GE UTS

John Locke

 Our identity is not locked in the mind, soul or body only. He included the concept of
memory.
 Identity is explained in terms of psychological connection between life stages.
 Tabula rasa
 Believed that the self or personal identity is constructed primarily by experiences.
 Conscious and experiences and memory of previous experiences are the keys to
understanding the self.

The reason why your identity is formed that way it’s because you can remember what happened
in the past. For example you are hardworking today because you remember in the past that
when you are a child you are rewarded for being hardworking. Because if we don’t have
memory how are we supposed to have continuous identity.

Tabula rasa- a person is born tabula rasa “blank slate”. When the person is born we really know
nothing, is clueless about the world. Just like a notebook whatever you write in the notebook will
be encoded. Hence, when we have a child let us be careful what you write or teach them, they
are going to remember things.

A person is blank slate upon birth and eventually you learn more and your ability to remember
allows you to be who you are today.

Gilbert Ryle

 Denies the existence of internal, non-physical self, nonphysical self.

 The self is not an entity once can locate. It is a name we use to refer to all behaviour.

Perspective that do not agree with dichotomous.

He believes in the existence of body and not on soul. Don’t try to look for self you cannot locate
it, it’s not in one location. Rather according to him “self” is a convenient name that you used to
describe all your behaviour. If you want to understand yourself, do not look for a soul or do no
ttry to look for a location but rather look at your day to day behaviour. There’s no such thing than
can be seen.

He is also know for his famous metaphor about a university. He says that one day there are a
group of people who went to the university and you are the one who give them the tour. You
showed them the clinic, library, clinic and classrooms. This group of people asked you where
the university is. According to Ryle they ask where the university what they did not know that
they are already in the university.

That’s just how we search for the self sometimes, we ask question who am I? What is really my
purpose? What are my personalities? But according to Ryle in order for us to understand our
self we need to look at things we do in our day to day life because that is the self.

 What truly matters is the behaviours that a person manifests in his day-to-day life
  Looking for and trying to understand a “self” as it really exist is like visiting your friend’s
university and looking for the university. Still end up not finding the university because
the campus, people, facilities and its territory are all form the university.
 The self is not an entity one can locate and analyse but simply the convenient name that
people use to refer to all behaviours that people make.

According to him if you really want to understand yourself unless you come to see that your self
is the entirety of the parts.

Whatever behaviours that you show will actually something that you locate but something that
can be acknowledge.

Merleau Ponty

 Denies the dualistic ideas

 The mind and the body cannot be separated

Denies dualism. Because for him the mind and the body cannot be separated. According to him
let us not believe on the perspective that tries to separate the body and mind because it will not
lead to anything productive, it will be futile. Let us not try to separate them but rather let us think
that they are inseparable and they are always connected. Basically what is experienced by the
body enters the mind. Thus they cannot be separated.

 The mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another
 All experience is embodied. One’s body is his opening towards his existence to the
world.

Combined body and mind. You cannot just deny that you are separated, you are one your body
is a living body.

 To him body, thought and emotions are all one. Hence, if you are one among those who
raised his/her eyebrow while reading the aforementioned mind-body separation, Merleau
Ponty is with you.

Paul Churchland

Nothing but matter matter exist

If something can be felt, heard, seen or touched or tasted then it exist. For Church there is
nothing beyond the sensory sense.

Soul/self does not exist because it cannot be experienced with the senses.
THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES: SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT

A persons self and personality comes to resemble his/her environment.

 Sociology is an area of discipline that deals with the study of nature of society or social
structure; its forms and patterns, and the extent to which influences mankind.
 A classical sociological perspective suggest that the self is relatively stable set of
perceptions of who we are in relation to ourselves, others and to social systems.
 The self is socially constructed in the sense that it is shaped through interaction and
socialization with other people.
 The influence of society varies from person to person, hence engaging in self-awareness
will help a person develop a clear perception of his/her personality, including his/her
strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, motivation and emotions.
 There are two types of self that one can be aware of, these are the private self and the
public self. Whereas private self refers to an individual’s internal standards, private
thoughts and feelings, public self refers to how an individual presents him/herself to
others.

Private self- internal standard that we have. Thoughts that we keep in private and feeling that
keep to ourselves. This is who we are when no one else is around.

