UNDERSTANDING

THE SELF
MODIFIED BY: ANTHONY A. ALAGON
0997-453-4577
Behavior – is an individual’s reaction to certain
situations.
Behavior can be:
• 1. overt - outward behavior
• 2. covert – hidden not visible to the naked eyes.
Behavior can be:
• 1. conscious - acts maybe in the level of one’s
awareness
• 2. unconscious – acts deeply embedded in one
subconscious
• Behavior may be:
• 1. Simple - is the one in which the response is the direct
result of the cause; involves few neurons;
• 2. Complex – is the one in which there is much more
responsible for your action, like mental condition etc.; more
number of neurons
• Behavior can be:
• 1. Rational – exercised with sanity or reason.
• 2. Irrational – acts committed for no apparent reason or
explanation
•Behavior can be :
•1. Voluntary – done with full volition of
ill.

•2. Involuntary – process within our

body that go even while we are asleep
or awake.
 Different
Psychological
Perspectives
BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
• Behavior is explained by brain chemistry, genetic
glands, etc.
• Focuses on how an individual’s biological factors (
chromosomes, hormones, and the brain) influence
behaviors, thoughts, and emotions.
• Most behavior is inherited from parents.
BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE
•Behavior is explained by previous learning
from stimuli found in the environment.
•Focuses on behavior being based on learning
through rewards, punishments and
observations.
 PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE
• Focuses on how behavior is affected by unconscious drives
and conflicts.
• It believes that most behavioral processes stem from the
unconscious.
• The unconscious is made up of fears, thoughts and wishes
that the person is unaware of, as these have been
forbidden from awareness, also known as the mechanism
of repression.
 COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
•Behavior is explained by “mental”
functions such as memory, perception,
attention, etc.
•Focuses on how people think about and
process information. Compares human
brain to computers.
COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

•Humans are active in their environment and

use mental processes to transform and
understand info.
•Studies memory, problem solving, decision
making, language, etc.
HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE
• Behavior is explained as being motivated by
satisfying needs ( safety, hunger, thirst, etc.) with the
goal of reaching one’s potential once basic needs
are met.
• Focuses on the whole person when observing
behavior and that each person is unique and
individual. Through free will individual attempts to
reach their full potential.
HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE
•Belief that people are innately good.
•Focuses on the uniqueness of human
beings and their capacity for choice
(free will).
SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
•Behavior is explained by the influence
of other people in the environment.
•Focuses on how mental processes and
behavior change based on the
environment or situation.
EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
•How human behaviors required for
survival have adapted in the face of
environmental pressures and evolution.
•Influenced by Darwin.
ACTIVITY:
•Case Study of Gino.
-Gino is a freshman student at Tanauan
Institute, Inc. Gino has been drinking a lot
lately. There is some concern that Gino may
be alcoholic.
 ASSIGNMENT
Answer the following questions about your self as fully and precisely as you
can:
1. How would you characterize your self?
2. What makes you stand out from the rest? What makes your self special?
3. How has yourself transformed itself?
4. How is your self connected to your body?
5. How is your self related to other selves?
6. What will happen to your self after you die?
 ANALYSIS
Were you able to answer the questions with ease? Why? Which questions
did you find easiest to answer? Which ones are difficult? Why?

Questions Easy or Difficult Why?

to answer?
THE SELF FROM
VARIOUS
PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVE
SOCRATES
 SOCRATES
• Was born in 469 BC and spent all his life in Athens, Greece
• He was the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self.
• To Socrates, the true task of a philosopher is to know oneself.
• Famously said, “True knowledge exists in knowing that you
know nothing”
• Acted as Athens “GADFLY”
• Socratic Method is his greatest contribution to the academic
world.
 “THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING.”
-SOCRATES

Socrates believed that you as a person should

consciously contemplate, turn your gaze inward
and analyze the true nature and values that are
guiding your life.
SOME OF HIS IDEAS WERE:
• The care of the soul is the task of philosophy
• Knowledge is necessary to become virtuous
and virtue is necessary to attain happiness.
• All evil acts are committed out of ignorance
and hence involuntarily
• Committing an injustice is far worse than
suffering an injustice
 WHAT IS THE NATURE OF OUR TRUE SELF?
According to Socrates, self-knowledge would open your
eyes to your true nature. One’s true self is not to be
identified with:

•what we own
•Our social status
•Even with our body
“OUR TRUE SELF IS OUR SOUL”
ACCORDING TO SOCRATES, EXISTENCE IS OF
TWO KINDS: VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

Visible existence changes while the invisible

remains constant. The body which is visible,
changes; the other part, the kind that is invisible to
humans yet sensed and understood by the mind,
remains constant.
WHAT IS GOOD? WHAT IS EVIL?
•Wealth •Poverty
•Status •Death
•Pleasure •Pain
•Social •Social
Acceptance Rejection
WHAT IS GOOD? WHAT IS EVIL?

