CHAPTER 1 THE SELF FROM VARIOUS ‘PERSPECTIVES This chapter deals with the fundamental concepts, theories and principles relative to the self and identity. It helps the student understand the construct of the self from various disciplinal perspectives which are philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Knowledge on Western and Eastern thought further helps the student develop a better understanding of himself/herself. This chapter aims to realize the following outcomes: . Discuss the different representations and conceptualizations of the self from various disciplinal perspectives. . Examine the different influences, factors and forces that shape the self . . Compare and contrast how the self has been represented across the different disciplines and perspectives : . Demonstrate critical and reflective thought in analyzing the development of one’s self and identity by developing a theory of the self Scanned with CamScanner= db. end ofthis learning module, the student lv expected to articulate the various philosophical views about the self a examine one’s thoughts and experiences according to the philoso} views of the self; $e an answer to the question “Who am 1?” Scanned with CamScannerCues MSY _ZDO DISCUSSION/READINGS INTRODUCTION ‘We might ight have been overwhelmed by the new environment that we are in today peimgiin Sollege, There’ are so many thin i i s ; sometimes are completely different fom what were ang terest. The systems e 1 ‘ere used to in the Senior High School. Intellectual discourses, academic requirements, course demands and healthy eeieied resent in all ‘ a bres eee the campus. There are also institutional systems that are Added to the new and challenging pressures brought about by the academic systems are the pilings of so many questions that we unconsciously hang on the air because it’s either we do not have the answer ot we are absolutely confused by our answers. We start to realize the importance of relationships. We question the authority of our parents and teachers. We want to achieve a lot but do a little. We want to explore countless applications with technology. We want to tell the world about something very important but we feel so powerless to do so, We thought we have so much at home but we realize that we are just as ordinary as anyone else in school. All these confusions bring about existential questions that we may want to explore. In this lesson, we shall once and for all get in touch with ourselves. Let us go back to those hanging questions that we almost wanted to forget. We will spend time to reflect on the issues that we think are important to us. And to aid us in this endeavor, we will seek the wisdom of Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Freud, Ryle, Churchland and Merlean-Ponty. They have all braved to answer the question “Who am I?” way ahead of us, We learn with them as we also attempt to answer this same question. A. MOTIVATIONAL ACTIVITY .e world suddenly went into chaos. ‘There is an impending melting of planet Earth because of Global Warming. All people are asked to submit Bio Date te the World Sereening Committee. The committee will only select 1,000 cites fram each country to be sent to an Earth-like planet in the neighboring galaxy. As ‘0 what the criteria are for the selection process is unknown to anyone. Let us imagine that th y ituat ven 10-minutes to fill up the Because of the urgency of the situation, we are only given u Bio Dats From, We are supposed to draw the self-portrait accurately and ss colt possible. Further, in order to increase our chamces fo be selected, we have to fil necessary data on the form. Scanned with CamScanner‘Special Skills Best friend Fears Language/Dialect OCCUPATION ‘SCHOOL, Nursery Kinder Elementary High School, ‘Senior High School College Vocational School Position/Company +— ‘Character Reference Name ‘Why should we select you? What could be your contribution to the new World? 4 Scanned with CamScanner‘S| Ce untesayENSy_DO B. PROCESSING QUESTIONS 1. Which part of the Bio-Data For difficult? rm is the easiest to answer? How about the most 2. What do you have in mind while writing yo fata? Which part did you ile writing your Bio Ds ich ye How did you feel while writing your Bio-Data? 4. What were your realizations after 10 minutes of completing your Bio Data? Instructions: The teacher will a give you guidelines to share your answers by triads. Th cone from the group will report to class the summary of your discussions. - C. DISCUSSION: Who Am I? ‘The imaginary impending destruction of the planet may have placed us in a panic state where we only have few minutes to pack the things that we needed to bring. However, the situation was not just about packing and transferring to another planet. The condition was that we have to at least provide the details about ourselves in order to be included in the select few to go to another planet, Since there were no criteria set for the selection, we ca only hope that the data we provided will be complete enough to be selected. : While we sometimes