Dualist Theory

We commonly hear the phrase: ‘mind, body, and soul’, as if they are three independent parts of an overall puzzle that makes us exactly who we are. Dualist theories presented by Descartes and others present the ideas that two things makes us who we are; the soul and the mind/body. Physicalist theories presented by Smart and others present the idea that we are our brains; everything we are is a result of our brain processes and functionality. In this paper, I will be critiquing the soul account from a physicalist viewpoint.
The soul account states that we are who we are because we have a unique soul that is only attributed to us. The soul account also states that there is nothing physical that makes us who we are. Rather, because we all have unique souls, we are different. Some of the objections I see are: we cannot see the soul so we do not, currently, have a way to quantifiably state that the soul itself exists, there is no way to determine ‘sameness of soul’ and whether or not one has had the same soul since birth or if the soul has …show more content…
Nagel argues that the brain account does not incorporate consciousness but further acknowledges that mammals hold some level of consciousness, as opposed to plants such as trees, who do not have any level of consciousness. We can identify that mammals have brains and therefore have some level of consciousness and that trees do not have brains and therefore lack consciousness, returning to the physicalist viewpoint. Additionally, we do not believe trees have souls, so one could conclude that a soul is tied directly to the presence of the physical brain. In conclusion, the soul account has many issues and does not give us a compelling reason to believe that we should be dualists or believe in a non-physical