PHILOSOPHY
• Philos means “lover” and Sophia means
“wisdom”
• “Lover of Wisdom”
• Science which studies the ultimate reasons
of all things
1. SOCRATES (469 BCE to 399 BCE)
• Greek philosopher born in Athens
• “The Father of Western Philosophy”
Socratic Method
• method of inquiry and instruction consisting
of a series of questioning
• to stimulate critical thinking, draw out ideas,
and underlying presuppositions.
• also known as:
— Method of Elenchus
— Elenctic Method
— Socratic Debate
Dualistic Concept
• Body (Imperfect)
• Soul (Perfect & Permanent)
Know Thyself: “The unexamined life is not worth
living for beings” (inscribed on the front piece of the
Temple of Delphi)
— The key of discovering knowledge is through
wisdom and virtue.
— By introspection and reflection, man realizes
his existence and purpose.
Virtue and Knowledge
• Core of Socratic Ethics
• Virtue is the deepest and most basic
propensity of man.
— Desirable attitudes
— Character traits
— Motives and emotions
• Virtue is innate in the mind and self-
knowledge is the source of all wisdom
2. PLATO (428 BCE to 348 BCE)
• Student of Socrates, Teacher of Aristotle.
• Founded the Academy in Athens
• From the Greek Aristocracy
Theory of Forms (World of Ideas/Forms)
– the world we know is only an imitation of
eternal and unchanging World of Forms (The
Ideal Self: The Perfect Self)
Tripartite Soul
1. The appetites — our myriad desires for
various pleasures, comforts, physical
satisfactions, and bodily ease. (The ugly
horse on the left)
2. The spirited or hot-blooded – the part that
gets angry when it perceives injustice, the
part that loves victory, and overcome great
challenges. (The noble white horse on the
right)
3. The mind (nous) – our conscious
awareness, the part of us that analyzes and
thinks rationally. (Represented by the
charioteer)
3. ARISTOTLE (384 BCE to 322 BCE)
• Philosophy is Science and Science is
Philosophy
• Criticized Plato for being too
metaphysical
• World of Senses is the real world for him
FORM + MATTER = THING
FORM (Potentiality) — determinate
structure which gives things their essential
characteristics or attributes.
MATTER (Actuality) — material out of
which physical things are made of (raw
materials).
4. ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (396 AD to 430 AD)
• Adapted the teachings of Plato
• Latin name is Aurelius Augustinus
• “Doctor of the Church” in Roman Catholicism
• An influential Christian Theologian from
Numidia
• Shaped the practice of biblical exegesis
• Laid the foundation for Medieval and Modern
Christian thought.
Man is of a bifurcated nature
• BODY – mortal and is destined to stay and
die on earth
• SOUL – can live eternally in a realm of
spiritual bliss in communion with God.
The goal of every person is to attain this communion
with the Divine by living his life on earth in virtue.
Only in the presence of the Omnipotent and the
Omniscient can the self attain happiness and
completeness
Love and Justice is the Foundation of the Individual Self
• Virtuous Life – dynamism of love
• Wicked Life – turning away from love
Loving God means loving one’s fellowmen; and
loving one’s fellowmen denotes never doing any
harm to another or, as the golden principle of justice
stats, doing unto others as you would have them do
unto you
5. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225 to 1274)
• Adapted the teachings of Aristotle
• “The Greatest of Scholastic Philosophers”
• Member of the Order of Preachers or
Dominicans
• To criticize him is thought to be impious
(unholy)
• Sent to the Abbey of Monte Cassino to train
among Benedictine Monks
(5 to 13 yrs. old)
• Earned his doctorate in theology under the
care of St. Albert the Great
• Wrote Summa Theologica
Matter (Hyle) – stuff that makes up everything in the
universe. (Body)
Form (Morphe) – essence of a substance. (Soul)
(The body is matter to the soul and soul is form to the body)
1. Vegetative Soul – for nutrition and
reproduction.
2. Sensitive Soul – by which higher animals
respond to their environment. For some
animals, it includes locomotion (movement).
3. Rational Soul – use of speech and abstract
thoughts.
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE SELF
1. RENÉ DESCARTES
• “Father of Modern Philosophy”
• “Father of Modern Mathematics”
• Believes Rationalism (Reasoning of Mind)
• French philosopher, mathematician, scientist
and writer of the Age of Reason
Cogito, ergo sum — “I think, therefore I am.”
“We have the ability to doubt, and when we doubt, we
are thinking, therefore there must be something that
is doing the thinking”
The self is a combination of:
• Mind – cogito the thing that thinks.
• Body – extension (machine) that is attached
to the mind
2. JOHN LOCKE
• Believes Empiricism
• Conscious awareness and memory of
previous experiences are the keys to
understanding the self.
• A person is the same in different times and
different places.
• Every aspect of your physical body
(substance) is integrated with your personal
identity.
• The identity exists in the consciousness
alone, not in the body and soul.
Empiricism – knowledge originates in our
direct sense experience (by Tabula Rasa)
3. DAVID HUME
• Scottish Philosopher, Economist,
Historian.
• One of the most important British
philosophers of all time
• Opposed Descartes
"The science of man is the only solid foundation for the
other sciences"
Experiences can only be categorized into two:
1. Impressions
— result of direct experience both
internally and externally, engraved in
the soul.
— Lively and Vivid
2. Ideas
— weakened copies of impressions
— a simple copy, a reproduction of the
spontaneous impression
• The Self is nothing else but a bundle of
impressions.
• The Self is founded on consciousness
(impressions) and not on the substance of
either the soul or the body
4. IMMANUEL KANT
• The Mind organizes the impressions.
• The self is a subject, an organizing principle
that makes a unified and intelligible
experience possible.
• The self is the product of reason, a
regulative principle
• He recognized both the Rationalism
(Reason/Mind) of Descartes and the
Empiricism (Experiences/Impressions) of
Hume
4. GILBERT RYLE
• Wrote the book, The Concept of Mind
• He claimed that the mind does not exist.
• The self is best understood as a pattern of
behavior, the tendency or disposition for a
person to behave in a certain way in certain
circumstances.
“I act therefore I am” - is a principle that reduces all of
human action into a materialistic determinism.
5. PAUL CHURCHLAND
Eliminative materialism – radical claim that
our ordinary, common sense understanding
of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or
all of the mental states posited by common
sense do not actually exist.
• It will integrate all that we are learning
about how the brain works on a
neurological level
• The psychology-based conceptual
framework currently used by most
academic disciplines and popular
culture may not end up being
completely eradicated and replaced
by a neuroscience framework still
operates within his physicalist
framework:
• For those “folk psychology”
terms not eliminated will
and nevertheless be reducible to
neurophysical statements of
brain states
6. MAURICE MERLEAU–PONTY
• Opposed to dualists
• All experience is embodied
• The living body, his thoughts, emotions,
and experiences are all one.
— “I live in my body.”
— “Mind-body intertwined”
“There is not a duality of substances but only the
dialectic of living being in its biological milieu.”
• Natural synthesis of biology and mind.
• The body itself is the knowing subject.
Embodied Subjectivity – the self is simply
the consciousness of a body which is
embodied in the world capable of
experiencing and which is a natural
synthesis of mind and biology
SUMMARY