thought that some factual information about ourselves are easy to access, the activity made us realize that it is not only about avcessing the factual information but also pulling over what are truly essential about ourselves. What distinguishes us and what individualizes us from the rest of humanity, all of a sudden, becomes a real question. The activity taught us to take time to know ourselves better and deeper than anyone else. We may not always have the luxury of time to examine ourselves and truly connect with our deepest thoughts. Most of our days will be filled with responding to the expectations of others, doing norms that are dictated by the society, and establishing things that are set for us by our biological and socio-economic conditions. Although these are all normal and generally acceptable, these would sometimes detach us from the core of our identity, the reason for our individuality. } ‘Since the ancient times until the postmodern discourses, many Philosophers grappled to understand the meaning of human life. They have attempted to answer the question “Who am I?” and most of their views have influenced the way we look at our lives today. 1. Socrates, Plato, Augustine i : is i ‘ing of the highly ‘The dictum “Know Thyself” as we hear today is an ancient greeting of h civilized. Greeks: It was believed that the temple gods greet the people with this salutation as they enter the holy sanctuary. The ancient Greek philosophers manifested to the people their various interpretations of the greeting. Scanned with CamScannerThe original Greek expression yv01 ceavrdy claimed to have very rich almost indistinguishable in the English language. | ‘The expression is terchangeably translated as “know thyself” or “self-control,” This means thatthe is not only an imperative of self-knowledge but is also a requirement that one has to Selzmoderation, Anything that is excessive is not good. Thus itis just prudent to strike balance of things. Too much power might lead to abuse; too many friends might deer the quality of relationships; too many problems might bring about depression; too m knowledge might make one think, as in the ancient rulers, that there is nothing else to kng ‘about, and so on. It is just wise then to put oneself in ‘moderation so that one is capable self-control and sound judgment. The prudence and judgment aspects of knowing thyself are already extensions fig self-knowledge to ethics. The expression is an ethical requirement to be wise in choo moderation, and to be able to make good judgments in desiring what is good and avo that which will only bring harm, Moderation in the expression of love for sweethearts, example, will bring the best of the other in the course of their loving companionship. partner is only overpowered and subjugated by the other, then there will never be prud ‘and good judgment in the relationship. The ethics in knowing thyself is very imy because such will bring the person to the excellence of the soul. For the ancient Greeks, the soul is the essence of the person. Like any other lo relationships, one must be able to bring about the excellence of the soul of the other result of such relationship. To know thyself, therefore is to examine whether we hav achieved moderation, have prudently chosen what is good, and have brought excellence of the soul. To be able to demonstrate this, Socrates proposed a very emphatic philosophy. In Plato's Apology, Sec. 38a, Socrates narrates: «a [{AJnd if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to ‘man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you. Besides, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve anything bad. If I had money, I would have proposed a fine... Here Socrates insisted that, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This thaps the most satisfying philosophical assertion that Socrates ae to uman beings from the shallowness of living their lives. An examined life is a life that j bound to develop self-knowledge and a self dignified with values and integrity. ‘that; living a good life means having the wisdom to distinguish what is right *s further argued that the unexamined life is no better off than animal lily 2 6 ji Scanned with CamScannerkad i Insisting on the examined life, Socrates maintained that only thos Teast achieved self-moderation and distinguished what is a (ov ein this Pac ae fe the life ee philosophers, are capable of condemning those who are e knowing, is is. acco ee Ives when the fact is contrary. On his account of Only a self-controlled man, then, will know himself and will ple of looking then, I be capable of to see what he actually knows and what he doesn’t know. By the ae only a self-controlled man will be capable of examining others to see what a person knows at i aa (assuming that he does have knowledge), and whether there re things which he thinks he knows, but doesn’t really. And i capable of doing this (Charmides, 167 a). Re Here in fact, Socrates wanted to tell the lawmakers, the community leaders, those who claimed to be learned, and