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Soul, Mind and Body Summary for A-level Philosophy
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Soul, mind and bodySoul Often, by not always, understood to be the non-physical essence of a person.
Consciousness Awareness or perception.
Substance A subject which has different properties attributed to it.
Dualism The belief that reality can be divided into two distinct parts, such as good and
evil, or physical and non-physical.
Substance The belief that the mind and the body both exist as two distinct and separate
Dualism realities.
Scepticism A questioning approach which does not take assumptions for granted.
Materialism The belief that only physical matter exists, and that the mind can be explained
in physical terms as chemical activity.
Reductive Otherwise known as identity theory – the view that mental events are identical
Materialism with physical occurrences in the brain.
Category Error A problem of language that arises when things are talked about if they belong to
one category when in fact, they belong to another.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy which deals with huge questions about what exists, and the
essential nature of things that exist. The existence of God, for example, is a metaphysical issue.
The soul
Although the word ‘soul’ can be used with a range of meanings in different contexts, in a philosophical
sense it is mainly used as meaning the same thing as ‘self’, to refer to the subject of mental states
and of spiritual experience.
Philosophers often refer to the ‘self’ rather than the ‘soul’ because the soul has religious connotations
which the philosopher might not want to include in the discussion. However, ‘self’ has a wider
meaning than ‘soul’, as the idea of self can include the mind and the body as one whereas soul
usually only means one particular aspect of the self; the part that is capable of having relationship with
God and which carries the possibility of life after death, without need of a physical body.
For some thinkers, the soul is the most important aspect of human nature; given by God so that we
can have a relationship with him and to exist in his presence after this life. For others, the whole idea
of a soul makes no sense; the physical, conscious person is simply a sophisticated animal with an
impressive range of abilities which disappear at the end of life.
Plato on the soul
For Plato, the soul and the body were two separate entities. The body is the temporary, physical
aspect of the person and the soul is the essential, immaterial aspect. In Plato’s understanding, the
soul is temporarily united with the body but can leave it.
Socrates argued that the soul continues to live on in a mode where it still has thought and intelligence.
After death, it is undisturbed by the distractions of constant bodily demands so that it can reach its
highest state. He also argued that the soul is what gives us life; therefore, it must be immortal.
Plato gives arguments to justify the view that the soul is immortal. He argues that every quality comes
into being from its own opposite, or at least depends on its opposite, to have an existence at all.
Something is ‘big’ because there are smaller things, something is ‘bright’ because there are duller
things. Plato uses this to draw the conclusion that life comes from death, and death comes from life, in
an endless change of birth, death and rebirth.
He also gives the Meno slave-boy example. A slave-boy with no education is given a geometry puzzle
to solve. Through questioning, he is able to solve the puzzle, which Plato uses to illustrate that the
boy must have been using his knowledge that he already had, from before birth, because his status in
life meant that he could not have the knowledge necessary to solve the problem. Plato thought that
our intuitions were evidence of knowledge attained before birth. This, to Plato, showed that our souls
had once lived in the realm of the Forms.
, When Plato wrote about the soul, he used the metaphor of a chariot being pulled by two horses. The
horses are ‘appetite’ and ‘emotion’, basic needs that pull us along and motivate us; they are controlled
by the charioteer ‘reason’. Without the guiding hand of reason, we can be led astray. People who let
reason guide the other aspects of their mental lives are wise. Plato's view of the soul is called a
‘tripartite view’ as he saw the soul consisting of these three elements; appetite, emotion and reason.
For Plato, because the soul is immortal and the body is not, they had to be two distinct different
things. Plato, when considering the nature of the soul, was thinking in the context of his dualist
understanding of reality. He was trying to work out what was temporary and subject to change and
what was eternal. He was also exploring how humans can relate to the realm of the Forms, and how
reason can give the best route to certain knowledge and wisdom, as part of his argument that society
should be better run by philosopher-kings.
Aristotle on the soul
Aristotle was more interested in the physical world and the things that could be learned from scientific
observation.
In Aristotle’s view, the soul was a ‘substance’, which is a term he used to mean the ‘essence’. He
found that we could not say that a baby, a toddler, child, adult and the elderly man the ‘same person’.
He concluded that the physical body is always in a state of change but the ‘substance’ stays the same
– this is what he understood to be the soul, for which he used the term ‘pysche’.
Even though Aristotle is considered to be the founder of psychology as a science, the topics he chose
to investigate and what modern scientists investigate are different. Modern scientists tend to focus on
the consciousness and various mental states whereas Aristotle turned his attention to giving an
account of the features which distinguish the essence of living things.
Aristotle did not consider the soul to be some kind of an invisible part of a person, but included the
matter and structure of the body along with its functions and capabilities. The soul is that which gives
a living thing its essence, so that it is not just matter but also has all the characteristics that it needs to
be that thing.
Living things are distinguished from non-living things by what they can do, their capabilities, and it is
these capabilities for Aristotle that define the soul.
He thought that there were various types of soul.
Plants have a vegetative soul – they have the capabilities to get nourishment for themselves
and ensure their reproduction but do not have the capabilities to plan for the future or to
reason.
Animals have perceptive souls – they have the senses to react to the world around them.
They have enough intelligence to distinguish between pleasure and pain.
Humans have a higher degree of soul because they have the ability to reason and can tell
between right and wrong. For Aristotle, the soul is not separate from the body; the soul is the
capacities that the body has. The soul is that which gives the matter its form, its efficiency and
its final purpose (telos).
The soul of an axe would be its capacity to chop. A toy axe is not a real
axe because it does not have the capacity to chop; it is only axe in name.
Aristotle also gives the example of an eye; its soul would be its capacity
to see. If the eye was unable to see then it would be nothing more than
matter – ‘no more they eye of a statue’. He did not think that that
inanimate objects had souls but gave them as examples.
For him, the soul was inseparable from the body in the same way that
the shape of a stamp is inseparable from the wax.
Because he believed that the soul could not be separated from the body,
his view did not allow for the idea that the soul could survive after death.
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