Public self- how we present ourselves to others and how we do it is cured towards having
agood presentation towards other.

Self-awareness can be positive and negative depending on the circumstances and the next
course of action that we do. In general can be positive because it can keep us from keeping
dangerous, it reminds us of the things that we should do. Example if there is an exam and we
are spending too much time on social media with self-awareness we can limit ourselves to
things that may be dangerous for us.

However in some instances it can be too much that we are concerned of being observed and
criticize by others and this is known as being too self-conscious. This can lead a tendency to
make critical judgements about oneself because we try to attune ourselves in the like or wants
of others.

 It is important to distinguish having self-awareness from having too much self-

consciousness.
 When we becomes too preoccupied with oneself that he standards by which he/she
measures his/her own value become based on the approval of others, the it is no longer
healthy and positive. Consistent with this idea is Charles Horton Cooley’s social
psychological concept called Looking glass self.
 The term “Looking glass self” asserts that the view we have of ourselves comes for the
contemplation of personal qualities and impressions of how others perceive us.
 Simply put, how we see ourselves does not come from who we really are, but rather
from how we believe others see us. People around us are like our mirrors, in the sense
that we use their comments, opinions and judgements to measure our own worth, value
and personality
A process that comprise three phases (subjective)

 How we imagine we appear to other

 How others will judge us based on our appearance
 The development of emotional reaction based on how one perceives others judgement

How others sees us does not reflect reality

 Self-esteem as defined by Nathaniel Branden is the disposition to experience oneself as

being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of
happiness.
 Basically, there are two types of self-esteem: high and low self-esteem. From the
definition above, we can say that having self-esteem means you are confident in your
ability to overcome life’s challenges and believing that you’re worthy of happiness while
having low self-esteem is the opposite.

Self-esteem and how is it developed

 A person’s self-esteem is also influenced through the process of social comparison.

Social comparison theory assumes that we learn about ourselves, the appropriateness
of our behaviour, as well as our social status by comparing aspects of ourselves with
other people.
 Are there are two kinds, namely, Downward Social comparison and upward social
comparison. Downward social comparison happens when we compare ourselves to
those who are worse off than us, therefore raising our self-esteem. Upward social
comparison, on the other hand, is when we compare ourselves to those who are better
off than us, which can be a form of motivation to some.

Social comparison theory- by comparing aspects of ourselves to other people.

Downward- we compare ourselves to those people who are inferior to us.

Upward- we compare ourselves to those people who are superior to us.

Either of this 2 can be an advantage or disadvantage for us. The most important thing is to
compare ourselves to who we are before to assess if to see if there are improvements.

George Herbert Mead

 Now to further understand how interactions with others impact the development of self,
well now focus on the theory of social behaviourism by George Herbert Mead.
 The “looking glass self” mentioned above, is actually a concept drawn from his work.
Mead’s work focuses on the way in which the self is developed.
 He believed that three activities developed the self, these are language, play and
games.
 To him, self emerges from social interactions, such as when kids are preparatory stage
simply imitate their parents’ behaviour, or take the roles of significant others in a pretend
play during play stage or finally begin to take an active role by taking into consideration
the society and expectations of them during the game stage.
“I” self active self- initiates action. “me” self objective- is dependent on how others respond.

Preparatory (1-2 years)

 Respond through mere imitation without knowing the meanings of the actions

Play roles (3-5 years)

 Take the roles of significant other. Pretend play in this process make believe stage,
children internalize the values and attitude eventually incorporate it with their own.

Game Stage

 Children begin to consider their role by taking into consideration the generalized other

Generalized other- expectations of the society.

Erving Goffman

 Now talking about impressions, central to this Canadian sociologists concern is his
notion of impression management. Sociologist Erving Goffman believed that we use
“impression management” to present to others we hope to be perceived.
 Each situation is a new scene, and we perform different roles depending on who is
present (Goffman 1959). In his theory of dramaturgical analysis, he argues that people
live their lives much like actors performing on a stage.
 We behave like actors by following a script that we learned from our parents, teachers or
friends and that there is a programmed quality to the way we relate in daily living. We
actively switch between these different social masks in different social setting and use
each respective mask in different social setting and use each respective mask to
accomplish some specific social goal.