especially his accusers to recognize their ignorance. What hinders these experts in seeing reality is the belief that they already know everything. Such a belief will eliminate altogether the desire for self-moderation and ethical prudence. Then, Socrates rightly pronounced that “I know that I ¢ ” This perhaps is what makes Socrates the wisest among philosophers. For Socrates, only in the recognition of one’s ignorance that a person can truly know oneself Influenced by the wise pronouncements of Socrates, Plato proposed his own philosophy of the self. He started on the examination of the self as a unique experience. ‘The experie {ll eventually better understand the core of the self which he called the For Plato, the psyche is composed of three elements. These are the appetitive, spirited, and the mind. The appetitive element of the psyche includes pers ical satisfactions, comforts, etc. ‘The spirited element is part of the psyche when, given challenges, or fights back when agitated, or igh for sce sare evident. In a way, this is the hot-blooded part of the psyche. The iders as the most superior of all the ele ments. He refers to this element as the ous which means the conscious awareness of the self; The nous is the superpower that controls the affairs of the self. It decides, analyses, thinks ahead, proposes what is best, and rationally controls both the appetitive and spirited elements of the psyche. inind, however, is what Plato consi We take as an example - college life - to illustrate Plato's psyche. College students want to hang out with their friends, spend time on computer games, eat the Favorit food, do thrilling activities that will excite the whole gang. These satisfy the appeh\ element of the psyche, However, when professors throw challenging projects and assignments that | would require tremendous amount of time and effort, the spirited psyche kicks in to face the | Ghallenges head on. All these are going on because the mind oF the nous is orchestrating these pursuits according to the quality ofthe nous a person has, In other words, in order to ‘% Scanned with CamScannerUftiersFeauRG, THe SU have a good life, one has to develop the nous ‘and fill it with of the self, and the correct ethical standards. the understanding of the Timity i is the life of concrete example of a highly self-controlled nous i of Aus vine He hailed from Tagaste, Africa in 354 BC. He ccm fo is ng ares of the world. Augustine was unsettled and restlessly searcl meaning preaife until his conversion to Christianity. In his Confessions, he pronounced: You hayy ie or Yourself, O Lord, and our hear is restless until it finds rest in You. jo hi braced an ascetic life. He dedicated yj ‘Augustine returned to his homeland and eml is ted hig Christian fe tothe pursuit of contemplative ideals. He practiced extreme self-denial ishop of Hippo. He fought bravely the errors iIEmortification. Later he was elected as bishop of Hippo. a Fesame through his sermons and many writings. He died in 430 and later was declare Doctor of the Church. ir ‘The development of the self for St. Augustine is achieved through self-presentation and self-realization. He was not afraid to accept to himself and tell the people about his Sinfulness, However the realization of the wasted self is achieved through his conversion tg the faith. Thus his journey toward the understanding the self was centered on his is convictions and belie! This could be true to all religions. When Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindy believers (or any other traditional or indigenous religions) struggle between the pleasures of the body and the demands of the soul in pursuit of the ultimate happiness of the self, one must be able to recognize the love of that Supreme Being or the Divine and morally or ethically respond to that love. To St. Augustine, man's end goal is happiness. Only in God can man attain true and eternal happiness, made possible in his contemplation of the Truth and the Divine Wisdom, i.e., God Himself. Christianity is the full and true, philosophy. Iti the full revelation of the true God, Human beings alone, without God, are bound to fail. 2. Deseartes, Locke, Hume and Kant sian heme Deseaten the father of modem philosophy, deviated from theocentric philosophies on the years before him. He was in fact able to readdress the question concerning the self in a very different rational method. He started his quest of discovering the self by his methodic doubt. ‘ In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes claimed that we cannot really rely on our senses beeausé out sense perceptions can often deceive us. There are times when We hear eatin ni ig when in fact there is nothing, and that we are only deceived by our sense of bearing. ‘Thee are also times when we see someone or something in the peripheries of ou ‘yes when in fact there is nothing that resembles with what we thought we saw. This will b Lad oper sense of smell, touch, hearing and so on, Therefore Descartes refused 10° 1 certainty of his sense perceptions and started