THE SELF:

A TAPESTRY OF
PHILOSOPHICA
L TRADITION.
Before we start…

ask yourself whether there is a “Real you” fixed at birth or whether you
are a working progress.
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IF a computer can pass for a human being, does this mean there are no essential
differences between humans and computers, more to point, are we unique among
animals? Is there something that sets us apart?

For centuries we have claimed that we are Superior to other animals because of our
capability in:

 Tool making

 Culture

 Language

 Reason

7  And Morality
Yet Chimps for instance
Make tools and plan ahead for their use.

 They break a long reed stick or stalk of grass .

 Strip away any excess leaves or twigs and shortens it in
an appropriate length, carry it to distant location
 Inserts it into a termite tunnel
 Shakes it to attract the tasty insect and carefully removes
it without dislodging to many .

 This technique takes many years to perfect

 Adult chimpanzees teaches it to eager young as they
mature.
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 MACAQUES ARE
INVENTIVE TOO

 In a small island in japan, scientist began leaving sweet

potatoes and wheat to feed a colony of macaques: once their
supply dried up.

 They discovered that dipping the sand-covered potatoes in a

brook washed off the inedible grit ( sand)

 Then they transferred this technique to a more difficult task

by separating sand and wheat.

 This innovation soon had been taught among offspring.

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Chimps are also capable of
using language:

Although chimps never had the ability to produce speech,

some of them have learned to use language proficiently

 Researchers tried unsuccessfully teaching a chimp to use symbol from a

computer as a means of communication .

 Kanzi was described as having an intellectual functioning of a two – year

old child. He understands hundreds of words and can execute complex
commands such as “put the backpack in the car”

 Can tell difference in the use of language such

“bite matata and matata bite”

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Rio the sea lion

Had mastered the logical principle of symmetry

and transitivity.

After learning that object A matched Object B and

object B matched Object C, the sea lion quickly
conclude that A is equals to C . This is transitivity.

The sea lion also asserts that C must be also equal

to A, which is basically Symmetry.

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 DAMINI THE
ELEPHANT

In 1991, Damini, an elephant India in died.

Apparently the cause of his death was losing the will to

live after the death his companion.

Damini lost interest in food and could not be tempted,

even with his favourites, he stood for days in enclosure,
when his legs swelled and eventually gave away. he
listlessly laid on his side and tears rolled down his face
and he rapidly lost weight.

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Killer whales and
culture

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Macaques won’t Betray you

An experiment was conducted to test ethical behaviours of

primates.

 Macaques were presented with two very undesirable

alternatives. If they were willing to pull a chain and
administer an electric shock to unrelated macaques,
they were fed, if not, they went hungry.

 In that experiment they found out that only 13%

pulled the chain and 87% of the macaques would
rather go hungry for weeks than to harm another
macaque.

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Milgram’s Experiment

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Milgram’s Experiment

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If we are truly unique?
The task of proving it seems getting very difficult.

Who or what are we?

What are we doing here?

Is there a distinct human nature??

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Who or what are we?

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 “
“When you devote
yourself into an ideal, you
become something else
entirely”

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AVOCADO VS. ARTICHOKE
VIEW ON HUMANITY

AVOCADO
 Pear shaped, yellowish flesh
 Single large seed at the center.
 If the seed is planted, an entire new avocado plant may grow, which is also
capable of producing another generation of fruit
 The seed at the canter contains all the essential information of what makes an
avocado.

Artichoke
 Consist of spiny layers that can be peeled off one after the other.
 When the last of the layer has been peeled of , there is nothing left
 The artichoke does not have an essence , the artichoke is nothing but it’s layer.

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“

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Judaic and
Hebrew
Traditions

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 The Hebrew scriptures asserts that humans are
made in the image and the likeness of God.
 Like the creator, we know who we are – we are self
conscious and has the capacity to love.
 We are moral and is obliged to love and serve God.
 Like the avocado we have a fleshy outward
appearance which makes us similar to animals yet
at the core we share the divine nature and that
makes us unique.

