GORDON COLLEGE

College of Education, Arts and Sciences

Course Title: Understanding The Self Professor: Eder E. Magsayo, EdD

Course Code: 32149 Date of Submission: 0ct. 3 2022
Schedule of Class: M&T 4:30PM - 5:00PM Student Name: Calilong, Erick Angelo D.
Module 3: Philosophical Perspective of the Self –
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Learning Objectives:
After studying this module, you should be able to:
1. Know who Descartes, Hume and Locke are and their contribution to the discovery of the self; and
2. Understand Skepticism, Empiricism and Memory Theory.

In the previous Module, you have learned that the ancient Philosophers acknowledged the
existence of a Soul as part of our Identity or our Self. The duality of our identity and the
presence of something we cannot sense at all is very daunting thought since our minds are
sometimes reliant to what we can perceive.
“To see is to believe” If you can’t perceive a part of you does it mean only a part of
you exist? Are you literally half the man/woman that we can see? How can you be sure that
you really even exist and that no one could ever doubt that? Is this the real life? Is this just
fantasy?
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Calm down you are being caught in a landslide. We will try to
sort this out. How? By unleashing the power of Skepticism and Empiricism.
The rise of Skepticism in the 17th Century, the period of Modern Philosophy, was found by
Rene Descartes. A Skeptic is a person who questions whether anything can be known with
certainty. Descartes realized that many of his early beliefs he used to hold were actually false.
(We have been all through this. It is part of what we call “growing up” like the inexistence of
Santa, Tooth Fairy, or that jumping on New Year’s Eve will actually make you taller.) He
realized this and asked what if more of his beliefs were actually false and that he just haven’t
realized it yet. The only way to make sure that the knowledge you hold was true is to
disbelieve everything or at least temporarily.
Bingbong bought a basket of apple. he was worried that some of his
apple are rotten since the rot could spread and ruin the other apples.
How can he be sure that all of his apples are fresh?

The only way to make sure that there are no bad apples is to dump the
fruits out of the basket and examine each one before putting them again
inside the basket.
The same is true with knowledge, if you are to examine each possible belief carefully and
only accept those which there could be no doubt, then you would know that what you are
believing is true. For example, it was widely known that the world was flat in the past. They
believed that you could actually fall into the abyss once you reached the edge of the world
and everyone accepted it as the truth until it was proven that the world is not flat but in fact
has a round spherical body.
Along with the rise of skepticism, the rise of Empiricism also burst forth in the same period
led by David Hume. Empiricism promotes that one can only know what comes from the
senses and experiences. According to Hume, the self is nothing but a bundle of Impression
and ideas. Impression being the basic objects of our experiences or sensations that forms the
core of our thoughts while the ideas are copies of impression but not as real as impression.
For example, when you see a bunny you immediately know that what you see is a bunny and
not a cat that is what an impression is but when you see the bunny and thought that it is so
fluffy and soft even without being able to touch it but just by looking at it, that is what Hume
called an Idea. With that in mind, Hume disagreed with the views of the ancient philosophers
about the Self since the early theory was that the self also has a soul. In Empiricism, beliefs
are formed through the use of senses. You can neither see, hear, feel, taste or smell a soul
therefore for the empiricist it is not real.
If you can sense it, it must be true right? Well… not really. Descartes pointed out that our
senses fails us all the time. Food tastes wrong when you are sick, the world shifts sideways
when you intoxicated, you rushed to a friend but realized it was not him as he turned around
when you tapped his shoulder, you thought someone called your name while in reality no
one did (happens all the time) and the list goes on. As a Skeptic himself, Descartes had
caused himself to doubt everything. Everything except that he was doubting. He knew he was
doubting then he must exist. After all, a doubt is a thought and if there is a thought then
there must be a thinker having those thoughts. Hence, he had a conclusion called “Cogito
Ergo Sum” which means “I Think Therefore I am”. You can doubt everything else but you
cannot doubt that you have a mind. The Self is made up of Cogito (the thing that thinks) and
Extenza (Extension of the mind). The body is just a machine attached to the mind and that it’s
the mind that makes the man. He brushed away the existence of a soul but replaced it with
mind. For Descartes, our identity is composed of our body and mind.
Our friend John Locke agreed with Descartes that the most important aspect of your self is
not your body. For him, the thing that makes you “you” is the non-physical stuff which is your
mind or consciousness. He added that a person does not maintain the same mind over the
course of our entire lives. We go to sleep everyday but when we wake up, our mind
remembers who we were the day before. He was the one who posited the Memory Theory.
He believed that personal identity persists over time because you retain memories of
yourself at different points and each of those memories is connected to the one before it. For
Locke, you are the person that you remember you were because you and that person are
linked through memories.
The Modern Philosophers were still believers of the concept of Dualism wherein we as an
organism are composed of two components but instead of soul, they replaced it and
suggested that our personality lies in what we call our “Mind”. In the next module, we will
return to these theories and find the issues that were that were seen by our contemporary
philosophers and why you should care about knowing about what your Self truly is.

Reminders: Your tasks should be accomplished in this same module. Do not use another word
document. This same module with accomplished learning tasks should be submitted on a
specified date I will announce on FB group page. You may convert the accomplished module
into pdf file before/upon submission (if you can). Strictly follow instructions in sending your
accomplished module which is posted on our FB group page for reference. Not following
specific instructions will mean deductions or non-reading of your submitted paperwork.
Learning Task: (You may answer in English or Filipino)
1. Of the discussed philosophical perspective, which do you think is most applicable to
your life? Choose two of these and explain.

I think the most applicable philosophical perspective in my life is the skepticism and
empiricism. It is true that in order to grow we should weigh things out either it is real or a
fantasy as a person who continuously seek the best in myself I think I keep being skeptic
questioning everything to know if it is real or not for example the belief that my grandma
used to tell me as a child that I should throw my baby tooth at the roof of our house so that
tooth fairy will replace it with nicer tooth as I grow up I realized that throwing tooth at the
roof of our house has nothing to do with the new teeth I will have because tooth fairy are
fantasy. Also empiricism is one of my most practiced philosophical perspective because I
think I learned from experiences and observation in example I know how to ride a motorcycle
because I can be able to experience how to ride it and observe my father how he operate
each buttons and the machine it self.

2. Reflection (What have you learned in this topic?)

This topic made me understand that there are different ways to understand the different
perspective of understanding yourself. With this topic it is easy to point out why a person is
acting different from you or why does his point of view in life is different which is simply
because everyone has their own perspective maybe some of us learn from experiences or
may be some of us believe that soul are nonexistence that a person is just composed of
mind and body wherein the mind sends signals to our body which causes us to react with
certain things.