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NAME:

RE 6.1

Soul, Mind and Body

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Checklist:

• What makes me, me?

• Am I my body or my consciousness?

• Mind-Body problem.

• What is the soul?

• Plato

• Aristotle

• Aquinas

• Descartes

• Gibert Ryle

• Peter Geach

• John Hick

• G.E.M. Anscombe

• Richard Dawkins

• John Cottingham

• Daniel C. Dennett

• B.F. Skinner

Key words:

• Consciousness:

• Materialism:

• Dualism:

• Monism:

• Reductionism:

• Substance Dualism:

• Psyche:

• Category Error:

• Behaviourism:

As you work through this booklet, complete a definition for the above key words

and checklist. Add other important ideas to each list.

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1. Introduction

One of the most important philosophical questions is about what makes a human

being. We have an awareness of our consciousness. We can look at our hand and

wonder in what sense is this ‘me’. My consciousness is experienced as somehow and

somewhere behind my eyes, yet I feel pain if my hand is hurt.

Am I my body?

Is our body part of what we have or part of who we are? Think about the

sentence: ‘I feel pain when my hand is hurt.’ The grammar of the sentence

seems to suggest that ‘my hand’ is my possession, like ‘my house’, or is it

part of me? The ‘I’ suggests I have pain from both my hand and the pain

itself. If it is part of me, I am the total sum of what makes up me; hands, brain,

hair, nose, eyes and all.

Now suppose I have an accident and my hand has to be amputated. My body is less

than it was but, am ‘I’ less me? I am still as conscious as I was, still as capable of

thought, feeling, memory as I ever was. I may even claim the experience has

enriched me. This implies that there is more to me than there was, even

though I am minus a limb. If I decided to indulge in a six month eating

binge, I may say there is several more stone of me than there was but I

would be reluctant to claim that I am more fully myself, even though there

is physically more of me. In my spirit I may actually feel diminished having let

myself become such a glutton.

So which paragraph is right. The first that suggests that I am the sum total of all

that makes up my body. Or, the second that suggests that the real me is not just

my body and feelings but a separate thing - my consciousness.

Am I my consciousness?

Considering this creates problems. Suppose I see a photograph of myself at six

months old. I may tell people that it is me but I have no recollection of me or my

consciousness at this age. The only connection between the baby and the me I

experience now is an awareness based on what others have told me. There is a

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spatial continuity between the child and me. It is a connectedness of

knowing that I have never disappeared from my body. But, the body of the

baby in the picture and the adult me has changed beyond recognition. Cells

have died and been replaced, memories and tastes have changed. Is the

current me more me than the baby?

But suppose I develop dementia. My memory would largely disappear. My tastes and

character would change, but would the person I become be any less me? Sometimes

we speak of someone ‘not being all there’ or ‘forgetting him/herself’. There would

be profound moral issues if I were to argue that a person with dementia is less

than a full human being.

The mind-body Question

The mind-body question asks about the relationship between body and mind. If we

cut open the body, we find the brain to be just another organ of the

body. It is more complex that all the other organs but it is just grey

matter. What is the connection between the grey matter and the

vividness of conscious thought? It seems more than just mechanical,

although some have argued the connection is purely physical.

Given these difficulties, what am I? It has been traditional to see humans as made

up of body and soul, with the ‘soul’ as somehow the real me. Many have argued that

as our body turns to dust it is our soul that survives in the afterlife. This is an

ancient belief that is manifest in may prehistoric tombs. However, materialists

argue that there is no ‘me’ beyond the physical of the body.

TASK 1:

1. Draw a picture of yourself. Label it with all the things that make you what you are.

2. Write down 6 things that have changed about you from 5 years ago, and 6 things you

think will change about you 5 years from now. (3 physical / 3 other).

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2. Is the soul a thing?

We would have little difficulty in describing our bodies. They take up space, last in

time and have physical characteristics. Having these qualities is generally what we

mean when describing something as a thing.

But, what exactly would our soul be? Many philosopher and religious believers argue

the soul is a kind of special object, perhaps a spiritual ‘substance’.

Others, including religious thinkers argue it is a mistake to think of the soul in such

a way. We have the noun of a soul, but it may be a mistake to think the noun must

be describing something. Just as Plato was criticised; because we have the name

for something abstract it may not link to a physical object. Some philosophers

argue that that to refer to the soul is not to name some special substance, but to

draw our attention to the spiritual aspect of the whole person.

