Footnote AT20

AT20. John Hick gives a useful summary of the Ryle/dualism situation:

The body-soul distinction, first formulated as a philosophical doctrine in ancient Greece, was baptized into Christianity, ran through the medieval period, and entered the modern world with the public status of a self-evident truth when it was redefined in the seventeenth century by Descartes. Since World War II, however, the Cartesian mind-matter dualism, having been taken for granted for many centuries, has been sharply criticized by philosophers of the contemporary analytical school. It is argued  [particularly by Ryle] that the words that describe mental characteristics and operations -- such as "intelligent," "thoughtful," "carefree," "happy," "calculating" and the like -- apply in practice to types of human behavior and to behavioral dispositions. They refer to the empirical individual, the observable human being who is born and grows and acts and feels and dies, and not to the shadowy proceedings of a "ghost in the machine."

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Thus, the Old Testament scholar, J. Pedersen, says of the Hebrews that for them "the body is the soul in its outward form."

 Philosophy of Religion
by John Hicks
(Prentice Hall 1963; 2d ed. 1973)

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There was of course quite a bit of controversy over Descartesian dualism in the 17th and 18th centuries, as British and then French thinkers proposed various forms of materialism (such as resurrection of the material body and material soul), but the general public retained its belief in the immaterial soul, a belief which tended to fall off after World War II. There has also been a great deal of difficulty over the distinction, if any, between the soul and the mind. Descartes essentially saw no distinction, and even today it is popularly assumed that the mind -- purified -- will carry on pretty much as on earth. But this point gives rise to various subtleties which we do not go into here.

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