The Self from Various

Perspectives
Philosophical Perspective
Socrates
• Classical Greek philosopher
credited as one of the founders
of Western philosophy
• Known for his method of inquiry
in testing ideas called Socratic
Method
• The idea is tested by asking a
series of questions to
determine underlying beliefs
and the extent of knowledge
to guide the person toward
better understanding.
Socrates
• Socratic Ideas:
• The soul is immortal
• The care of the soul is the task of philosophy
• Virtue is necessary to obtain happiness
• “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
• Self-knowledge (the examination of one’s self) and question about
how one ought to live one’s life are very important concerns
because only by knowing yourself can you hope to improve your life
(Rappe, 1995).
Socrates
• Two Kinds of existence:
• Visible
• Changes; the body
• Invisible
• Remains constant; the kind that is invisible to humans yet
sensed and understood by the mind (soul)
• “When the body and soul are together, nature assigns our body to be a
slave and to be ruled and the soul to be a ruler and master.”
• The body was a reluctant slave and the soul gets dragged with what
is always changing, thus leaving the soul confused (Organ, 1986).
Socrates
• The goal of life is to be happy.
• The virtuous man is a happy man and that virtue alone is the one and
only supreme good that will secure his/her happiness.
• Virtue
• Moral excellence
• An individual is considered virtuous if his/her character is made up of
the moral qualities that are accepted as virtues.
Plato
• Student of Socrates.
• Philosophical method is Collection
and Division
• A method done by collecting
all generic ideas that seemed
to have common
characteristics and then
divided them into different
kinds until the subdivision of
ideas became specific.
Plato
• Wrote “Theory of Forms”
• Asserted that the physical world is not really the “real” world
because the ultimate reality exists beyond it.
• Soul
• The most divine aspect of the human being.
• 3 parts:
• Appetitive (sensual) –the element that enjoys sensual
experiences
• Rational (reasoning) –the element that forbids the person to
enjoy sensual experiences
• Spirited (feeling) –the element that is inclined toward reason
but understand the demand of passion
St. Augustine
• One of the Latin Fathers of
the Church, one of the
Doctors of the Church and
one of the most significant
Christian thinkers.
• Deeply influenced by Plato’s
ideas and adopted Plato’s
concept of self as an
immaterial (but rational)
soul.
St. Augustine
• Asserted that “forms” were concepts existing within the perfect and
eternal God where the soul belonged.
• The soul held the Truth and was capable of scientific thinking.
• Self
• An inner, immaterial “I” that had self-knowledge and self-
awareness.
• The human being is both the soul and body( possesses senses such as
imagination, memory, reason and mind through which the soul
experiences the world).
St. Augustine
• 3 aspects of the self/soul:
• Able to be aware of itself
• Recognizes itself as a holistic one
• Aware of its unity.
• “Everything related to the physical world belongs to the physical body,
and if a person concerns himself/herself with this physical world…he
will not be different from animals.”
• Man is similar to God as regards to his mind and its ability…incorrect
usage of it would lose his/her possibility to reach real and lasting
happiness.
Rene Descartes
• Philosopher, mathematician, and
scientist who is considered as
the father of modern Western
philosophy.
• Philosophical method is
Hyperbolical/ metaphysical doubt
or methodological skepticism
• A systematic process of being
skeptical about the truth of
one’s beliefs in order to
determine which beliefs could
be ascertained as true.
Rene Descartes
• Doubt was a principal tool of disciplined inquiry.
• “Cogito ergo sum” translated as “I think, therefore I am.”
• Everything perceived by the senses could not be used as proof of
existence because human senses could be fooled.
• There was only one thing we could be sure of in this world, and that
was everything that could be doubted.
• Self
• Constant; it is not prone to change, and it is not affected by time.
• Only the immaterial soul remains the same throughout time
• The immaterial soul is the source of our identity.
Rene Descartes
• Cartesian Dualism
• The immaterial substance(soul) possesses a body and is so
intimately bound by the self and forms a union with the body but
still distinct from each other.
Distinctions between the soul and body

