This document covers everything you need to know to ace the IB Philosophy Paper 1 Core Theme exam and get a high 7. Topics covered include mind and body, personhood, human nature, self and identity, and freedom and determinism.
Includes an overview of the main theories, definitions, and critique...
Essay introduction structure:
1. Describe the photo / text
2. Link to core theme topic
3. Link to “What is a human being?”
4. Explore (at least) two different philosophical approaches to the philosophical
concept/issue identified
MIND AND BODY
KEY TERMS
- Dualism: theory that our mind and body are separate entities
- Monism: theory that all of reality falls into one and only one basic category of
being; this means our mind and body are the same entity
- Physicalism: the theory that everything is physical
DUALISM
Renes Descartes: Cartesian Dualism
- “I think, therefore I am”
- An evil demon may be making me believe things that are false
- So, we cannot be certain our bodies and the physical world exists
- But being able to doubt one’s existence proves that one is a thinking
being
- ⇒ “I think, therefore I am”
- He then tries to prove the body exists
- All ideas have a cause → cause must be inside or outside us → infinity
and perfection are not within humans → so an infinite and perfect being
(God) must exist → a perfect God would not cause the imperfection of
deceit, so things we are certain about must be true → we are certain
material objects exist → knowledge of God makes it certain that we
have a body
- Descartes says a “real and true distinction” exists between mind and body
- While separate, the mind and body interact with and affect each other
(‘interactionism’)
- Criticisms:
- Gilbert Ryle: Descartes makes a category mistake of supposing that
the mind belongs to a different category than the body
1
, - Dualism is like suggesting there is a “ghost in the machine”; but
how could the non-physical entity inside control the physical
body?
Plato: Tripartite theory of soul
- Bodies are made of physical matter → part of the visible world
- But the material world is ever-changing, so the body can never
experience the real truth
- Souls are immaterial → belongs to the world of Forms, is the agent of the
Form of the Good.
- Enables us to gain true knowledge, by ‘remembering’ what it learned in
the world of Forms through reason
- Human soul (‘psyche’) is like a charioteer controlling two horses that
represent ‘eros’ (bodily desires) and ‘thymos’ (the soul, emotions).
- The charioteer represents our intellect (‘logos’)
- The charioteer moves the chariot (the soul, the true self) forwards by
controlling the desires and getting the whole to work in harmony
- Importantly: the soul directs the body
- Criticism:
- Even if it were possible to know the Forms in themselves, they would
have no relevance in our physical life, where our behaviours are
physical
- Aristotle was unconvinced by Plato’s theory that ideas (the Forms) are
the most real things. He saw ideas only as a way of talking about
physical objects, not as things-in-themselves.
David Chalmers: naturalistic dualism
- Chalmers uses the ‘philosophical zombies’ thought experiment to refute
physicalism (a form of monism):
1. Physicalism says that everything in our world is physical
2. We can imagine hypothetical creatures (‘philosophical zombies’) that
are physically identical to regular humans, but without conscious
experiences like feeling pain
3. ⇒ Physicalism cannot be true, as it can’t solve the ‘hard problem of
consciousness’: why and how do humans have conscious
experiences?
- Conscious experiences (‘qualia’): what it is like to experience pain, see the
colour red etc.
- Criticism:
- Daniel Dennett (a physicalist) argued that philosophical zombies are
logically impossible, e.g. the experience of pain cannot be stripped off
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