LESSON 1: - The quality or quantity of answers are
dependent on the person answering these basic
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE SELF
- Philosophical perspective on the self
- Philosophy as a subject offering a multiple
perspective various philosopher offering
multiple perspectives on just about a topic
including the self
1. SOCRATES
- No historical document
- Only know Socrates because his illustrious
students (Plato  Aristotle)
- No writings but highly regarded by Plato
- Credited for his many contributions to Western
Philosophy
“gnothi seauton”
- “know thyself”
- Posited that if a person knows who he/she is, all
basic issues and difficulties in life will vanish and
everything will be clearer and simpler, one
could now act according to his/her own
definition of the self without any doubt and
contradiction
“Who am I?”
“What is the purpose of life?”
“What am I doing here?”
“What is justice?”
Self-knowledge
- Means knowing one’s degree of understanding
about the world and knowing one’s capabilities
and potentials.
- It is only through self-knowledge that one’s self
emerges. Therefore, SELF is achieved and not
just discovered something to work on and not
product of a mere realization.
Possession of knowledge is virtue, and ignorance is
vice.
- A person’s acceptance of ignorance is a
springboard for the acquisition of knowledge
later on. So, one must first have the humility to
acknowledge his/her ignorance so as to acquire
knowledge.
According to Socrates:
- Answers are always subjective, there is no right
or wrong answer to the questions posited by
Socrates
inquiries and one’s subsequent actions are best
understood on now one defines oneself, thus
the constant reminder to “know thyself.”
Socrates is a dualist.
- “What is it that, when in a body, makes it
living?”
- Believes that man has SOUL
Soul Body
Divine, immortal, Human, mortal,
intelligible, uniform, multiform, unintelligible,
indissoluble and ever dissoluble, and
self-consistent, and inconsistent
invariable
- The ruler of the body is the soul.
- Soul pre-existed the body, and soul is what
makes the body alive, it makes the body and the
soul dependent on each other.
Death
- Release of the soul from the body for the body
for the human soul is immortal. The soul has life
essentially, the way fire has heat essentially.
- Mental states can be attributed to the soul
while others ate linked to the body.
- The body is vulnerable to basic emotions and
actions.
- The soul controls these emotions and actions;
the soul controls these emotions and actions;
the soul controls these emotions and actions
through proper judgement and reason. This
differentia establishes the superiority of the
soul over the body.
2. PLATO
- Ancient Greek philosopher
- Student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle
- Produced a substantial body of work that
became the basis of Western thought
Empirical Reality
- We experience in the experiential world is
fundamentally unreal and is only a shadow or a
mere appearance.
Ultimate Reality
 - Real as it is eternal and constitutes abstract
universal essences of things.
- All the things that exist in the physical world are
therefore unreal as they are immaterial
blueprints of objects in the physical world.
- The concrete objects in this world are mere
copies of these abstract universal essences.
IDEAS
- Objects of the intellect known by reason alone
and are OBJECTIVE REALITIES that exist in a real
world if their own.
“Man in this world” – an illusion
“Idea of man” – real man
- Plato was one of the first philosopher who
believed in an enduring self that is represented
by the soul.
- Argued that the soul is eternal and constitutes
the enduring self, because even after death, the
soul continues exist.
3. ST. AUGUSTINE
- St. Augustine’s reflections on the relations
between time and memory greatly influenced
many fundamental doctrines of psychology.
TIME
- Something that people measure within their
own memory
- Not a feature or property of the world, but a
property of the mind
MEMORY
- Time present of things past
DIRECT EXPERIENCE
- Time present of things present
FUTURE
- Time present of things future
Emphasized that the memory of the past is significant in
anticipation of the future and presence of the present.
INTROSPECTION
- Awareness of one’s own mental processes
- Memory is the entity through which one can
think meaningfully about temporal continuity
- Possible only by and through memory
- Advanced the idea that past and future could be
seen as equivalent entities that exist
- However, time past and time future are not real
in themselves but they are only as real as long
as they exist in the mind or consciousness.
In his work CONFESSIONS
- “We measure the passage of time when we
measure the intervals of perception…”
- The existence of past and future is only possible
through memory and expectation.
- Introspection became the impetus to the
doctrines of psychology began with the inquiry
of the soul of then of the mind, consciousness,
and thought.
- These doctrines confirm the superiority of
humans over other organisms since humans
have self-consciousness.
- St. Augustine introduced the concept of the self
in the past, present, and future time. He wrote,
“From this it appears to me that time is nothing
other than extendedness; but extendedness
may be of the mind itself.”
- He argued that as far as consciousness can be
extended backward to any past action or
forward to actions to come, it determines the
identity of the person.
4. RENE DESCARTES
- French Philosopher and mathematician
- Best known for his dictum “cognito, ergo sum”
which means “I think, therefore I am.”
- The existence of anything that you register from
your senses can be doubted.
- Whichever thought a person chooses is the one
that is carried over into his or her “I am.”
- Only humans have the hubris (excessive pride)
of musing such irreverent questions on
existence and purpose of life. and only humans
have satisfied themselves with their own
answers to their own musings.
- Human brain: greatest computer of all.
- Only humans have the audacity and
impertinence to try to figure out the meaning of
life and are actually self-aware of their own
existence.
“A thinking thing or a substance whose whole essence