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 Judaic and Hebrew traditions affirms that that
what makes you a person, rather than a chimp or
computer is you’re a special creation of god.
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Socrates and Plato
 The first philosopher who started to engaged in systematic
questioning about the self.
 For Socrates, the true task of a philosopher was to now
oneself.
 Socrates believed that an unexamined life is not worth
living.
 For Socrates, Every man is composed of Body and Soul, this
means that humans are dualistic, that he is composed of two
important aspects of his personhood.
 Since humans are dualistic, he sees them as having both
imperfections and impermanent vessels while also having a
perfect soul that is permanent.
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 “
“An unexamined life is not
worth living.”
-Socrates

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Plato
 Plato basically took off from his master and supported that
humans is a dual nature of body and soul.
 In Addition to socrates’ contribution Plato added that there
are (3) three components of the soul:
 Rational Soul – Forged by reason & intellect. It governs the
affair of the human person.
 Spirited Soul – In charge of emotions that should be kept at
bay.
 Appetitive soul – is in charge of base desire such as eating,
drinking, sleeping and having sex.
These aspect must work harmoniously in order to attained the
ideal and becomes just and virtuous.
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 “
“The measure of a man is
what he does with power.”
-Plato

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Augustine and Aquinas
 He also believes that humans are bifurcated

 One aspect of the man dwells in the world and is imperfect and
continuously yearn to with the divine and the other is capable of
reaching immortality.

 Body – bound to die on earth, thrives only in the imperfect,

physical reality that is the world.

 Soul – stays even after death in an eternal realm with the all
transcendent God.
The goal of every human person is to attain this communion and
bliss with the divine by living his life on earth with virtuous.
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 “
“Love is the beauty of the
soul.”
-Augustine

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Thomas Aquinas
 He sees man as having two parts: Matter and Forms.

 Matter (hyle) – refers to the common stuff that makes up

everything in the universe. He believes that Man’s body is part of
this matter.
 Forms ( morphe) – Essence, substance or a thing”

The body of the human person is something that he shares even with
animals, the cells in man’s body are more or less akin to the cells of
any living, organic world, how ever what makes human, as a person
is his essence or the soul. Which for aquinas animates the body.

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 “
“The soul is known by it's
acts.”
-Thomas Aquinas

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 Rene Descartes
 Father of Modern Philosophy.
 Conceived of the human person as having Body and Mind.
(Cognito & Extenza)
 He claims that there is so much of what we think and believe are
not infallible, they may turn out the be false. One should believe
that which can pass the test of doubt. (Descartes)
 Descartes thought that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the
existence of the mind, for even if one doubt oneself that only
proves that there is a doubting mind.
 Cognito ergo sum “ I Think, therefore I am”
 Descartes view the body as nothing else but a machine that is
attached to the mind.

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 “

“I THINK THEREFORE I AM”

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DAVID HUME
 Scottish Philosopher, Empiricist who believes that one can
know only what comes from senses and experience.
 Hume argues that the self is nothing like what his predecessors
thought of it. The self is not an entity over and beyond the
physical body.
 To hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
2 Types of experience
 Impressions - the basic object of our experience or sensations,
therefore the core of our thoughts. When one touches an ice
cube, the cold sensation is an impression

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DAVID HUME
Therefore, impressions are vivid because they are direct products of
our experience with the world.
2. Ideas – These are copies of impressions. Because of this, they are
not as lively and vivid as impressions. When one imagines the
feeling of being inlove for the first time, that still is an idea.

 To hume, “Self” is simply a bundle or collection of different

perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidly and are in perpetual flux and movement ( hume and
sternberg, 1992)
 Men Simply want to believe that there is a unified, coherent self,
a soul or mind just like what the previous philosophers thought.
In reality, self is simply combination of experience with a
particular person.
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Immanuel Kant
 Kant recognized that everything starts with perception and sensation
of impressions. Yet he argues that humans also categorized and
organize these experience according to their relationship.
 To kant, there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions
that men get from the external world. Time and Space for example,
are ideas that one cannot find in the world, but is built in our minds,
he calls these as apparatuses of t mind.
 Along the different apparatuses of the mind there goes the “ Self”
 Without the self, one cannot organize the different impressions that
one gets in to his existence.
 The self Synthesises all the knowledge and experiences, and it is the
seat of knowledge acquisition for human person.

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Gilbert Ryle
Ryle sees the self as the day to day behaviour that manifest in a
person.
 For ryle, looking for the self is like visiting your friend’s
university and looking for the “university” one can roam around
the campus, visit the library, football field, faculty and still end
up not finding the “university”. This is because the campus, the
people and the system and the territory all form the university.

 “Self” is not an Entity, but it is a name we use to refer to all

behaviours that people make.

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Merleau Ponty
 Unlike his predecessors who believe that Man is bifurcated into
MIND and BODY, he sees these as intertwined and cannot be
separated from one another.
 Sees living body his thoughts, emotions and experience are all
one.

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