Content and Exam Tips for OCR A Level Religious Studies
Dualism and Materialism
Soul, Mind and Body
Content
the philosophical language of soul, mind and body in the thinking of Plato and Aristotle
metaphysics of consciousness, including:
substance dualism
materialism
Key Knowledge
Plato’s view of the soul as the essential and immaterial part of a human, temporarily united with the body
Aristotle’s view of the soul as the form of the body; the way the body behaves and lives; something which cannot be separated from the body
the idea that mind and body are distinct substances
Descartes’ proposal of material and spiritual substances as a solution to the mind/soul and body problem
the idea that mind and consciousness can be fully explained by physical or material interactions
the rejection of a soul as a spiritual substance
Plato's View of the Soul
Plato is a dualist because he believes the soul if a wholly different entity from the body. He argues that our bodies are controlled by the unreliable senses, which deceive us. The body is mutable and at some point will cease to exist. The impermanence of the body means there must be something that is more permanent. For Plato, the soul is this something; it can reason and thus is able to access true knowledge.
Plato illustrates this view with a man driving a chariot. Reason is like the charioteer who controls two wayward horses: spirit (emotions) and the physical appetites. When reason is in control, the soul is in harmony. However, reason if often not in control of the human body.
Plato uses the argument from recollection and knowledge to support his view of the soul. He argued that the soul has already been aware of the Forms before it was incarnated into a human body. By using reason, our soul recalls what it knows about the permanent, immutable and perfect Forms. This is called anamnesis. For Plato, knowledge is recollected by the soul, not learned, and this innate knowledge is proof that the body and soul are separate.
The body is the course of endless trouble to use by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to disease which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery and in fact, as men say, takes away all power of thinking.
Transmigration of the Soul
Plato argued that the soul transmigrates, changes from one body to another. Between lives our souls go the World of Forms and we encounter the forms. Plato illustrated this in the Myth of Er and emphasised that before our rebirth we drink from the river of forgetfulness. This is why when we experience things, we are remembering or recognising the forms in them which we knew in the World of Forms.
The Myth of Er
One day, a soldier dies in battle.
He wakes up and all those who have died in the battle, as well as judges sitting before them. The judges direct the dead into openings in the sky or in the ground. Out of other openings came the souls of those who spent time in the sky (pleased and happy) and those who had spent time in the ground (dirty and haggard).
They all chose new lives and were reincarnated, although some chose unwisely. They then drank from the river of forgetfulness and were reborn.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
Plato seems to understand human nature and inner conflict.
When reason is in control, the soul is in harmony. For example, if the three parts of the soul are harmonious, the spirit shows courage, the rational part of the soul shows wisdom, and together they control the appetites. As we mature and make more rational decisions, we feel more unified as a person.
The soul, using reason, can access the World of Forms because it remembers this world before it became a part of the body.
We recognise opposites such as large and small. The body and soul are opposites. Since life is something, death must also be something - the moving of the soul to the World of Forms.
Weaknesses
Inner conflict could be explained by emotion, personality, DNA etc
There is no verifiable evidence of an immaterial soul as something extra and beyond the physical body.
Peter Geach criticises the argument that the soul is separate from the body as how can the soul 'see' the Forms when 'seeing' is a physical process.
The argument from opposites seems to be an assumption. What is the opposite of something like 'blue'?
Dr Ian Stevenson
Dr Stevenson identified thousands of cases of children who had apparently remembered past lives. This gives support to the theory that souls are reincarnated into new bodies once the bodies have died and decayed. He investigated using empirical methods.
Stevenson identified the deceased person the child remembers, verified the facts of the deceased person's life; he even matched birth marks and wounds verified by medical records. His strict methods rule out all possible 'normal' explanations for the child's memories.
Anthony Kenny
Kenny defended Plato's notion that the psyche was divided into rational and non-rational. He gave the example of the toddle having a tantrum, suggesting this shows the pre-rational psyche. Some modern psychologists have argued that the body and psyche are dual in nature which is why some people feel trapped in other people's bodies.
Aristotle's View of Body and Soul
Aristotle has a very different view of the body and soul compared to Plato. He believes that the soul cannot be separated from the body. He uses the idea of a wax seal; the wax is the body and the seal is the soul. Once the wax seal has been made, it is impossible to separate them.
Aristotle observed that everything was made from matter (the material cause) and had a form (the formal cause). The body is the material cause whereas the soul is the formal cause. For Aristotle, the soul is real but in a different way to Plato as it is the soul that animates the body and gives it characteristics and form.
Aristotle applied the idea of the soul to all living things, not just human beings. He identified three faculties (abilities) of the soul. He thought every living thing has a soul which contains one or more of the faculties:
Vegetative - refers to characteristics of growing.
Appetitive - refers to the ability to act and fulfil desires for basic needs.
Rational abilities - intellect; only found in human souls.
Humans have all three faculties of the soul. Aristotle suggested that he thought that reason or intellect could even survive death. However, this would go against his empirical stance.
Identity Theory
Identity Theory asserts that the person is their brain. Therefore, there is no soul, nothing that is separate from the body.
Phineas Gage
The example of Phineas Gage from the 1800s give support to Identity Theory. Gage was a foreman on a railway line. He was well liked and did his job well. One day, there was an accident and a pole went through his skull and brain. Although he survived physically, he was an entirely different person after the accident and could no longer work as a foreman.
