Body soul personal identity

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Body, soul and personal identity revision sheet

A.

What does the spec want you to

know?

i.

The nature and existence of the

soul and the body/soul relationship – differing views

ii.

Personal identity and the

possibility of continued personal existence after death – immortality,

resurrection, rebirth, reincarnation and replica theory

iii.

Nature of Near Death

Experiences and their value as evidence of survival beyond death

iv.

Is the notion of personal post

mortem existence coherent?

v.

Do Near Death Experiences

provide reasonable grounds for belief in the afterlife?

vi.

Is the notion of soul coherent

and are there reasonable grounds for belief in the existence of a soul?

B.

Arguments FOR the existence of

the soul

i.

Plato: Life cannot emerge from

a dead thing. Something living must have

given life to the body “the soul is that which renders the body living” The

immortal soul enters the body at birth and leaves it at death.

ii.

Descartes:The knowledge

argument

I know that I exist as a thinking thing- res cogitans. This is induibitable. To doubt that I exist is a sort of thinking

and if I am thinking I must exist.

I can doubt that I have a body.

Mind has the property of being induibitable. Body has the property of being

doubtable. Leibniz’s Law says that the

same entity must have the same properties.

Mind and body have different properties so mind and body are not the

same entity

OR

iii.

Descartes’ argument from

indivisibility

BODY-

what are its properties? Divisible.

SOUL-

what are its properties- indivisible.

Liebniz’s

Law

Mind

and body cannot be the same entity.

C.

Counter arguments

i.

To Plato: We are not a

dead thing animated by a soul. We are a

material thing which under conditions of life can perform certain functions. By

analogy a toaster is a material thing that can perform certain functions. It is not animated by a toaster soul. There is no need to posit the existence of

another, immaterial substance here. RUSSELL "Whenever possible, substitute

constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities."

ii.

To Descartes: Just because he

thinks he has a soul with the essential property of thinking doesn’t mean that it

exists or has those properties. He has misapplied Leibniz. By analogy Rachel thinks that Batman saved

her from the Joker. She thinks that

Bruce did not save her from the Joker.

Does this prove that Batman is not Bruce? NO- Rachel has just got it wrong…like

Descartes!

iii.

Immaterial objects do not

exist. (If you disagree find me one!)

iv.

Souls and minds are just ways

of talking about the functions of a person.

If I say that I changed my mind I don’t mean that I went and got a new

immaterial object! It is a manner of

speaking which we have made the mistake of taking literally. Ryle- a category mistake (where is the

university?)

v.

If we did have a soul/mind it would

be causally ineffective. How could an

immaterial substance interact with a material one? You can’t make a cake with immaterial eggs

and material flour.

vi.

A mind is not made of material

so it cannot be physically located. What

would make a soul mine? How do I know I only have one?

D.

Can we save life after

death?

Well you could try to use REPLICA- Hick?

i.

Hick wants to provide an

account of an afterlife which does not rely on the existence of a soul as a

separate substance.

ii.

Replication does not depend on

moral behavior- you get replicated because you are human not because you are

good!

iii.

Upon death, a ‘replica’ of you

is placed in a special, separate place (usually thought of as a different

‘plane’ of existence). This ‘replica’ is exactly like you in every way. Hick

asserts that the ‘replica’ of which he speaks is not the same as a replica (no

quotes), of which one could potentially create hundreds. Hick maintains that

there can only be one ‘you’ because we as human beings are individuals – if I

had several versions of myself, I would not ‘be’ all of them, just one, and

while the others would be eerily similar versions of myself I would not

consider them to be the current me.

iv.

Your dead body would, of course

still exist. But this version of yourself is no longer you.

v.

Recreation of the body in the

resurrection world is a divine act, which Hick says might occur immediately, or

perhaps after a certain wait (in accordance with a Judgement Day, perhaps.)

When God does remake your body, he remakes you completely whole, as you were.

There is not, at any point, a separation of body and soul or anything else.

Strengths

i.

Hick has given an account of an

afterlife which does not rely on dualism which we have seen raises a great many

problems.

ii.

Hick allows only one ‘replica’ to

avoid one obvious objection from the problem of identity – if there was more

than one ‘you’ at any one time, that would be a paradox – personal identity

relies on numerical identity.

Criticisms

i.

Paul Davies- it would be no

consolation to me that a replica version of me were to suddenly be created upon

my death because I would still be dead. Hick defends this objection by saying

there can be only one ‘replica’ as if this makes a difference. I don’t see how

this helps because there is no physical continuity. The version in the

resurrection world would only think

that it was me. How is a replica any consolation to me?

ii.

Hick seems to ignore the

question of punishment or judgement for sins – no matter how evil someone has

been in life, their replica will still exist in the resurrection world no

matter what.

iii.

If the person who comes to

exist in the replica world is EXACTLY like the person who dies then they will

be at the point of death. If Hick says

that people are recreated

iv.

The question, then, is why this

matters. Surely, it would be preferable for us all to be magically transformed

into ‘us’ in our prime, rather than as an old (or dead) person. But the me I was in my prime IS NOT ME!

e.Nature Of

The Soul

i.

Plato- Plato thinks the soul is

immortal, unchanging and immaterial. It

animates the body. Without it we are a

corpse.

ii.

