Emma Cohen-Edmonds

In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates’ argument for the immortality of the soul fails due to his insufficient explanation for how the soul, as a particular, could partake in an immortality that belongs to universals. Simmias’ objection brings this to light by providing an analogy of a particular. This particular is exemplified by the specific harmony belonging to one instrument, and its relationship to that instrument itself. The soul, having an analogous relation to the body, remains separated from Socrates’ establishment of universals as eternal.

David Chalmers distinguishes an explanatory gap between consciousness and standard functional properties, intuitively, what we experience differs from how we experience. This essay explores how the explanatory gap can be bridged with embodied understandings of function. Embodiment suggests that what we experience can end in how we experience. According to developments by Thomas Fuchs, through Embodied Cognition, the gap does not explicitly make explaining consciousness a distinctively hard task. Embodiment poses a solution, suggesting that consciousness “is not confined to the brain”, but involves a whole human and their interaction with the world.

This essay follows how three different texts (one prose, and two poems) each reflect the narrative arc of St. Paul's struggle with sin and his overcoming of it. It begins by following a parallel between the experience of Paul's conversion in the biblical book of Acts with the anagnorisis of Charlotte Bronte's protagonist, Jane Eyre. I compare how both literary agents wrestle with inner conflicts and arrive to a united conclusion that where humankind fails, God always represents the solution. Following this, in light of analysing Paul's religious experience, I turn to Seamus Heaney's poem 'Miracle.' In this, the effect of sin, interpreted as death and suffering is underscored in the same way that Paul underscores it in his letters. Finally, I conclude by deepening an understanding of Paul's anthropology in analysing Edwin Muir's poem, 'Adam's Dream.'