3. Plato and the Soul

Plato was deeply influenced by Pythagorean thought. This emphasised the

distinction between the spiritual soul (psyche) and the material body. We can see

decay in the world around us leading us to believe that nothing material is

permanent.

Plato believed that permanence can be found in the world of the spiritual. From

this he adopted the idea that the soul is immortal. The soul’s eternity lies in itself.

It is a simple substance and thus cannot be destroyed. To be destroyed is to be

broken into bits; the soul has no parts so is simple and permanent. It was not

created; its immortality lies in having neither beginning or end.

This is problematic. If my soul existed before my current life and continues after

my death, where has it been and where will it go? – In answer to this, Plato devised

his theory of the Forms.

Pythagoreans believe that the soul moves from one body to another and has

no memory of its life in a previous body.

In Phaedo, which dramatizes the death of Socrates, Plato shows Socrates

comparing his eternal soul with his body, arguing that as the soul is eternal,

he has nothing to fear from death:

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Plato – the relationship of body and soul

Plato is a substance dualist. This is the idea that there are two

distinct elements to us – mind and body. A difficulty with any theory

of this kind is how the spiritual body interact with the material body.

Plato does not answer with any clarity. For him, the soul ultimately

desires to get out of the inferior body in which it is trapped. Yet we

need to do physical things such as washing ourselves, feeding

ourselves and so on. To suggest this is a lesser or more imperfect thing than

contemplating the Form of the Good, does not answer the question of how we

direct our limbs to move in accordance to our thoughts. Plato is uninterested in

establishing the link. He assumes it, just as he assumes that if our mind knows the

right thing to do, then somehow the whole person will do it.

The problem is, Plato assumes that reasons are causes. For example,

‘I am giving you a present because I like you.’ But is ‘I like you’ the

reason for the action? A reason is the result of a thought, a mental

happening. The cause of my action seems to be based on a conscious

decision to act on my reason; to get my body to do something about it.

Plato seems not to make the separation between reasoning and action. This perhaps

explains why he believed if our mind knows the right thing to do, then somehow the

whole person will do it.

For Plato, death is nothing to fear as it is the shaking off of the

temporary shell of a body, and (at least for the philosopher who has

contemplated and found his connection to the Forms) a chance to

return to the pure essence of things.

…the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, an

immortal, and intelligible, and uniform, and

indissoluble, and unchangeable; and the body is in the

very likeness of the human, and mortal, and

unintelligible, and multiform, and dissoluble, and

changeable.

Socrates

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Plato and Christianity

Plato’s view is not a Christian view. For Plato the soul is without beginning. For a

Christian the soul is created anew at the point of conception for each being. For

Plato the soul is indestructible and immortal. For Christians this concept would

deny the omnipotence of God and the dependence of all existence on God.

Christians believe any immortality the soul might have is a gift from God not an

innate right.

However, Plato has greatly influenced modern thought,

including Christian. The contrast between the

permanent spiritual world of realities such as Plato’s

Forms and the temporary unsatisfactory physical realm

is a notion that lies very deeply in our culture. It is

found in early Christianity and many New Age ideas

today, for example; The School of Economic Science

or Scientology. It is easy to see how Plato’s view of:

soul = good / body = not so good, could be easily simplified by others into a notion

of ‘soul = good’ / ‘body = bad’. This is why so many early Christians struggled with

the concept of Christ as incarnated and with the concept of bodily resurrection.

Even today, there are believers who talk about God as saving their souls, or heaven

as a place for souls, skipping over what the creeds (statements of faith) mean by

the resurrection of the dead.

TASK 2:

1. Write a paragraph to explain what you think is meant by the soul.

2. Summarise what Plato believes about the soul.

3. Why are his assumptions problematic?

4. In what ways are Plato and Christian ideas similar and different?

5. Research: Using the Nicene Creed, analyse the Creed to show how Plato’s ideas on the

soul may have influenced the creed and why some Christians find it difficult to

believe it literally.

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4. Aristotle and the Soul

Aristotle emphasised his four causes to explain the world around him. The Formal

Cause gives things shape and nature; a table is a table because it is in the form of

a table. In the same way I am a person because my body is animated by the soul

which gives it life; the soul is the formal cause of the body. Otherwise, I am

matter – bones, meat, gristle and so on – the material cause.

For Aristotle the soul is not a simple immortal substance as with Plato. When the

light goes out and the soul dies I go back to being a lump of matter – there is no

person left. The idea that the souls goes to another world is not part of Aristotle’s

understanding. He speculates about whether reason lives on but he does not

believe in personal survival after death. Aristotle is more than a materialist – the

soul is not just physics and chemistry. Matter needs the soul to animate it.

