I´d like to know if you can think of a good reason why there would be such a thing as a "soul" or "spirit" that is separate of the body (this includes your brain) and which is the source of your rationality. I read some bullcrap descartes wrote on wikipedia and met some people in my philosophy course that are pretty sure, that this is true, while being unable to explain why.
Now i come to you for enlightment.
>a "soul" or "spirit" that is separate of the body (this includes your brain)
Where can you find serious Cartesian dualists in this day and age? I know that a lot of people like to use them as strawmen but I've literally never encountered anyone who thinks that a soul is an entity that has no connection to your body.
In the traditional sense, a soul is simply a life-force, i.e. the thing ANIMAting your body (no, this is not supposed to be conceived of distinctly from the mind; the 'mind' is just the process whereby you are alive, that is, whereby your body is capable of directing its own movement, or at least believing that it is directing its own movement).
Aristotle, at one point, mentions something about a special kind of the intellect that might be capable of surviving after the body dies. St. Thomas Aquinas took this to mean that this part of the soul is that which is in the presence of God when a person goes to Heaven. Like so many issues, Aquinas is where people start to depart in irreconcilable directions. If he hadn't brought Christianity into the Aristotelian account of the soul, you wouldn't need to be convinced that you have a life-force, or that some process causes or allows your body to move.
Aristotelian functionalism isn't wrong, it's just medically useless.
Thanks for the reply and the input! Apparently some people at my uni do.
So my "soul" is actually what we call brain/mind? We had a lenghty discussion about whether this is true, because I brought up the point, that human beings achieved their rationality through the effects the evolutionary process had on our brain. Therefore rationality is a product of the layout and composition of our brain. To which they replied that the "soul" is the source of rationality.
Also: How does aristotle come to that conclusion?
>>1225484
>Apparently some people at my uni do.
Are you sure?
>brain/mind?
Those words are not interchangable.
>To which they replied that the "soul" is the source of rationality.
The soul is the layout and composition of your body such that it is alive. You're both right, they're just wrong to be dualists. If they're Christians, I can't even think of a form of Christianity that seriously endorses Cartesian dualism.
>How does aristotle come to that conclusion?
The same way he comes to every other conclusion: slowly. I'm not going to explain Aristotelian or Cratesian psychology to you, you should read Aristotle and Descartes yourself and stop posting on 4chan. Otherwise you may as well just accept everything your idiot dualist friends say. You've come here looking for opinions to mimic. I've already given you more than you deserve or should want, if you're serious about learning about the history of philosophy.
>>1225155
I don't know about the soul being the source of rationality, as you suggest. To me, the soul is a sense of awareness.
For example, consider a fetus growing in their Mother's womb. At some point, this accumulation of human tissue becomes self aware and, capable of sensing things. This is where the soul begins. Before, the fetus was just a clump of matter.
>>1225155
Souls aren't individual, they're shared among a people.
>>1225532
Therefore, the soul appears to be something transformative, as well as something that is separated from the material body at birth and death.
>>1225532
I never stated this. I suggested that rationality is the outcome of the evolutionary process and rooted in our brain.
Furthermore if we go by your definition then a soul is nothing else than consciousness.
>>1225573
I admit I misread your post on the point of the brain, which you say is the source of rationality, and not the soul. I tentatively agree with you on this point.
But in my fetus example the soul is something which accounts for the transformation of a previously non-sentient blob of cells in the womb into something that can see, hear, and feel.
Therefore, body and soul are entwined at some point. It follows that the two were separated at some point, too.
My idea is that the soul is a non-tangible thing that is separate from the body at pre-birth, and death. Body and soul are two distinct things.
