ipl-logo

Dualism: Do We Have The Soul?

834 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Strengths And Weakness Of Dualism Pdf

Do you think we humans have a soul? This is one debatable topic that still is unanswered today. The article by Richard Gunderman, “Whatever the soul is, its existence can’t be proved or disproved by natural science”, is a problematic debate under the philosophical topic of metaphysics specifically, dualism. The article is about the soul’s existence and how it cannot be proved or disproved. The Author Gunderman, really goes into depth by supporting his work when including the ancient Greek’s points of view, and explaining Duncan MacDougall’s experiments of the 20th century. The idea of the soul expresses a problem in dualism to determine if it truly exists by the evidence we can find or the stories our ancestors were able to discover. The evidence …show more content…

The professor’s first evidence he provides his readers is about Duncan MacDougall’s experiment. In this experiment, MacDougall believed that testing patients after death, he was able to conclude that individuals after death, experienced a weight loss. Which, he thought was evidence that the soul leaves the body. Then, MacDougall decided animals do not have a soul because he found no weight loss in the animals. However, his results were debunked after multiple attempts to recreate this experiment failed, and the results of weight loss in humans were nonexistent. Therefore, Gunderman states, “I look at the interior of the human body every day, but have yet to see a soul. That does not mean it doesn’t exist” (Gunderman). In addition, the professor adds that Plato and Socrates observed the soul as “a living thing”. Consequently, his next main point is that he believes the soul and the human body are separate, so the soul could pass on if the body ceases to exist …show more content…

Panyda, a neurosurgeon, published “Understanding Brain, Mind and Soul”, shows the search for the location of the soul. Panyda refers to many philosophers in his article to associate the soul within the human body. “The location of the human soul probably dates back to the awareness of such an entity. Panyda includes Christopher Pallis’s research in 1983, discussing ‘The loss of Capacity for conciseness and the capacity to breathe (after brain death) relate to functional disturbances at the opposite ends of the brain stem while the former is also a meaningful alternative to ‘the departure of the soul’. (Paynda) However, with his supporting evidence by Sir Thomas Brown, he concludes that “there is no organ or instrument for the rational soul”. Pandya really emphasizes that the soul is not separate from the brain, which contradicts Gunderman’s theories to believe that the soul and the body is a detached

Show More
Related

Descartes Response To Princess Elisabeth: Summary

213 Words | 1 Pages

He further to response to Princess Elisabeth question by introducing to her what is called (Cartesian Dualism) he uses these to explain to her that the mind, soul and the body are not the same and can never be same, which came to conclude that your mind cannot be your body and your body cannot be your mind. He also explains

Read More

Analysis Of Clarence Darrow's The Myth Of The Soul

745 Words | 3 Pages

In response to the long-standing philosophical question of immorality, many philosophers have posited the soul criterion, which asserts the soul constitutes personal identity and survives physical death. In The Myth of the Soul, Clarence Darrow rejects the existence of the soul in his case against the notion of immortality and an afterlife. His primary argument against the soul criterion is that no good explanation exists for how a soul enters a body, or when its beginning might occur. (Darrow 43) After first explicating Darrow 's view, I will present what I believe is its greatest shortcoming, an inconsistent use of the term soul, and argue that this weakness impacts the overall strength of his argument.

Read More

Kabbaah: Jewish Eoteric Knowledge And Practices

733 Words | 3 Pages

Compassion is often impossible without trusting in God's support. The Kabbalah also argues that the human soul has three elements, the nefesh, ru'ach, and neshamah. The nefesh is found in all humans, and enters the body at birth. The next two parts of the soul can be developed by the actions and beliefs of the individual and can only be fully realized in folks who are spiritually

Read More

Chapter Summary In St. Bonaventure's Itinerarium

1572 Words | 7 Pages

These external, sensible beings are the first to enter into the soul through the doors of the five senses. They enter, I say, not in their substantial reality but by means of the likeness which are generated in the medium. And from the medium they pass into the organ, and from the external organ they move to the internal organ, and from this they move to the faculty of the awareness. The statement above already summarizes the process by which sensible beings enter into the soul by using his senses.

Read More

Socrates Sacred Disease

454 Words | 2 Pages

(Presently, doctors that use to believe that evil possession occurs as a problem brought on by a person’s mental or physical incapability’s, happens to be losing its validity. For anthropologists, psychologically oriented scholars of religion, and psychological studies, attest that demonic possession consists of nothing to do with a person’s mental or physical state before the possession; (As epilepsy is now thought to have nothing to do with evil possession.) Their research concludes the majority of people to be in perfect physical and psychological health before an evil possession takes place. Nevertheless, among the numerous beliefs that haunt societies, Pan’s ability still affects people through panic, and demonic possession, appearing in cultures globally and taught by a number of medical doctors.

