OCR
Philosophy

AO1: Plato’s dualism

Plato is a dualist which is the view that the soul/mind and the body are different.
He claims the physical world, including our body, is a faulty representation of the real world which is of abstract forms and ideas.
We are really not a body but a soul with the potential to understand these forms through reason.
Plato is not a dualist in the modern sense of believing that mind and body represent two types of being.
Plato’s dualism is not between types of reality, but between degrees of reality.
Minds (and abstract forms) are a higher degree of reality than the body.
Plato compares the soul to a charioteer driving a pair of winged horses. The charioteer represents reason, which must guide and control the two horses. One is noble (spirit, representing courage and honour) and one unruly (appetite, representing desire and lust).
When reason rules and brings both horses into harmony, the soul ascends toward truth and the divine; when the appetitive horse dominates, the soul falls into disorder and ignorance.
This tripartition underpins Plato’s ethical theory and his account of virtue as harmony among the parts.

AO2: Plato’s argument from recollection

Plato justifies the existence of an immaterial soul and world of forms through his argument from recollection.
We have ideas of perfect things, like the idea of two sticks being perfectly equal in length, or a perfect circle or perfect justice.
Yet, we have never experienced such perfect things in the world of appearances.
So, we must have apprehended these ideas from a world of perfect forms, where perfect forms of circles and justice exist.
Our imperfect body couldn’t be part of that perfect realm.
And Plato’s epistemological likeness principle entails that the part of us which knows immaterial forms must also be immaterial.
So, we must have an immaterial soul which was in the world of perfect forms before we were born.
We now gain knowledge through anamnesis, where experience of particulars triggers a a recollection of the perfect forms they partake in.

Counter

Hume counters that justice and beauty were subjective, though Plato’s argument could still function on the geometry examples, since maths is not subjective.
However, Hume claims we can actually create the idea of perfection ourselves.
Through abstract negation we imagine imperfect circles ‘not imperfect’, which creates the idea of perfection.
So, it seems we can explain perfect concepts without a soul or realm of forms.

Evaluation:

Plato’s argument fails at two points.
Hume’s proposal shows that we could get perfect concepts from pure a priori reasoning alone, without their being innate.
But even if we were born with perfect concepts, it’s a leap to think a soul and realm of forms must explain that.
E.g., evolution may have programmed us with geometric awareness to enable our survival.
So, Plato was wrong to think a soul & realm of forms must exist as the explanation.

AO2: Plato’s portrayal of the soul

Plato’s rationalist epistemology and dualist metaphysics shape his account of the soul.
Plato thinks knowing is a kind of direct cognitive attunement between the soul and its object.
Such contact requires likeness: the soul sharing the nature of what it knows.
If true knowledge is of immaterial Forms, rationality must be immaterial.
Plato argues mental conflicts reveal reason is only one part of the soul.
He illustrates: a thirsty person refusing water shows appetite and rational judgement are distinct.
Feeling anger about our desires and siding with reason against appetite indicates a third part: ‘spirit’.
This tripartite model is embedded in his hierarchical metaphysics.
The rational soul which knows the forms is immortal and immaterial, while appetite and spirit are tied to the embodied person.

Counter:

However, this leads to a type of interaction problem.
If knowledge requires likeness between knower and known
But knowledge is triggered by bodily perception (anamnesis).
And the soul is unlike the body,
Then, it’s hard to see how the immaterial rational soul receives sensory content.
E.g., “thirst” is bodily, but the “rationality” apprehending and spirit resisting it is immaterial.
Non-dualist theories (whether hylomorphic like Aristotle, or reductive materialist) integrate mind, body and world from the start, so no such problem arises.

Evaluation

Plato might respond that perception is a unified activity of body and soul.
So it’s not that the body receives perception and passes it to the soul.
He can make this move as his dualism doesn’t claim body and mind are separate substances, but represent different degrees of reality.
However, this relocates the problem to how the soul could cooperate with the body in perception.
Plato doesn’t answer this, and his metaphysics makes it difficult.
His separation of body and soul means his ‘likeness’ epistemology struggles to explain how they cooperate in producing knowledge.
So Plato faces an epistemological version of the interaction problem.