However, he does not completely separate mind, body and soul in the dualist way

Plato does. He does however, believe the soul has three elements:

➢ The vegetative soul, shared with all living things including plants. – Found in

all living things including plants.

➢ The appetitive soul, in which we find passion and appetites such as hunger,

thirst and sexual desire as well as emotions such as anger, envy or sadness. –

Found in animals and humans.

➢ The intellectual soul, which is rational and directive – it thinks about things

and decides the actions we might take. It also includes the powers of

memory and reflection on our past and future. – Found only in humans.

Aristotle was fascinated by the workings of the human mind, so much so that

psychology and insight into the workings of the mind are found in many of his

works. Aquinas and the legacy of Aristotle

TASK 3:

1. Using page 42-45 create a revision poster to summarise what Aristotle says about

the soul.

2. What examples does Aristotle use to demonstrate that the soul cannot be

separated from the body.

3. Was Plato sure of his views about the soul? Share reasons for your answer.

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….the human soul, which is called the ‘intellect’ or the ‘mind’, is something

incorporeal and subsistent.

St Thomas Aquinas, was greatly influenced by the Aristotelian revival of the 12th

& 13th Century. He says in Summa Thelogica:

…the soul is defined as the first principle of life in living things: for we call living things

‘animate,’ [i.e. having a soul] and those things which have no life, ‘inanimate.’…….Now, though a

body may be a principle of life, or living thing, as the heart is a principle of life in an animal,

yet nothing bodily can be the first principle of life……Of course, a body is able to be a living

thing or even a principle of life, because it is a body. When it is a living body it owes its life to

some principle which is called its ‘act’. Therefore, the soul, which is the first principle of life,

is not a body, but the act of a body; just as heat…is not a body, but an act of a body.

Just as it belongs to the notion of this particular man to be composed of this soul, of this

flesh, and of these bones; so it belongs to the whole notion of man to be composed of soul,

flesh and bones….. Sensation is not the operation of the soul only. As then, sensation is an

operation of man [as a whole]…. It is clear that man is not a soul only, but something

composed of soul and body. Plato, because this sensation was simply a function of the soul,

was able to maintain that man was a soul making use of the body.

Aquinas closely follows Aristotle. He is not saying the soul is me. It is the principle of

life, as Aristotle argued. My life needs the body to be animated.

The soul is not material and should be understood as

the mind, not something separate from it. The body is

necessary for me to be me:

Aquinas is very aware of the difference in his views and that of Plato. Aquinas himself has been

developed by more contemporary philosophers such as G.E.M. Anscombe.

TASK 4:

1. In your own words, write down what each of Aquinas’ quotes mean.

2. Write a tweet (140 characters only) to summarise what Aquinas believes about the soul.

Don’t forget the #hashtag.

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5. Substance Dualism

Dualism and Monism

Dualism is the belief that we are made of two different elements – material body

and spiritual soul. If this is true, a problem remains – how can the purely physical

body be directed or influenced by a spiritual soul. There appears to be a link. If my

body is hurt or undernourished, then my mind feels it and I am able to act upon

this thought through my physical body.

Monism is the belief that we are a single substance. ‘I am my body’ rather than ‘I

have a body.’ In this view, thinking is just something the body does;

just as an amoeba splits into two separate bodies. This view, again is

problematic. An amoeba splits in two for physical and biological

reasons. Our consciousness, with its qualities of imagination, artistic

skill, memory, story-telling and physical skill seem to have capacities way beyond

those needed for mere survival and have no obvious biological function. A purely

material account seems to struggle to explain such features.

Mind-Body Problem

Parallel Mentalism Materialism

Dualism Monism

Theory of Identity

Undertaking

TASK 5:

1. Draw out the ‘Mind-Body Problem’ diagram. Under each heading add;

• A brief explanation of what it is

• A picture to remember it.

• Explain how materialism is a type of monism

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Descartes and Substance Dualism

Substance dualism is the belief that mind and body are wholly different

substances. Rene Descartes (17th century) represents the most extreme form of

substance dualism. He outlined his radical views in his books, Mediations (1641) and

The Passions of the Soul (1649). He begins his work by asking whether there is

any knowledge so certain that no one can doubt it. He notes how some experiences

maybe mistaken and speculates about whether his senses might be misled by some

malicious demon. This might mean that the material world and even his body

might be an illusion. He concludes that there is only one certain piece of

knowledge, the cogito (thinking). He says, “Cogito ergo sum” - “I think,

therefore I am.” His methods lead to a natural division between body and spirit.

