Dualism Is The Relationship Between The Mind And The Body

1193 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Values and limitations of dualism

Dualism, A philosophical concept is ultimately the relationship between the mind and the body. The mind-body dualism cannot be perceived with our senses, we cannot feel, see, or touch mind-body dualism. Moreover, there is no legitimate way for one’s thoughts to be traced or known. Additionally, you cannot study the mind, one can only study the brain. This concept was adopted by major philosophers including, Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. Furthermore, the soul can be interchangeable with real identity from the human body and the senses. Additionally, the soul intertwines with the body and essentially adds life. Moreover, the distinct difference between the soul and body is the soul is utterly rational and the body is irrational. The relationship between the mind and body is intriguing and compelling. Ultimately, individuals are aware of their bodies and it’s capabilities. On the contrary, we do not know what is determining our minds activity or why we have particular thoughts. Moreover, there are various questions one might ask. Do we have a soul and is our soul controlling our mind and body. Plato, a significant philosopher of his time, believed the soul is everlasting …show more content…

Socrates believes our body distracts our soul and one will not grasp ultimate knowledge until they are deceased. Philosophers who believe in this theory do not fear death because death is equivalent to ultimate wisdom and truth. Plato’s cyclical argument demonstrates that when one dies our souls exist in another world and are consequently reborn. His foundation for this argument is that opposites begin solely from their opposite. An example would be what starts as small item can produce a larger item. Innately, everything that is present has to come from something. Socrates follows with the argument that life and death result from one another. Moreover, it is only right to assume the souls of the dead exist until they are

Show More
Related

  • Four Arguments Of Plato's Phaedo

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    He views death as a separation of the soul from the body when the body and soul are together it is life. He believed this so powerfully, that he did not only fear death but welcomed it. Socrates believed that he had to live a life full and hope for death. He had to convince his disciples Cebes and Simmias to be okay with his death since they did not believe in his beliefs. Socrates believed that men were the property of the gods and stated, “it is gods who care for us, and for the gods, we human beings are among their belongings. Don't you think so?” (Phaedo, 62b). Cebes was in an agreement with Socrates on that argument. They both believed that if a man kills himself he will be punished. Cebes suggest that when the soul leaves a body, it may dissipate, no longer existing as one unit. However, Socrates argues that in favor of this myth, souls after death will eventually return to the world in other bodies. Everything that comes to come from its opposites that is explained in the first argument. Simmias then argues that destroying a body will destroy the soul in it. Cebes declares that there is no proof that the souls are immortal and suffer no negative effects after each death and rebirth. Socrates tries to convince his friends with the Argument of Opposites and the Theory of Forms. Socrates hopes that the theory of forms will help explain causation and proof of the

    Read More

  • Socrates and Plato in Phaedo

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    Socrates first argument is on the Theory of Opposites in which he discusses the nature of opposite things and beings. Socrates makes his claim that everything that is, comes from its opposite being. “If something smaller comes to be it will come from something larger before, which became smaller” (71a). What he is trying to explain is that something that is considered to be “smaller” requires it to once have been “larger” previously, so its size decreased in time. Just as large and small, Socrates compares the matter of life and death as being opposites in which the soul is what moves on. The issue with this reasoning is that unlike moving from opposites such as small to large or large to small, where an object may increase or decrease, life to death is not a reversible process. Life can move to death but it cannot reverse and move from death to life. Life cannot come from death, and though life is contrary to death it is not the contradicting opposite, and it cannot be considered to follow the Theory of Opposites. It is practically impossible for something to be alive and dead at the same time, so the soul that transfers from life to death it must be able to exist within the body or out of it. Socrates believes that th...

    Read More

  • The Mind as a Function of the Body by Richard Taylor

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    Richard Taylor explained why the body and the mind are one, and why they are not two separate substances. In the article “The Mind as a Function of the Body”, Taylor divides his article in a number of sections and explains clearly why dualism, or the theory that the mind and the body are separate is not conceivable. In one of these sections it is explained in detail the origin of why some philosophers and people believe in dualist metaphysics. As stated by Taylor “when we form an idea of a body or a physical object, what is most likely to come to mind is not some person or animal but something much simpler, such as a stone or a marble”(133). The human has the tendency to believe a physical object as simple, and not containing anything complex. A problem with believing this is that unlike a stone or a marble a human (or an animal) has a brain and the body is composed of living cells (excluding dead skin cells, hair, and nails which are dead cells). The f...

