Understanding the self
 Thinkers for centuries have search for explanations and
reasons for everything that exists around him
 For instance, Greek Philosophers chose to seek natural
explanations instead of seeking for supernatural
explanations
 They labored to search for explanations into how the
world works through understanding the elements,
mathematics, heavenly bodies and even atoms
 From trying to understand nature and the universe,
questions now center on the inner world of man, such as
Who am I ?, Why am I here?, What do I want out of life?
(Price 2000)
 Philosopher and their Philosophical Perspective of the
self
 Socrates
 In ancient Greece, specifically in Athens, to be powerful,
one must do it in words. Athenians settle arguments by
discussion and debate.
 People skilled in doing this we.re called “Sophists,” the
first teachers of the west
 One great sophist emerges in this era in the person of
Socrates, a stonemason with a sharp mind, he was a
brilliant debater and was idolized by many Athenians
o Socrates View of Human Nature
 The “true self” is not the body but the soul.
 “the unexamined life is not worth living,” one has to
reach inside himself to their deepest nature.
 Thus, one has to think, seek and ask again and again to
arrive at a better understanding of oneself.
 Plato
 his real name was Aristocles, he was nicknamed Plato
because of his physical built which means “wide/broad.
 He established a school called ‘The Academy’
 He wrote a book entitled, The Dialogues, which contains
the many dialogues he had with his teacher Socrates.
o Plato view of Human Nature
 Plato also believed that knowledge lies within the
person’s soul.
 Plato describes the soul as having three components:
1. The Reason – rational/based on morality/ tell what’s
good, true and real
2. The Spirited – non rational/neutral
3. The Appetites – desire/ wants of the body
 Plato believe that people are intrinsically good.
 In his Theory of Being, he said that the more the person
knows, the more he is and the better he is.
 LOVE is a force that paves the way for all beings to
ascends to the higher stages of self-realization and
perfection.
 St Augustine of Hippo
 A great sinner who became a great saint.
 According to St. Augustine GOD is the source of all
good, without GOD man could never understand eternal
truths.
 Real happiness can only be found in God because GOD is
Love and He created humans for them to also love.
 “My soul is restless until it rest in thee”
 David Hume (1711 – 1776)
 Generally regarded as one of the most important
philosophers to write in English.
 David Hume was also well known in his own time as a
historian and essayist.
 A master stylist in any genre, his major
philosophical works
a) A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740),
b) Human Understanding (1748)
c) The Principles of Morals (1751),
d) Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779)
o Empiricism
 the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-
experience.
 “Self” is also a product of the imagination. He believes
that there is no such thing as personal identity because
perception and feelings come and go. So for Hume, “there
is no permanent/unchanging self”
 Rene Descartes
 He is known as the “father of modern philosophy”
 He is a rationalist who upholds rationalism
o Rationalism
 is the belief that REASON rather than experience is the
foundation of certainty in knowledge.
 Descartes believed that reasoning could produce absolute
truths about nature, existence, morality and God. The
truth that can be discovered are a “priori”, these do not
rely on experiences but rather are innate in the human
mind.
 “I think, therefore I am” this phrase is Descartes legacy.
 He believes that a thinker is someone who doubts,
understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses and that also
imagines and feels.
 The cognitive aspect of human nature is his basis for the
existence of the self
 John Locke
 He is also an empiricist
 He believes that knowledge results from ideas produced a
“posteriori” or by objects that were experienced.
 The process involves two forms: sensation wherein
objects are experienced through the senses and reflection
by which the mind looks at the objects that were
experienced to discover relationships that may exists
between them.
 Sensation is the conscious awareness that follows
immediately upon the stimulation of a sense organ.
 Perception which is the interpretation of the stimulus
giving it order and meaning.
 Locke contended that ideas are not innate but rather the
mind at birth is a “tabula rasa” (blank slate)
 Immanuel Kant
 He is the founder of German Idealism.
o Idealism
 is premised on knowledge are held in some way
dependent on the activity of the mind.
 Contrary to what the empiricist believed, Kant argued that
the mind is not just a passive receiver of sense
experiences but rather actively participates in knowing the
objects it experiences.
 He defined knowledge as a result of human understanding
applied to sense experience.
 He formulated the theory of “Transcendental
Apperception”, the unity of all impressions that are
organized by the mind through perceptions.
 Sigmund Freud
 He was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of
psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating
psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and
a psychoanalyst.
 One of Freud's most important contributions to the field
of psychology was the development of the theory and
practice of psychoanalysis.
 Some of the major tenets of psychoanalysis include the
significance of the unconscious, early sexual
development, repression, dreams, death and life drives,
and transference.
 the father of modern psychology,
 His theories and ideas on the connections that exist
between the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, the
body, and the world around us are still as widely known
as they were when he first espoused them at the turn of
the 20th century.
 Gilbert Ryle
 Gilbert Ryle was a 20th Century British philosopher,
mainly associated with the Ordinary Language
Philosophy movement.
 He had an enormous Influence on the development of
20th Century Analytic Philosophy, particularly in the
areas of Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Language.
 According to Ryle, there are two types of knowledge,
“knowing-that” and “knowing-how”
a) Knowing that – is irrelevant and empty
intellectualism/ the knowledge only stays in mind
b) Knowing how – applying the knowledge
 Just knowing that is considered to be empty
intellectualism. What is more important is how to make
use of tis facts.
 Thus Ryle’s point of view on this is that knowing
involves an ability and not just an intellect.
 Patricia and Paul Churchland
 Husband and wife team who coined the term
“Neurophilosophy”, the combination of neurology- the
study of the nervous system, its structures and physiology
and Philosophy- the love of wisdom in search for the
truth.
 It aims to explore the relevance of neuroscientific
experiments/studies to the philosophy of the mind. The
issue of the brain-mind is central to this study.
 The Churchland’s believe that the man’s brain is
responsible for the identity known as the self, because the
biochemical properties of the brain is responsible for
man’s thoughts, feelings and behavior.
 It seems that what and who the person is
Example:
 How he makes decision, controls impulses and how he
sees himself is largely determined by his neurons,
hormones, and overall genetic make – up.
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty
 He was a French Philosopher who wrote books on
perception, art and political thought.
 He was the proponent of “Phenomenology of Perception,”
it described the nature of man’s perceptual contact with
the world.
 The world is a field of perception, and human
consciousness assigns meaning to the world.