The method he adopted leads to a hierarchy of the mental and the a priori over

the doubtable material of things separate from the mind. The body and souls are

wholly separate substances; with the soul being superior to the body.

This approach creates difficulties. If the mind is simply spiritual and we have

bodies that are non-spiritual and material, how do they interconnect? How do the

thoughts of this sentence, for example, connect with the working of my hand to

type this sentence? When Descartes writes about the body he conceives of it only

in mechanical terms, with muscles acting like ropes and cables (a point made very

specifically in Meditations VI, 17).

There is a great difference between a mind and a body, because a body is by

nature devisable but the mind is not. Clearly, when I think about the mind,

that is, of myself as far as I am a thing that thinks, I am not aware of any

parts in me – that is, I understand myself to be one whole person. Although

the whole mind seems united to the whole body, if a foot, or an arm, or

another limb were amputated from my body, nothing would be taken from my

mind. Mental faculties such as willing, sensing, understanding, cannot be

called its parts, because it is always the same mind that wills, senses and

understands. But any corporeal or physically extended thing I can think of, I

can easily think of as divided into parts….. this reasoning alone would be

enough to teach me that the mind is wholly different from the body.

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In Passions of the Soul, Descartes tries to explain the connection by suggesting

that:

In his, Treatise on Man, Descartes claims that the pineal

gland is the seat of the imagination and common sense. The

pineal gland is a tiny organ in the centre of the brain

that played he regarded it as the principal seat of the soul and the place in

which all our thoughts are formed. Here it becomes (perhaps) the link between

the body and the soul. This is only a suggestion, but a problematic one. Saying

where the link is, in a physical sense, tells us nothing about how the link is made.

The conversion of the mental into the physical remains an unexplained point.

There is a little gland in the brain where the soul exercises its

functions more particularly than in the other parts of the body.

TASK 6:

1. What evidence is there that Descartes is a substance dualist?

2. What do his 3 quotes mean?

3. What problems are linked to Descartes ideas?

4. Make sure you know what the pineal gland is actually for. Why do you think Descartes

linked this to the soul?

Note down definitions for ‘Property Dualism’ and ‘Reductive Materialism’

page 51

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6. Other views on the Mind-Body question

Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976)

This means………………………..

Gilbert Ryle is an analytic philosopher. He is not attempting to create an

alternative theory of the way things are but is attempting to provide

conceptual clarity. He describes the role of the philosopher to that of a

cartographer – who maps territory but does not create it. He considered

reduction to the material, (reductionism), to be mistaken and saw his work as an

exploration of the phenomenon of consciousness.

In his best known work, Concept of the Mind, Ryle refutes the substance dualism

proposed by Descartes, referring to his ideas of the mind as “the ghost in the

machine.” Descartes in his book Meditations described the mind as the pilot of the

body and the body itself as a sort of mechanism. (So Ryle is quiet close to the

language of Descartes). His complaint against Descartes is that he is guilty of

category error – mistakenly treating something as being one type when it is

in-fact another, (e.g. It would be a category error to treat a rhinoceros as a

butterfly). Ryle claims ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are not of the same logical type even

though they can be superficially spoken about in similar ways, (e.g. ‘there are

physical processes’ and ‘there are mental processes’). It would be, for example,

an error to think of the noun ‘soul’ as refereeing to a concrete object in the

way the noun ‘body’ does. The soul does not exist as a separate thing, in the

same way the spirit in ‘team spirit’ does not exist in a separate way. Ryle uses

three famous examples to illustrate his point:

…Both Idealism and Materialism are answers to an improper question. The

‘reduction’ of the material world to mental processes and states, as well as,

the ‘reduction’ of mental states and processes to physical states and

processes, presuppose the legitimacy of the disjunction ‘Either there exist

minds or there exist bodies (but not both).’ It would be like saying, ‘either

she brought a left-hand and a right-hand glove or she brought a pair of gloves

(but not both).’

Concept of the Mind (1963)

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1. Suppose a foreign visitor went to Cambridge to look at its sights.

He is shown the different colleges, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the

library and so on. At the end of the tour he asks, ‘But where is the

University?’ he is guilty of a category error because he assumes that

the ‘University’ is something separate from and other than all those

individual bits which collectively are the University.