    Read More

  • Property Dualism: The Main Issue Of The Mind-Body Problem

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    The mind-body problem can be a difficult issue to discuss due to the many opinions and issues that linger. The main issue behind the mind-body problem is the question regarding if us humans are only made up of matter, or a combination of both matter and mind. If we consist of both, how can we justify the interaction between the two? A significant philosophical issue that has been depicted by many, there are many prominent stances on the mind-body problem. I believe property dualism is a strong philosophical position on the mind-body issue, which can be defended through the knowledge argument against physicalism, also refuted through the problems of interaction.

    Read More

  • Four Arguments For The World Of Life In Plato's Phaedo

    1217 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book Plato 's Phaedo, Socrates argues that the soul will continue to exist, and that it will go on to a better place. The argument begins on the day of Socrates execution with the question of whether it is good or bad to die. In other words, he is arguing that the soul is immortal and indestructible. This argument is contrary to Cebes and Simmias beliefs who argue that even the soul is long lasting, it is not immortal and it is destroyed when the body dies. This paper is going to focus on Socrates four arguments for the soul 's immortality. The four arguments are the Opposite argument, the theory of recollection, the affinity argument, and the argument from form of life. As the body is mortal and is subject to physical death, the soul

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Socrates Theory Of Recollection

    392 Words  | 1 Pages

    Socrates' theory of recollection argues that all learning is recollection of prior knowledge acquired in a previous existence that we have simply forgotten. The theory maintains that the soul exists before birth and since our experiences began with our birth, we had to have this awareness before birth. Socrates states that since we can be reminded of one thing by another thing, we must have previous knowledge of the form and its qualities and since we begin to see and hear only at birth, our knowledge preexists that birth. Socrates is in essence arguing that the soul is immortal and lives on after the death of the body.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Phaedo

    1364 Words  | 3 Pages

    For something to be dead it must pass through the state of being alive, given that life and death are in opposite states. Socrates says that it must be a cyclical process for a thing to proceed in a straight line, with no way back then the whole world would be dead. Socrates solidifies this argument by asking Cebes what is opposite to the living. Cebes response is that death is opposite to being alive and therefore, Socrates responds that everything that dies must come back to life for it is to thrive. If A comes to be from B, then there is a process of becoming from B to A. Things move from one state to another.

    Read More

  • The Argument of Dualism

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    . There are two kinds of dualism. One is Substance dualism which holds that the mind or soul is a separate, non-physical entity, but there is also property dualism, according to which there is no soul distinct from the body, but only one thing, the person, that has two irreducibly different types of properties, mental and physical. Substance dualism leaves room for the possibility that the soul might be able to exist apart from the body, either before birth or after death; property dualism does not. A substance dualism is something with "an independent existence". It can exist on its own. This holds that each distinct non-physical entity mind composed a different kind of substance to material objects. Substance dualist believed only spiritual substances can have mental properties. It is “soul” along with certain memory and psychological continuities that constitutes the survival of the person. Physical properties of property dualism are properties like having a certain weight, conducting electricity and mental properties are properties like believing that 1+1=2, being in love, feeling pain, and etc. Property dualism allows for the compatibility of mental and physical causation, since the cause of an action might under one aspect is describable as a physical event in the brain and under another aspect as a desire, emotion, or thought; substance dualism usually requires causal interaction between the soul and the body. Dualistic theories at least acknowledge the serious difficulty of locating consciousness in a modern scientific conception of the physical world, but they really give metaphysical expression to the problem rather than solving it.

    Read More

  • The Theory Of Recollection By Socrates

    962 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the Phaedo Socrates claims that the soul is indeed immortal, that it lives forever and cannot die even after the body has died, thus philosophers spend their lives devaluing themselves from their body. Socrates presents the Theory of Recollection to persuade his fellow philosophers that have convened inside his cell that the soul is immortal. In essence, the recollection argument refers to the act of learning, because the soul is immortal, according to Socrates, then this suggests that when a person is learning something they are actually relearning it, because their soul has existed before they were born. This idea of recollecting knowledge is prominent and is the most convincing argument in proving the existence of immortality through the soul, however, this argument does not suggest that the soul continues to exist after death and lacks clarity regarding what truly happens after a person dies.

