soul-body problem: survey - 1 soul & body: a survey of the basic positions zbackground on the...

Soul-body problem: survey - 1

Soul & body: a survey of the basic positions

Background on the soul-body problem Main historical & logical positions on the

soul-body problem 1. Substance dualism

Plato (428-348 B.C.), Augustine (354-430), Descartes (1596-1650) - the soul is a different kind of reality than the body; it is a spiritual substance and is the seat of the self.


Soul & body: background

Plato - the soul properly belongs to the otherworldly realm of Ideas or Forms

Comments & problems:• Provides a clean solution to

scientific criticisms of the notion of soul by putting soul out of the bounds of science. Independence position.



• If so dissimilar, how can they interact?

• If humans have evolved from matter, we would expect mind or soul to be similar to matter.



Is not substance dualism required for the Jewish & Christian notions of afterlife?

• Many contemporary biblical scholars argue that dualism is not present in the Hebrew and Christian bibles



• Hebrew nephesh, often translated as “soul,” does not mean an immortal soul but the life principle or the self as the subject of appetites & emotions & willing



2. Matter-form dualism - the soul is not complete by itself; it is complete only with the body; but it is capable of existing without the bodyAristotle (384-322), Aquinas (1225-1274)Problems:

• Has many of the same difficulties of substance dualism, but perhaps mitigated a bit.



• The metaphysical baggage which goes with this theory

Strength• It has a much more positive

appraisal of the body than Platonic dualism



3. Physicalism, or “materialism,” or “reductive materialism” Mental events are identical with brain

processes.• Francis Crick in The Astonishing

Hypothesis (1994)



“The Astonishing hypothesis is that ‘you,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.’” (The Astonishing Hypothesis 3)



Some criticisms: • Crick sets up the problem as if

there are only two alternatives: strong substance dualism or reductive materialism. Is this fallacious?

• At best a research programme• It cannot account for the privileged

position of the subject



4. Multi-level theories Ian Barbour & Nancey Murphy -

Reality is organized into a variety of levels, each with its characteristic types of activity. The mind-brain problem is a particular case of the more general problem of the relation between levels.



Advantages:• Is congenial with an evolutionary

viewpoint• According to Barbour, it is

compatible with the biblical view of humans

Nancey Murphy’s position is a version of the multi-level theory



Why science seems to make any version of strong dualism problematic1. The continuity between humans

and other animals • Our closest cousins in the animal

world are chimpanzees--c.99% of the DNA of humans and chimpanzees is the same



• Hominids & chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor c. 5 to 7 million years ago (Ayala 33)

• One of the lines of these early hominids evolved is Australopithicus.



The genus Homo evolved from Australopithicus c. 2.5 million years ago.

Of the many species in the genus Homo, Homo sapiens sapiens emerged c. 120,000 years ago.



2. Modern psychology & neurology• Brain localization research • Murphy: “Nearly all of the human

capacities or faculties once attributed to the soul [language, emotion, decision-making] are now seen to be functions of the brain” (1).



• Specific mental processes have been shown to be tightly linked to particular regions or systems of the brain

• Examples The hippocampus -- remembering

names or events Writing prose and reading it are

linked to different parts of the brain.



Recognizing faces Damage to the right temporal

lobe results in obsessional behavior

soul-body problem: survey - 1 soul & body: a survey of the basic positions zbackground on the...

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