 Thus man cannot separate himself from his perception of

the world.

 Sociological Perspective of the Self

o Sociology
 Is the one of the disciplines in the social science which
aims to discover the ways by which social surrounding
influences people thoughts and feelings and behavior.

 In this topic the thoughts and observation of some

sociologist will be discussed for you further comprehend
the significant role people play in the development of the
self.

 George Herbert Mead

 He was born on February 1863 in Massachusetts, USA.

 He taught grade school at the Oberlin College.

 In 1887, at the age 24, he enrolled at Harvard University

where his main interest were philosophy and psychology.

 During the span of his career, he wrote and published

many articles and book reviews.

 Mead died of heart failure in 1931 at the age 63.

o Mead’s Social Self

 Social Behaviorism
 Is an approach George Mead used to describe the power
of the environment in shaping human behavior.

 According to Mead the self cannot be separated from

society. This explained through a set of stages which the
person undergoes in the course of his development.

 The first 9 years is the foundation of one’s personality to

lay down

o Stages of Development According to Mead

1. The Preparatory Stage
 He believed that a self did not exist at birth. Instead, the
self develops overtime. Its development is dependent on
the social interaction and social experience. At this stage
children behavior are primarily based on imitation.

 The first 3 years

 Stage where child starts to acquire knowledge by
imitating the adults
2. The Play Stage
 At this stage, skill at knowing and understanding the
symbols of communication are important. Through
communication social relationship are formed.
 Now the children begin to role play and pretend other
people.
 Role taking in this stage according to Mead is the process
of mentally assuming the perspective of another person to
see how this person might behave or respond in a given
situation. (Schaefer, 2012)
 Next 4-7 years
3. The Game Stage
 At this stage, the child begins to consider several tasks
and various type of relationship simultaneously.
 Through the learning that were gained in this stage two,
the child now begins to see not only his own perspective
but at the same time the perspective of others around him.
 In this final stage the child now has the ability to respond
not just to one but several members of his social
environment, ‘generalized other’
 Learn that there are many members in the social
environment.
o Meads Theory of the Self
 The self is not present at birth, at first children see
themselves as the center of their universe and is having
difficulty understanding others around them. However, as
these children grow and mature in the formation of the
self, there is a change in the self. They begin to see other
people and is now concerned about people’s reaction.
Other people particularly his family, play a major role in
the formation of the self.
 The ‘I’ and ‘Me’
 George Mead explained that the person’s capacity to see
the through others implies that the self is composed of
two parts, the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ self
 The ‘I’ self
 When the person initiates or performs a social action.
Example:
 I will go on a date.
 I will cook dinner tonight.
 I will watch a movie later.
 The ‘Me’ Self
 When the person takes the role of the others
Example:
 The choice for the best drawing awarded to me.
 Students around school voted for me.
 Thus it should be remembered that the formation of the
self, doesn’t stop, it continues for as long as we are alive.
The self may change based on life circumstances, such as
death of a love one, disease or disability may reshape the
self.
 Charles Horton Cooley
 Was an American sociologist who made use of the
sociopsychological approach to understand how societies
work.
 He earned his doctorate degree at the University of
Michigan and taught at the same university as a sociology
professor until the end of his life
 In his written work, Human Nature and Social and the
Social Order (1902), he discussed the formation of the
self through interaction.
o The Looking Glass Self or the self that is a product of
social interaction
 Cooley stated that the people learn who they are through
their social interaction with other people, that the view of
the self is also significant influenced by the impression
