Thursday, May 14, 2009

2. the nature of persons

5 comments:

  1. i feel as though there should be more than just the 2 basic views of the physical conception of the body.
    he pointed out the monist view (physicalism) which states that there is one connection between the soul and body. that when b1 dies, so does s1. fair enough.
    then the second was the dualist view of body and soul where they the mind is different from the body pointing out the sandwich analogy.
    if we are dualist we must ask ourselves if the mind exists beyond the death. some dualist believe in a body soul ‘sandwich’. but the person must be the soul and the body separate. if the person is the combination… destroy the body and the pair no longer exsists (b1, s1 both die). so if we want belief in the soul we must say that we survive destruction of the body. we will survive the destruction of our body thus we can never view the body as a ‘pair’ or sandwich.
    my objection is that i have always believed that there has to be a third way of thinking. call it ‘tri-alist’; mind, body, spirit. such as (to use his example) if the body is pricked then the mind will receive the pain and interpret it. i feel that that has nothing to do with the soul. perhaps i am just arguing the definition of dualism. but he is saying that electrical impulses we ‘feel’ are separate from the body, thus body is separate from the mind. i believe that the body IS separate from the body, like he states. but then there has to be an account for the soul, an entity i believe is more responsible for character judgments, moral dilemmas, ‘gut feelings’, and spiritual experiences. i think the body and mind die at b1, but s1 will live on forever.
    am i wrong in my tri-alist view? am i arguing the same thing as a dualist would believe?
    -stephen
    anyone know what j rosenburg texts he is talking about?

    NOTES:

    what am i?
    fundamentel building blocks of a person.
    what is the concept of survival?
    j rosenburg-
    is there life after life. no? there is no life after life.
    is there any food left on the plate when i have eaten all the food on the plate?
    might i survive death? no.
    when a body dies- causal paths may start different but they converge but they have the same set of events.
    bodily death-
    precise question: might i still exsist after bodily death.
    will i survive the death of my body? will is survive my death.
    my-my body.
    view one: dualist- the mind is thought of different from the body. ‘soul’
    bodies/soul
    the proper metaphyisical view of the mind is non physical view.
    view 2: monist view (physicalism): one basic kind of thing; a body. a person is a material body, a very fancy/amazing object. there are no souls.
    view 3. there are souls but no bodies; minds but no physical objects. (Descartes i think therefore i am) idealism. (not a contender)

    dualist: the mind /soul based in the non physical. (psychy) the sould can direct the body. the body can generate imput which gets sensed by the soul. pin in body mind feels.
    WHAT ABOUT MIND BODY SOUL? MIND WOULD FEEL PIN PRICK TAKEN BY THE BODY, BUT THE SOUL IS NOT AFFECTED.
    soul is located in the vicinity of the body.
    if we are dualist we must ask ourselves if the mind exsists beyond the death. dualist believe in a body soul ‘sandwhich’. the person just IS the soul. if the person is the combination… destroy the body and the pair no longer exsists. so if we want belief in the soul we must say that we survive destruction of the body. we will survive the destruction of our body thus we can never view the body as a ‘pair’ or sandwich.
    3 different interests:
    are bodies and souls distinct. are there two different ‘things’
    does the soul survive the destruction of the body. it could get destroyed at the same time as the body. perhaps in the process of body dying the soul dies as well.
    how long does the soul exsist forever. are we immortal. we want there to be souls for immortality! PLATO (feto) argues for immortality of soul.

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  2. i got a lot more out of reading the transcrypt than watching the lecture. I have to sit there and think before I can move on....i wish he would explore more than just the dualist and pluralist views... which i just realized is exactly what you said.

    I wish I knew more about these "other" arguments,but I love the description of the soul being somewhere in or around the body. It's really hard for me to even grasp the concept of pluralism, because when you think about the physical body, specifically the mind and its capabilities, then along with the physical body it seems almost impossible that there would be enough variations of physical matter (when it comes down to it, we are all made of the same physical material) to give the amount of creative expressions, talents, short-comings, etc. to each and every human being. I wonder if he'll explain his ideas about that when he goes into the pluralist view....

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  3. I like this prof. he talks fast and moves around a bunch, personally I'd have to side with Esteban with the idea of the "tri-alist". I feel like Dr. Kagan didn't allow room in his discussion for the spirit. My Soul interprets pain?? Unless the idea was that the mind and spirit get lumped together and he wants to call it the Soul. Bodily death: I get it. My thought was that my spirit would live on (in whatever form that would look like) but i would have the same basic sense of self or understanding.

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  4. What about a existentialist view of things (somewhat), the concept that, since there is no actual proof that the world, life, the universe as we conceive it exists, we have no reason to believe in the body.

    But then there is the "soul", the something whose existence is proven by its own doubts (Descartes). It may not have anything to do with our perception of the universe. But something has to be there. Because the world may possibly be basically a dream this something is having, this something is not effected when the dream ends. So, because the body is a product of the "soul", the soul outlasts the body.

    (That's the stuff I have worked out as, relatively speaking, fact, with my own brand of logic. This next is the things I've come up with, with a softer sort of logic, things I personally believe.)

    I tend to group the mind with the body. The mind, concerned with day-to-day tasks, ambitions, relationships. What I sweep aside and dub "mundane". The body, for the most part, carries out these functions. Also mundane. The insubstantial, transient things.

    Now let's say there's a spirit, not necessarily the same as the soul discussed above. Something that is not totally detached from the physical world, but is not so immersed in it that it would care much about a pin prick. This spirit is what I tend to focus on. It's basically what esteban calls the soul, concerned with what I can only call the "non-mundane" parts of life. It can notice as much or as little of your life as you let it; it all depends on your awareness of life as it happens. When it takes notice of something, well, that's what I look for everywhere.

    Whatever parts of that mind/body/spirit conglomeration you believe last forever, that is your religion. They can't be objectively stated; hence faith. Personally I think love is what carries through, here using "love" as kind of a blanket term so I don't have to define it. Other people may think differently.

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  5. in quick, belated, response, esteban, i believe the rosenberg reading referred to is this:
    Rosenberg, Jay. "Life After Death: In Search of the Question." In Thinking Clearly About Death. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1983. pp. 18-22

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