Thursday, May 14, 2009

3. arguments for the existence of the soul part 1

1 comment:

  1. 3. LECTURE THREE argument for the existence of the soul.

    i wish that prof shelly would have not told us whether he was a dualist of physicalist. i wish he would have gave us the arguments and then made up our own mind. its like someone says ‘do you want an orange or apple? now, the oranges are better, i have tried many oranges and spent years studying both of them and they are superior!, and the apple is rotting and tastes gross!, but still i’ll leave it up to you to decide… which one do you want?’

    what about things like the ‘duty to monogamy’ for feature F? it has no evolutionary explanation yet we follow them. (well some people).
    p function: goals, dreams, communication, fall in love etc.
    mind is the p function of the body.

    what are some other things for feature F? anyone???
    -stephen



    NOTES:
    DUALIST- separation of mind and body in death.
    PHYSICAL- mind is just proper pfunction of body, death is the end of the set of functioning in death. death is breaking down of body. physicalists think that we have minds, and might call those ‘soul’.
    soul is reserved for when we talk about dualist.

    should we believe in existence of souls?
    we both believe in bodies…
    what reasons do we have to believe in souls?
    with everything else we just believe (in chairs) because of our 5 senses.
    but this approach does not work with souls. we cannot see touch taste etc.

    inference to the best explanation- allows one to explain _________________ using the most reasonable explanation allotted.
    are there things about us that the physicalists can not explain. if we are dualists we can explain certain things such as feature F. (example: love being the inference to the best explanation).
    possible feature F’s: find the right F and the dualist would prove the existence of the soul.
    F: duty to be monogamous? animation of body-(argument-the parts are broken),
    F: ‘you need the soul to explain free will.’
    F: ‘the ability to reason/beliefs/desires/make plans/strategizing. no mere machine could reason.’

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