WEEK 2:

1. INTRODUCTION TO SELF-UNDERSTANDING
2. THE SELF ACCORDING TO PHILOSOPHY

Understanding oneself is essential to understand behaviors and beliefs

that affects ourselves and others specifically in becoming effective and
successful person in life, work, and relationship. Moreover, self-understanding
(1) provides a sense of purpose; (2) leads to healthier relationships; (3) helps
harness your natural strength; and (4) promotes confidence.

This module will introduce you to the basic concepts of self and
personality, and how they are related with each other. Self and personality
characterized the way we define our existence, also these refers on how we organized
our experiences that are reflected to our behavior. On the other hand, people have different ideas about
themselves. These ideas represent the self of the person. Moreover, we behave in different ways in a
given situation, but people also behave fairly stable in different circumstances. The relatively permanent
pattern of behavior represents personality of the person. In details,

Personality

 The etymological derivative of personality comes from the word “persona”, the theatrical masks
worn by Romans in Greek and Latin drama. Personality also comes from the two Latin words
“per” and “sonare”, which literally means “to sound through”.
 Personality have no single definition since different personality theories have different views on
how to define it. However, the commonly accepted definition of personality is that it is a
relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality
to a person’s behavior (Roberts & Mroczek, 2008).
 Personality plays a key role in affecting how people shape their lives. It involves the complex
relationship of people with their environment, how they cope and adjust through life, and how
they respond to demands of physical and social challenges.
 Personality is the overall pattern or integration of a person’s structure, modes of behavior,
attitudes, aptitudes, interests, intellectual abilities, and many other distinguishable personality
traits. Personality is the conglomeration of the following components: physical self, intelligence,
character traits, attitudes, habits, interest, personal discipline, moral values, principles and
philosophies of life.

Determinants of Personality

Personality refers to the total person in his/her overt and covert behavior. The determinants of
factors of personality are as follows:

 Environmental Factors of Personality. The surroundings of an individual compose the

environmental factors of personality. This includes the neighborhood a person lives in, his school,
college, university and workplace. Moreover, it also counts the social circle the individual has.
Friends, parents, colleagues, co-workers and bosses, everybody plays a role as the determinants
of personality.

 Biological Factors of Personality. This further includes:

1) hereditary factors or genetic make-up of the person that inherited from their parents. This
describes the tendency of the person to appear and behave the way their parents are;
2) physical features include the overall physical structure of a person: height, weight, color,
sex, beauty and body language, etc. Most of the physical structures change from time to
time, and so does the personality. With exercises, cosmetics and surgeries, many physical
features are changed, and therefore, the personality of the individual also evolves; and
3) brain. The preliminary results from the electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) research
gives indication that better understanding of human personality and behavior might come
from the study of the brain.
  Situational Factors of Personality. Although these factors do not literally
create and shape up an individual’s personality, situational factors do alter a
person’s behavior and response from time to time. The situational factors can be
commonly observed when a person behaves contrastingly and exhibits different
traits and characteristics.

 Cultural Factors. Culture is traditionally considered as the major determinants

of an individual’s personality. The culture largely determinants what a person is
and what a person will learn. The culture within a person is brought up, is very
important determinant of behavior of a person. Culture is complex of these
belief, values, and techniques for dealing with the environment which are
shared among contemporaries and transmitted by one generation to the next.

Personality Traits

Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings,

and behaviors. Personality traits imply consistency and stability—someone who scores
high on a specific trait like Extraversion is expected to be sociable in different situations
and over time. Thus, trait psychology rests on the idea that people differ from one
another in terms of where they stand on a set of basic trait dimensions that persist over
time and across situations.

The most widely used system of traits is called the Five-Factor Model. This
system includes five broad traits that can be remembered with the acronym OCEAN:
Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Each of
the major traits from the Big Five can be divided into facets to give a more fine-grained
analysis of someone's personality. In addition, some trait theorists argue that there are
other traits that cannot be completely captured by the Five-Factor Model. Critics of the
trait concept argue that people do not act consistently from one situation to the next and
that people are very influenced by situational forces. Thus, one major debate in the field
concerns the relative power of people’s traits versus the situations in which they find
themselves as predictors of their behavior.