The soul The Body

Conscious thinking substance that Material substance that changes
is unaffected by time through time
Known only to itself Can be doubted
Not made up of parts Made up of physical, quantifiable
divisible parts
John Locke
• Philosopher and physician, widely
regarded as one of the most
influential of Enlightenment
thinkers.
• Expanded Descartes’ definition
of the self to include the
memories of thinking thing.
• Self
• Identified with consciousness
and consists of sameness of
consciousness.
John Locke
• A person’s memories provide a continuity of experience that allows
him/her to identify himself/herself as the same person over time.
• Defense of accountability
• Self is the same self in the passing of time, thus held accountable
for past behaviors he/she can only remember.
David Hume
• Philosopher, historian and
economist who is best known for
his philosophical empiricism,
skepticism, and naturalism.
• Opponent of Descartes’
Rationalism
• Reason, rather than
experience, is the foundation
of all knowledge.
• Empiricism
• The origin of all knowledge is
sense experience.
David Hume
• Bundle theory
• Described the self or person as a bundle or a collection of
different perceptions that are moving in a very fast and successive
manner ---”self as a perpetual flux”
• The self is merely made up of successive impressions.
• 2 divisions of mind’s perceptions:
• Impressions
• Perceptions that are the most strong
• Ideas
• Perceptions that are less forcible and lively
David Hume
• Self
• Nothing but a series of incoherent impressions received by the
senses.
• Does not exist because man’s perception are only active for as long
as he/she is conscious.
• A passive observer; whereby the total annihilation of the self
comes at “death.”
Immanuel Kant
• Considered the most influential
thinker of the Enlightenment era
and one of the greatest Western
philosophers of all times.
• His works are especially those on
epistemology, aesthetics and
ethics.
Immanuel Kant
• Self
• Transcendental
• Related to spiritual or nonphysical realm.
• 2 Kinds of consciousness of self:
• Consciousness of oneself and one’s psychological states; and
• Consciousness of oneself and one’s states by performing acts of
apperception.
• Apperception
• The mental process by which a person makes sense of an
idea by assimilating it to the body of ideas he or she
already possesses.
Immanuel Kant
• 2 components of the self:
• Inner self
• The self by which you are aware of the alterations in your own
state.
• Outer self
• Includes your senses and the physical world.
Sigmund Freud
• A neurologist and the founder of
psychoanalysis.
• A clinical method for treating
psychopathology through
dialogue between a patient
and a psychoanalyst.
• Developed psychoanalysis which
answered questions about the
human psyche.
• The totality of the human
mind, both conscious and
unconscious.
Sigmund Freud
• 3 levels of consciousness
• Conscious
• Awareness of present perceptions,
feelings, thoughts, memories and fantasies
at any particular moment
• Pre-conscious/ subconscious
• Data that can readily be brought to
consciousness.
• Unconscious
• Data retained but not easily available to
the individual’s conscious awareness or
scrutiny
Sigmund Freud
• Existence of the unconscious as:
• A repository for traumatic repressed memories, and
• The source of anxiety-provoking drives that is socially
unacceptable to the individual.
• Psychoanalytic Theory
• A personality theory based on the notion that an individual get
motivated by unseen forces, controlled by the conscious and the
rational thought.
Sigmund Freud
• 3 parts of the psyche/mind:
• Id
• Operates on the pleasure principle
• Pleasure
• Achievement of demands
• Unpleasant feeling/feeling of tension
• Denial of the desires/demands
• Ego
• Operates according to the reality principle
• Defense mechanisms
• Use to ward off unpleasant feelings of anxiety due to the
failure to use reality principle.
Sigmund Freud
• Superego
• Operates according to the moral principle
• 2 systems:
• Conscience
• Guilt feeling
• Ideal self
• The imaginary picture of how you ought to be.
Gilbert Ryle
• 20th Century British
philosopher, and professor
who produced a critique on
Descartes’ idea that the
mind is distinct from the
body.
• Rejected the notion that
mental states are separable
from physical states.
Gilbert Ryle
• Category-mistake
• Distinction between mind and matter
• His points against Descartes theory are:
• The relation between mind and body are not isolated processes
• Mental processes are intelligent acts, and are not distinct from
each other.
• The operation of the mind is itself an intelligent act.
• Distinct self is not real.
• One’s sense of self is obtained through his/her behaviors and actions.
Paul Churchland
• Philosopher known for his studies
in neurophilosophy and the
philosophy of mind.
• Philosophy stands on a
materialistic view
• Nothing but matter exists.
• Viewed the immaterial,
unchanging soul/self not
existing because it cannot be
experienced by the senses.
Paul Churchland
• “Eliminative materialism”
• People’s common-sense understanding of the mind is false and
certain classes of mental states do not exist.
• The “sense of self” originated from the brain itself and that self is a
product of electrochemical signals produced by the brain.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Phenomenological philosopher and
author.
• Self
• An “embodied subjectivity”
• Embodied
• To give a body (to an
immaterial substance)
• Subjectivity
• The state of being a
subject
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Subject
• An entity that possesses conscious experiences and affects
some other entities called as “object”
• The body is not a mere “house” where the mind resides, rather, it is
through the lived experienced of the body that you perceive, are
informed, and interact with the world.
• The body acts what the mind perceives as a unified one.