AO1: Aristotle’s materialist view of the soul

Aristotle thought Plato was wrong to think that ‘form’ existed in another realm.
Form is instead an inseparable part of objects, their essence or ‘formal cause’. This view is called hylomorphism.
The formal cause of all living things is a soul which gives them their vital characteristics.
Plants have a vegetative soul which enables nutrition. Animal souls have that plus locomotion. Human souls have all that plus rational thought.
So the soul is the formal cause of the body, giving humans their defining essential characteristic of rational thought.
Aristotle illustrates that the soul is like the imprint left in wax by a stamp, whereas the wax is like the body. The imprint is not actually a thing itself, but gives characteristic to the wax.
Similarly, the soul is not a distinct entity. It can’t be separated from the body but gives us rational thought.

AO2: Critique of formal causation by modern materialism

Modern science rejects formal causation.
A classic scholastic example is that the whiteness of snow is explained by its form.
But we now know snow’s colour to be a feature of its material structure interacting with light.
After Francis Bacon, it became a feature of the emerging scientific method, to sideline as purely ‘metaphysical’, concepts which have no explanatory necessity.
Aristotle insists rational thought is the activity of the soul, which is the form of the body.
Modern scientists treat the mind as brain structures and their processes.
Just as with the whiteness of snow, what is attributed to formal causation can in principle be accounted for by material and efficient causation alone.

Counter

Contemporary hylomorphists reply that this move isn’t justified.
Material explanation has not succeeded in the crucial area of consciousness or rational thought.
So, we cannot legitimately claim to have eliminated the need for formal causation.

Evaluation

However, something being unexplained does not justify a special kind of metaphysical cause.
The history of science contains many cases once thought to require special categories (life-force, phlogiston), that were later eliminated by material explanations.
The case of the whiteness of snow illustrates this pattern clearly.
This doesn’t disprove formal causation, but it does undermine its credibility.
Consciousness and thought are indeed mysteries, but the question is how to scientifically approach mystery.
Scientific mysteries like dark matter and black holes could require new metaphysical categories, but likewise, they may not.
The same is true of consciousness.
So, unless we actually have clear evidence for the necessity of formal causation, it is an unnecessary concept.
We have vast evidence for the applicability of material and efficient causation, but none for formal causation.
Therefore, we are justified in proceeding to investigate consciousness materially rather than formally.

AO2: Hylomorphism vs Descartes on the soul

Aristotle ground hylomorphism in psychology:
“The soul never thinks without an image”
Sensory experience produces mental ideas, which provide the basis needed for the functioning of knowledge, imagination and memory.
So, human intellect cannot think, imagine or remember without the body.
Aquinas adds that the soul can subsist in itself after death, but only in an incomplete, “unnatural” state.
It cannot count as the whole person until reunited with the resurrected body.

Counter

Descartes rejected the hylomorphic notion that the soul is incomplete without the body.
He claims personal identity is grounded in the continued existence of a unified immaterial consciousness, not bodily continuity.
His argument is that we could doubt the physical world including our body as illusory, but we would still exist so long as we are thinking.
The “I” that doubts is grasped more clearly and distinctly than any physical body.
So introspective rational intuition provides privileged access to the self.
What we grasp reveals consciousness as a unity, compared to the divisible body.
He concludes personal identity consists in unity of immaterial consciousness, not the unity of an organism.

Evaluation

However, Descartes assumes that the mind’s introspective self-perception is accurate.
He thinks he can imagine the mind disconnected from any bodily input.
But this overlooks the possibility that the mind is already the product of an intrinsically embodied development.
Thought is always ‘about’ something (intentionality), and that something is supplied by the body.
Without images from sense data, thought would have nothing to think about, and then it’s hard to conceive in what form it could exist.
Descartes’ notion of a conceivably disembodied mind is thus a misinterpretation of an abstraction.
This is further justified by modern research in developmental psychology.
Mental faculties are not simply innate, they are co-developed with experience.
Descartes’ reliance on intuition fits his epistemology, but this case shows its flaws compared to more empirical views.

AO1: Descartes’ substance dualism

Descartes thought the mind and soul were the same thing.
He is a substance dualist, meaning the mind and body are distinct fundamental types of being.
Physical substance is characterised by extension, meaning it occupies certain coordinates of space. Mental substance is characterised by thinking.
Descartes is a rationalist who argued that a priori intuition can discover indubitable foundational knowledge, from which deductive arguments can produce further knowledge.
Our own existence is the first thing we can know for certain. We cannot doubt our existence, since we would have to exist to doubt we exist.
Doubting is a type of thinking. Descartes concludes ‘cogito ergo sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’.
The ‘I’ specified here is a thinking mind.
The body on the other hand could be doubted, as we could just be dreaming about having a body or confused by an evil demon.
This is the first indication for Descartes that there is a distinction between mind and body. Thought is intuitively inseparable from what we are, but that’s not true of the body.
He then develops two deductive arguments for the non-identity of mind and body, named indivisibility & conceivability.