The Five-Factor Model of Personality

Research that used the lexical approach showed that many of the personality
descriptors found in the dictionary do indeed overlap. In other words, many of the
words that we use to describe people are synonyms. Thus, if we want to know what a
person is like, we do not necessarily need to ask how sociable they are, how friendly
they are, and how gregarious they are. Instead, because sociable people tend to be
friendly and gregarious, we can summarize this personality dimension with a single
term. Someone who is sociable, friendly, and gregarious would typically be described as
an “Extravert.” Once we know she is an extravert, we can assume that she is sociable,
friendly, and gregarious.

The most widely accepted system to emerge from this approach was “The Big
Five” or “Five- Factor Model” (Goldberg, 1990; McCrae & John, 1992; McCrae &
Costa, 1987). The Big Five comprises five major traits shown in the Figure 2 below. A
way to remember these five is with the acronym OCEAN (O is for Openness; C is for
GED 101 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
Conscientiousness; E is for Extraversion; A is for Agreeableness; N is for Neuroticism).
The table below provides descriptions of people who would score high and low on each
of these traits.

Table 1. Descriptions of Personality Traits

Big 5 Trait Definition
Openness The tendency to appreciate new art, ideas, values, feelings, and behaviors.
Conscientiousness The tendency to be careful, on-time for appointments, to follow rules, and
to be hard working.
Extraversion The tendency to be talkative, sociable, and to enjoy others; the tendency to
have a dominant style.
Agreeableness The tendency to agree and go along with others rather than to assert one
owns opinions and choices.
Neurotism The tendency to be frequently experience negative emotions such as anger,
worry, and sadness, as well as being itnerpersonally sensitive.

GED 101 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

Philosophy

Philosophy is defined as the study of knowledge or wisdom from its Latin

roots, philo (love) and sophia (wisdom). This field is also considered as “The
Queen of All Sciences” because every scientific discipline has philosophical
foundations.

Various thinkers for centuries tried to explain the natural causes of everything
that exist specifically the inquiry on the self preoccupied these philosophers in
the history. The Greek philosophers were the ones who seriously questioned myths
and moved away from them in attempting to understand reality by exercising the art of questioning that
satisfies their curiosity, including the questions about self. The following lecture will present the different
philosophical perspectives and views about self.

Socrates

 A philosopher from Athens, Greece and said to have the

greatest influence on European thought.
 According to the history he was not able to write any of
his teachings and life’s account instead, he is known from the
writings of his student Plato who became one of the greatest
philosophers of his time. Socrates had a unique style of asking
questions called Socratic Method.
 Socratic Method or dialectic method involves the search
for the correct/proper definition of a thing. In this method,
Socrates did not lecture, he instead would ask questions and
engage the person in a discussion. He would begin by acting as if
Image Source he did not know anything and would get the other person to
clarify their ideas and resolve logical inconsistencies (Price,
2000).
 The foundation of Socrates philosophy was the Delphic
Oracle’s that command to “Know Thyself”. Here, Socrates would like to emphasize that knowing
or understanding oneself should be more than the physical self, or the body.
 According to Socrates, self is dichotomous which means composed of two things: The physical
realm or the one that is changeable, temporal, and imperfect. The best example of the physical
realm is the physical world. The physical world is consisting of anything we sense – see, smell,
feel, hear, and taste. It is always changing and deteriorating. The ideal realm is the one that is
imperfect and unchanging, eternal, and immortal. This includes the intellectual essences of the
universe like the concept of beauty, truth, and goodness. Moreover, the ideal realm is also present
in the physical world. One may define someone as beautiful or truthful, but their definition is
limited and imperfect for it is always relative and subjective. It is only the ideal forms themselves
that are perfect, unchanging, and eternal.
 For Socrates, a human is composed of body and soul, the first belongs to the physical realm
because it changed, it is imperfect, and it dies, and the latter belongs to ideal realm for it survives
the death. Socrates also used the term soul to identify self.

GED 101 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

  The self, according to Socrates is the immortal and unified entity that is consistent over time. For
example, a human being remains the same person during their childhood to adulthood given the
fact that they undergone developmental changes throughout their lifespan.