    Read More

  • Socrates Arguments On Immortality

    1137 Words  | 3 Pages

    First and foremost, Socrates believed that when a person dies the body is what seems to die while the soul continues to live and exist. Although many suggested that when the body dies the soul dies with it, Socrates provides numerous arguments to prove his point otherwise. The arguments that were presented consisted of The argument of Reincarnation, The argument of Opposites, The argument of Recollection, and The argument of Forms. The argument that was most convincing for me was that of the Argument of Forms because Socrates makes his most compelling arguments here and it’s the most effective. On the other hand, the argument that I saw to be the least convincing was that of the Argument of Recollection and Reincarnation because both arguments fail to fully support the idea of the soul being immortal.

    Read More

  • Dualism and Artificial Intelligence

    1249 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mind-body dualism is usually seen as the central issue in philosophy of the mind. The problem with mind-body dualism is that it is unknown whether the mind really is a separate entity from the human body as Descartes states in his argument, or whether the mind is the brain itself. Descartes believed that in a person existed two major components, the physical body and the nonphysical body which was called the mind or soul. As a scientist, Descartes believed in mechanical theories of matter, however, he was also very religious and did not believe people could merely be mechanical creatures that ran like “clockwork.” And so, it was Descartes who argued that the mind directed thoughts. To account for this, he split the world into two parts, the scientific world and the mental world. The scientific world was all that was physical, like the human body. The mental world was the mind which could not be seen or touched. Thus, mind-body dualism was created. If the mind could not be seen or touched, how could it possibly interact with the human body and so, how do we know if it even exists? Also, how would we know if other minds exist if we cannot make contact with other minds? Questions like these are what made Descartes’ version of dualism improbable and led to different theories of the mind such as physicalism, which is the belief that the mind is just a result of brain states such as nerve impulses in certain areas of the brain.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Socrates's View On Death

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    Socrates discusses that people should not fear death because we do not know the qualities of death. Even though we do not know what death is, he makes some suggestions for the possibilities after death. He suggests that maybe death is just an endless sleep without dreaming, it is where we can finally come to peace with ourselves. He also suggest that maybe in the afterlife he will be able to meet heroic people in the past, where he can share his experience and question people to see whether they are wise. Even in death Socrates is still going to practice philosophy even if the place is bad. Even if he did not live a just life that he thought he did, he can examine what he did wrong and fix the problems in the after life. I agree with Socrates

    Read More

  • Dualism: Interactionism Best Solves The Mind-Body Problem

    248 Words  | 1 Pages

    The mind-body problem, is determining how the mind a non-physical entity networks with the body a physical entity. I think that the Dualism: Interactionism best solves the mind-body problem. Renee Descartes argument states that “if two things do not have exactly identical properties, then they are not identical” (Lawhead 68) clearly the mind and body are non-identical. So they are not as one. The mind is the same as your soul which is the real you. Your mind/soul is not made of matter unlike the body. The body is made of flesh, bones and muscles. “The body has property A, the mind has property non A” (Lawhead 68). Interactionism is defined as a form of dualism that states “he mind and body though different does casually interact” (Lawhead 64).

    Read More

  • Plato's Arguments for Proving the Inmortality and Longevity of the Soul

    848 Words  | 2 Pages

    Socrates’ first argument is the argument from opposites. He says the soul is eternal. It never ceases to be or becomes to be. It’s completely eternal. Everything comes to be from out of its opposite, so that for instance a tall man becomes tall only because he was short before. Similarly, death being the opposite of life, and so living things come to be out of dead things and vice versa. This implies that there is a continuous cycle of life and death, so that when we die we do not stay dead, but come back to life after a period of time. Our soul never dies, however. It is the one thing that conti...

    Read More

  • Plato's Argument For The Immortality Of The Body And The Soul

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    Plato believed that the body and the soul were two separate entities, the body being mortal and the soul being immortal. In Plato’s phaedo, this is further explained by Socrates. He claims that by living a philosophical life, we are able to eventually free the soul from the body and its needs. If we have not yield to our bodily needs, we should not fear death, since it can than permanently detach the soul from the body. The most convincing argument for the immortality of the body is the theory of recollection, which shows that we are already born with knowledge of forms and that learning is thus recalling these ideas. If we are already born with knowledge this implies that are soul is immortal, since it would otherwise be a blank page.

    Read More

More about Dualism Is The Relationship Between The Mind And The Body

Open Document