AO2: Descartes’ Indivisibility argument

Descartes argues all extended things are divisible, because they could in principle be divided at some point along the area they occupy.
The mind is indivisible because it is not composed of parts and thinking seems the one thing essential to it.
P1. Physical substance is divisible (since it’s extended).
P2. The mind is indivisible (since it’s non-extended).
P3. Leibniz’ law is that identical things must have the same properties.
C1. The mind therefore cannot be identical with any physical substance, such as the body.
This argument uses a logical principle which came to be known as Leibniz’ law of identity: identical things must have the same properties.
If the body and mind were identical, then that one identical thing would be both divisible and indivisible, which is impossible.

Counter

Scholastics objected that the mind can be divided into feelings, perceptions, memories, etc.
However Descartes replies that by mind he means consciousness.
It is the one undivided consciousness that feels, perceives, remembers, etc. Those are modes of consciousness, not divisions of it.

Evaluation

The stronger counter-example is the modern evidence of split-brain patients.
The right hemisphere controls the left arm, and the left hemisphere controls the right arm.
Sometimes as a treatment for epilepsy, doctors sever the neurons connecting the hemispheres.
Patients can then appear to have their mind divided into two.
E.g., picking up food with one hand, while the other hand hits it out of that hand.
E.g., a patient was with his wife, one hand reached out to hug, the other to push her away.
So, this is good evidence that Descartes’ premise of the mind as indivisible is wrong, undermining his conclusion that it is non-physical.

AO2: Descartes’ conceivability argument

Descartes’ rationalism holds that we can gain knowledge through a priori intuition about clear and distinct ideas.
P1. I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking non-extended thing.
P2. I have a clear and distinct idea of my body as a non-thinking extended thing.
C1. These opposing properties allow us to conceive of the mind separate to and without the body.
P3. What is conceivably separate is possibly separate.
P4. What is possibly separate is actually non-identical.
C2. Therefore, the mind and body are not identical.
Identical things are inconceivably separate. E.g. you can’t imagine a triangle separate from three sides.
Yet we can imagine a disembodied mind – e.g. imagine being a ghost floating through walls – or having an out of body experience).

Counter:

However, the masked man fallacy shows that we can imagine impossible things.
If someone hears about a masked man robbing a bank, they can imagine that it’s not their father.
But if it really was their father, they just imagined the impossible.
This shows conceivability doesn’t entail possibility (P3 is false).
Descartes could be imagining an impossibility whe imagining a disembodied mind.

Evaluation

Descartes might respond that impossibilities are only conceivable due to ignorance, (e.g., who is under the mask).
Regarding our minds there is no ignorance, in fact we know it with certainty.
However, here Descartes oversteps.
We might know we exist with certainty, but it’s not clear we know what we are simply by thinking about what we are like Descartes’ rationalism assumes.
E.g., Cognitive psychology has shown most mental processing to be unconscious.
“Know thyself” is a central maxim of socratic philosophy, indicating how self-knowledge isn’t immediate.
We don’t know our mind perfectly, so the masked man fallacy applies.
Conceivability of ourselves disembodied may just reflect limits of introspection, not metaphysical possibility.

AO1: Gilbert Ryle’s ‘category error’ critique of dualism

Ryle argued dualism makes a ‘category error’, which involves confusing the logical category a thing belongs to.
He illustrated with someone being shown a university, saying that they see the biology building and physics building etc, but now want to be shown the university.
They mistakenly think ‘university’ is in the category of ‘individual buildings’.
Descartes’ arguments work by claiming the mind/soul is not in the category of physical things as it isn’t divisible etc, so must be in the category of non-physical things.
Ryle objects that our concept ‘mind’ cannot refer to a thing at all, so Descartes has mistakenly put it in the category of ‘things’.
Referring to the mind as a ‘thing’ is like saying there is a ghost in the machine of our body.
Ryle is a soft behaviourist, which claims language about the mind is really about behavioural dispositions.
E.g. if I say someone is ‘angry’ that means they are disposed to angry behaviour. Talking about anger as a ‘thing’ is a category mistake.
He illustrates: the brittleness of glass is clearly not extended nor divisible.
But that doesn’t imply brittleness is a non-physical thing, because it is not a thing at all but a disposition to behave in a certain way (shatter) under certain conditions (impact).
Treating mental language as referring to the entity of the physical brain also commits the category error.
Ryle remains a materialist as he thinks only physical things exist, but he’s not a reductive materialist as he doesn’t think ‘mind’ is a ‘thing’.