Plato

 A student of Socrates, who introduced the idea of a

three- part soul/self that is composed of reason, physical appetite
and spirit or passion.
o The Reason enables human to think deeply, make wise
choices and achieve a true understanding of eternal
truths. Plato also called this as divine essence.
o The physical Appetite is the basic biological needs of
human being such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.
o And the spirit or passion is the basic emotions of human
being such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness and
empathy.
 These three elements of the self works in every
Image Source
individual inconsistently. According to Plato, it is always the
responsibility of the reason to organize, control, and reestablish
harmonious
relationship between these three elements.
 Plato also illustrated his view of the soul/self in “Phaedrus” in his metaphor: the soul is like a
winged chariot drawn by two powerful horses: a white horse, representing Spirit, and a black
horse, embodying appetite. The charioteer is reason, whose task is to guide the chariot to the
eternal realm by controlling the two independent-minded horses. Those charioteers who are
successful in setting a true course and ensuring that the two steeds work together in harmonious
unity achieve true wisdom and banquet with the gods. However, those charioteers who are unable
to control their horses and keep their chariot on track are destined to experience personal,
intellectual, and spiritual failure.

St. Augustine
 He is considered as the last of the great ancient
philosophers whose ideas were greatly Platonic. In melding
philosophy and religious beliefs together, Augustine has been
characterized as Christianity’s first theologian.
 Like Plato, Augustine believed that the physical body is
different from the immortal soul. Early in his philosophical
development he described body as “snare” or “cage” of the soul
and said that the body is a “slave” of the soul he even
characterized that “the soul makes war with the body”. Later on
he came to view the body as “spouse” of the soul, with both
attached to one another by a “natural appetite.” He concluded,
“That the body is united with the soul, so that man may be entire
and complete, is a fact we recognize on the evidence of our own
Image Source: nature.”
 According to St. Augustine, the human nature is
compos
ed of
two
realms:
 1. God as the source of all reality and truth. Through mystical experience, man is capable
of knowing eternal truths. This is made possible through the existence of the one eternal
truth which is God. He further added that without God as the source of all truth, man
could never understand eternal truth. This relationship with God means that those who
know most about God will come closest to understanding the true nature of the world.
2. The sinfulness of man. The cause of sin or evil is an act of mans’ freewill. Moral
goodness can only be achieved through the grace of God.
 He also stated that real happiness can only be found in God. For God is love and he created
humans for them to also love. Problems arise because of the objects humans choose to love.
Disordered love results when man loves the wrong things which he believes will give him
happiness. Furthermore, he said that if man loves God first and everything else to a lesser degree,
then all will fall into its rightful place.
Rene Descartes
 A French philosopher, mathematician, and considered
the founder of modern philosophy.
 Descartes, famous principle the “cogito, ergo sum—“I
think, therefore I exist” established his philosophical views on
“true knowledge” and concept of self.
 He explained that in order to gain true knowledge, one
must doubt everything even own existence. Doubting makes
someone aware that they are thinking being thus, they exist.
The essence of existing as a human identity is the possibility
of being aware of our selves: being self-conscious in this way
is integral to having a personal identity. Conversely, it would
be impossible to be self-conscious if we did not have a
personal identity of which to be conscious. In other words, the
Image Source: https://www.sapaviva.com/

essence of self is being a thinking thing.

 The self is a dynamic entity that engages in metal operations – thinking, reasoning, and
perceiving processes. In addition to this, self-identity is dependent on the awareness in engaging
with those mental operations.
 He declared that the essential self or the self as the thinking entity is radically different from the
physical body. The thinking self or soul is a non-material, immortal, conscious being,
independent of the physical laws of the universe while the physical body is a material, mortal,
non-thinking entity, fully governed by the physical laws of nature.
 He also maintained that the soul and the body are independent of one another and each can exist
and function without the other. In cases in which people are sleeping or comatose, their bodies
continue to function even though their minds are not thinking, much like the mechanisms of a
clock.
 He identified the physical self as part of nature, governed by the physical laws of the universe,
and available to scientific analysis and experimentation, and the conscious self (mind, soul) is a
part of the spiritual realm, independent of the physical laws of the universe, governed only by the
laws of reason and God’s will. And because it exists outside of the natural world of cause-and-
effect, the conscious self is able to exercise free will in the choices it makes.
John Locke
  An English philosopher and physician and famous in his
concept of “Tabula Rasa” or Blank Slate that assumes the
nurture side of human development.

 The self, according to Locke is consciousness. In his

essay entitled On Personal Identity (from his most famous
work, Essay Concerning Human Understanding) he discussed
the reflective analysis of how an individual may experience the
self in everyday living. He provided the following key points:
1. To discover the nature of personal identity, it is
Image Source: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/

important to find out what it means to be a person.