Makes Makes
us us
HAPPY SUFFER
To Socrates, “if one devoted themselves to self-
knowledge and philosophical inquiry, they would
soon be led to a more appropriate view of the
good”.
There is one supreme good and possession of this
good alone will secure our happiness
 Is defined as “MORAL EXCELLENCE”
A VIRTOUS PERSON is the one whose character is
made up of the moral qualities accepted as virtues:
COURAGE PRUDENCE
JUSTICE TEMPERANCE
 WHAT IS VIRTUE?
•Socrates conversed with his fellow Athenians, in
search of the definition, or essence, of a specific
virtue
•He thought that when one arrived at the correct
definition of virtue, one would realize that virtue
is the true good.
EVIL IS THE RESULT OF
IGNORANCE
 “IT IS BETTER TO SUFFER AN
INJUSTICE THAN TO COMMIT
AN INJUSTICE”
PLATO
 PLATO
• Student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle
• Wrote on wide variety of topics including Politics, Aesthetics, Cosmology, and
Epistemology
• Studied Philosophy, Poetry and Gymnastics
• best known for his physical world. Theory of Forms that asserted that the
physical world is not really the real world because the ultimate reality exists
beyond the physical world.
• Wrote the “Socratic Dialogue” where Socrates was the main character and
speaker.
WORLD OF IDEAS SENSIBLE WORLD

•Eternal •Temporary
•Unchanging •Constantly Changing
•Perfect •Imperfect
•True Knowledge •Insecurity
 THE 3 PARTS OF THE SOUL ACCORDING TO PLATO:
• Theappetitive (sensual) – the element that enjoys
sensual experiences such as food, drink and sex
• Thespirited (emotion) – the element that is inclined
toward reason but understands the demands of
passion; the part that loves honor and victory.
• The rational (reasoning) – the element that forbids
the person to enjoy the sensual experiences; the part
that loves truth, hence should rule over the other parts
of the soul through the use of reason
 RATIONAL

EMOTION/
SPIRITED

APPETITIVE
ST. AUGUSTINE
 ST. AUGUSTINE
• One of earliest influences was that of the Manicheans.
Manicheans are dualists, who believed the world is a battlefield between light
and darkness.
• Came under the influence of a group of intellectuals-the Platonists.
• He adopted Plato’s view that the self is an immaterial (but rational) soul.
• Agreed that a man is of a bifurcated nature.
• He believed that the human being was both a soul and body, and the body
possessed senses, such as imagination, memory, reason, and mind through
which the soul experienced the world.
• He believed that we were born sinful due to the fall of humanity.
• Anti-Pelagian
 THE HUMAN WILL BEFORE THE FALL
• Accordingto Augustine, Adam and Eve lived in
harmony before the fall. During this time the HUMAN
BODY, WILL and REASON were in complete
harmony.
• God created the will “ex nihilo” (from nothing) and can
choose good, bad or to accept or reject God.
• The will is also synonymous with love-
both CUPIDITAS (Self-Love) and CARITAS (Generous Love)
 THE HUMAN WILL AFTER THE FALL
• Adam and Eve desired to be like God and through
their pride, decided to experience good and evil from
the forbidden tree of knowledge.
• In Augustine’s version, Satan does not cause the fall but
provides the stimulus to disobey God.
• Pride (disobedience) is the cause of all vices. The will,
now in a weakened state, is unable to control the body
and it will seek food and sex.
The result is the divided will, or AKRASIA. This is
a will that possesses rationality, but is also
susceptible to weakness.

In the case of Adam (and all men) this led to

CONCUPISCENCE meaning uncontrolled lust.