to doubt everything. Ey y Gane herding mt be subjected to doubt. Our existence, our religion, our world, out Tong as it passes our se me, even our teacher! There will never be certain in this world a in his dream and in veniie, Ken te Descartes cannot even distinguish between the events in reality. He claimed that when dreaming, it felt so real that even OUT Scanned with CamScannerUflderstamaing,The Selp- heartbeat, breathing, and feelings are just so comparable to the real events. When we dream about our crush, we feel the intensity of the dream that we would wake up frustrated realizing that it was only a dream. Likewise when we dream about our most dreaded experience in life, we would wake up happy after realizing that it was only a dream. Here, Descartes started to doubt whether the events he experiences at the moment are only products of his dreams and therefore illusions. He started to doubt about the very realities that he had been accepting as true as only illusionary creations of an evil genius who designed all these false impressions in the world. Eventually Descartes is left with nothing but his doubt. Nonetheless, this same doubt redeemed him from slumber. He claimed that since he could no longer doubt that he is doubting, there should be a level of certitude that there must be someone who is doubting that is him, Then he said “Cogito, ergo Sum.” This is translated as “I think therefore I am” or “[_ doubt therefore I exist.” Only after the certitude of the “doubting I” can all the other existence (e.g. God, the universe, things, events, etc.) become certain. y + Descartes’ discovery of the cogito revolutionizes the way we view outselves and the world around us. It has also dramatically changed the way we evaluate ourselves. The primary condition, therefore of the existence of the self, at least according to Descartes, is human rationality. Simply put, we need reason in order to evaluate our thoughts and actions. We need reason to live fully the demands, challenges and call of our religion. We need reason in order to establish foundations for universal truth and morals. We need reason in order to exist and to continue\to survive the generations to come by protecting our environment. We need reason in order to protect ourselves from our being'savage to one another. We need reason in order to build and live out our peace. Contrary to the primacy of reason as proposed by Descartes, one British phil and politician, John Locke, suggested another way of looking at the self. Locke opposed ’ The idea that only reason is the source of knowledge of the self. His proposition is that the self is comparable to an empty space where everyday experiéiices contribute to the pile of, knowledge that is put forth on that empty space. Experience, therefore, is an important requirement in order to have sense data which, through the process of reflection and analysis, eventually becomes sense perception. These sense data are further categorized by Locke according to primary qualities such as numbers, solidity,.figure, motion, among others, and also secondary qualities such as color, odor, temperature and all other elements that are distinguishable by the subjective individual. Sense perception becomes possible when all these qualities are put together in the faculty of the mind. It has to be noted here that the validity of sense perception is very subjective. Perception is changing from one individual to another. For example, when one reads a text message: “Congratulations! You won IM pesos in an online lottery.” from an unknown number, one text receiver may hastily reply in excitement and elation while the other text receiver may just totally ignore it as a hoax or even treat it as a virus! Perception therefore, i8 very subjective to Locke. Scanned with CamScannerrie Ufilerstqgaiig, The SUL ; , ‘This provides the mos Tnient leeway Tor evry individual tobe independent in sy, exaninatio slemanagement and sle-conl, The individual Penson, C20 ng e i ience but also skilful 1 0 ee only capable of learning from experience b sa ero © prowess i Phe from various experiences to form a more comp + percepivgs to understand complex realities about the self and the world, Challenging the position of John Locke, David. Hu r* 2 Seats, philosopter and in se sntical take on the ideas forming the identity o! T Haig i t forward his skeptical take on the id : eat J distr Pt ere cannot be a persisting idea ofthe sol. While Hume agreed that al id, ied derived from impressions, problematically, it follows that the idea of the selfis alsg area ran impressions However, impressions are subjective, temporary, provision prejudicial and even skewed ~ and therefore eannot be persisting, Inasmuch as we wanted to be persistent, constant and stable with our knowledge about ourselves, Hume asserted that this is just impossible. As long as we only derive our Knowledge from sense impressions, there will never be the “self.” This means that for Hume, all we know about ourselves are just bundles of temporary impressions. Pethaps, this