The Issue of Mind and Soul as Discussed by Plato and Descartes - Essay Example

The issue of mind and soul as discussed by Plato and Descartes The connection between the mind and the body has been discussed for a very long time by different scholars. The nature of what an individual is has become very uncertain since individuals ignore the issue of the mind-body relationship. Many famous philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Descartes have spoken plainly about the subject. Other philosophers like the pre-Socratics have talked about philosophies that can easily relate to them. So what does it imply to have a mind? If one argues that the mind is being conscious, one must also admit that a majority of animals do have minds. Is having a mind being conscious of an individual’s consciousness? The question that one can pose is that does an individual have mind when he or she is sound asleep and unconscious? In the last century, philosophy of mind was a central theme of philosophy in many areas of the world. There were very many unanswered questions that concerned the connection between mind and brain. The other issues involve consciousness, and how people perceived the world. In the modern days, many people equate mental phenomena with the activities of the mind by describing them in scientific ways. There is an assumption that cognition happens in computers and man and animal brains, and can be examined uniformly well in all the three forms (Heil 12). Today’s scholars and students of philosophy have an opportunity to dissect and discuss many written works of different thinkers in the history of man. Although scientific and technological discoveries have revolutionized man, there are still essential principles of knowledge and thinking anchored in the recorded works of great philosophers such as Plato and Descartes (Hackforth 24). Possibly the earliest thoughts on the issue of mind and body emanate from the philosophy of a great thinker of his time, Plato. Plato, just as Descartes, believed that the mind was the same as the soul. Even so, unlike Descartes, Plato believed that the soul pre-existed and survived the body; it went through a process of transmigration. In the works done by Plato (Apology) and Descartes (Meditations), the two philosophers point out that human beings comprise a mind, or soul, that is in some way linked to the body. Even though the two scholars argue that the mind or soul can survive separately from the body, Platos “soul-body argument” and Descartes “mind-body argument” appears to be dissimilar. Many people believe that the defining feature of an individual is that a person has the mind, consciousness, or soul (Heil 112). Many people know consciousness (feelings, thoughts, and sensations), although it is very hard to explain what consciousness entails. Plato argued that what people are is the soul and that the soul will live even after the demise; death is viewed as the discharge of the soul. Plato asserts that the soul and body are separate things; the body dies, but the soul remains active (Heil 113). Rene Descartes, who is viewed as the father of modern philosophy, discussed the issue with his widely studied idealistic view. Descartes employed his famed "method of doubt" to demonstrate that he did not doubt the reality of mind (Descartes 25). Since doubting entailed thought and thought require consciousness to reflect it, the philosopher was certain that he could not hesitate to believe the existence of his mind. Descartes summed it in this way: "I think therefore I am" (Descartes 31). Descartes thought that it was not impossible to doubt that his body existed (Descartes 14). Many a times the philosopher had dreams that when he woke up discovered that they lacked a basis in reality. The philosopher thought that a wicked demon could be deceiving to believe that he had a body. Descartes later argued that God exists, and because God exists, he could believe that his body also existed. The philosopher is referred to as a dualist since he thought that both the mind and body were distinct substances (Descartes 24). He believed that the mind was conscious and non-spatial while the body was spatial but not conscious, and the two elements interacted through the pineal gland. When the body and mind are seen as a dualism, there is a stress on the mind being substantially dissimilar from the material brain (Radner 177). Because the world is always making information, by reorganizing present matter, this is a critical and reasonable difference; Matter is conserved in the process. On the other hand, the information is not conserved since it is the source of authentic newness. The issue of the connection between the body and the mind has fascinated many people due to religious and traditional implications it has caused (Radner 180). Today, the issue has become ampler due to the advancement of modern science and the ability to understand issues surrounding it. Descartes’ mind-body dualism agrees with Platos ideas because its ontology is dissimilar from that of matter. Descartes believed that the mind was a locus of freedom. The philosopher understood that the body is a mechanical system of fibers that cause movements in the brain. The movements, according to Descartes, pull other fibers to trigger the muscles. That was the foundation of stimulus-response theory in reflexology. The concept of animals as machines involved the concept that man too is a machine (Hackforth 31). The body observes deterministic fundamental, but man has a soul that is free from determinism and causal closure. One may question how the soul is expected to take on a body; Plato appears to imply that the soul weaves the body for itself. The idea most likely is that the soul notifies some materials that grow and organize themselves into the necessary body. An earlier embodied soul might start with some matter from a former body; Plato does not hold that the soul builds its body. Some philosophers may not agree with the notion that the soul can reorganize a matter. These philosophers might feel more at home with the idea that the soul dreams its body and physical environment. It may be a huge task to explain whether and how souls dream different physical dreams and how they communicate with each other. The Philosophy of Mind is viewed as a section of Metaphysics since it deals with an aspect of reality, which is the mind (Heil 36). The nature of the mind can be the nature of reality, depending on the views of people since they may believe that all things are reliant on the examination of the mind (Heil 37). Theists see the Philosophy of Mind and Metaphysics as interconnected since they believe that people’s reality is reliant on the Mind of God and that people’s minds were made to reflect the mind of God. A fundamental disagreement on the issue of mind is whether human consciousness can be described solely by material and natural procedures. The question is: is the physical brain accountable for people’s mind and consciousness, or there is something else that is immaterial and supernatural that is involved? Religion teaches that there is something immaterial concerning the mind, but scientific studies support material and naturalistic reasons. Religion believes that the more we learn about the mind, the less essential non-material clarifications become. Atheists differ very much in their notions of what the mind of human entails. Atheists only agree on the fact that the mind was not created by anyone and not depend on another being such as gods (Broadie 23). A majority of atheists have a materialistic notion of the mind and state that human consciousness is exclusively a creation of the physical brain. On the other hand, Buddhists argue that much of what people may consider stable and constant about the mind is a delusion that stops people from acknowledging the reality as it looks (Broadie 25). The topic of the mind has drawn attention to many people around the world. There are a lot of disagreements concerning what the mind entails and how it functions. Different interpretations of the mind are dependent on where a person comes from and their beliefs. There are no agreements on what the mind is or whether it was created or not. We may not find the right answer concerning what the mind is and how it came into being. Works Cited Broadie, Sarah. "Soul and body in Plato and Descartes." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback). Vol. 101. No. 1. Blackwell Science Ltd, 2001. Descartes, René. Meditations. Cosimo, Inc., 2008. Hackforth, Reginald. The composition of Platos Apology. Cambridge University Press, 2014. Heil, John, ed. Philosophy of mind: A contemporary introduction. Routledge, 2012. Radner, Daisie. "Descartes notion of the union of mind and body." Journal of the History of Philosophy 9.2 (1971): 159-170. Read More