Philosophy
Dualism ( body and soul )

The leading idea of what we have called the '2-component' picture is that we are a composite of 2 entities, one corporeal and one non-physical: and the presence of the 2nd non-physical component is essential if we are to function as thinking, feeling beings.

There is a division of labour between the 2 components. The body (including the brain), is the locus of purely physical phenomena and processes, while it is the self (the 2nd component) which does the thinking and feeling.

Backed by people throughout the history of philosophy. In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates is portrayed on the day of his death arguing about immortality and the nature of the soul. And he starts defining death in a way that plainly seems to presuppose a 2-component conception of the person. Being dead is this :

"the body's having come to be apart, separated from the soul, alone by itself, and the soul's being apart, alone by itself, separated from the body."

And later Socrates sums up his views like this:

"Consider, then, …if these are our conclusions from all that's been said: soul is most similar to what is divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, unvarying, and constant in relation to itself; whereas body, in its turn, is most similar to what is human, mortal, multiform, non-intelligible, dissoluble, and never in constant relation to itself. Have we anything to say against those statements … to show that they're false?"

I am thinking, therefore I exist.

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