PLATO (427-347 BC) - The Idealist

The Mind-Body Debate

The Immortality of the Soul:

• “The soul through all her being is immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal; but that which moves another and is moved by another, in ceasing to move ceases also to live. Only the self-moving, never leaving self, never ceases to move, and is the fountain and beginning of motion to all that moves besides.” - Phaedrus

• Plato also believes in reincarnation where the philosopher or “lover, who is not devoid of philosophy” is the highest in level. (Phaedrus)

• The nature and form of the soul is to give life; therefore it must participate in giving life, and not admit to death, and thus survive death.

“And must not the same be said of that which is immortal? If the immortal is also imperishable, it is impossible for the soul to perish when death comes against it. For, as our argument has shown, it will not admit death and will not be dead, just as the number three, we said, will not be even, and the odd will not be even, and as fire, and the heat in the fire, will not be cold.” – Phaedo, 106b

Three Levels of Soul: Man as a Rational Animal

1. Vegetative – corresponds to nutrition and growth, as well as reproduction. – plants

2. Sensitive – corresponds to perception and the ability to have senses. – animals

3. Rational – corresponds to the intellect and the ability to think. – human beings

“That is why it is in a body, and a body of a definite kind. It was a mistake, therefore, to do as former thinkers did, merely to fit it into a body without adding a definite specification of the kind or character of that body. Reflection confirms the observed fact; the actuality of any given thing can only be realized in what is already potentially that thing, i.e. in a matter of its own appropriate to it. From all this it follows that soul is an actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being besouled.”

– De Anima Book II: 2

1. I can doubt everything that I thought I knew and pretend that they never existed. (Perhaps as part of my imagination, or by being fooled into believing that they exist)

2. But I cannot doubt that I doubt, and that I thus exist to doubt. (because that would self-refuting)

3. Therefore, the “I” that doubts is entirely distinct from the physical and thus the body.

(that the Mind is distinct from the body):

(From the Meditation VI in his Meditations on First Philosophy)

[O]n the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing [that is, a mind], and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it

1. I have a clear and distinct idea of the mind as a thinking, non-extended thing.

2. I have a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended, non-thinking thing.

3. Therefore, the mind is really distinct from the body and can exist without it.

The Bundle Theory

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect nonentity” – A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part 4, Section 6.

The Psycholoical and Historical Formation of Man: Freud and Marx

Sigmund Freud

The Good Life : Man as a Political Animal (from Nicomachean Ethics Book I)

The last lines of the Communist Manifesto....

Quite simply, the pleasure-principle drives one to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. However, as one grows up, one begins to learn the need sometimes to endure pain and to defer gratification because of the exigencies and obstacles of reality: "An ego thus educated has become 'reasonable'; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also at bottom seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished" (Introductory Lectures 16.357).

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries Unite!”

The rational part, on the other hand, is subdivided too into two parts:

1. The superior part which possesses reason with authority and in itself and;

2. The desiring part which it shares with the irrational part as we aforesaid.

The function of man should be an activity which is peculiar and proper to him, something that “follows or implies reason.”(I: 7)

• Aristotle believed that man had a natural drive for society, being a political animal, as well as for knowledge, God, and ultimately, happiness. (we all just want to be happy)

• The Good Life for Aristotle is one that is directed towards the mentioned natural dispositions to the greatest extent possible.

• Eudaimonia – when Philosophy is able to guide and direct a human being from irrational deceptions towards his natural dispositions.

• Virtue – is the Golden Mean between two extremes

Sigmund Freud

ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC) - The Materialist

Karl Marx

Repression – The ego’s mechanism for suppressing and forgetting instinctual impulses.

Instinct – a pre-lingual bodily impulse that drives our actions.

Primal Instincts:

• Death Drive – the death-instinct, a natural desire to "re-establish a state of things that was disturbed by the emergence of life" ("Ego and the Id" 709); sometimes referred to as Thanatos.

• Life Drive – the sexual instincts, which he later saw as compatible with the self-preservative instinct; sometimes referred to as Eros.

o Pleasure Principle – The principle which the id operates upon; the desire for immediate gratification

o Reality Principle – the principle which the superego operates upon; the deferral of that gratification.

Sigmund Freud

Karl Marx

Alienation – Workers in capitalist society do not produce freely as an expression of their true human potential and aspirations but under coercive conditions that dictate what and how they must produce.

Four aspects of alienation:

1. Alienation from product of labor: The product of labor becomes an alien object that workers do not control and that comes to rule over them.