2. A person is a thinking, intelligent being who has the
abilities to reason and to reflect.
3. A person is also someone who considers themself to be
the same thing in different times and different places.
4. Consciousness as being aware that we are thinking—
always accompanies thinking and is an essential part of the thinking process.
5. Consciousness makes possible our belief that we are the same identity in different times and
different places.
 Although Locke and Descartes believed that a person or the self is a thinking intelligent being
who has the abilities to reflect and to reason, Locke was not convinced with the assumptions of
Plato, St. Augustine and Descartes that the individual self necessarily exists in a single soul or
substance. For Locke, personal identity and the soul or substance in which the personal identity is
situated are two very different things. The bottom line of his theory on self is that self is not tied
to any particular body or substance. It only exists in other times and places because of the
memory of those experiences.

David Hume
 He was a Scottish philosopher and also an empiricist.
 His claim about self is quite controversial because he
assumed that there is no self! In his essay entitled, “On
Personal Identity” (1739) he said that, if we carefully examine
the contents of [our] experience, we find that there are only
two distinct entities, "impressions" and "ideas".
 Impressions are the basic sensations of our experience,
the elemental data of our minds: pain, pleasure, heat, cold,
happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, and so on.
 On the other hand, ideas are copies of impressions that
include thoughts and images that are built up from our
primary impressions through a variety of relationships, but
because they are derivative copies of impressions, they are
once removed from reality.
Image Source: https://www.britannica.com/
 Hume considered that the self does not exist because all
of the experiences that a person may have are just perceptions
and this includes the perception of self. None of these perceptions resemble a unified and
permanent self-identity that exists over time.
  He further added that there are instances that an individual is limited in experiencing their
perception like in sleeping. Similarly, when someone died all empirical senses end and according
to him, it makes no sense to believe that self exists in other forms. As an empiricist, Hume
provide an honest description and analysis of his own experience, within which there is no self to
be found.
 Hume explained that the self that is being experienced by an individual is nothing but a kind of
fictional self. Human created an imaginary creature which is not real. “Fictional self” is created to
unify the mental events and introduce order into an individual lives, but this “self” has no real
existence.

Sigmund Freud
 A well-known Australian psychologist and considered as
the Father and Founder of Psychoanalysis. His influence in
Psychology and therapy is dominant and popular in the 20th to
21st century.
 The dualistic view of self by Freud involves the
conscious self and unconscious self.
 The conscious self is governed by reality principle. Here,
the self is rational, practical, and appropriate to the social
environment. The conscious self has the task of controlling the
constant pressures of the unconscious self, as its primitive
impulses continually seek for immediate discharge.

Image Source: https://www.researchgate.net/The unconscious self is governed by pleasure principle.
It is the self that is aggressive, destructive, unrealistic and
instinctual. Both of Freud’s self needs immediate gratification
and reduction of tensions to optimal levels and the goal of every individual is to make unconscious
conscious.
 Freud proposed how mind works, he called this as provinces or structures of the mind. By illustrating
the tip of the iceberg which according to him represents conscious awareness which characterizes the
person in dealing with the external world. The observable behavior, however, is further controlled by
the workings of the subconscious/unconscious mind.
 Subconscious serves as the repository of past experiences,
repressed memories, fantasies, and urges. The three levels of
the mind are:
1. Id. This is primarily based on the pleasure principle. It
demands immediate satisfaction and is not hindered
by societal expectations.
2. Ego. The structure that is primarily based on the
reality principle. This mediates between the impulses
of the id and restraints of the superego.
3. Superego. This is primarily dependent on learning the
difference between right and wrong, thus it is called
moral principle. Morality of actions is largely
dependent on childhood upbringing particularly on
rewards and punishments. Image Source:
 According to Freud, there are two kinds of instinct that drive individual behavior – the eros or the life
instinct and the thanatos of the death instinct. The energy of eros is called libido and includes urges
necessary for individual and species survival like thrist, hunger, and sex.in cases that human behaior
is directed towards destruction in the form of aggression and violence, such are the manifestations of
thanatos.