2. A boy watches a military parade. He has been told that a Division

is marching by. Someone points out to him the different squadrons,

platoons, batteries and so on. At the end he asks when the Division

will arrive, unaware that all the units he has seen are collectively

the Division. This is a category error.

3. A foreigner goes to his first game of cricket, having previously read

a book about it. He is shown the stumps and the bails, the umpires and

various fielding positions. Then he asks, ‘But where is the team spirit?’

This is a category error.

In the same way, Descartes is guilty of a category error because he assumes that

sentences about causes, sensations or events must be either mental or physical.

This presupposes an unjustified assumption that they cannot be both. To describe

an action as mental is not to suggest that it is something different from what I as

a whole do. When I think I shall stop working, I am thinking I shall stop work. To

say ‘my mind thinks I should stop work’ does not mean the mysterious separate

something is telling my body to stop work.

Ryle’s argument is holistic. It does not deny the mental or say that mental activity

is simply material. His opposition is to the separation of material and mental as he

claims it is not needed. He is, (for the sake of this argument) a monist. Roman

Catholic, Peter Geach in ‘What do We Think With, God and the Soul’ argued

that the only correct view of the soul is that of Aquinas – the soul is the principle

of the body, but not separate from it.

TASK 7:

1. Explain what Gilbert Ryle’s quote means.

2. With examples, explain what a category error is.

3. According to Ryle, how does Descartes make a category error?

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John Hick (1922-2012)

Hick strongly opposed Plato’s view of the soul as un-Christian as it assumes the soul

is immortal in itself. For Hick, as for Aquinas, ‘my soul is not me.’ His outlook is

similar to Aristotle and often described as soft materialism. We are our bodies but

those bodies have a spiritual dimension. There is no mind without matter. To be a

person is to be a thinking material being. Thinking in this way is not reductionist –

the belief that everything can be reduced to statements about physical

bodies. The mental depends on the body, but is more than simply a

behaviourist reaction to stimuli. (Behaviourism is the belief that all

mental states are simply learned behaviours of bodies. To say that I

feel sad or angry means that I am behaving sadly or angrily.) That we

are necessarily material beings does not mean we are just material

beings.

Hick is opposed to any approach which assumes that death is not something to be

feared. Plato and Socrates believed, as the souls was immortal, death was like

moving from one room to another. For a Christian, death is to face God and

something that one must prepare for.

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919-2002)

In her essay, ‘Analytical Philosophy and the Spirituality of Man’,

Anscombe considers the phenomenon of pointing. If I point at something,

the action of the body is not the whole of its meaning. If I point at a

piece on a chess board, my body action is a gesture. But the meaning of

the gesture is that it is this piece that occupies this position and not

another. The gesture cannot tell me anything about the colour, the

texture or the design of the piece. The meaning cannot be deduced from even the

most complete physical description of my action. The description might describe

how my body is working, but not why it is working. Just looking at the action of my

pointing body does not explain the action. For that we need a description of the

thought: ‘I am pointing at the chess piece because….’ But it

is still my body that does the pointing; the action would be

impossible if there were no body. A disembodied soul could

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not point; it is my body that points. Anscombe argues that ‘this bodily act is an act

of man qua spirit’, the act of a human as a whole.

7. Materialism

Materialism is the philosophical view that there only exists material matter. In

the case of human being this means there is only the things that make up our

body; flesh, blood, nerves and cells. Anything said about a person is reducible

to sentences about physical processes. So if I said, I were to paint a painting or

write a novel, this could be reduced as a statement about my brain activity and

electrical pulses in my neurons. – Some philosophers question whether every

act we call consciousness is reducible in this way.

Richard Dawkins (1941- )

Dawkins is often cited as an example of a materialist thinker.

However, his approach is much subtler than simple reductionism.

He rejects any notion of the disembodied soul proposed by Plato

and Descartes and many religious believers. He finds no empirical

evidence for such an entity and mocks religious believers for

supporting such as bizarre notion. However, he does acknowledge

the mystery of consciousness but believes it is something that will be eventually

explained by further exploration of DNA, even though its components (art,

imagination and so on), do not have any obvious evolutionary value.

Dawkins makes a distinction between what he calls Soul One and Soul Two.

➢ Soul One is a separate substance of much traditional thought. He rejects

the notion as primitive superstition.

