Different Perspectives in the

Explanation of Self
 PHILOSOPHY
 Socrates
 Plato
 St. Augustine
 Rene Descartes
 John Locke
 David Hume
 Immanuel Kant
 Sigmund Freud
 Gilbert Ryle
 Paul Churchland
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Philosophy – from the Greek words philo (loving) and Sophia (knowledge,
wisdom)
• Socrates – known for his method of inquiry in testing an idea (Socratic
method)
• Some of Socrates’ ideas were:
 The soul is immortal
 The care of the soul is the task of philosophy
 Virtue is necessary to attain happiness
• Most- quoted phrases is, “The unexamined life is not worth living”.
• Socrates said existence is of two kinds: 1. the visible, and 2. the invisible
• Plato – philosophical method identified as “collection and division”
• Known for his theory of forms ------that asserted the physical world is not really
the “real “ world because the ultimate reality exists beyond the physical world
• The single most important influence of the Western concept of “self”
• The “soul” is indeed the most divine aspect of the human being (his concept of
the divine is not spiritual being) but rather one that has intellectual connotation
• The self/soul/mind is the aspect of the human beings by which the forms (ideas)
are known.
• The 3 parts of the soul are: 1. The appetitive (sensual) 2. The rational (reasoning)
3. The Spirited (feeling)
• St. Augustine – one of the Latin Fathers of the Church, doctors and significant Christian
thinkers
• His Christian thinking is the most influential theological system
• He adopted Plato’s view that the “self” is an immaterial (but rational) soul.
• Held that the soul held the Truth and was capable of scientific thinking
• Concept of the “self” was an inner, immaterial “I” that had self-knowledge and self-
awareness
• Believed that the human being was both a soul and body, and body possessed senses
through which the soul experienced the world.
• Rene Descartes –French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist; father of modern western philosophy
• First thinker to emphasize the use of reason to describe, predict, and understand natural phenomena
based on observational and empirical evidence.
• Proposed that doubt was a principal tool of disciplined inquiry, method called hyperbolical/metaphysical
doubt or methodological skepticism
• It is a systematic process of being skeptical about the truth of one’s beliefs in order to determine which
beliefs could be ascertained as true.
• Famous line “Cogito ergo sum” translated as “I think, therefore I am”
• Asserted that everything perceived by the senses could not be used as proof of existence because human
senses could be fooled
• Descartes’ claims about the “self” are:
constant, not prone to change and not affected by time.
Only the immaterial soul remains the same throughout time.
The immaterial soul is the source of our identity.
• The immaterial substance(self) possesses a body and is intimately joined by it that the elf forms a
union with its body.
• Despite this body-soul union, the soul is still distinct from the body.
John Locke
• Was a philosopher, physician and was one of he most influential Enlightenment thinkers
• Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason dominated the ideas in Europe during the 18 th century
• If Descartes described the “self” as a thinking thing, Locke expanded this to include the memories of
that thinking thing, consists of sameness of consciousness
• A person’s memories provide a continuity of experience that allows him/her to identify
himself/herself as the same person over time.
• Since the person is the same “self” in the passing of time, he/she can b held accountable for the pas
behaviors; though insisted that a person could only be held accountable for behaviors he/she can
remember.
David Hume
• was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian during the Age of Enlightenment
• Fierce opponent of Descartes’ Rationalism
• Rationalism is the theory that reason, rather than experience, is the foundation of all knowledge
• Hume, along with John Locke and Bishop George Berkeley, was one of the 3 main figureheads of the influential
British Empiricism movement
• Empiricism – is the idea that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience; it emphasized the role of experience and
evidence (especially sensory perception) in forming concepts
• Hume is identified with the bundle theory wherein he described the “self” or person (assumed to be the mind as a
bundle or a collection of different perceptions that are moving in a very fast and successive manner; therefore in a
“perpetual flux”
• Deny Descartes’ view of the immaterial soul and of its experiences
• Empiricists believed that human intellect and experiences are limited; therefore it is impossible to attribute it to an
independent persisting entity (i.e.soul)
• Concluded that the “self” is merely made up of successive impressions
Immanuel Kant
• Is a central figure in modern philosophy
• Have profound impact to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics
• Among other ideas that he proposed was that, the human mind creates the structure of the human
experience
• View of the “self” is transcendental, which means the “self” is related to a spiritual or nonphysical
realm; the self is not in the body, is outside the body, and it does not have the qualities of the body
• Despite being transcendental, Kant stressed that the body and its qualities are rooted to the “self”
• He proposed that it is knowledge that bridges the “self” and the material things together
• Two kinds of consciousness of self (rationality)
• 1. Consciousness of oneself and one’s psychological states in inner sense, and
• 2. Consciousness of oneself and one’s states by performing acts of apperception
• Apperception is 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.
Sigmund Freud
• Philosopher, physiologist, and psychologist; most influential thinkers of the 20 th century
• Most important contribution, particularly in psychology, was psychoanalysis – a practice devised to
treat those who are mentally ill through dialogue; answered questions about the human psyche
• In psychology, the psyche is the totality of the human mind, both conscious and unconscious
• Structural division of the psyche, Freud distinguished 3 levels of consciousness
• 1. Conscious – awareness of present perceptions, feelings, thoughts, memories, and fantasies at any
particular moment
• 2. Pre-conscious- related to data that can readily be brought to consciousness
• 3. Unconscious – refers to data retained but not easily available to the individual’s conscious
awareness or scrutiny.
Gilbert Ryle
• Philosopher and professor; wrote the Concept of Mind where he rejected the notion that mental
states are separable from physical states
• Believed that the concept of a distinct “self” is not real; we get our sense of self as he asserted that it
is from our behaviors and actions
• In his view, your actions define your own concept of “self” (who your are).
Paul Churchland
• Philosopher and professor; known for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of the
mind
• Stands on a materialistic view or the belief that nothing but matter exists; if something can be seen,
felt, heard, touched, or tasted, then it exists; there is nothing beyond the sensory experienced
• View the immaterial, unchanging soul/slf does not exist because it cannot be experienced by the
senses
• insisted that the idea of a mind or soul is not in consonance with the physical changes that have occurred
in the hereditary characteristics of the human species over successive generations
• His idea is called eliminative materialism or the claim that people’s common-sense understanding of the
mind(or folk psychology) is false and that certain class classes of mental states do not exist
• “The physical brain and NOT the imaginary mind gives us our sense of self”.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Philosopher and author
• Emphasizing the body as the primary site of knowing the world; idea of “self” is an embodied subjectivity
• The term “embodied” is a verb that means to give a body to ( usually an immaterial substance like a soul)
• Subjectivity (in philosophy) is the state of being a subject – an entity that possesses conscious
experiences, such as perspectives, feelings, beliefs, and desires
• Moreover, a subject acts upon or affects some other entity, which is called object