PHIL 250A Study Guide - Final Guide: Socratic Questioning, Medieval Philosophy, Empirical Evidence

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 250A
• Professor: Andrew Stumpf

Document Summary

Part a: paragraph answers on 7 of 10 topics. If we want to believe, as the pythagoreans and plato did, that we have souls capable of surviving beyond death, then we need to ask what these souls are like. The broader question concerns the nature of the human person in general. The debate on this subject continues to rage today in the discipline called philosophy of mind. There are by now a myriad of different positions a person can hold on the relation of the mind to the body, or of mental states to brain states. There are many ways of being a materialist, and many ways of being a dualist, and several interesting attempts to find something in the middle. Still, the basic distinction between materialism and dualism is a helpful place to start. Whether or not you yourself believe that souls exist, it is worth asking why someone might hold such a belief.