Lesson 2
The Self According to Philosophy
Philosophy is defined as the study of knowledge or wisdom
from its Latin roots, philo (love) and sophia (wisdom). This
field is also considered as “The Queen of All Sciences”
because every scientific discipline has philosophical
foundations.
- A philosopher from Athens, Greece and said to have the
greatest influence on European thought.
-According to the history he was not able to write any of
his teachings and life’s account instead, he is known from
the writings of his student Plato who became one of the
greatest philosophers of his time.
-He had a unique style of asking questions called Socratic
Method.
SOCRATES
- The foundation of Socrates philosophy was the Delphic
Oracle’s that command to “Know Thyself”. Here, Socrates
would like to emphasize that knowing or understanding
oneself should be more than the physical self, or the body.
- According to Socrates, self is dichotomous which means
composed of two things: the physical realm or the one that
is changeable, temporal, and imperfect, and the ideal
realm is the one that is imperfect and unchanging, eternal,
and immortal.
- For Socrates, a human is composed of body and soul, the
SOCRATES first belongs to the physical realm because it changed, it is
imperfect, and it dies, and the latter belongs to ideal realm
for it survives the death. Socrates also used the term soul to
identify self.
- A student of Socrates, who introduced the
idea of a three-part soul/self that is
composed of reason, physical appetite and
spirit or passion.
- The Reason enables human to think deeply,
make wise choices and achieve a true
understanding of eternal truths. Plato also
called this as divine essence.
- The Physical Appetite is the basic biological
needs of human being such as hunger,
PLATO thirst, and sexual desire.
- The spirit or passion is the basic emotions of
human being such as love, anger, ambition,
aggressiveness and empathy.
- These three elements of the self works in
every individual inconsistently. According to
Plato, it is always the responsibility of the
reason to organize, control, and reestablish
harmonious relationship between these
three elements.
PLATO
- He is considered as the last of the great
ancient philosophers whose ideas were
greatly Platonic. In melding philosophy
and religious beliefs together, Augustine
has been characterized as Christianity’s
first theologian.
ST. AUGUSTINE
- According to St. Augustine, the human nature
is composed of two realms:
1. God as the source of all reality and truth.
Through mystical experience, man is capable of
knowing eternal truths. This is made possible
through the existence of the one eternal truth
which is God.
2. The sinfulness of man. The cause of sin or
evil is an act of mans’ freewill. Moral goodness
can only be achieved through the grace of
God.
ST. AUGUSTINE
A French philosopher, mathematician, and
considered the founder of modern
philosophy.
He introduced the Cartesian Method and
analytic Geometry.
His famous principle the “cogito, ergo
sum—“I think, therefore I exist” established
his philosophical views on “true knowledge”
and concept of self.
RENE DESCARTES
- The self is a dynamic entity that
engages in mental operations –
thinking, reasoning, and perceiving
processes. In addition to this,
self-identity is dependent on the
awareness in engaging with those
mental operations.
RENE DESCARTES
- An English philosopher and physician
and famous in his concept of “Tabula
Rasa” or Blank Slate that assumes the
nurture side of human development.
- The self, according to Locke is
consciousness. In his essay entitled On
Personal Identity (from his most famous
work, Essay Concerning Human
Understanding) he discussed the
JOHN LOCKE reflective analysis of how an individual
may experience the self in everyday
living. He provided the following key
points:
1. To discover the nature of personal identity, it
is important to find out what it means to be a
person.
2. A person is a thinking, intelligent being who
has the abilities to reason and to reflect.
3. A person is also someone who considers
themself to be the same thing in different times
and different places.
4. Consciousness as being aware that we are
thinking—always accompanies thinking and is
an essential part of the thinking process.
JOHN LOCKE 5. Consciousness makes possible our belief that
we are the same identity in different times and
different places.
- He was a Scottish philosopher and also an
empiricist. His claim about self is quite
controversial because he assumed that there is
no self.
- In his essay entitled, “On Personal Identity”
(1739) he said that, if we carefully examine the
contents of [our] experience, we find that there
are only two distinct entities, "impressions" and
"ideas".
DAVID HUME
-Impressions are the basic sensations of our
experience, the elemental data of our
minds: pain, pleasure, heat, cold,
happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, and so
on.
