Body & Soul

Body & Soul

1. Dualism is the concept that our mind is more than just our brain. This concept entails that our mind has a non-material, spiritual dimension that includes consciousness and possibly an eternal attribute. One way to understand this concept is to consider our self as a container including our physical body and physical brain along with a separate non-physical mind, spirit, or soul.

   • Plato was a dualist, he believed that we have both a body and a soul and that they were different entities

2. Monism/ Materilism:Materialism can refer either to the simple preoccupation with the material world, as opposed to intellectual or spiritual concepts, or to the theory that physical matter is all there is. This theory is far more than a simple focus on material possessions. It states that everything in the universe is matter, without any true spiritual or intellectual existence.

3. Soul: in religion and philosophy, the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, that which confers individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self. In theology, the soul is further defined as that part of the individual which partakes of divinity and often is considered to survive the death of the body.

   • Aristotle: "We are made up of matter and soul/psyche. The soul animates the body by organising a potential living body into an actual living body"
     • Aristotle uses his familiar matter/form distinction to answer the question “What is soul?” At the beginning of De Anima II.1, he says that there are three sorts of substance: Matter (potentiality) Form (actuality) The compound of matter and form Aristotle is interested in compounds that are alive. These— plants and animals—are the things that have souls. Their souls are what make them living things. Since form is what makes matter a “this,” the soul is the form of a living thing. (Not its shape, but its actuality, that in virtue of which it is the kind of living thing that it is.)
       • Growth, nutrition, (reproduction) Locomotion, perception Intellect (= thought) This gives us three corresponding degrees of soul: Nutritive soul (plants) Sensitive soul (all animals) Rational soul (human beings) These are nested in the sense that anything that has a higher degree of soul also has all of the lower degrees. All living things grow, nourish themselves, and reproduce. Animals not only do that, but move and perceive. Humans do all of the above and reason, as well. (There are further subdivisions within the various levels, which we will ignore.)
         • So on Aristotle’s account, although the soul is not a material object, it is not separable from the body
     • a psyche is a Greek term, often used today, which can be used for the interchangeably for 'mind' and/or 'soul'

4. Our 'minds', 'souls', 'spirit' and consciousness are all physical in nature1. Thousands of years of investigation has shown us that our brains comprise and produce our true selves, although because that for most of human history we have had no understanding of how our brains work most Humans have falsely believed inferred that we have souls2 and this idea has infused our folklore, cultures, myths, religions and has instructed our interpretation of dreams3. Souls and spirits do not exist. Our bodies run themselves. We know from cases of brain damage and the effects of psychoactive drugs, that our experiences are caused by physical chemistry acting on our physical neurones in our brains. Our innermost self is our biochemical self

5. Philosophers who accept the idea that all laws of nature are deterministic and that the world is causally closed still cannot understand how an immaterial mind can be the cause of an action. On this view, every physical event is reducible to the microscopic motions of physical particles. The laws of biology are reducible to those of physics and chemistry. The mind is reducible to the brain, with no remainder.

6. Information Philosophy identifies the (immaterial) mind with the incredible biological information processing going on in the brain. This processing operates on two levels. At the Macro level, the mind/brain is adequately determined to make its decisions and resulting actions in ways that are causally connected with the agent's character and values. It is everything that determinist and compatibilist philosophers expect it to be. At the Micro level, the mind/brain leaves itself open to significant thermal and quantal noise in its retrieval of past experiences. This generates creative and unpredictable alternative possibilities for thought and action. This is our best hope for a measure of libertarianism. Our mind/brain model emphasizes the abstract information content of the mind. Information is neither matter nor energy, yet it needs matter for its concrete embodiment and energy for its communication. Information is the modern spirit, the ghost in the machine. Because it is embodi