SS031

Understanding the Self

Philosophy has always sought to answer life’s difficult SOCRATES
questions and has relentlessly pursued answers to these
Trivia! Socrates never wrote a book and most of the things we
no matter how seemingly futile the quest may be.
know about him came from Xenophon and His prized student-
-Just what exactly are we? Plato. This is also the reason why it is sometimes difficult to
differentiate Socrate’s idea from Plato’s.
-What do we even mean by the ‘self.’
‘’An examined life is not worth living.’’
-Are we souls, organic bodies or merely a figment of
another’s imagination? -He directed philosophy’s attention from the universe to an
examination of our existence in the universe.
-Are we just minds or a combination of body and mind?
-There is soul first before man’s body. Man first exist in the
-will I survive bodily death because I am more than a realm of ideas and exists as a soul or pure mind.
body or when my body is dead, that’s really the end?
-When man came to the material world. He forgot the ideas that
-Am I actually a robot controlled by some identity? he knew, hence he become arrogant. Ignorance cause problem to
THE SELF the man.

-Self- knowledge -Solution; Dialectic method/Socratic method

-Self -concept PLATO

-Self -Esteem ‘’If we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must
get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves
-Social-Self with the soul by itself.’’
The Philosophical quest is aimed at unraveling who man -An important part of his philosophy is the dichotomy of the
is and his nature by looking, not just everyday goals of ideal world or the world of forms and the material world.
man, but to determine what ultimately is man, his goals
and his essence. -Human beings are composed of two things, Body and Soul.

What is the self? -Soul is the true self- the permanent unchanging self found in the
-Composed as self perception as defined by their self world of ideas.
concept, self knowledge,self esteem and social self. -Body is what we see in the material world- a mere replica of the
SOME GREAT MINDS FROM OUR HISTORY TO true self (that is why it is changing).
APPROACH THE QUESTION, WHO AM I? -Soul is already existing even before the bodily death and thus,
-Descartes -Paul Churchland will survive even after the body dies.

-John Locke -Gilbert Ryle -Socrates,Plato -Thus. The body becomes a prison of the soul. To free us, We
have to contemplate.
-David Hume -Sigmund Freud &Augustine
-Contemplation- Union of the mind with universal and eternal
-Maurice Merleau-Ponty -Immanuel Kant ideas.

SSO31
 Understanding the Self
ST. AUGUSTINE JOHN LOCKE
‘’But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, Trivia! He is knows as ‘’The father of Classical
beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and His Liberalism’’ because of his contribution to the formation
other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, of human rights.
confusion and error.’’
‘’What worries you, Masters you.’’
‘’When I consider thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which though has ordained; What -The self is not locked in mind. Body and Soul only.
is a man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of
-Memory is part of the definition of the self.
man, that thou hast visited him?’’ -Psalm 8:3-4
-Memory Theory- We are the same person as we were in
-Highly influenced by Plato- the permanent world is
the past for as long as we can remember something from
where God is and the material world is our world now.
the past.
-Man is created out of God’s love and also created in his
DAVID HUME
image. He also has an immortal soul whose goal is to be
with God eternally. ‘’Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
passions, and can never pretend to any other office
-The pursuit of happiness can be achieved in God alone.
than to serve and obey them.’’
-Moral law is also existing in man’s mind. Man’s
-Born in Scotland, He was a Lawyer but is known more
rationality helps him distinguish between what is right
for the history book that he wrote- History of England.
and wrong.
-Just like Locke, He is an empiricist and regarded the
RENE DISCARTES
senses as our key source of knowledge. He (1738) does
Trivia! Rene Descartes was hired to tutor Queen Christina believe in the existence of the mind and what’s inside the
of Sweden but soon after, he died of Pneumonia because mind is divided by two: impressions and ideas.
his health could not take the 5 am start of lesson required
-Impression- things directly perceived by the senses.
by the queen.
-Ideas: things created in mind. Can be a combination of
‘’I think, therefore, I am.’’ (Cogito ergo sum)
expressions.
-The essence of a man is in being purely thinking being.
-Hume: When he looks in the mind, there is no
Thus, I think, therefore: I am.
impression that corresponds to the self because the self
-The mind and body separate but at the same time constantly changes. Thus, the self is merely the
conjoined with one another that they causally act upon perception we have at the moment it is being perceived.
each other. ( I cannot act without my body) Therefore, the enduring self is just a fiction. We cannot
observe a permanent self, in short. THERE IS NO SELF.
-The self is mind over the body.
-How then shall we respond when somebody tells us,
-Difference: Body is structured but the mind cannot be please don’t change?
boxed- hence, the study of the self requires science of its
own because mind pursues its own thoughts.