- On the other hand, ideas are copies of
impressions that include thoughts and
images that are built up from our primary
impressions through a variety of
DAVID HUME relationships, but because they are
derivative copies of impressions, they are
once removed from reality
A well-known Australian psychologist and
considered as the Father and Founder of
Psychoanalysis. His influence in Psychology
and therapy is dominant and popular in
the 20th to 21st century.
- The dualistic view of self by Freud involves
the conscious self and unconscious self. -----
-The conscious self is governed by reality
principle. Here, the self is rational, practical,
SIGMUND FREUD
and appropriate to the social environment.
- The unconscious self is governed by
pleasure principle. It is the self that is
aggressive, destructive, unrealistic and
instinctual.
- Freud proposed how mind works, he
called this as provinces or structures of
the mind. By illustrating the tip of the
iceberg which according to him
represents conscious awareness which
SIGMUND FREUD
characterizes the person in dealing with
the external world. The observable
behavior, however, is further controlled
by the workings of the
subconscious/unconscious mind.
- 1. Id. This is primarily based on the pleasure
principle. It demands immediate satisfaction
and is not hindered by societal expectations.
- 2. Ego. The structure that is primarily based on
the reality principle. This mediates between the
impulses of the id and restraints of the
superego.
- 3. Superego. This is primarily dependent on
learning the difference between right and
wrong, thus it is called moral principle. Morality
of actions is largely dependent on childhood
upbringing particularly on rewards and
punishments.
- According to Freud, there are two kinds of
instinct that drive individual behavior – the eros
or the life instinct and the thanatos of the death
instinct. The energy of eros is called libido and
includes urges necessary for individual and
species survival like thirst, hunger, and sex.in
cases that human behavior is directed towards
destruction in the form of aggression and
violence, such are the manifestations of
thanatos.
A British analytical philosopher. He was an
important figure in the field of Linguistic
Analysis which focused on the solving of
philosophical puzzles through an analysis of
language.
His ideas was contradicted with Cartesian
Dualism.
GILBERY RYLE
- According to Ryle, the self is best understood
as a pattern of behavior, the tendency or
disposition for a person to behave in a
certain way in certain circumstances.
- He opposed the notable ideas of the
previous philosophers and even claimed
that those were results of confused
conceptual thinking he termed, category
mistake.
- The category mistake happens when we
GILBERY RYLE speak about the self as something
independent of the physical body: a purely
mental entity existing in time but not space
- A German Philosopher who made great
contribution to the fields of metaphysics,
epistemology, and ethics. Kant is widely
regarded as the greatest philosopher of the
modern period.
- Kant maintained that an individual self makes
the experience of the world comprehensible
because it is responsible for synthesizing the
discreet data of sense experience into a
meaningful whole.
- It is the self that makes consciousness for the
person to make sense of everything. It is the
IMMANUEL KANT one that help every individual gain insight and
knowledge. If the self failed to do this
synthesizing function, there would be a chaotic
and insignificant collection of sensations
- An American philosopher interested
in the fields of philosophy of mind,
philosophy of science, cognitive
neurobiology, epistemology, and
perception.
- Churchlands’ central argument is
PAUL AND PATRICIA that the concepts and theoretical
CHURCHLAND vocabulary that people use to think
about the selves—using such terms as
belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain,
joy—actually misrepresent the reality
of minds and selves. He claims that
the self is a product of brain activity.
- Neurophilosophy was coined by
Patricia Churchland, the modern
scientific inquiry looks into the
application of neurology to age-old
problems in philosophy. The
philosophy of neuroscience is the
PAUL AND PATRICIA study of the philosophy of science,
CHURCHLAND neuroscience, and psychology. It
aims to explore the relevance of
neurolinguistic experiments/studies to
the philosophy of the mind.
- A French philosopher and phenomenologist.
- According to him, the world and the sense of
self are emergent phenomena in the ongoing
process of man’s becoming.
- Developed the concept of self-subject and
contended that perceptions occur existentially.
Thus, the consciousness, the world, and the
human body are all interconnected as they
mutually perceive the world.
MAURICE
MERLEAU-MONTY
- Phenomenology provides a direct
description of the human experience
which serves to guide man’s conscious
actions. He further added that, the world is
a field of perception, and human
consciousness assigns meaning to the
world. Thus man cannot separate himself
from his perceptions of the world.
- Perception is not purely the result of
MAURICE sensations nor it is purely interpretations.
MERLEAU-MONTY Rather consciousness is a process that
includes sensing as well as
interpreting/reasoning
