certain that we don’t have a body.
Descartes - Our immortal soul provides us with a conscious life not the body.
Descartes - A person’s body may alter , may be damaged, but nothing would be taken from the mind.
Plato- soul is separate from the body, the body was mortal, whilst the soul was immortal. This world is not the end WOF.
Plato’s belief in an afterlife and possible reincarnation gives a reward for giving an honest and virtuous life.
Near Death Experiences (Raymond Moody)- many people have used the idea of near death experiences and out of body experiences as proof that another world exists.

Substance Dualism is not convincing

Gilbert Ryle, dismissed substance dualism, calling it a category error.
Ryle’s analogy of the glove- It would be a mistake that a pair of gloves are something different from a right glove and a left glove.
Ryle- Descartes mistaken as he assumes that sentences about causes/sensations/events must be either physical or mental.
Hick- we are our bodies, but those bodies have a spritual dimension. No separate substances (weak materalism)
Aristotle- monist- we are one substance (Russell- when i die i rot)
no empirical evidence
Dawkins- Religious belief in ideas such as immortality of the soul have no sound basis. (AJ Ayer- cannot verify the idea of a soul.)

Platos theory of a separate soul is convincing

Plato- soul seperate from the body, the body was mortal, whilst the soul was immortal. Humans are partly spiritual and partly material. This world is not the end WOF.
Plato’s belief in an afterlife and possible reincarnation gives a reward for living an honest and virtuous and honest life.
Emphasises the importance of pursuing a moral life.
Concept of an afterlife is widely held by religion.
Near death experiences (Raymond Moody)
Descartes (i think therefore i am)
Descartes- our immortal soul provides us with a conscious life not the body- that is just spatial and physical.

Plato’s theory of a separate soul is not convincing

Gilbert Ryle- Dismissed substance dualism, calling it a category error, claiming it was reminiscent of a ghost in a machine. -Ryle and his analogy of a glove. -Ryle- Descartes is mistaken as he assumes that sentences about causes/sensations/events must be either physical or mental. -Hick- we are our bodies, but those bodies have a spiritual dimension. No separate substances. -Aristotle- Monist- we are all one substance -no empirical evidence for religious belief so no basis for believing their factual truth. Dawkins/Bertrand Russell- religious belief in ideas such as the immortality of the soul have no sound basis (AJ Ayer Verification.)

Stating that the mind and body are separate substances is making a category error AGREE

Gilbert Ryle- Dismissed substance dualism, calling it a category error claiming it was reminiscent of a ghost in a machine.
Language about the soul or self beyond the physical is a mistake
Ryle’s analogy of the glove- it would be a mistake to think that a pair of gloves are something different from a right glove and a left glove.
Ryle- Descartes is mistaken as he assumes that sentences about causes/sensations/events must be either physical or mental. -Hick- weak materialism -Aristotle- Monist- we are one substance (Russell- ‘when i die, I rot’) -No empirical evidence for religious experience so no basis for believing the factual truth. Dawkins/Bertrand Russell -religious belief in ideas such as the immortality of the soul have no sound basis (AJ Ayer Verification)

Stating that the mind and body are separate substances is making a category error DISAGREE

Descartes- I think therefore I am
Descartes- Our immortal soul provides us with a conscious life not the body
Descartes- A person’s body may alter, may be damaged, but nothing will be taken from the mind.
Plato- soul is seperate from the body, the body was mortal, whilst the soul was immortal. The world is not the end WOF
JSM (emergence dualism) The mind in this view, has it’s own existence in some sense but it is not a completely separate substance from the physical.
Near death experiences- Raymond Moody- Many people have used this idea of near-death experience and out of body experiences and out of body experiences to prove that another world exists.

The concept of a ‘soul’ is best understood metaphorically

Plato- soul seperate from the body, the body was mortal, whilst the soul was immortal. This world is not the end WOF.
Plato’s belief in an afterlife and possible reincarnation gives a reward for living an honest and virtuous life.
Emphasises the importance of pursuit of a moral life.
Concept of a afterlife is widely held by religion
Near death experiences (Raymond Moody)- Many people have used this idea of near death experiences and out of body experiences as proof that another world exists.
Descartes ‘I think therefore I am’

-Aristotle- monist- we are one substance -Hick- we are our bodies, but those bodies have a spiritual dimension. No separate substances. -No empirical evidence for religious belief so no basis for believing their factual truth. Dawkins/Bertrand Russell- religious belief in ideas such as immortality of the soul have no sound basis . - Dawkins- humans are merely carriers of DNA ‘just bytes and bytes of digital information’. Purpose of life is DNA survival/consciousness is not due to any kind of soil but because of self awareness have evolutionary advantages.`

Strengths of Dualism

Platos three argument are logically sound progressions from accepted truths and seem to prove his understanding of a soul based on the world of forms
Descartes theory is entirely based on finding irrefutable truths, and developing a theory from this therefore his conclusions are equally refutable.
Both take seriously the complexity and mystery of human thoughts rather than simply trying to explain away important questions.

Descartes Dualism being a Category Error

Gilbert Ryle suggests that Dualism is guilty of a category error.
This is the mistaken assumption that two things are of the same logical type, and therefore comparable.
In this case, Descartes assumes that the mind and the body are separate substances of the same logical type, and therefore actions can either be a mental or a physical process.
Ryle sees this as a mistake, there is no reason to separate physical and mental processes as they are one unity- therefore there can be no separate soul.
He gives the example of a university:someone is shown around a library , museum, halls and so on, but at the end asks when they will see the university.

Strengths of Materialism

Materialism is right to claim that there is no evidence for anything other than physical matter, is supported in this by science.
Modern neuroscience suggests that all brain functions can be traced and deduced by observing brainwaves.
Skinners behaviourism is supported by his extensive research on other animals.
Dawkins states that materialism is the only logical answer to the theory of the mind, as it is the only theory that agrees with evolution and scientific understanding.

Weaknesses of Materialism

Behaviourism is an oversimplification of the human mind and motivations, it isn’t sufficient for complex human activities.
It is also based on animal research.
Materialism claims that it has the full support of science, but there are a very large number of unexplained questions to do with human consciousness, that undermine this view.
Materialism cannot account for the richness and complexity of the human consciousness and subconsciousness.

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What Is the Difference Between Soul and Body According to Descartes? Essay

Works Cited

Mind, body and soul summary notes

Plato’s view of the soul

Aristotle’s materialist view of the soul

Descartes’ view of the soul

G. Ryle’s ‘category error’ critique of dualism

Dawkins’ view of the soul

Plato’s dualism

Aristotle’s view of the soul

Descartes’ substance dualism

Ryle’s category mistake critique of Descartes

Dawkins’ scientific rejection of the soul and metaphorical view of it

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A Look at The Dualism Concept Between The Body and Soul as Depicted in Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes

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