AO2: The category mistake

A common sense reaction to Ryle is to reject his claim that our concept of mind does not refer to a thing.
It feels like our minds are things, which seems a basis to infer others have them too.
Mill turns this into an analogical argument.
We know our own mind through introspection, and infer others have similar inner states because their behaviour resembles ours.
So using mental language to refer to inner states is not a category mistake.
The mind is known first-personally and extended to others by analogy.
It’s then valid to ask whether those states are physical or non-physical.

Counter:

Ryle rejects this by denying that mental concepts are learned through private introspection and projected onto others.
Mental language is acquired through public use.
Children learn words like “pain” or “anger” by seeing how they apply in behaviour, not by identifying inner objects.
So treating mental terms as referring to inner entities is a category mistake that produces the “ghost in the machine.”

Evaluation:

However, both accounts are incomplete.
Mill prioritises introspection while Ryle prioritises public use, but in practice these develop together.
Mill assumes we can identify mental states prior to any conceptual framework.
But what counts as a “belief” or “pain” is shaped by learned concepts.
So introspection is not neutral access, but conceptually mediated.
However, Ryle’s error is deeper.
Even if mental concepts are learned publicly, this does not show they fail to refer.
He moves illegitimately from meaning (use) to ontology (non-existence of inner states).
A more plausible view is that inner experience and public language are mutually dependent.
Empirically, they develop together in childhood.
Our ability to identify mental states is shaped by social practices, but grounded in real phenomenological differences.
So referring to inner mental states does not commit a category mistake.
Ryle dissolves the idea of a separate inner substance, but not inner states themselves.
The metaphysical question remains whether those states are mental or physical.

AO1: Materialism

Monism is the view that only one type of entity exists. There is only one type of being or existence.
This divides into two subvarieties:
Idealists think the one type of existence is mental & minds.
Materialists think the one type of existence is physical.
Ancient materialists like Aristotle found a way for the soul to exist as the form of material beings.
However Modern scientists tend to think that the mind is just the brain, so there is no such thing as a soul.
Dawkins represents this view. He argues there is no scientific evidence for the soul.
The scientific evidence is that we are evolved beings, purely physical matter like flesh, bones and DNA, complexly structured by natural selection..
Our uniquely human mental abilities like reason and consciousness could just be the result of our having evolved a different brain to other animals.
As Bertrant Russell put it, “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.
Dawkins concludes the only valid way to talk about a soul is metaphorically.
The dictionary has two definitions of soul. Soul 1 is the literal view of a soul which actually exists.
Soul 2 is the metaphorical view. Dawkins thinks it’s fine to use the word metaphorically to refer to our deep human feelings and our humanity.
E.g. if I said ‘that is a soul-less person’ – that would be metaphorical. This doesn’t mean souls actually exist, the word ‘soul’ is just a metaphor.
Dawkins thinks the mind is just the brain and that’s all. When you die, you cease to exist.

AO2: Reductive materialism

Reductive materialism claims that the mind is just the brain.
Drugs which stimulate, depress, or anesthetize the brain correspondingly affect consciousness.
Brain damage affects certain mental faculties depending on the area affected.
A brian developing or aging affects the mind.
Brain imaging shows correlation for brain activity patterns for any type of mental state.
J J Smart applies the abductive reasoning of occam’s razor here:
The simplest explanation of this correlation is that types of mental states are identical (ontologically reducible) to types of brain states.
E.g., feeling pain is just f-fiber stimulation.

Counter

However, dualist David Chalmers argues scientists have only explained the ‘easy problem of consciousness’, figuring out which brain part is responsible for which mental process like memory, perception or emotion.
The ‘hard problem of consciousness’ is figuring out consciousness itself, and explaining why any physical process should give rise to subjective experience at all.
Neuroscience has not made comparable progress there.
Chalmers’ point seems to be that since such a mystery remains regarding the central question of consciousness itself, it’s at least premature to use science to justify reductive materialism.