Gilbert Ryle
 A British analytical philosopher. He was an important
figure in the field of Linguistic Analysis which focused on the
solving of philosophical puzzles through an analysis of
language.
 According to Ryle, 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.
 He opposed the notable ideas of the previous
philosophers and even claimed that those were results of
confused conceptual thinking he termed, category mistake.
 The category mistake happens when we speak about the
self as something independent of the physical body: a purely
Image Source: https://www.jstor.org/ mental entity existing in time but not space

Immanuel Kant
 A German Philosopher who made great contribution to
the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Kant is
widely regarded as the greatest philosopher of the modern
period.
 Kant maintained that an individual self makes the
experience of the world comprehensible because it is
responsible for synthesizing the discreet data of sense
experience into a meaningful whole.
 It is the self that makes consciousness for the person to
make sense of everything. It is the one that help every
individual gain insight and knowledge. If the self failed to do
this synthesizing function, there would be a chaotic and
insignificant collection of sensations.
Image Source: https://mediaethicsmorning.wordpress.com/

 Additionally, the self is the product of reason, a

regulative principle because the self regulates experience by
making
unified experience possible and unlike Hume, Kant’s self is not the object of consciousness, but it
makes the consciousness understandable and unique.
 Transcendental apperception happens when people do not experience self directly, instead as a
unity of all impressions that are organized by the mind through perceptions. Kant concluded that
 all objects of knowledge, which includes the self, are phenomenal. That the true nature of things
is altogether unknown and unknowable (Price, 2000).
 For Kant, the kingdom of God is within man. God is manifested in people’s lives therefore it is
man’s duty to move towards perfection. Kant emphasized that people should always see duty as a
divine command (Price, 2000).

Paul and Patricia Churchland

 An American
philosopher interested in the
fields of philosophy of mind,
philosophy of science, cognitive
neurobiology, epistemology, and
perception.
 Churchlands’ central
argument is that the concepts and
theoretical vocabulary that
people use to think about the
selves— using such terms as
belief, desire, fear, sensation,
pain, joy— actually misrepresent
Image Source: http://thesciencenetwork.org/
the reality of minds and selves.
He claims that the self is a
activity. product of brain
 The behavior of the self can be attributed to the neuropharmacological states, the neural activity
in specialized anatomical areas.
 Neurophilosopy was coined by Patricia Churchland, the modern scientific inquiry looks into the
application of neurology to age-old problems in philosophy. The philosophy of neuroscience is
the study of the philosophy of science, neuroscience, and psychology. It aims to explore the
relevance of neurolinguistic experiments/studies to the philosophy of the mind.
 Patricia Churchland claimed that man’s brain is responsible for the identity known as self. The
biochemical properties of the brain according to this philosophy of neuroscience is really
responsible for man’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
 Paul Churchland is one of the many philosophers and psychologists that viewed the self from a
materialistic point of view, contending that in the final analysis mental states are identical with,
reducible to, or explainable in terms of physical brain states. This assumption was made due to
the physiological processes of the body that directly affecting the mental state of the person. The
advent of sophisticated technology and scientific research gives hope to understand the
connection between the physical body and the mind/brain relationship that integrated in the self.
 Being an eliminative materialist, he believes that there is a need to develop a new vocabulary and
conceptual framework that is grounded in neuroscience. This new framework will be a more
accurate reflection of the human mind and self.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
  A French philosopher and phenomenologist.
 He took a very different approach to the self and
the mind/body “problem.” According to him, the
division between the “mind” and the “body” is a
product of confused thinking. The self is experienced as
a unity in which the mental and physical are seamlessly
woven together. This unity is the primary experience of
selves and begin to doubt it when an individual use their
minds to concoct abstract notions of a separate mind
Image Source: http://all-to-human.blogspot.com/
and body.
 Developed the concept of self-subject and
contended that perceptions occur existentially. Thus, the
consciousness, the world, and the human body are all
interconnected as they mutually perceive the world.
 According to him, the world and the sense of
self are emergent phenomena in the ongoing process of
man’s becoming.
  Phenomenology provides a direct description of the human experience which serves to
guide man’s conscious actions. He further added that, the world is a field of perception,
and human consciousness assigns meaning to the world. Thus man cannot separate
himself from his perceptions of the world.
 Perception is not purely the result of sensations nor it is purely interpretations. Rather
consciousness is a process that includes sensing as well as interpreting/reasoning.

References/Sources:

1. Bersoto, M.A., Arcega, A.M., & Cullar, D. S (2020). Module in Understanding the Self.
Batangas City, Philippines: Batangas State University.
2. Gazzingan, Leslie B. et. al., (2018). UNDERSTANDING THE SELF. A Compilation,
Muntinlupa City, Panday-lahi Publishing House