2. Alienation from process of labor: In the process of labor, humans must suppress their unique human qualities as potentially free producers and subordinate themselves to external control. Labor becomes merely a means to an end, rather than a means of self- development and an end in itself.

3. Alienation from other workers: workers relate to others workers not as full human beings but as means to an end and as competitors for their jobs

4. Alienation from human "species being": workers suppress their unique human capacities for self-expression through creative labor, i.e., they suppress what distinguishes them as a species from other animals.

RENÉ DESCARTES (1596 - 1650)

THE RATIONALIST

The Bundle Theory

Cogito ergo sum "I think, therefore I am."

The Revolution:

• It is therefore the aim of Marx to change the social conditions which has enslaved man, and alienated him from his true self.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” – Theses on Feuerbach, XI.

• Marx challenges all such prioritization of the mental. Instead, he regards the economic realities as primary.

• Only out of a context of human response to need and interaction among the individuals of the group, does any philosophically significant concept develop at all. If we want to understand how people conceptualize the world and their place in it, we must start with analysis of their material conditions.

According to Hume:

• All our more complex ideas can be reducible to simple ideas. (e.g., God as a supreme and perfect Being is taken from human qualities.)

• He who has not learned or directly experienced something will not really be able to know about a specific idea. (e.g., I do not know what steak is if I have never seen or tasted a steak)

Class Struggle – The conflict between classes is the driving force of history, responsible for epochal changes in the major structures of society.

There are two main classes in every society: the laboring class and the property owning class. In capitalism, Marx refers to these as the "proletariat" and the "bourgeoisie."

• The proletariat owns no means of production and must sell its labor to the bourgeoisie for a wage.

• The bourgeoisie owns the means of production and hires the labor-power of proletarians to produce a profit.

Marx sees this as a relationship of exploitation in which the bourgeoisie is forced to squeeze profits from its workers and the proletariat seeks to limit this exploitation.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” – The Communist Manifesto

Neurosis – A neurosis represents an instance where the ego's efforts to deal with its desires through repression, displacement, etc. fail: "A person only falls ill of a neurosis if his ego has lost the capacity to allocate his libido in some way" (Introductory Lectures 16.387).

Psychosis – A mental condition whereby the patient completely loses touch with reality. Freud originally distinguished between neurosis and psychosis in the following way: “in neurosis the ego suppresses part of the id out of allegiance to reality, whereas in psychosis it lets itself be carried away by the id and detached from a part of reality” (5.202)

Imagination/Creative powers of the mind – amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience.

• Compounding: Taking two or more impressions and adding them together (e.g., imagining a golden mountain, which = gold + mountain)

• Transposing: Taking an impression and re-arranging its parts (e.g., imagining a person with arms where their legs should be, and vice versa)

• Augmenting: Taking an impression or making it larger or greater (e.g., imagining an ant the size of an elephant)

• Diminishing: Taking an impression and making it smaller or lesser (e.g., imagining an elephant the size of an ant)

Rationalism – A Philosophical school of thought which believes in the superiority of the mind in finding the truth and acquiring knowledge, but since pure reason tends to be very formalistic, they tend to be dogmatic.

I attentively examined what I was and as I observed that I could suppose that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place in which I might be; but that I could not therefore suppose that I was not; and that, on the contrary, from the very circumstance that I thought to doubt of the truth of other things, it most clearly and certainly followed that I was; while, on the other hand, if I had only ceased to think, although all the other objects which I had ever imagined had been in reality existent, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed; I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that " I," that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is. – Discourse on Method, Part 4.

Sigmund Freud

The Father of Psychoanalysis

PLATO (427-347 BC) - The Idealist

• Id – the appetitive part of man which pertains to the most basic biological instincts.

– The id is the great reservoir of the libido (Libido: The sexual drive. Freud believed that the sexual drive is as natural and insistent as hunger and that the libido manifests its influence as early as birth.)

Sigmund Freud

World of The Tri-Partite Soul

In the "Phaedrus", Plato presents three parts of the soul, which he describe as follows:

1. The Appetitive – the black horse – ignoble and rebellious

2. The Spirited – the white horse – noble and obedient

3. The Rational – the charioteer

ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC) - The Materialist

Unconscious – The instincts that we repress, or the things at the “backs of our minds,” slips of the tongue(Freudian slips) often put aside as unimportant, but for Freud, is the driving force of most conscious behavior.

– Although the unconscious is mostly composed the Id, the Superego also plays a large role, that is, in embedding values and teachings that our parents teach us, or that we acquire in society, as we grow up, which also influences our decisions and behavior without us being directly aware of it.