supports the difficulty of answering the question “Who am 1?” because what we can readily answer are impressions such as name, height, color of hair, affiliations, skills, achievements and the like. All these are temporary and non-persisting. ‘In fact, Hume harshly claimed that there IS no self. . — Hume could have made us all agnostic about our knowledge. of the self, and be content with whatever fragmented idea at least we have about ourselves had it not by the rescue efforts of Immanuel Kant. Kant is a Prussian metaphysicist who synthesized the rationalist view of Descartes and the empiricist views of Locké “and Hume. His new | proposition maintained that the self is always transcendental. In fact he calls. his philosophy the Transcendental Unity of Apperception. His theory explains that being or the self is not in the body, it is outside-the body and even outside the qualities of the body — meaning transcendent. For Kant, ideas are perceived by the self, and they are corinecting the self and the world. The similarity of ideas between individuals is made possible because, for Kant, we all have the sensory apparatus by which we derive our ideas. This means that we need not reject our ideas, unlike Hume, xno matter how temporary and non-persistent they are because there is unity in ideas. Kant further argues that even if we eliminate everything, or in the case of Descartes, doubt everything, there will still be space and time that will remain in us. The space and time belong to us. These are categories that cannot be outside of the self, and they help provide the perception of the self. Perception here does not belong to the world; it belongs to the self through its temporal-spatial faculty. Rightly, Kant is able to claim that all things in the world are in themselves and part of it belongs to the self. This is possible because the mind possesses the order atid unity of all raw sensations.~In-other words, the thing-in-jself cannot provide the idea but it is only th self thine eamnt provi ly the spatial-temporal faculty of the sc i Short, Kant is only saying’that our rationality unifies and makes sense the the world, Tciave in our experiences and make sensible ideas about ourselves and This ingenious synthesis saved the empirical theories of the sciences and the 10 Scanned with CamScanner—UfderStainainig;The Serf. rational justification innate ideas. Kant also solved the problem of the ability of the self to perceive the world. 3, Freud, Ryle, Churchland and Merleau-Ponty Just as the philosophers celebrate the “unity” of the self as achieved by Kant, psychologist Sigmund Freud lamented the victory and insisted on the complexity of the self, Freud, refusing to take the self or subject as technical terms, regarded the self as the 47? that ordinarily constitute both the mental and physical actions. So we say “Trun”, “Teat”, “I decide”, “I Teel the tingling sensation” or “I refuse to cheat because it is wrong.” Admittedly, the question “Who am 1?” will not provide a victorious unified answer but a complicated diverse features of moral judgments, inner sensations, bodily movements and perceptions. The “I” will never be the same and it will continue to change overtime. In other words, Freud sees the “I” as a product of-multiple interacting processes, systems, ‘and schemes. To demonstrate this, Freud proposed two models: The Topographical and Structural Models (Watson, 2014), rd ' —_{_ ‘ Topographical Model. According to Freud’s concept of hysteria, the individual person may both know and do not know certain things at the same time. We may say, for example, that we know the disadvantage and perils of missing classes without any reason, but we are not really sure why we still do it anyway. We are certain about the many wrongs that may be brought about by premarital sex, ie. early pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, ruined relationships and depression, but we never understand why there is this something somewhere inside us that makes many of us do what we know is wrong. Freud’s solution to this predicament is to divide the “I” into conscious and the unconscious. ‘The unconscious’ keeps what it knows by what Freud calls “censorship” so that the conscious will be left on its Clearly, the self for Freud will never be arbifrarily taken as a unified whole. There will always be fragments and discontinuity and struggle inside the same “I.” Structural Model. ‘Similar to the disintegration of the self in Topographical Model, Freud’s Structural Model will also represent the self_in three different agencies. This is popularly known as the id, ego and the superego. The(id is known as the primitive or laxinetve component The ego is described by Freud as that part of the id which iat been modified by the direct influence-of the external world. Many interpreters of Freud see the ego as the “I” and the super ego as “above I.”