UNDERSTANDIN

G THE SELF
Prepared by:
Jesslene R. Mojica, LPT, RPm
 ACTIVITY #1
Try to know more about yourself by answering the following
questions.

1. Aside from your name, course, age,

address, physical attributes, and
interests, how would you characterize
yourself?

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 ACTIVITY #1

2. Reflecting on your younger years,

how did yourself develop? What
external factors or personal decisions
made the biggest impact?

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 ACTIVITY #1

3. How is your “self” related to others,

and what makes it different from
others?

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3-4
 ACTIVITY #1

4. What do you think is the connection

of your “self” to your physical body?

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3-4
 ACTIVITY #1

5. Do you think a separate “self”

exists after death? What do you think
happens to this entity?

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Philosophica
l
Perspectives
on the Self
 • Change of perspective by focusing on the
self.
• Applied systematic questioning of the self.

• “unexamined life is not worth living”

Socrates
 • Dualistic
– body and soul
• Body (Physical)
– imperfect and impermanent
• Soul
– perfect and permanent

Socrates
 3 Parts/Components of Soul

• Appetitive Soul
– desires and cravings
• Rational Soul
– thinking, reasoning, judging aspect

• Spirited Soul
– emotions, rules of reason is
followed to attain victory or

P l at o honor
Socrates Plato
SELF SELF
BOD SOU
BOD SOU Y L
Appetitive
Y L Rational

Spirited
 • merged that of Plato and then the new
Christian perspective

• duality of the self but the body is imperfect

which is connected with the world and the
soul yearns to be divine

St. Augustine
 • imperfection of the body
incapacitates it from the spiritual
communion with God

• body must live in this world with virtue to

attain the communion of the soul with
God

St. Augustine
 • cogito
– mind

• extenza
– body
– extension of the mind

R e n é D e s c ar t e s
 • person should only believe the things
that can pass the test of doubts

• person cannot doubt the existence of his

or her “self”

R e n é D e s c ar t e s
 • “cogito ergo sum”
– “ I think, therefore I am”

• Mind is what makes a person

• Body is just a machine

• Thinking (A thinking thing)

– doubts, understands, affirms, denies,
wills, refuses, imagines, and perceives
R e n é D e s c ar t e s
 • “tabula rasa”

• self is found in the consciousness which

is filled by experience

Joh n L oc k e
 • Knowledge come from senses and
experiences

• self is “bundle or collection of different

perceptions, which succeed each other
with an inconceivable rapidity, and are
in a perpetual flux and movement”

David Hume
 Categories of Experience

• Impressions
– real or actual

• Ideas
– copy of impression or
representation of the world

David Hume
 • Reason is the foundation of knowledge

• “self” organizes and synthesizes our

experiences into something meaningful

Immanuel Kant
 • Focus on observable behavior on
inferring about the self of a person

Gilbert Ryle
 • Mind and body should not be separated

• body is our connection to the world

Maurice Jean
Merleau-Ponty
 • “eliminate materialism” or
“eliminativism”

• focus on neuroscience and the activities of

the brain to learn about the self

Paul
Churchland
• Think like you are a philosopher.
• How can you define your “self”.
• Present on a creative way.
(February 20--TUESDAY)