Preconscious – Latent parts of the brain that are readily available to the conscious mind, although not currently in use.

Sigmund Freud

Karl Marx

The Father of Communism

Hylomorphism (from De Anima Book II)

• Form – “(a) in the sense of matter or that which in itself is not 'a this'” (potentiality) – body

• Matter – (b) in the sense of form or essence, which is that precisely in virtue of which a thing is called 'a this' (actuality) – soul

• Compound – “(c) in the sense of that which is compounded of both (a) and (b)”

o Form is what makes matter a “this,” the soul is the form of a living thing, its actuality.

• The Soul is Matter and Form, hence hylomorphic, derived from Greek terms for matter (hulê) and form or shape (morphê).

PLATO (427-347 BC) - The Idealist

Descartes’ Two Arguments for Dualism

• Superego – the normative society which functions in order to tame the id for the sake of civilization and stable co-existence with other humans.

– The super-ego is the faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable desires; it represents all moral restrictions and is the "advocate of a striving towards perfection" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.67).

• Ego – the conscious, rational part which is the manifest product of the Superego taming the Id, but also of protecting the Id against the authoritative power of the Superego which has the tendency towards inaction or suicide as a result of crippling guilt.

– Freud sometimes represents the ego as continually struggling to defend itself from three dangers or masters: "from the external world, from the libido of the id, and from the severity of the super-ego" ("Ego and the Id" 716).

Forms of ideological consciousness:

Evil:

• Evil is a submission to the appetites

• Man does injustice because he has forgotten his true nature which belongs with ideas and forms.

A Society Reflecting The Soul

“Come, then, let us create a city from the beginning, in our theory. Its real creator, as it appears, will be our needs.” – The Republic, 369c

1. Reason – the ruling class – comprised of the most intelligent and able members of society. (The Mind of the state)

2. Courage – the military class – comprised of the physically and spiritually well-disciplined. (The Heart of the state)

3. Appetites – the merchant class – comprise of the working men and women who are necessary for society in providing basic needs such as food and money, but do not have the strength, either intellectually or spiritually, to rise above their passions. (The Stomach of the state)

The Bundle Theory

Man’s Reality:

"Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life." –The German Ideology.

Karl Marx

Descartes’ Two Arguments for Dualism

DAVID HUME (1711-1776)

THE EMPIRICIST

• Ideologies hide or deny inequality and oppression, claiming that what’s good for rulers is good for everybody (e.g., "what’s good for General Motors is good for America").

• Ideologies morally justify oppression (e.g., "poor people deserve to be poor because they're stupid or lazy").

• Ideologies define oppression as inevitable (e.g., "there will always some on top and some on bottom; it's human nature").

• Ideologies offer false or symbolic solutions (e.g., "put your trust in religion and everything will be okay").

Empiricism – A Philosophical school of thought which believes in the superiority of the experience in finding the truth and acquiring knowledge, but since senses are can be deceiving, empiricists tend to be skeptics.

“All the colours of poetry, however splendid, can never paint natural objects in such a manner as to make the description be taken for a real landskip. The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.” – An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, of the Origin of Ideas.

Perceptions – succeed each other, and do not exist all at the same time. These are therefore divisible, separable, and can exist in themselves, even without our conscious knowledge.

Impressions – all our lively, direct, perceptions when we love or hate, become happy or sad.

Thought or Idea – the less forcible and lively perception of the mind, which occurs when we reflect on previous impressons, and are therefore semblances of such direct impressions.

Ideology – a form of belief or consciousness that mystifies the nature of social relations, promotes acceptance of the status quo, and prevents people from recognizing or understanding the causes of their oppression. Dominant beliefs and ideas of any historical period tend to serve the interest of the dominant class because those who own the means of material production also tend to own or control the means of intellectual production (the press, mass media, educational system, religious institutions, etc.).

Dialectical Materialism – Marx’s belief that human consciousness does not shape social reality, but the other way around. Human identity is formed because he or she exists in an immediate social reality.

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness." – A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

– Unlike other animals that adapt themselves to a given environment, humans, through their labor, shape and change their own material environment, thereby transforming the very nature of human existence in the process.

[T]here is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete….By contrast, there is no corporeal or extended thing that I can think of which in my thought I cannot easily divide into parts; and this very fact makes me understand that it is divisible. This one argument would be enough to show me that the mind is completely different from the body….

1. I understand the mind to be indivisible by its very nature.

2. I understand body to be divisible by its very nature.

3. Therefore, the mind is completely different from the body.

The Self according to the Western Perspective

Instructor: Christine Tan