PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF SELF

Reported by Mary Joy Dayoc

(BSED-ENGLISH)
PHILOSOPHY OF SELF
The philosophy of self defines among other things, the conditions of identity that make one subject of
experience distinct from all others.

DEFINITIONS OF THE SELF

Self of one individual is exhibited in the conduct and discourse of that individual which has
characteristics of the self-determine to its identity.

CONCEPTS OF SELF

 SELF IN TRADITIONS
In spirituality, and especially nondual, mystical and eastern meditative traditions, the human being is often
conceived as being in the illusion of individual existence. The goal of many traditions involves the dissolving
of the ego, allowing self-knowledge of one's own true nature to become experienced and enacted in the world.
This is variously known as enlightenment, nirvana, etc.
 SELF AS AN ACTIVITY
The soul as the core essence of a living being, but argued against its having a separate existence.
 Plato’s view, the soul remains even the body has no function as long as the essence of being human exist.
 Aristotle's view, soul is an activity of the body, it cannot be immortal.

Aristotle also believed that there were FOUR SECTIONS OF THE SOUL:
The calculative and scientific parts on the rational side used for making decisions
Desiderative and vegetative parts on the irrational side responsible for identifying our needs.
 SELF INDEPENDENT OF THE SENSES
Self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a
primary given, a substance. David Hume pointed out that we tend to think that we are the same person we were five
years ago.

 SELF AS A NARRATIVE CENTER OF GRAVITY

Daniel Dennett has a deflationary theory of the "self". Selves are not physically detectable. Instead, they
are a kind of convenient fiction, like a center of gravity, which is convenient as a way of solving physics
problems, although they need not correspond to anything tangible. Our self is rational.
 THE BUDDHA
The Buddha in particular attacked all attempts to conceive of a fixed self. Ātman in Buddhism is the
concept of self, and is found in Buddhist literature's discussion of the concept of SELF. It refers to a person's
"true self", a person's permanent self, and absolute within, the "thinker of thoughts, feeler of sensations"
separate from and beyond the changing phenomenal world
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one's
identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from
the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known. The
self has many facets that help make up integral parts of it, such as self-awareness, self-esteem, self-knowledge,
and self-perception.

 SELF (SOCIOLOGY)
The self is an individual person as the object of his or her own reflective consciousness. This reference is
necessarily subjective, thus self is a reference by a subject to the same subject. The sense of having a self – or
self-hood.
Examples of psychiatric conditions:
 Depersonalization where such 'sameness' is broken
 Schizophrenia: the self appears different to the subject.
 SELF (SPIRITUALITY)
The self is a complex and core subject in many forms of spirituality. In Western psychology, the concept of self
comes from Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Carl Rogers where the self is the inner critic.
 False self - the self that is the ego, also called the learned, superficial self of mind and body.
 True self - an egoic creation.
 SELF (REALIZATION)
Self-realization is an expression used in psychology, philosophy, and spirituality; and in Indian religions.
In the Western, psychological understanding it may be defined as the "fulfillment by oneself of the
possibilities of one's character or personality." Self-realization is liberating knowledge of the true Self.

 SELF-SCHEMA
The self-schema refers to a long lasting and stable set of memories that summarize a person's beliefs,
experiences and generalizations about the self, in specific behavioral domains. A person may have a self-
schema based on any aspect of himself or herself as a person, including physical characteristics, personality
traits and interests, as long as they consider that aspect of their self-important to their own self-definition.

 SHIP OF THESEUS (SELF PORTRAY)

In the metaphysics of Identity, the ship of Theseus (or Theseus's paradox) is a thought experiment that
raises the question of whether a ship—standing for an object in general—that has had all of its components
replaced remains fundamentally the same object.