and perception of others.
 Three Phases of Developing a Self:
1. People imagine how they present themselves to others.
2. People imagine how others evaluate them.
3. People develop some sort of feeling about themselves as a
result of those impressions
 Here, Cooley believed that there is a possibility that
people develop self-identities based on the wrong
perception of how others see them. Wrong perception
however, can still change based on social experiences.
 Erving Goffman
 Was a Canadian-American sociologist known for his role
in the development of modern American sociology.
 One of his popular work was The Presentation of the Self
in Everyday Life, in which he wrote how he observed that
people early in their social interactions learned how to
slant their presentation of themselves in order to create
preferred appearances and satisfy particular people
 He called this impression management.
o Dramaturgical Approach
 In Goffman’s observation of people in everyday
interactions, he sees similarities of real social interaction
to a theatrical presentation.
 That we all live in a big stage where each one of us play a
major role in the drama of our life wherein each situations
that we are facing will slowly unfold who we are based on
how we react or handle the situation that we are faced at
that moment
 Society is the big stage and we are the actors of our life
and each chapters we see what we truly are.

 Summary
 Sociologist Namely: George Herbert Mead, Charles
Horton Cooley and Erving Goffman represented a
progression on how the self has developed through the
progress of socialization to how the person manage self-
presentation in order for him to be accepted by others
 Anthropological Perspective of the Self
 Anthropology
 is a field of the social sciences that focuses on the study of
man.
 This does not only pertain to one aspect of man, but rather
on the totality of what it means to be human.
 This field looks into man’s physical/biological
characteristics, his social relationships, and the influences
of his culture from the dawn of the civilization up to the
present, “for what man is now is a product of his past.”
 Additional info: Study of social relationship, culture, and
past
 Subfields of Anthropology
a) Archeology
b) Biological Anthropology
c) Linguistics
d) Cultural Anthropology
 Archeology
 is the study of human history and prehistory through the
excavation of sites and the analysis of artifacts and other
physical remains.
 Archeologist unearths pieces of pottery, tools, jewelries,
and even bones of the past occupants of the dig site in
order to discover how these people lived their lives.
 Archeologist find what’s behind past to understand how
our ancestor live before
 As a result, archeologist have so far discovered the unique
ways in which human beings adapted to changes in their
environment in order for them to survive.
 Archeological data suggests that the species homo sapiens
did not become extinct because of their ability to think,,
use tools and learn from experience. They have adapted
and gained dominance over all earth’s creatures.
 Biological Anthropology
 Deals with the study of the evolution of humans, their
variability, and adaptations to environmental stresses.
 It investigates human and non-human primate biological
evolution and variation by studying biology (especially
skeleton), evolutionary theory, inheritance, the fossil
record and living primates. It looks at interrelationships
between behavior, ecology and biology.
 All humans are same biologically
 What harmful to one is harmful for everyone such
Covid19
 It focuses primarily on how the human body adapts to the
different earth environments,
 They look on the probable causes of disease, physical
mutation and death.
 Linguistic Anthropology
 studies the role of language in the social lives of
individuals and communities.
 It explores how language shapes communication and the
huge role it plays in social identity, group membership,
and establishing cultural beliefs and ideologies.
 So unlike linguist, linguistic anthropologists do not look
at language alone, language is viewed as interdependent
with culture and social structures.
 Their interest focuses on using language as a means to
discover a group’s manner of social interaction, how
 language is used to create and share meanings, to form
ideas and concepts and to promote social change.