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 Understanding the Self
IMMANUEL KANT GILBERT RYLE
‘’All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds ‘’Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies.’’
the to the understanding, and ends with the reason.
There is nothing higher than reason.’’ -The debate on the definition of the self is only a problem of language.

-Considered as one of the giants in Philosophy, he was -For him, a talk of the mind is only a talk of behavior. The mind is not
spurred into philosophical activism when he encountered distinct from the body but is a part of a certain aspects of our bodies.
Hume’s skepticism and took it upon himself to refute it. -Criticized Descartes and said Descartes made a category mistake.
-He argued that it is possible to discover universal truth -In a discourse, separation of mind, body and soul is possible but not
about the world using our reason. He also argued that it is in practice. Thus, we can see how the mind is working through his
possible to find the essence of the self. behavior. The self can be known by the behavior.
-Refuting Hume, He argued that it is possible to find the PAUL CHURCHLAND
essence of the self by using our reason.
‘’We do have an organ for understanding and recognizing moral
-Man is gifted with reason and freewill, therefore man facts. That is called the brain.’’
can organize the different data gathered by the senses.
From this, we can now have a good idea of the self. -known for his Eliminative Materialism- the idea which states that the
mind is unreal and the brain is unreal.
-Man has inherent dignity and should be treated with
respect as an end and not as a means. -The self is the brain. The brain is the essence of the self.

SIGMUND FREUD -The term mind, moods, emotions, actions, and consciousness are
deeply affected by the state of the brain.
Trivia! It is claimed that one of the proofs for the
unconscious is what we called ‘slip of tongue’ It is when Do you think experience also shapes a person? If you say yes, How
instead of saying Shaun, we blurted out Paolo. It is said can this be reconciled with churchland’s eliminate materialism?
that we are thinking Paolo in our subconscious. Maurice Merleau- Ponty
‘’The ego is not master in its own house’’ ‘’We know not through our intellect but through our experience,’’
-Man is a combination of his biological structure and the -An existentialist, he believes that the person is defined by virtue of
influence of his socio cultural environment. movement and expression. A person is the sum of all that he does with
-He devised a tripartite division of man- id, ego, his body. Including his interpretation of his past and his decisions.
superego. -The definition of the self is all about one’s perception of one’s
-Id represents the biological structure, superego experience and the interpretation of those experiences.
represents the socio-cultural environment. -The self is grounded on the experiences from the past, the
-The two are at battles against each other and whoever possibilities for the future and present cognition.
wins between them is manifested in the ego. The ego
being the Self.

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 Understanding the Self
SUMMARY
-Socrates, answered by saying, man is essentially a soul,
and this was seconded by Plato.
-Augustine, extending Plato’s idea said that the man is
an image in the likeness of God and he is essentially a
soul whose goal is to be with God.
-Rene Descartes, also emphasized the non -physical
form of man and said that in essence, man is mind- a
thinking being separate from his body. However, it
doesn’t mean that we don’t need the body because the
body is a necessity for the mind in order for it to perform
any act.
-John Locke claimed that the self is consciousness and
that for as long as we have memories about who we are
and our identity, then that tells us that we are that same
person, that same self that we are conscious of now.
-David Hume declared that there is no permanent self,
because the self is only a bundle of senses that keeps on
changing.
-Immanuel Kant said that it is possible for us to
contract our self. Since we are thinking being, we can
organize our experiences so that we can build an idea of
who we are, hence the self is very much present.
-Sigmund Freud asserts that man is made up of two
things, the conscious and the unconscious and that man
has many layers.
-For, Gilbert Ryle, how one behaves is a big factor in
showing who man is.
-Paul Churchland declared that the brain is the essence
of the self.
-Maurice Merleu-Ponty rejected the entire idea of body
and mind dichotomy because for him, man is all about
how he sees himself.
(an embodied subjectivity)