Defending Materialism
Dualism means the complete separation of the mental world and the physical world. In philosophy, it is the theory that the world is explicable only as a world composed of two distinct and mutually exclusive factors: the mind and the body. Socrates and Plato are called dualists because they think that mind and body are separate and distinct substances. Mind is conscious and non-spatial and body is spatial but not conscious. While separate, the two supposedly interact. Socrates argues that the mind and body are separable and the soul is immortal. It is through the mouth of Socrates that Plato presents his argument for dualism. The argument contains three parts. First, the harmony analogy is inconsistent with the recollection argument. Next, the harmony analogy entails that all souls are equally virtuous. Lastly, the harmony analogy cannot account for the fact that the soul can resist the body's temptations and can control the body's behavior. Materialism, on the other hand, is a way that people consider the relations between mind and matter to be inseparable. We are physical beings and our mental reactions are just by-products of a material process; the human being is not, nor has, a non-mater
Simmias' harmony analogy uses harmony, lyre, and strings to defend materialism. Simmias replies to Socrates, "a harmony is something invisible, without body, beautiful and divine in the attuned lyre, whereas the lyre and itself and its strings are physical, bodily, composite, earthly and akin to what is mortal. Then if someone breaks the lyre, cuts or breaks the strings and then insists, using the same argument as you, that the harmony must still exist and is not destroyed because it would be impossible for the lyre and strings, which are mortal, to exist when the strings are broken, and for the harmony, which is akin and of the same nature as the divine and immortal, to be destroyed before that which is mortal; he would say that the harmony itself still must exist and the wood and the strings must rot before the harmony can suffer...If then the soul is a kind of harmony or attunement, clearly, when our body is relaxed or stretched without due measure by diseases and other evils, the soul must immediately be destroyed, even if it be most divine, as are the other harmonies found in music and all the works of artists, and the remains of each body last for a long time until they rot or are burned" (Plato 36, 37). This analogy shows the soul as being mortal, as the wood and strings rot away and ar
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Approximate Word count = 879
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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