 Knowing the identity of the one who is speaking

 Focus in the influence of language in many aspects.

 Cultural Anthropology
 Is the study of how people who share a common cultural
system organize and shape the physical and social world
around them and are in turn shaped by those ideas,
behaviors and physical environments.

 Culture is described as a group of people’s way of life. It

includes their behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that
they accept, (usually unconsciously) that are socially
transmitted through communication and imitation from
generation to generation.

 Theory of cultural determinism-who or what a person is

may be determined by the kind of culture he is born into
and grew up in.

 Ways in which culture manifest on people:

o Symbols
Words, gestures, pictures or objects that have a
recognized meaning in a particular culture. Ex.
Rings-commitment; colors-have meanings that are
similar in many cultures.
o Heroes
Persons from the past or present who have characteristics
that are important in a culture. Ex. Jose Rizal, Andres
Bonifacio, Darna, Spiderman
o Rituals
Activities participated in by a group of people for the
fulfillment of desired objectives and are socially essential.
Ex. Baptism, weddings, birthdays, graduation
o Values
Human tendencies/preferences towards good or bad, right
or wrong. Ex. Respect for elders, hospitality, nationalism

 Summary

 The field of anthropology is yet another way by which a

person can view himself. It makes the person aware that
what he is maybe determined by his past and present
condition, his biological characteristics, the way he
communicates, the language that he uses and the manner
in which he chooses to live his life.
 The Psychological Perspective of the Self
 What is Psychology?
 Psychology is derived from two Greek words, “psyche”
meaning the mind, the soul and “logos, "meaning to
study. Thus, etymologically psychology is defined as the
study of the mind/soul.
 Psychology is defined as the scientific study of behavior
and mental processes.
 Scientific is systematically and orderly.
 Behavior refers to any observable action and responses of
man.
 Mental processes encompass all the things that the human
mind can do naturally, (memory, emotion, perception,
imagination, thinking and reasoning).
 Goal of Psychology
 To be able to explain and understand why a person
behave differently;
 To be able to predict what will happen if such behavior
persist;
 To be able to control or change the behavior
 Historical Development of Psychology
 Wilhelm Wundt established the 1st psyclogical laboratory
in 1879
 It gave birth to Psychology as a science.
 Hence Wundt was hailed as the “father of modern
psychology”
 Many other psychologist studied the phenomenon of
human behavior and came up with different explanations
thus contributing to the development of Psychology
throughout the years.
 Traditional Approach in Psychology
o Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Tichener
 Structuralism is the study of the conscious experience.
 Three basic elements of the conscious experience are:
1. Images
2. Sensation
3. feelings.
 Introspection - is a psychological technique whereby one
looks into and study ones 'own conscious experience.
o John B. Watson
 Behaviorism - the study of the observable action and
responses of man.
 Contradict to structuralism
o William James
 Functionalism- is the study of the adaptability of mans’
behavior to ones changing environment.
 How man behave base on the environment where he is.
o Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka
 Gestalt-emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater
than its parts. The word “gestalt” is used to mean the way
in which a thing has been “placed” or “put together.”
 Look for the backstory of a person to understand their
action.
 Modern Approach in Psychology
o Psychobiological approach
 it focuses on the study of how biological processes
influences and affect mans’ behavior.
o Cognitive approach
 is the study of mental processes such as attention,
language use, memory, perception, problem solving and
reasoning and the act of using these processes.
 Jean Piaget is a famous cognitive psychologist.
o Behavioral approach
 analyzes how organisms learn or modify their behavior
as they respond to their environment.
 Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner are famous behavioral
psychologists.
o Psychoanalytic approach
 is a method of analyzing psychic phenomena and treating
emotional disorders that involves sessions during which
the patient is encourage to talk freely about personal
experiences. This was developed by Sigmund Freud, the
father of psychoanalysis.
o Humanistic approach
 emphasizes the personal worth of the individual, the
centrality of human values and the creative active nature
of human beings.
 Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are famous humanistic
psychologists.
 Man is capable to be the best they could be.
o Cultural approach
 is the study of how psychological and behavioral
tendencies are rooted and embedded within culture. The
mind and culture are inseparable; that people are shaped
by their culture and their culture is also shaped by them