~The superego synthesizes the inorals, values and systems in society in order fo function as the control outpost of the instinctive desires of the id (McLeod, 2007). f ‘We often equate the ego as the self, the subject or the “I,” However, Freud does not readily approve this equation because while the three agencies are distinct from one another, oftentimes, the ego is not able to ‘control the instincts of the id, and cannot even manipulate the thoughts of the superego. This even leaves the ego as only a marginal and impotent agency of the mind — not the ideal philosophical self or soul that we want to figure out. Freud remarked that it is even the id — this devil, instinctual, unthoughtful, fearless and primitive agency of the mind ~ that is the core of our being (Freud, 2011). v \ ll Scanned with CamScannerUPerRTHES Ue Se ‘The sensatipnalization of the self as unifying agent and a powerful command centg, of the other agencies simply do not exist in Freud’s Structural Model. Although the egg fnitiates the command, it simply lacks the power to control and put limits to the rage ofthe id. Moreover, the ego will only content itself wit the yery imited information revealed the vast databank of information in the unconscious. The ego owns a scanty knowledge about the unconscious which oftentimes are incomplete and inaccurate, ‘cal example of a child who is born in a happy, loving ang affluent family. He is well provided by his well-mannered parenis who are respecteg professionals in their fields. The family never misses the Sunday ritual of going to Mass, He .d study. He is sent to an expensive private is raised with plenty of time to work and play an¢ dati he found himself kicked out by the school because of drug addiction and cut shoes He steals the family fortune to afford his vices. He destroyed many lives of his danas je disrespects his parents and siblings and accuse them of not loving him. ‘Te ended up broke, wasted, imprisoned and a menace to society. Now we ask: Where is the crt? Haw ean we understand the “T” in this example? What is it in the self that was not abe to contol the piles of self-destructive activites of the child? What is it in the experiences of the child that made him deviant of the otherwise ideal upbringing? How can we know? Freud claims that there is nothing else above the “I” that will consolidate the three agencies, There is only the plurality of these antagonistic and independent agencies. ion to some behaviors that are difficult to justify her, proposed his Positive View in his “Concept of the Mind.” It started as a stem critique of Descartes’ dualism of the mind and body. Ryle “aid that the thinking I will never be found because it is just a “ghost in the machine.” It means he finds the philosophy of Descartes totally absurd. The id is never separate ‘fcom the body. He proposed that physical actions or behaviors are dispositions of the self These dispositions are derived from our inner private experiences. In other words, we will only be able to understand the self based from the external manifestation — behavior, expressions, language, desires and the like. The mind therefore, is nothing but a disposition ofthe self. Ryle continued that the mind will depend on how words are being told and expressed and delivered, In a way, he demystified the operations of the mind because the operations of the mind are simply manifested by the dispositions of knowing and believing. To illustrate this position, we take the visitor on a tour around the city. We bring him to the _ City Hall, to the park, to the known schools, to big malls, to beautiful gardens, to night life “Jenues, to the known landmarks and to your house. After the tour, your visitor will ask: Where is the City? All those parks and malls and places consist the city. This same observation is true to the disposition of the mind. All the manifestations in physical Let us take a hypotheti In an attempt to offer an explanatic by reason, Gilbert Ryle, a British philosop! activities or behavior are the dispositions of the self, the basis of the statement; “ 1 at therefore I am” or “You are what you do”. a foerefore a nd. Churehland Bringing this argument a little further, couple Ps promoted the position they, called “elimi 4 m” which brig neuroscience into the fore of understanding the self. For centuries, the main concem © philosophy and even of psychology is the understanding of the state of the self, and still they failed to provide satisfactory position in the understanding of the self. For the Churchlands, these philosophical and psychological directions will eventually be abandoned only to be 12 Scanned with CamScannerCO upiersreaajeeTUe Su} replaced by a more acceptable frend in neuroscience that provides explanation of how the rain works. This position is a direct attack against folk psychology. Eliminative materialism sees the failure of folk psychology in explaining basic concepts such as sleep, learning, $00 piness and The Tike Given the length of time that these sciences have investigated these concepts.and yet there is no definitive explanation offered to understand the mind is tantamount to “explanatory poverty” (Weed, 2018). It is not remotely impossible that folk psychology will be replaced by neurobiology. As the Churchlands wanted to predict, when people wanted to ask what is going on with themselves, they might as well go for MRI scan or Cf Scan to understand'the present condition of the brain and how it currently works. Interestingly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French philosopher, seemed to support the emerging trends’ in-Uniderstanding the self. His philosophy, the Phenomenology of Perception draws heavily from the contemporary research Gestalt_psychology_and neurology.’ He ‘developed a kind of phenomenological rhythm that will explain the perception of the self. The rhythm involves three dimensions. , First is the empiricist take on perception, followed by the idealist-intellectual alternative, and lastly, the synthesis of ‘both positions. On the onset, Merleau-Ponty rejected classical empiricism because it eliminates the indeterminate complexities of experience that may have an effect on perception. In the same way, he also rejected the idealist-intellectual position because it will only falsify perception based from one’s biases and prejudices. What Merleau-Ponty proposes is treating perception as a causal process. It simply means that our perceptions are ‘caused by the “intricate-experfences Of the Sélf, and processed intellectually while distinguishing truthful perceptions from illusory. Therefore the self is taken as a phenomenon of the whole — a Gestalt understanding of perceptual synthesis, In closing, this section discussed the philosophical perspective of understanding the self through historical approach. In the Ancient and Medieval times, we have identified the self as the perfection of the soul. To achieve this requires self-examination and self-control. In the Modern period, understanding the self is recognized in the dialectic synthesis between Rationalism and Empiricism. Contemporary philosophy takes a wide variety of theories in understanding the self. |. In the end we realize that we are not yet done in answering the question “Who am 12” although we already have achieved a lot in our philosophical reflections about it. We continue our quest for understanding who we really are. Scanned with CamScannerae y Hie ih vy : analysis. Explain each ofthe following passages ‘am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is, that I know nc — (Socrates) Plato, The Republic ; “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understand ‘ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason “And what more am I? I look for aid to the imagination. [But how mistakenly!] I not that assemblage of limbs we call the human body; I am not a subtle penetrati air distributed throughout all these members; I am not a wind, a fire, a breath or anything at all that I can imagine. I am supposing all these things tot pothing. Yet | find, while so doing, that [am still assured that am a something: — René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy : “Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then a zi will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you thenceforth avoid falling ill.” — Sigmund Freud, Character and Culture {discover that there are other minds in understanding what other people say do. — Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind “Whether it is a question of my body, the natural world, the past, birth or death, question is always to know how I can be open to phenomena that transcend me an that, nevertheless, only exist to the extent that T take them up and live them.” 4 — Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception Scanned with CamScannerUilersteediiigs The Sel CHS Date: Score: ‘Name: Course/Year/Section: 2. Discussion. Answer each’of the following questions. a) Compare and contrast the elements of the mind according to Plato and the life of St. Augustine. : b) Differentiate the concepts of the self according to Descartes and that of Locke. c) For Hume, what is it that makes “your” perceptions inaccessible to “me” and vice versa? 4) What were some of the criticisms that have been brought against Freud and psychoanalysis? 15 Scanned with CamScanner4. Self-Awareness Index Log on to https://goo.; gl/forms/yELu8JxmiMpwjold2 and answer the survey on! Awareness Index. After answering the forms, click View Scores, then right click for, options. Print your answers and submit it to class the following meeting. Scanned with CamScanner5, OUTPUTPLANS ' 1, Class debate. Organize team debates based on the following motions: a) This house believes that philosophy will disintegrate and will be replaced by neuroscience. b) This house believes that experience is a better teacher than reason, ©) This house believes that extrajudicial killings are illegal and a breach of fundamental rights and freedoms. 2, Video Clip. Formulate your own Philosophy of the Self, Create a 30-second video clip that will briefly explatn your concept. Provide examples and illustrations. Post your video clip on social media and report to class the comments and feedbacks. Ww Scanned with CamScanner