Evaluation

However, we can defend reductive materialism.
The brain is beyond our current understanding.
If the mind were the brain, how that works would likewise be beyond our understanding.
So, we should expect reductive materialism to be inconceivable even if it were true.
So, Chalmers pointing to the inconceivably hard problem cannot count against its truth.
Ultimately, it is methodologically more reasonable to extend known physical explanations than to posit a new non-physical kind of substance or property.
We are justified in expecting advances in neuroscience to solve the hard problem.
So, dualism cannot be disproved, but the abductive balance of considerations laid out by Smart still favours materialism.

Question preparation

Key paragraphs:

Plato (dualism)
Aristotle (materialist – but believes in the soul (as the formal cause of the body) – the soul is the way the body behaves and lives)
Descartes’ substance dualism & indivisibility argument
Descartes’ substance dualism & conceivability argument
Ryle (category mistake)
Dawkins (modern scientific materialism & metaphorical view of the soul)

Question types:

Scholar focused questions on or critically comparing:

Plato
Aristotle
Descartes
Metaphorical view of the soul (Dawkins)
Category error (Ryle)

For critical comparison questions, do one paragraph on each and then a third paragraph on another person who would either say yes or no to both, or back up one over the other.

‘Discussion of the mind-body distinction is a category error’ – Discuss [40]

Ryle
Dawkins
- intro sentence:
- Ryle aims to attack reductive materialism like that of Dawkins & Smart as well as dualism. It’s a category error to refer to the mind as a thing – whether a non-physical thing, but also a physical thing like the brain.
- Dawkins’ approach to the mind-body distinction is better than Ryle’s in making the case for materialism & criticising dualism – because Dawkins relies more on science and doesn’t lead to counter-intuitive claims that the mind isn’t a thing.

Descartes’ indivisibility argument
- Intro sentence: Descartes argued his theory was not based on a category error, but on sound rationalist argumentation.
- Outro sentence: Modern science shows that Descartes is wrong, adding further weight to the conclusion that it is science that undermines Descartes, not Ryle’s philosophical reasoning about a category error.

Questions about Consciousness or the mind.

Descartes thinks the soul and the conscious mind are the same thing.
Plato says something similar – the conscious mind is part of the soul – and it has to choose between the good and bad desires/appetites of the soul.
Aristotle – What we in modern times call the mind – Aristotle just called the soul – divided into animalistic parts containing our appetites and the human part which gives us rational thought which is a key feature of consciousness.

Weirdly worded questions:

Could consciousness/mind/soul could be fully explained by physical interactions [40]

Physical interactions refers to brain processes – e.g. electrical impulses in the brain.
This question is basically asking whether the mind is just the brain.
Dawkins: yes
Plato, Descartes: no because they are dualist
Aristotle: no – because the soul give us reason – and it isn’t simply reducible to the material/efficient causes in the brain – Aristotle thinks the soul is the formal cause of the body.

“The soul is the way the body behaves and lives” – Discuss [40]

This Q is about aristotle

Analyse the metaphysics of consciousness. [40]

Metaphysics is the philosophical field/study of the nature of existence/reality).
This question is asking you to debate the nature of consciousness – e.g. is consciousness physical (materialism) or non-physical (dualism)

Assess the philosophical language of soul, mind and body in Plato and Aristotle’s work. [40]

This question is just asking you to critically compare Plato & Aristotle on the soul

Assess materialist critiques of dualism [40]

Plato (dualist theory) and the materialist critique (from Hume & Aristotle)
Descartes dualist arguments – and the materialist counters to them
Dawkins – has his materialist argument which critiques dualism

Assess dualist arguments against materialism [40]

Plato (dualist argument against materialism) and the materialist critique (from Hume & Aristotle)
Descartes dualist arguments against materialism – and the materialist counters to them
Dawkins – has his materialist argument which is criticised by Chalmers who is a dualist

Is the soul a spiritual substance? [40]

Descartes – yes – he invented substance dualism – he says there exists both physical and mental substance.
Plato – is a dualist – but not a substance dualist – Plato doesn’t say the mind and body are separate substances – in fact he says the body and the whole physical world doesn’t really exist.
Dawkins – no
Aristotle – no
Ryle – no