A Philosophical Journey
to Discovering the Self
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
CHAPTER 1
Intended Learning Outcome
Explain why it is essential to understand the self
Describe the different philosophical perspectives
of the self from various philosophers
Evaluate the importance of having different
philosophical perspectives of the self
Examine one’s self against the different views of
self that were discussed in the class
INTRODUCTION
Our names represent who we are.
Our names signify us.
A name is not the person itself no matter
how intimately bound it with the bearer. It
is only signifier.
Everyone is tasked to discover oneself.
Philosophical Perspective of the SELF
Socrates: Know yourself
Socrates is principally concerned
with man. n. He considers man from
the point of view of his inner life.
He is the first philosopher who ever
engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self. Figure 1; Socrates;
[Link]
Times-of-the-Ancient-Greek-Philosopher-Socrates
“Know yourself”, tells each man to
bring his inner self to light. Socratic Thinking - is a form of
cooperative argumentative
A bad man is not virtuous through dialogue between individuals,
ignorance, the man who does not based on asking and answering
follow the good fails to do so questions to stimulate critical
because he does not recognize it. thinking and to draw out ideas and
Socrates affirms, claimed by Plato in underlying presuppositions.
his dialogue that the unexamined
life is not worth living.
He thought that the worst that can
happen to anyone, to live but die
inside
Plato’s concept of the self is
practically constructed on the
basis of his reflections on the
nature of the rational soul as
the highest form of cognition.
Figure 2; Plato;
[Link]
27/
Human person is composed of;
PLATO (428 – 348 BC) –
Body – material and
Socrates student
destructible
Man was omniscient or all-
Soul – immaterial and
knowing before he came to be
indestructible (self)
born into this world.
Three parts of the SOUL: The Concept of
The Rational soul – cognition “Eudaimonia”
Plato considers the rational - Plato believed that
soul as the superior among the individuals naturally feel
three because it serves as a moral
and rational guide for the spiritual
unhappiness when they do
soul and the appetitive soul. something they know and
The Spiritual soul - emotions
acknowledge to be wrong
(Price, 2011).
The Appetitive soul - which
involve our pleasurable desires
such as those which provide us
physical pleasure and
physiological comfort.
- He suggests that anything
with life has a soul
- the soul is the essence of
the self. However, humans
differ from other living
things because of their
capacity for rational
ARISTOTLE (BC 384 – BC 322) : thinking.
The Soul is the Essence of the Self
- believes that the soul is merely a
set of defining features and does not
consider the body and soul as
separate entities.
Three kinds of soul Aristotle suggests that the
rational nature of the self
is to lead a good,
vegetative soul includes
successful, and fulfilling
the physical body that
life (self-actualized).
can grow.
The pursuit of happiness is
Sentient soul includes
a search for a good life
sensual desires, feelings,
that includes doing
and emotions.
virtuous actions
Rational soul is what
makes man human. It
includes the intellect that
allows man to know and
understand things.
He believed that man is
bifurcate (divided into two
branches) in nature,
physical body
soul.
Figure 5; St. Augustine; [Link] One aspect of us is
imperfect and worldly while
[Link]
Saint Augustine of Hippo
the other is capable of
A Christian theologian and divinity and immortality.
philosopher to have greatly
contributed to the progress of
Western Christianity.
The body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to
anticipate living eternally in a realm of spiritual bliss in
communication with God.
He pointed onto sin as the source of human unhappiness
as sin impairs human free will.
He reiterated that one transforms as he struggles in both
body and soul to ultimately achieve happiness
specifically found in God’s Love.
understanding of the self and the formation of identity is
achieved through the process of ‘Introspection’ or ‘Self-
analysis’
Loving God’s means loving one’s fellowmen; and loving
one’s fellowmen denotes never doing any harm to
The self then for Descartes is
also a combination of two
distinct entities, the cogito, the
thing that thinks, which is the
mind, and the extenza or
extension of the mind, which is
the body.
Descartes’s view, the body is
Figure 5; Rene Descartes;
[Link]
nothing else but a machine
Rene_Descartes.jpg
Descartes: : Cogito, ergo sum that attached to the mind.
— “I think, therefore I am.”
The essence of existing as a
He is the “Father of Modern human identity is the possibility
Philosophy” conceived of of being aware of our selves:
human person as having a Being self-conscious in this way
body and a mind. is integral to having a personal
identity.
For example:
You understand situations in which you find yourself.