Descartes- Descartes

thinks the body is a machine made of earth which regulates the body like a

fountain keeper regulates the function of the fountain. Remember his example of the shepherd and the

wolf.

iii.

Aquinas – He believes that we

will be physically resurrected. He

quotes this verse. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall

rise out of the earth, and I shall be clothed again with my skin’"-(Job

19:25-26) Aquinas also quotes Aristotle: "the soul is united to

the body as form to matter". |He believes the body is the matter of the

soul. The soul is superior, but both body and soul are necessary for definition

of ourselves.

iv.

Hinduism- Atman =the

non-material self, which never changes. Distinct from both mind and external

body. The real self is beyond race, gender, species and nationality.

Ideas of reincarnation arise naturally from this concept.

v.

Buddism- Anatman There is no

"self" in the sense we generally understand it. What we think of as

our self (our personality or ego) are temporary creations of the skandhas.

(Sanskrit meaning "aggregate." Buddhists believe that an individual is a combination of five

aggregates of existence. These are: Form, Sensation, Perception, Mental

formations, Consciousness)

vi.

Materialism: The soul is simply

a metaphorical way of talking about brain states or behaviors which we have

made the error of taking literally.

Ryle- the example of the visitor to the university. We are our body and its functions.

f.Personal Identity

i.

Qualitative and numerical

identity.

ii.

Dualism- Dualists think that my

personal identity depends on my having the same soul over time. Question to

think about- if all my thoughts, feelings and memories were transferred to

another soul who would be me?

iii.

Psychological Continuity-

My identity depends on my thoughts, ideas and feelings. Locke thinks that memories are essential to

identity. He thinks that if Bert

remembers his wedding day and if , on his wedding day he remembered his first

day at school then he is the same person as the schoolboy.

iv.

Physical Continuity- My identity depends on there being a continuity

of the matter that I am made of. Of

course Bert now is not made of the same molecules as he was back then but at

the time that each molecule changed most of his molecules stayed the same. Bernard Williams thinks that identity depends

on more than half of the brain being the same but other people think that it is

not just the brain that matters.

v.

Thought Experiments: We thought about the implications for

identity theory of thought experiments like transplants (Which would you rather

be, someone who is a brain donor or someone who receives a brain transplant? If you could go in the Star Trek transporter

would you still be you when you arrived?

What if the you in the transporter room did not dematerialize? Who would you be then?

g. Near Death Experiences

i.

What are NDEs? a range of

personal experiences associated with impending death- possible sensations range

from detachment from the body, sensation of levitation, fear, total serenity,

security, or warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, the presence of a

light, which may be interpreted as a deity.

ii.

Dr. Raymond Moody- From a study

of 150 people who had “clinically died” or almost died, Moody concluded that

there are nine experiences common to most people who have had a near death

experience. These are:

a.

hearing sounds such as buzzing

b.

a feeling of peace and

painlessness

c.

having an out-of-body

experience

d.

a feeling of traveling through

a tunnel

e.

a feeling of rising into the

heavens

f.

seeing people, often dead

relatives

g.

meeting a spiritual being such

as God

h.

seeing a review of one's life

i.

feeling a reluctance to return

to life

iii.

NDE Accounts- Joyce Hawkes, a scientist, with

a PhD, fell out of a window. As she fell out, she felt that her spirit/ soul

had left her to go to another reality. "I think what I learned was that

there truly is no death, that there is a change in state from a physical form

to a spirit form, and that there's nothing to fear about that passage," Plato The Myth of Er

iv.

Dr. Sam Parnia – 3 year study

to determine if people without heartbeat or brain activity can have an

out-of-body experience with veridical visual perceptions. "evidence is now

suggesting that mental and cognitive processes may continue for a period of

time after a death has started" and describes the process of death as

"essentially a global stroke of the brain. Therefore like any stroke

process one would not expect the entity of mind / consciousness to be lost

immediately".

v.

1990s, Dr. Rick Strassman

research on the psychedelic drug (DMT) -theory that a massive release of DMT might

cause near-death experience phenomenon.

vi.

Richard Kinseher 2006 Sensory

Autonomic System – brain senses oncoming death- no experience has ever been

like this and the brain scans everything in order to find a stored experience

which is comparable to the input information of death. The brain is searching

for a coping mechanism out of the potentially fatal situation.

vii.

Susan Blackmore says NDE peace/euphoria

might be due to release of endorphins and the random activity of neurons as the

brain lose3s organization (neural noise) “If you started with very little

neural noise and it gradually increased, the effect would be of a light at the

centre getting larger and larger and hence closer and closer....the tunnel

would appear to move as the noise levels increased and the central light got

larger and larger....If the whole cortex became so noisy that all the cells

were firing fast, the whole area would appear light.” Pim van Lommel "With

a purely physiological explanation such as cerebral anoxia for the experience,

most patients who have been clinically dead should report one."

Accordingly, a lack of predictable experiences should cast doubt on wholesale

explanations of NDEs.

viii.

Near Death Experience patients

are not dead! They are really

poorly…dead means dead- you don’t come back from that and recount the

experience.

ix.

If a patient says they saw

something while unconscious what were they seeing with? If one’s spirit is immaterial how can it be

located in order to look back at the old body from the ceiling.

x.

Some say NDEs prove something

because they are universal but does this just indicate that they are a function

of human biology?

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