Read More

Descartes Sixth Meditation Analysis

1919 Words | 8 Pages

Conclusion: The mind is substantively different from the body and indeed matter in general. Because in this conception the mind is substantively distinct from the body it becomes plausible for us to doubt the intuitive connection between mind and body. Indeed there are many aspects of the external world that do not appear to have minds and yet appear none the less real in spite of this for example mountains, sticks or lamps, given this we can begin to rationalize that perhaps minds can exist without bodies, and we only lack the capacity to perceive them.

Read More

Aquinas Accomplishments

1326 Words | 6 Pages

Neither is it inherited from parents as bodily features are. Instead, it is a fresh creation by God in the case of each human being (Kenny 11). This is important for modern believers to take not of because this understanding of the soul gives a new meaning to when life is created. Aquinas would have believed that the soul was made at conception when the body or form of the individual was first created. This provides a new angle for believes to evaluate when considering the origin of

Read More

Newton's Third Law By Steven Bancarz Analysis

1089 Words | 5 Pages

I have chosen the topic is there a soul after death, I would like to talk about Newton’s third law, a gift that became an idea to benefit science. “For every action taken, there is always an equal and opposite reaction in its place” (Newton). In my view I believe if God made us, when we die he exerts his will or shall we say force on our soul, to either bring us to heaven, hell, or limbo. Sometimes the choices we make as people affect only us; but more often than not our choices have a domino effect, reaching far past our own sphere of being. I haven’t the vaguest idea about our past lives, but I do know that for every action taken it creates the life we lead.

Read More

Immanuel Kant Research Paper

1364 Words | 6 Pages

We must recognize that we cannot know things as they are in themselves and that our knowledge is subject to the conditions of our experience. The project was doomed to failure because it did not take note of the information that was given to our ability to think makes to our experience of objects. Information based on their knowledge and not what was seen analysis of our ideas could inform us about the content of our ideas, but it could not give a (clear-thinking/easy to understand) (act of showing or proving) of knowledge-based truths about the external world, the self, the soul, God, and so

Read More

Aristotle Dualism Essay

526 Words | 3 Pages

He argues that the body and soul are two elements that have the same underlying substance. He maintains that a person’s soul is the same as his nature of body; however, he argues that the mind differed from other parts of the body as it lacked a physical feature. In this case, he maintains that the intellect lacks a physical form, and this allows it to receive every form. It allows a person to think about anything, including the material object. In this case, he argues that if the intellect were in a material form, it could be sensitive to only some physical objects.

Read More

Essay On Cartesian Dualism

703 Words | 3 Pages

This paper will critically examine the Cartesian dualist position and the notion that it can offer a plausible account of the mind and body. Proposed criticisms deal with both the logical and empirical conceivability of dualist assertions, their incompatibility with physical truths, and the reducibility of the position to absurdity. Cartesian Dualism, or substance dualism, is a metaphysical position which maintains that the mind and body consist in two separate and ontologically distinct substances. On this view, the mind is understood to be an essentially thinking substance with no spatial extension; whereas the body is a physical, non-thinking substance extended in space. Though they share no common properties, substance dualists maintain

Read More

George Berkeley's Theory Of Physicalism

549 Words | 3 Pages

And with evidence that the material property of the body allows for it to be independent of the mind, a strong claim can be made that the mind is dependent on the body. In conclusion, the mind and body rely on each other; however, the mind is more reliant on the body due to

Read More

Reincarnation Thesis Statement

1080 Words | 5 Pages

Preliminary Thesis Statement The religious and philosophical concept of rebirth of souls in another body after ones death is called Reincarnation. In simple words the return to life. Some cases have been reported when people have claimed that they have already lived earlier and they are reincarnated. My work will demonstrate such investigations from the work of different researchers and psychiatrics.

Read More

Mozart Reincarnation Philosophy

922 Words | 4 Pages

Integrating the concepts The idea of the survival of soul and the theory of reincarnation has been laid. The mission is to unify these concepts to achieve the goal of this philosophical work. Reincarnation is an ancient belief that is widely known for this time being. As reincarnation is a verifiably concrete reality, the most commonly used method today to show us this proof is with past-life regressions under hypnosis. But this is controversial and somewhat dubious method.

Read More

The Soul And Soul In Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray

1123 Words | 5 Pages

‘Once in his life may a man send his soul away, but he who receiveth back his soul must keep it with him forever, and this is his punishment and his reward’. A body, a soul, and a heart are the three elements that Oscar Wilde thought of as being essential to man. The body is the vessel, the carcass that keeps everything, including the heart, which is the house of feelings, bound together. Distinct and separate from the body is the soul which is the transcendent, ineffable spiritual proof of existence.

Read More

More about Dualism: Do We Have The Soul?

Related Topics

Open Document