Humans suffer from ORIGINAL SIN

This is denoted by double death and the
transmission of sin.
• St.Augustine believed that the human being who is
both soul and body is meant to tend to higher, divine,
and heavenly matters because of his/her capacity to
ascent and comprehend truth through the mind.
• He also pointed out that a person is similar to God as
regards to the mind and its ability; that by ignoring to
use his/her mind (or the incorrect use of the mind)
he/she would lose his/her possibility to reach real and
lasting happiness.
RENE DESCARTES
 RENE DESCARTES
• Considered the father of modern Western philosophy.
• He is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize
the use of reason to describe, predict, and understand
natural phenomena based on observational and
empirical evidence.
• He proposed that doubt was a principal tool of
disciplined inquiry.
• His method was called hyperbolical/metaphysical doubt, also
sometimes referred to as 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.
• His famous line “cogito ergo sum” translated as “Ï think,
therefore, I am” became a fundamental element of Western
philosophy as it secured the foundation for knowledge in the
face of radical doubt.
• He asserted that everything perceived by the
senses could not be used as proof of existence
because human senses could be fooled.
• He added that there was only one thing we could be
sure of in this world, and that was everything could
be doubted. In turn, by doubting his own existence,
Descartes proved that there is a thinking entity that
is doing the act of doubting.
 DESCARTES’ CLAIMS ABOUT THE SELF:
• It is constant, it is not prone to change and it is not affected
by time
• Only the immaterial soul remains the same throughout time
• The immaterial soul is the source of our identity.
• The thinking entity could exist without the body because it is
an immaterial substance. Nevertheless, this immaterial
substance (self) possesses a body and is so intimately bound
/joined by it that the self forms a union with its body. Despite
this union, Descartes reasoned that the soul is distinct from
the body.
The SOUL The BODY
It is a conscious thinking substance that It is a material substance
is unaffected by time that changes through time

It is only known to itself (only you know It can be doubted; the public
your own mental event and others can correct claims about the
cannot correct your mental states) body

It is not made up of any parts. It views It is made up of physical,

the entirety of itself with no hidden or quantifiable, divisible parts.
separate compartments. It is both
conscious and aware of itself at the
same time.
DAVID HUME
 DAVID HUME
• An empiricist who believes that one can know only what comes
from the senses and experiences.
• He argued that the self is not an entity over and beyond the
physical body.
• Empiricism is the school of thought that espouses the idea that
knowledge can only be possible if it is sensed and
experienced.
• To him, self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
HUME DIVIDED THE MIND’S PERCEPTIONS INTO TWO
GROUPS:

1. Impressions – perceptions that are most strong. They enter

the sense with most force. These are directly experienced

2. Ideas – these are the less forcible and less lively counterparts
of impressions. These are mechanisms that copy and
reproduce sense data formulated based upon the previously
perceived impressions.
 CONTENTS OF THE MIND
IMPRESSIONS
Sensation and feelings.
Are strong and vivid.
IMPRESSIONS OF
SENSATION: Derive from our
senses
IMPRESSIONS OF
REFLECTION: from our
experience of our mind, e.g.
feeling, emotions, etc.
IDEAS
Related to thinking, concepts
beliefs, memories, mental
image, etc.
Derived from and are
copies of impressions
IDEAS OF SENSATION: E.g:
Color
IDEAS OF REFLECTION: E.g:
Idea of emotion
• Hume compared the self to a nation; whereby a nation
retains its being a nation not by some single core or
identity but by being composed of different, constantly
changing elements, such as people, systems, cultures,
and beliefs.
• In the same manner, the self, according to Hume, is not
just one impression but a mix and a loose cohesion of
various personal experiences. Hume insisted that that
there is no one constant impression that endures
throughout one’s life.
IMMANUEL KANT
A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI DISTINCTION
• A PRIORI is something that can be known without experience or sense
data.
Ex: Five is a prime number.
Brothers are male siblings.

A POSTERIORI can only be known with sense of experience.

Ex: My dogs like chicken
It often rains in the Philippines.
 NOUMENA AND PHENOMENA
• Noumenal World is known by the mind because it cannot
be known through the senses, only evidence for it can be so
known. It is the world as it is in itself.

• Phenomenal World as we experience it.

 IMMANUEL KANT
• Kant’s view of the self is transcendental, which means
the “self” is related to a spiritual or nonphysical realm.
• For him, the self is not in the body. The self 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.
 2 KINDS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
1. Consciousness of oneself and one’s psychological states in the inner
self
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.
2 COMPONENTS OF THE SELF
1. Inner self – the self you are aware of alterations in your own
state. This includes rational intellect and psychological
states, such as moods, feelings, and sensations, pleasure
and pain.
2. Outer self – it includes senses and the physical world. It is
the common boundary between the external world and the
inner self. It gathers information from the external world
through the senses which the inner self interprets.