Research Paper on "Relationship of Mind & Soul to Body & Brain"

Research Paper 7 pages (2790 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Soul and Body in Plato and Descartes

Mind/Soul and Body in Plato and Descartes

To this day, the problem of the mind-body relationship has not been resolved. Indeed, some have rejected all commitment to mentality, according to Jaegwon Kim, while others have resurrected a Schopenhauerian pessimism that says that the problem is insoluble (Kim 580). To understand the problem, take the example of a corpse. A dead body appears to lack animation. It does not move, speak, or respond to stimuli. Its eyes cannot see. Yet one can observe its presence as an object, a body, with physical shape, dimension, depth, and weight. Even the brain, if one were to open the skull of a dead person, continues in bodily form. What we call a dead body does not simply disappear as soon as it loses the power of animation. This seems to lead to the conclusion that there is something besides the body and the brain that is the animating force within each animated body. The question, then, is how the two -- soul and body -- are related. Are they related because they are of the same substance? Or are they completely different in substance? Is the soul a physical thing? And does it vanish at physical death or remain immortal and imperishable because it is immaterial substance? These constitute the questions that this paper wants to discuss. It will focus on two prominent views from the history of philosophy, those of Plato and Descartes, to formulate an independent perspective.

The issues of soul/body puzzled Plato. He gave some answers to them in his philosophical work, the Republic. He seems to assert a dualism in which the soul is related to the body while the body is alive, but ultimately unrelated to the body after death. The soul is a different thing than the body. Julia Annas writes, "Plato never doubts that when I ask what I, myself, really am, the answer will be that I am my soul, rather than my animated body" (Annas 65). What are they, then, and how are they related?

The soul in Plato is divided into parts. In book four of Republic, Plato talks of the "three parts in his soul" (435c). These are broken into reason, emotion, and desire/appetite (436a). His argument is based on motion. Thirst, for example, drives a person "like a beast" to drink (439b). Yet there is some part of the soul that can make a thirsty person withhold drinking. This is the distinction between the calculating rational part and the irrational appetitive part. In addition, there is a third passionate part of the soul. This thumos is what some might call spirit, as in a spirited performance at the ballet or at a football game. One of Plato's examples of this in Republic is the city guardian who must possess a soul of courage that is spirited (375a-b). It encompasses the emotional side of life such as anger (439e).

The three parts can be in conflict. Each part has its driving pleasures and can rule the soul (580d-581c). For example, one's emotions can lead to repressing hunger for a passionate goal. But it can also be negative. If someone is badly governed (unjust), they are driven by tyrannical pleasures and lack self-control (579b). This is where Plato sees the soul as imprisoned in the body. Plato links this with a civil war in the human soul, and alliances can sometimes be made between the three different parts. His moral conclusion, however, is that the rational part should rule "since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul, and for the spirited part to obey it and be its ally" (441e). The pleasures of the body and emotion must be abandoned as rebellious parts of the soul. Guidance by the rational part of the soul leads to the best form of life. It has the more comprehensive view of things. The passionate and desiring parts of the soul are short-sighted. Reason's guiding hand is for the good of the whole, not just of itself (586d), and it is the "least disturbed or altered by any outside affection" (380e). For these reasons, he prioritizes the rational element.

So what is this complex soul's relation to the body? Annas writes, "In the Timaeus the soul's parts are located in different parts of the body, in ways which encourage reason (in the head) to dominate spirit (in the upper body) and desire (in the lower body)" (Annas, 68). The soul is obviously connected to the body. It is not exactly clear how. Plato never explains how the immaterial inhabits the material. At the same time, in Plato's view the soul is immortal. It survives disconnection with the body. So there must be some part of the soul that is free from involvement with the body. There must be something of the soul that is unaffected by the physical world of senses or connection to it. Here it seems to be reflection, or mind. Perhaps it is the soul's ability to think about things independently of sense perception. This mind part of the soul is what goes beyond the visible world to contemplate mental objects or forms. In other words, the body has sense perceptions of visible things, but the mind contemplates the invisible things, the changeless forms (507b). In his famous cave analogy, he says that some virtues of the soul are like the body, but the virtue of reason belongs to something divine (518e). At death, the soul leaves the body that imprisons it. The rational part of the soul is drawn away from the lawless corporeal things that corrupt the soul but do not kill it (610d). Death is a release to purity. Plato says, "But to see the soul as it is in truth, we must not study it as it is while it is maimed by its association with the body and other evils . . . But as it is in its pure state" (611b). All souls exist apart from the body after death, he asserts in book ten of Republic.

This view of the soul seems overly driven by morality and disconnection with the real world. Plato denigrates the body because he wants to elevate reason. He seems to think that the body is nothing but a corrupting influence, a diversion away from beautiful contemplation. This is problematic if one sees the soul as intimately connected with the body. It is hard to understand how something invisible can exist apart from having physical form. This means that it is not at all as clear as Plato thinks that the soul is immortal. His arguments are more like presuppositions than conclusions. By prioritizing the mental rational part of the soul, he can talk about invisible forms in some pure reality. There is no proof for this other world, or for the notion that the rational soul exists beyond death. There is no proof that contemplation is possible apart from a physical body doing the contemplation. Can the mental aspect function without an organic body? Is thought possible without a physical brain?

In terms of Plato's division of the soul into three parts, this is less controversial. There do seem to be animated differences between thinking, feeling, and sensing. All of them are mixed and interrelated in a confusing way within the body. To make them so distinct is perhaps impossible. But conceptually and practically, a human feels all these different forces. The main problem is in linking something like the appetites with the soul. These seem more just a function of the body, the way the body maintains its survival. Not just thirst, but also procreation and sexual desire, the avoidance of pain, etcetera. In this view, even emotion and reason can be linked to the body in its organic existence. From this perspective, while the three parts of the soul may interact, there is no reason to prioritize reason over the other two. The only reason would be a type of morality. Without the moral argument, the other parts of the soul, linked to bodily realities, can be seen in a more positive light. They need not be corrupting or evil.

Descartes's view of the mind/body problem comes mainly in the sixth of his Meditations. He sets his view up in the second meditation with the notion of an extended body in space for which "power of self-movement, like the power of sensation or of thought, was quite foreign to the nature of a body" (VII: 26). Here it is the mind that moves the body, much as Plato had asserted. Bodies require some animating force invested in them to gain animation. He comes to believe in his existence, but it is proven only by his being a thinking being. He clearly believes that what defines him is his mind, not his body. Later in the third meditation he says, "I conceive of myself as a thing that thinks… READ MORE

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