University of Saint Anthony

(Dr. Santiago G. Ortega Memorial)

City of Iriga

College of Liberal Arts

NGEC 8 – Understanding the Self

ACTIVITY NO. 2

Research Work: Give the philosophical perspectives about the self of the
following philosophers:

1. Socrates- And contrary to the opinion of the masses, one's true self, according
to Socrates, is not to be identified with what we own, with our social status, our
reputation, or even with our body. Instead, Socrates famously maintained that
our true self is our soul.
2. Plato- Plato argues that the soul is really an entity distinct from the body.
Indeed, for Plato, the soul is the self. As we can see, the body and the soul can
be separated. In fact, Plato believes that the soul is just residing in the body
temporarily.
3. Aristotle- While Aristotle believes that the human person is essentially body and
soul, he was led to interpret the “true self” of humans as the soul that animates
the body. ... Again, Aristotle's concept of the self is hylomorphic, that is, the self
or the human person is composed of body and soul. The two are inseparable.
4. St. Augustine- ugustine's sense of self is his relation to God, both in his
recognition of God's love and his response to it achieved through self-
presentation, then self-realization. Augustine believed one could not achieve
inner peace without finding God's love.
5. Rene Descartes- With his ties to dualism, Descartes believed the mind is the
seat of our consciousness. Because it houses our drives, intellect, and passions,
it gives us our identity and our sense of self. ... He also believed that the idea of
a mind controlling the body is as erroneous as the idea of ghosts controlling
machines.
6. John Locke- John Locke holds that personal identity is a matter of psychological
continuity. 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.
7. David Hume- Hume suggests that the self is just a bundle of perceptions, like
links in a chain.Hume argues that our concept of the self is a result of our natural
habit of attributing unified existence to any collection of associated parts. This
belief is natural, but there is no logical support for it.
8. Immanuel Kant- According to him, we all have an inner and an outer self
which together form our consciousness. The inner self is comprised of our
psychological state and our rational intellect. The outer self includes our sense
 University of Saint Anthony
(Dr. Santiago G. Ortega Memorial)
City of Iriga

College of Liberal Arts

and the physical world. ... According to Kant, representation occurs through our
senses.
9. Sigmund Freud- Freud's view of the self was multitiered, divided among the
conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. ... And though the conscious self has
an important role to play in our lives, it is the unconscious self that holds the
greatest fascination for Freud, and which has the dominant influence in our
personalities.
10.Gilbert Ryle- Ryle saw a tendency of philosophers to search for objects whose
nature was neither physical nor mental. Ryle believed, instead, that
"philosophical problems are problems of a certain sort; they are not problems of
an ordinary sort about special entities." Ryle analogizes philosophy to
cartography.
11.Paul and Patricia Churchland- Paul and Pat Churchland believe that the
mind-body problem will be solved not by philosophers but by neuroscientists,
and that our present knowledge is so paltry that we would not understand the
solution even if it were suddenly to present itself.
12.Maurice Merleau-Ponty- Maurice Merleau-Ponty believed the physical body to
be an important part of what makes up the subjective self. ... This work asserts
that self and perception are encompassed in a physical body. The physical body
is part of self. The perceptions of the mind and the actions of the body are
interconnected.
 University of Saint Anthony
(Dr. Santiago G. Ortega Memorial)
City of Iriga

College of Liberal Arts

The aperture opening has an opening where the aperture opening can be enlarged and
decreased and you can control it to shrink and enlarge and he is responsible for how much light
enters the camera and the shutter speed you can also control how fast and how slowly the
shutter curtain closes, and there are numbers on the camera how fast you expose the film to
light.