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Analyse the claim that dualism makes the best sense of our experiences as humans.

It is undeniable that human beings are made up of a physical body and that properties such as height have a numerical reality and as such are not debatable. There are certain physical characteristics that are subjective and certain. It is also undeniable that we think; we have thoughts, we have self-awareness. However the question is whether our minds and bodies are one entity or whether they are separate and distinct. Is the chemical brain activity the same thing as the thought or does this thought have a reality, less physical than this?

It is certainly true that we do not experience thought as though it were a part of our bodies. We can attribute it to the brain only to a certain extent because the actual workings of the brain do not seem to resemble the thoughts and images they produce. A dualist approach to this problem is to separate the mind and body. The body is the mere physicality of our real selves; it is contingent and destined for deterioration and death. The mind, on the other hand is that which determines our personality and is concerned with the higher realities such as truth, goodness and justice. Dualists therefore generally believe in the immortality of the soul.
Dualism dates back to the 4th century BCE. Writing in "The Republic" Plato outlined his beliefs about the soul and the mind. He felt that because ideas are not physical substances they must belong to the soul and to the Realm of the Forms. For Plato this soul is the self, and the self is eternal, hence when the body dies, this thinking part of us continues.
Conversely Aristotle had an integrated view of the body and the soul believing the two to be inextricably linked. Consequently the soul is as finite as the body. Aristotle did however believe that although the soul is a part of the body, it is not the same as it. Rather the soul is that which animates the body; the soul develops the faculties, personality and temper of a person and therefore when that person dies so too does the soul.
St Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle in that he believed that it is the soul that animates the body; that gives it life. However he believed that the soul works independently of the body. Because only those things that are divisible are subject to decay, he felt that the indivisible soul is able to survive to death. Its link to the body, however, is important in that it is precisely this link that gives the soul its identity,

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