Understanding Plato’s Dualism and Its Impact on Human Nature

Posted on Dec 7, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

3.1 Plato’s Dualism

Belief that ideas exist in themselves, having their own reality: ontological idealism. They exist outside of human thought, creating two separate realities that are heterogeneous.

The physical world, for Plato, is the reflection of the world of ideas. Humanity and society will be morally good in terms of their resemblance to the idea, or ideal, of humanity and society to be met.

Taking the ideas as models, the Demiurge (an encapsulated cosmic force that orders reality) directs reality. The idea of the human being serves as a model for human beings according to this idea. Every idea tends to occur in the material world. This justifies the reality of the human body and mind (this is called dualism: we are an idea proposed in a body). It longs to return to the world of ideas where it belongs. This is accomplished through the love of goodness and beauty. This is what saves us, because only a human being who strives to achieve love, goodness, and beauty will return to the world of ideas from which they derive.

In Christian thought, dualism is transferred to the differentiation between this life and the other to which we are called. The road to reach the eternal abode is the imitation of Christ.

* KARL MARX

“We invented religion because we need comfort from the injustice of this world beyond ensuring perfect righteousness. But if it is guaranteed in the afterlife, why fight for it here? Religion is man’s exploitation deterring rebellion, morally necessary.”

“Overcoming religion occurs when we achieve the establishment of a just society through philosophical critique of the existing order and the proletarian revolution.”

That is, when you think you will overcome the dictatorship of the proletariat or the triumph of socialism, religion need not come to bring order to the unfair world because by that time it will not exist. Understand that this perspective looks at reality from its historical moment. The truth is that the church contributed significantly to the extent that it made people think and consider things.

Critique of Marx

Religion is not only a tool of oppression but also of justice. An example is the huge number of people, mostly Catholics, dedicated to development work, caring for the sick, elderly, children, etc. This is known as the Technology of Liberation. Religion can and should speak out against injustice because God does not ignore the cries of the oppressed.

* SIGMUND FREUD

“We invent religion because life is a tough experience of illness, aging, suffering, and death, and we need to learn to take a pain reliever. So we created a heavenly Father who cares for us always (this is ironic as long as the comparison can be made with a man of 30 who did not leave the house because Dad cared).”

“We will overcome as we move past the religious neurosis (a psychological state when a person has a lot of repression) of inventing a father figure and assume reality as it is,” which he considers difficult.

AGAINST THE THOUGHT OF FREUD

The history of psychiatry shows how religion has been a source of terror and anxieties for men according to their ministers, temporary circumstances, epidemics, etc. However, if religion were only consolation, there would be no possibility of damnation or anxiety about sin.

II. The Nature of Human Beings

The features that characterize human beings are four:

• Standing: The pros are free to leave us, the relocation of the vocal cords to speak. One drawback is that it exposes the front of our species.
• Prehensile: We have opposable thumbs.
• Neoteny: We are born prematurely. When we are born, our brain weighs 400 grams, both boys and girls, and weighs 1 kg by the age of one year, apart from brain tissue and neuronal development.
• Biological Plasticity: We have adaptability in behavior and habits. Human beings, despite having some limitations, have a higher level of fitness than other animals.

Neoteny and biological plasticity make us the animal whose maturation process is longer, but this serves to acquire all the capabilities we need to adapt to the environment.

Without culture, human beings would not survive, especially in the cultivation of feeling.

Our culture has given us throughout our evolution six things:

1. Language, management concepts, the capacity for abstraction, social organization, and especially a collective memory.
2. Control of fire and light metals.
3. Housing and clothing, as a defense mechanism.
4. Domestication of animals.
5. Use of agriculture, especially when we become sedentary.
6. Organizational political, economic, and cultural structures that cover all the above.

We can conclude that the human being is social, cultural, and historical (heir and testator).

V. The Inner Adventure

A) Prefrontal Cortex: This part of the brain tells us how we should act at all times, as it interprets what we see.

B) Hypothalamus: The message becomes a nervous signal in a hormonal message.

C) Hypophysis: Coordinates the hormones generated by the signal from the hypothalamus.

D) Insular Cortex: This area of the brain relates to sexual images.

E) Female Specificity of Brain: Language analysis of the situation allows for quick realization of what is happening in the environment.

F) Male Specificity of Brain: Space orientation and certain programs for the manipulation of tools.

G) Brain: Our animal part of the brain. Its objectives are play, development, and defense.

H) Sound and Over Brain: This is the part that encompasses human intelligence and stoicism.

I) Past Sensory:

J) Cloisters: Where the baby is, in the mother’s womb, the placenta.

K) Theory of Fingers: The theory that the higher the level of testosterone in utero, the greater the ring finger. The bigger the ring, in women, the more masculine the appearance.

L) Display: This serves to show who’s boss, acting as if one were the leader, showing off to others (e.g., big car, strength, etc.).