The example of Gage shows that when there are changes to the physicality of the brain, the person also changes. There was no 'soul' to retain his personality and protect it from a physical change.
Richard Dawkins
Dawkins is convinced there is no soul or afterlife. He believes that the only way in which anything of us survives our death is through out genes. Our bodies are nothing more than survival machines for our genes.
John Hick
Hick believed in resurrection. He believed that when people die, God replicates their bodies into spiritual bodies. He was clear that dualism was not the solution. He presented his argument as follows:
The only self of which we know is the empirical self who lives and then dies. Mental events and mental characteristics are analysed into the modes of behaviour and behavioural dispositions of this empirical self. The human being is described as an organism capable of acting in the 'high-level' ways which we characterise as intelligent, thoughtful, humorous, calculating, and the like. The concept of mind or soul is thus not the concept of a 'ghost in a machine' … but of the more flexible and sophisticated ways in which human beings behave and have it in them to behave.
Theory of Verification, John Hick.
John Locke
Locke believed that a person's identity was in their consciousness. He gave the story of the Prince and the Cobble to illustrate the relationship between body and consciousness.
There once was a Prince and a Cobbler. One day they woke up to find themselves in each other's bodies. The cobble was anxious to explain that he had not broken into the palace, but that he had no idea how he came to be there. But because he had the appearance of the prince, no one understood what his problem was/ The prince woke up in the cobbler's bed and was angry because he believed the cobbler's wife had kidnapped him.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
The soul is essential because it is the formal cause of the body.
Elizbeth Anscombe suggests intention can be linked to the soul because it shows there is more to human beings than just physical actions.
Body and soul cannot be separated as they are both essential to the living being.
When the body dies, so does the soul.
Weaknesses
Materialists would argue that we are made only of physical matter. There is no need to assume there is something extra inside that is a soul.
Plato would argue that the soul could be separated from the body which imprisons it during life.
Descartes' View of the Mind and the Body
Descartes is often described as a substance dualist. He argues that the soul and body are completely different substances.
Descartes reached his conclusion about the mind and body when questioning whether we can ever be certain of anything. He decided that he could doubt everything because he could be being deceived by the world around him. However, he knew that he was thinking. 'Cogito, ergo sum' - 'I think, therefore I am'.
The mind was where the thinking took place and Descartes argued the mind was therefore the essence of himself and that he must exist.
The physical or material body cannot think. It can be divided into parts whereas the mind cannot. The thinking mind can therefore be separated from the existence of a body; it must be a different sort of substance.
However, if mind and body are separate, there needs to be a link between them. Descartes suggests this link is the pineal gland, the centre of the brain. He reasoned that the pineal gland was the home of singular thought as well as where the imagination and common sense are found.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
The mind and body are separate substances because they can be treated differently. The mind is immaterial and the body is physical.
The mind is the part of the human that holds the essence of personhood.
Pineal gland links the body and mind together.
Weaknesses
If somebody lost a part of their physical body, it could change them as a person.
What actually makes a person?
Medical research has found the function of the pineal gland. It secretes hormones that help to regulate sleep.
Gilbert Ryle questions how an immaterial mind communicates with a material body. He uses the idea of the 'ghost in the machine' to illustrate his point.
Homunculus fallacy - one system is explained e.g. the body is directed by the spirit in the pineal gland, but this process has not been explained e.g. how does the pineal gland direct the body?
Gilbert Ryle's Criticism of Descartes
Ryle argues that Descartes incorrectly sees the physical, mechanical actions of the body being controlled by the non-material mind like a 'ghost in a machine'. How does something non-physical control something that is physical?
Ryle suggests that this problem arises because of an incorrect use of language. This is known as a category error: a logical error with the use of language.
Ryle accuses Descartes of making a category error because he tries to categorise all events as either mental or physical. Ryle argues that body and mind are not distinct substances but a description of the whole person and what it means to be a conscious, thinking being.
Materialism
Daniel Dennett argues that there is no place within the mind or brain where thinking, subjective experiences, or consciousness happen. Conscious thought is more likely to be a combination of many different processes in the brain. Materialists, such as Dennett, argue that at some point, psychologists will be able to develop their studies to understand where or how thinking happens.
Richard Dawkins is a materialist who does not believe in the soul, but uses the word to explain why he disagrees with the concept. He splits the idea into two:
Soul One - Used by pre-scientific people because they needed to explain why humans were rational, thinking beings.
Soul Two - is the intellect or mental abilities.
For Dawkins, mental processes give an evolutionary advantage that helps humans to survive and procreate. Physical existence is all there is.
Susan Blackmore sees the idea of the 'soul' as a metaphor for personhood, consciousness, and identity. This is how Dawkins uses 'Soul Two'. The soul is not real.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
Functional magnetic scanners can detect changes in the brain when a subject's attention moves to different images. This could suggest that mental activity such as thoughts or attention is caused by physical events in the brain.
If there is nothing more to personhood than the body or brain, there is no need for an afterlife.
Materialism uses scientific methods and shows how modern studies of the brain can shed light on previously mysterious processes, such as thinking.
Weaknesses
Even if thoughts can be tracked by physical changes in the brain. there is still a problem about how this happens and the intention behind it.
Materialism reduces human experience and existence to the physical.
Dawkins' claim that one day scientists will be able to fully understand consciousness is an assumption.