You doubt the accuracy of ideas presented to you.
You affirm the truth of a statement made about you.
You deny an accusation that someone has made.
You will yourself to complete a task you have begun.
You refuse to follow a command that you consider to be unethical.
You imagine a fulfilling career for yourself.
You feel passionate emotions toward another person.
He considered personal identity
(or the self) to be founded on
consciousness (viz. memory), and
not on the substance of either the
soul or the body.
We are the same person to the
Figure 6: John Locke: [Link]
history/[Link]
extent that we are conscious of
the past and future thoughts and
JOHN LOCKE (1632 – 1704) actions in the same way as we are
He developed the concept of conscious of present thoughts and
“Tabula Rasa” (blank slate) actions.
Locke posits an “empty” mind, a If consciousness is this "thought"
tabula rasa, which is shaped by which "goes along with the
experience, and sensations and substance…which makes the
reflections being the two sources same person," then personal
of all our ideas. identity is only founded on the
repeated act of consciousness:
Empiricism is the school of
thought that espouses the
idea that knowledge can
only be possible if it is
sensed and experience.
Men can only attain
Figure 7: David Hume - [Link]
hume-human-nature-and-understanding/
knowledge by
experiencing
DAVID HUME (1711 – 1776) The self is nothing else but
The Self is the Bundle Theory of a bundle of impressions.
the Mind
The self is not an entity over
and beyond physical body.
If one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that they
can all be categorized into two: impressions and ideas
Impressions are the basic objects of our experience or
sensation.
Ideas are copies of impression. Because of this, they are
not as lively vivid as our impressions.
SELF is “ a bundle or collection of different perceptions
which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity,
and are in a perpetual flux and movement”. Men simply
want to believe that there is a unified, coherent self, a soul
or mind just like what the previous philosophers thought. In
reality, what one thinks as unified self is simply a
combination of all experiences with a particular person.
Kant uses the term
“apperception” to denote
the capacity for the
awareness of some state or
modification of one’s self as
a state.
Figure 8: Immanuel Kant; [Link]
newton-friedman-082515/
Man is the only creature
Immanuel Kant - RESPECT who governs and directs
FOR SELF
himself and his actions, who
Inner sense is, according to sets up ends for himself and
Kant, the means by which his purpose, and who freely
we are aware of alterations orders means for the
in our own state. attainment of his aims.
Immanuel Kant
Kant thinks that the things that Time and space, for example are
men perceive around them are ideas that one cannot find in the
not just randomly infused into the external world but it is built in our
human person without organizing minds. Kant calls these the
principle that regulates the apparatus of the mind.
relationship of all these
Kant suggested that the self is an
impressions.
actively engaged intelligence in
man that synthesizes all
knowledge and experiences. Thus
For Kant, there is necessarily a
the self is not just what gives one
mind that organizes the
his personality. It is also the seat of
impressions that men get from the
knowledge acquisition for all
external world.
human persons.
Gilbert Ryle argued that "the sorts
of things that I can find out about
myself are the same as the sorts of
things that I can find out about
other people, and the methods of
finding them out are much the
same
Figure 10; Gilbert Ryle;
He further claimed that "our
[Link]
crack-consciousness
knowledge of other people and
ourselves depends on noticing
Gilbert Ryle believes that our how they and we behave"
behavior makes us who we According to behaviorism, we can
are. know our own mental states only
by observing our own behavior or
relying on the testimony of others
who have.
belief, desire, fear, sensation,
pain, joy—actually
misrepresent the reality of
minds and selves. All of these
concepts are part of a
common sense “folk
psychology” that obscures
rather than clarifies the nature
Figure 11; Paul Churchland;
[Link]
of human experience.
Eliminative materialism. This view is Paul Churchland believes that
embodied in the work of the brain is the essence of the
philosophers like Paul Churchland, Self.
who believes that the mind is the
brain and that over time a mature
He believes that by empirically
neuroscience vocabulary will investigating how the brain
replace the “folk psychology” that functions, we will be able to
we currently use to think about predict and explain how we
ourselves and our minds. function.
Figure 12; Maurice Merleau-Ponty;
[Link]
squared-maurice-merleau-ponty/
He believes that the He believes that the mind
definition of the Self is all and body is intertwined or
about one’s perceptions of connected and that they
his or her experiences and cannot be separated from
how we interpret those one another.
experiences.
THANK YOU!!!
EVALUATION
Prepared by:
GIRLIE R. JOSAFAT
Instructor