TASK 8:

1. Write a tweet to summarise what Hick says about the mind-body question.

2. Draw an emoji that helps you remember Hick’s example.

3. Write a tweet to summarise what Anscombe says about the mind-body question.

4. Draw an emoji that helps you remember Anscombe’s example.

5. Write a definition for all of the key words.

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➢ Soul Two is intellectual and spiritual power, higher development of the moral

faculties, feelings and imagination. For Dawkins, these are rooted in the

body and their precise scientific nature is yet to be scientifically explained.

The point, however, is that there is something to be explained.

Behaviourism

Another type of materialism is behaviourism, which sees human thoughts

as simply learned behaviours. B. F. Skinner (1904-90), believes what we

consider mental events are simply learned behaviours. The idea of a

mental state separated from the body, in any sense, is a radicle

misunderstanding. Animals learn behaviours and can be conditioned into

behaviours, as we know from a study of Pavlov’s dog. For Skinner, mental acts

are caused acts, explicable at physical level. In his book, About Behaviourism

(1974), Skinner explains that human behaviour can be attributed to genetics, the

environment and what is learned in relation to both – and not, (as dualists would

suggest), the actions of some unknown soul. He supported his argument by much

scientific work, especially into animal behaviour.

Objections to Behaviourism

Daniel C. Dennett (1942- ), in his article, ‘Skinner Skinned’, argues that

Skinner over- simplifies human consciousness. He assumes that what

applies to the consciousness of a pigeon will also apply to that of a human.

Animal actions may be learned behaviours, but not so for humans. If I am

asked why I am reading a book, simply saying it is a learned response

misses the point. If I say ‘because I want to’, I am providing an

explanation. If I go further and say it’s because I enjoy the authors work, I am

taking my explanation further. To say this is just learned behaviour misses the

point. My reading a book, expresses other goals than survival or getting rich.

Dennett argues that Skinner would be right if my explanation stopped with desire

alone, but human thinking moves beyond Skinner’s ‘basic theory’. Dennett argues

people could be conditioned to hand over their wallets to robbers, whether they

posed a threat or not. If this were the case, he says:

“….human beings would be no better than pigeons or wasps, and we would have to agree we had

no freedom and dignity.” ‘Skinner Skinned’, Brainstorms (1978) p.69

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If Dennett is right, then there is something more to human consciousness than

simply material cause-and-effect. What that something is remains elusive.

TASK 9:

1. What is materialism?

2. In no more than 50 words, explain what Dawkins believes about the mind, body and soul.

3. What books did Dawkins write his ideas in, support his views using quotes. Page 53

4. How does Dawkins agree with Betrand Russell? Page 54

5. In no more than 50 words, explain what Skinner say about behaviourism.

6. Research Pavlov’s Dog. Explain how it links to a behaviourist view of mind, body and

soul.

7. In no more than 50 words, explain Dennett’s objections to Skinner.

8. Do you think people can be conditioned in the same way animals can, or is there more to us

than mere learned behaviour?

Discussing soul, mind and body pages 54-58

Create a table that details the following:

How might the materialist criticise a dualist

approach to questions about consciousness?

Don’t forget the names of key scholars.

How might the dualist respond to materialist

criticisms?

Don’t forget the names of key scholars.

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8. Objections to the theories and Conclusions

We have a continuing mystery of the nature of the soul and what is meant by

the soul. The danger is to simplify a complex area. Even established

assumptions may be challenged. For example, John Cottingham (1943 - ), (a

philosopher who has studied and interpreted the works of Descartes), in his

book Cartesian Reflections-Chapter 9, has challenged traditional readings of

Descartes as a dualist. He argues instead that we are made up of body, soul

and spirit. If we are made of two substances, mind and body, an

area of human experience including passions, emotions, sensations

cannot be reduced to either category.

Cottingham also points out there is no straightforwardly precise

definition of mind, body, soul, spirit, consciousness and so on.

Philosophers and theologians use the terms interchangeably, but are influenced by

their life view on the definition they adopt. For example, Plato’s view is influenced

by his desire to find certainty in an uncertain world and the need to point to a

separate type of existence. Descartes view begins with the consciousness ad

contrasts it with the external world. Skinner is clearly basing his interpretation on

animal experimentations on conditioning. However, it is also clear that just because

a philosopher believes one view of mind, body and soul, it does not follow that they

automatically reject an alternative view.

20

Summary Diagram: Mind, body and soul

21

TASK 10:

1. Using the summary diagram, copy it onto A3 paper. Add a brief explanation of the ideas

outlined and a diagram to help you remember.

2. Read though the revision advice and sample question with guidance.

3. Complete the essay under timed conditions of 37minutes.

Which do you find more

convincing substance

dualism or materialism?