or nature is merely thinking.”
- The self is real and not just an illusion. He also
reassured that the self is different from the
body. Hence, self and body exist but differ in
existence and reality.
 - The self is a feature not of the body but of the
mind and thus a mental substance rather than a
physical substance.
- The self is nothing else but a mind-body
dichotomy.
- Thought (mind) always precedes action (body).
It has always been this sequence.
- Everything starts with a thought. It is the
thought that sets direction to human actions
but humans are always free to choose.
Human are self-aware and being such proves their own
place in the universe. Humans create their own reality
and they are the masters of their own universe.
Western Philosophy is largely based on the writings of
Descartes. If you have heard of the saying that man is a
rational animal, one is actually positing the ideas of
Rene Descartes.
Diskarte
- Derivative of the surname of Descartes
- Which denotes finding a way or making things
possible.
5. JOHN LOCKE
- Main philosophy about personal identity or the
self is founded on consciousness or memory.
CONSCIOUSNESS
- Is the perception of what passes in a Man’s own
mind.
- He rejected that brain has something to do with
consciousness as the brain, as well, as the body
may change, while consciousness remains the
same. He concluded that personal identity is not
in the brain but in one’s consciousness.
“Identity and Diversity” in An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1689)
- He pondered that, “if the same Substance which
thinks be changed, it can be the same person,
or remaining the same, it can be a different
person.”
- Here, he supports that consciousness can be
transferred from one substance (body and soul)
to another. While the soul is changed, for
instance, consciousness remains the same,
thereby maintaining the personal identity
through the change.
- Consciousness may be lost involuntarily through
forgetfulness while the soul but a different
person. This, the same soul is unnecessary or
insufficient in the formation of one’s personal
identity over time when consciousness is lost.
- “The Prince and the Cobbler.”
TABLUA RASA
- This concept posits that everyone started as a
blank state, and the content is provided by
one’s experience over time.
6. DAVID HUME
- Scottish Philosopher
- There is no self as a mental entity for “what we
call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of
different perceptions…”
- The self is a bundle of perceptions (objects of
the mind) of interrelated events.
- The assumption of a self as mental entity and
thus a mental substance does not exist.
- Hume’s materialism views the soul as a product
of the imagination. There is no primordial
substance that houses the self. Any concept of
the self is simply memory and imagination.
- Hume stressed that there is no stable thing
called self, for the self is nothing but a complex
set of successive impressions or perceptions.
- He added when “when my perceptions are
removed for any time, as by sound sleep...”
- He reduced personality and cognition to a
machine that may be activated or deactivated.
- DEATH – obliterates the perception one has.
7. IMMANUEL KANT
- German philosopher
- Theorized that consciousness is formed by
one’s inner and outer sense.
INNER SENSE
- Comprised of one’s psychological state and
intellect
OUTER SENSE
- Consists of one’s sense and the physical world.
EMPIRICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
- Consciousness of oneself and one’s
psychological state (inner sense).
TRANSCENDENTAL APPRECIATION
- Consciousness of oneself and of one’s state via
acts of appreciation
The source of empirical self-consciousness is the inner
sense. All representational states are in the inner such LOGICAL BEHAVIORISM / ANALYTICAL
as moods, feelings, and sensations including pleasure BEHAVIORISM
and pain. One must be phenomenally conscious to be - A theory of mind which states that mental
aware of something in the inner sense.
concepts can be understood through
observable events.
APPRECIATION
- Is the faculty that allows for application of
concepts. The act of apperceiving allows one to CONCEPT OF MIND (1949)
synthesize or make sense of a unified object. - He described that Descartes’ mind-body
dualism as “ghost in the machine.”
Transcendental appreciation makes experience possible Descartes’ idea is a category mistake
and allows the self and the world to come together. supporting that there is an immaterial mind
in a material body. Descartes thought that
CONSCIOUSNESS one has soul in the body that possesses
- being unified, is the central feature of the mind. talents, memories, and character.
Mind should perform both the unity of - The properties of a person are better
consciousness and the unity of appreciation.
understood as adjectives modifying a body,
- Makes the world intelligible.
than as nouns (objects)
The self is not an object located in one’s consciousness
with other subjects. The self, your own self, is a subject.
It is an organizing principle that makes a coherent
experience possible by using the faculties of the mind to
synthesize sensations into a unified whole. The ability of 9. PAUL AND PATRICIA CHURCHLAND
the mind to regulate those experiences into one
10. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
experience makes the self a product of reason. It is for
this reason that Kant gives the self-transcendental
status for it exists independently of experience. The self
is therefore a transcendental unifying subject, an
organizing consciousness that makes an intelligible
experience possible.

As opposed to Hume, Kant stressed that self is

something real, yet it is neither an appearance nor a
thing in itself since it belongs to a different metaphysical
class.

He believed in the existence of God and soul. He

emphasized that it is only through experience that
humans can acquire knowledge; however, there are
questions that humans have no answers to in the aspect
of metaphysics.

8. GILBERT RYLE
- British Philosopher
- Opposed Rene Descartes that the self is a
“thinking thing”
- Mind is not separate from the body
- Mind consists of dispositions of people
based on what they know, what they feel,
what they want, and so on.