• “The Self is an immortal soul that exists

over time” (Socrates, Plato, St. Augustine)

• “The self is a thinking thing, distinct from

the body.” (Descartes)

• “Personal identity is made possible by self-

consciousness” (Locke)

• “There is no ‘self’, only a bundle of

constantly changing perceptions passing
through the theatre of our minds” (Hume)

• “The self is a unifying subject, an

organizing consciousness that makes
intelligible experience possible” (Kant)

• “The self is the way people behave” (Ryle)

• “The self is the brain. Mental states will be

superseded by brain states” (Churchland)

• “The self is embodied subjectivity”

(Merleau-Ponty)
 THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE SELF
SOCIOLOGY
• is the study of human social relationships
and institutions
• a social science that studies human
societies, their interactions, and the
processes that preserve and change
them
SOCIETY
• an organized group of persons
associated together for religious,
benevolent, cultural, scientific, political,
patriotic, or other purposes.
• a body of individuals living as members
of a community; community.
• a large group of people who live together
in an organized way, making decisions
about how to do things and sharing the
work that needs to be done.
SOCIALIZATION
• The process through which the individual
becomes a social being.
• Socially formed norms, beliefs, and
values come to exist within the individual
A. THE SELF IS SEPARATE
— It is distinct from other selves.
— It is unique and has its own identity
— One cannot be another
B. THE SELF IS SELF-CONTAINED AND
INDEPENDENT
— In itself and can exist by itself
— Its distinctness allows it to be self-
contained with its own thoughts,
characteristics, and volition
— It does not require any other self for it to
exist
C. THE SELF IS CONSISTENT
— The Self has a personality that is
enduring and can persist for some time
— Its consistency allows it to be studied,
described, and measured
— A particular self’s traits, characteristics,
tendencies, and potentialities are more or
less the same
D. THE SELF IS UNITARY
— It is the center of all experiences and
thoughts that run through a certain
person
— It is the part of an individual where all
processes, emotions, and thoughts
converge
E. THE SELF IS PRIVATE
— Each person sorts out information,
feelings, emotions, and thought
processes within the self. The whole
process is never accessible to anyone
but the self.
— The Self is isolated from the external
world. It lives within its own world.
— However, the Self is always connected
and affected by external circumstances
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVIST PERSPECTIVE
• The Self is ever-changing and dynamic,
allowing influences to take part in its shaping
• They argue for a merged view of the person
and their social context where the
boundaries of one cannot easily be
separated from the boundaries of the other
• The Self is always in participation with social
life and its identity subjected to influences
here and there.
• The Self is multifaceted
1. GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
• An American Sociologist
• Founder of American Pragmatism
• A pioneer of symbolic interaction theory
• One of the founders of Social Psychology
— The Self develops only through social
experience; not innately biological
— The social experience is an exchange of
symbols
— Understanding intention requires imagining a
situation from another’s point of view (taking
the role of others)
— The Self is the combination of the “I” and
the “me,” the self proves to be noticeably
entwined within a sociological existence
THE TWO COMPONENTS OF THE SELF
• Me – represents the expectations and
attitudes of others organized into a social
self. The individual defines his or her own
behavior with reference to the generalized
attitude of the social group he/she occupies.
It is the self as object.
• “I” – is the response to the “me,” or the
person’s individuality. It is the essence of
agency in human action. It is an individual’s
impulses. It is the self as subject.
2. CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
• American Sociologist
• Born on Aug. 17, 1864, in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, USA
• Employed a sociopsychological approach to
the understanding of society
THE LOOKING GLASS SELF
• The degree of personal insecurity you
display in social situations is determined
by what you believe other people think of
you.
• A person’s self grows out of a person’s
social interactions with others.
• How we see ourselves does not come
from who we really are, but rather from
how we believe others see us
THREE STEPS IN THE FORMATION OF THE
LOOKING-GLASS SELF
1. We imagine how we appear to others.
2. We imagine how others judge us based on
those appearances
3. We ponder, internalize, or reject these
judgments
THE LABELING BIAS
• The expectations/labels of others start to
become self-fulfilling prophecies, and our
self-concept and even our behavior start to
align with them
• If we are repeatedly labeled and evaluated
by others, then self-labeling may occur,
which happens when we adopt others’ labels
explicitly into our self-concept