M) Goals Allowed:

N) Pheromones: These are hormones that generate a certain attraction to the opposite gender. They are expelled through sweat and captured by the vomeronasal organ.

Ñ) Oxytocin: Known as the cuddle hormone, it is generated mainly during delivery. It generates a bond between people when they are in an environment with oxytocin. It is also produced during the act of kissing.

II: The Gestalt

It is a word of Germanic origin which means image or form. This is a watershed in thought, a school or psychological level that originally was dedicated to the study of perception in humans.

The prevailing school of this slope in the middle of the 19th century was associationism. The Gestalt theory suggests that images are detected in their entirety in a moment as a global or unique entity and not as a sum of constituent parts.

The associationist perspective says that we perceive parts together to identify the object. The Gestalt perspective says the opposite: we see the big picture and break it into detailed parts.

However, the problem with associations is that the same parts may belong to two different realities (e.g., an ass or an elbow).

The Gestalt theory requires images to be in context.

In perceptive configurations, context plays an essential role. Perceptual learning laws were formulated by Gestalt psychologists by 1910, leaving evidence and analysis systems for associationist learning. Terms such as “field theory” emerged, progressing in the study of perception in ways that would challenge atomism.

Since the beginning of the investigation of perceptual processes, scholars have attempted to differentiate innate factors from learning. This has been used for infants or young animals to put them in a position by projecting visual cliffs.

However, these theories were refuted by other researchers. It was diagnosed that innate factors are involved in perception. There is agreement that our brain receives an overall picture.

Visual cliff experiments serve to demonstrate that our brain innately perceives whole space-images linked to multiple physiological and neurological experiences. Although a newborn lacks visual experience, they have other sensory abilities that contribute to the perception of depth and do not depend on a number of light energy reflected by objects.

In this context, newly discovered cells, especially in amphibians and mammals, detect disks and rings with particular configurations and store them as symptoms of motion.

In short, we have cells that innately perceive shapes through certain mechanisms. This allows us to better distinguish shapes by color, light, shape, and relief. It is thought that humans prefer curved lines over straight lines.

Frustration and Defense Mechanisms:

Frustration is understood as an unpleasant emotional experience (undesirable) induced by the withdrawal of rewards, leading to sadness, disappointment, and anger.

The defense mechanisms we use are:

Affective Insulation: Consists of escaping from an emotional conflict by separating ideas from emotions or feelings. Also called rationalization. Example: A biology student who enjoys going to the laboratory excessively dissects frogs to rationally release their frustrations.

Bonus: Concealing the failure of a business by seeking another victory.

Displacement: Unloading hostile feelings onto people or objects that did not elicit those emotions.

Fantasy: Making up scenarios that we cannot achieve.

ID: Adding features to my personality that are alien to me, essentially copying from another.

Reactive Training: Adopting or expressing sentiments contrary to one’s true feelings.

Disclaimer: Ignoring unpleasant realities to avoid dealing with them. “There is no worse blind than he who will not see.”

Projection: Attributing our faults to others. “Think of the thief who sees all others as thieves.”

Streamlining: Justifying ideas or behaviors for fear of not being accepted by others.

Regression: Reverting to an earlier stage of development in situations of stress and anxiety.

Suppression: Preventing certain thoughts or feelings from entering dangerous or painful consciousness.

Sublimation: Channeling or directing sexual impulses towards higher activities, such as artistic, intellectual, religious, or social assistance, because one wants to and can.

III: Artificial Language / Animal Language / Artificial Intelligence

The logikon zoon (animal endowed with reason) is the only being capable of voicing their thoughts and reflecting on them. This research and development are advanced, meaning that human beings are capable of intellectual understanding manifested largely through reasoned language. There are groups of thinkers who believe that language is unique to humans (comparative ethology), regarding their own language and artificial intelligence as autonomous, but both admit that their languages are not rational.

According to Darwin, the qualities of an organism are the result of specific developments, and given that the evolution of humans is different from that of other animals, so too are our qualities. Therefore, primates and robots trained to speak develop a certain type of communication, or what is the same, their trainers are the ones who speak through them. However, when humans speak, they are exercising their constitutive power. Namely:

“With Freedom: We talk because we are free to do so.”

“We establish an overall understanding of the world through concepts.”

“What we talk about impacts our emotional life and emotions. For the most stoic feeling, it will always affect us to a greater or lesser degree.”

“What we say, speak, and hear generates, recognizes, and enhances our self-consciousness (I), meaning we speak from what we are.

We speak from what we are, and we are a constantly evolving entity.

In short, our exercise is about thoughts, feelings, volitions, and self-consciousness. The claim that, like humans, primates and robots can talk faces the following objections:

“I do not fit the same qualities in different substrates.”

“Do not talk if there were no previous training.”

“Human language includes all facets of human experience (we use a wide range of communication codes).”