Chapter 1

A Philosophical Journey to Discovering the Self

Introduction
This module aims to describe the different philosophical perspectives of the self from
various philosophers, evaluate the importance of having different philosophical perspectives
of the self, and practice wider understanding of different point of views of people based on the
various philosophical perspectives. The knowledge, skills, and insights that students would
gain from this course may be used in their academic endeavors, their chose disciplines, and
their future careers as they understand their self and identity.

Specific Objectives
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:

- Describe the different philosophical perspectives of the self from various philosophers;
- Evaluate the importance of having different philosophical perspectives of the self; and
- Practice wider understanding of different point of views of people based on the various
philosophical perspectives.

Duration

Chapter 1: A Philosophical Journey to Discovering = 5 hours

the Self (3 hours discussion; 2 hours
assessment)

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Lesson Proper
I. From Myth to Science

Pre-philosophical Greek attitudes toward the soul and the prospects for
surviving bodily death found expression in Homer and subsequently in the mystery
cults of Dionysus (Bacchus) and Orpheus. The earliest attempts to grapple with
such issues philosophically occurred hundreds of years later, in the sixth century
BCE, primarily in the philosophies of Pythagoras and Heraclitus.

In Homer, people had psyches, which survived their bodily deaths. But the
survival of a psyche was not the survival of a person. Before bodily death, peoples’
psyches, or life principles, were associated with their breath (pneuma) and
movement. Other faculties, most of them associated with bodily organs or bodily
activities other than breath and movement, were responsible for specific mental and
emotional tasks. Nous, for instance, was associated with seeing and was responsible
for reasoning; thymos was associated with the organism’s immediate mental and
physical response to an external threat and was responsible for courage; phrenes
was associated with the midriff and responsible for strength; kardia was associated
with the heart and responsible for passion, including fear.

In the early fifth century BCE, progressive Greek thinkers began to replace all
such myths with science. As far as the self is concerned, their interest centered on
the word psyche, which meant different things to different thinkers. Sometimes it
meant person or life, sometimes personality, sometimes that part of one that could
experience. In each case, psyche tended to be understood as a bodily function that
has emotion and appetite. But under the influence of Orphism and perhaps also
Greek shamanism, later thinkers began to think of the psyche in more spiritual
terms.

Pythagoras (fl. 530 BCE) and Empedocles (fl. 450 BCE), two of the earliest
philosophers to have been concerned with the self, may have been shamans. Both
of them combined what today we would call science with an Orphic-style
mysticism. Pythagoras inspired legends but wrote nothing, so it is hard to speak
with confidence about his views. Originally from Samos, he was an astronomer and
mathematician who was said to have originated the doctrine of the tripartite soul,
which resurfaced in the philosophy of Plato. Pythagoras also espoused rebirth, or
transmigration, and was said to have been able to remember what happened in many
of his previous incarnations. Empedocles, on the other hand, was preoccupied with
medicine rather than mathematics. Admired widely as a miracle worker, he was said
to have cured illness by the power of music. He was also said to have restored the
dead to life.

According to the Orphism with which Pythagoras and Empedocles may

both have been associated, when a human dies his or her soul (or psyche)
persists. Those persisting souls that were pure remained permanently with the gods.
Those that were impure remained in the company of the gods while they awaited
incarnation again as humans, animals, or worse (Empedocles apparently believed
that he had once been incarnated as a bush). The process of incarnation “soils”
souls, augmenting their impurity. Their subsequent fates depend on the behavior of
their new hosts, especially upon whether the hosts, if human, observe certain dietary
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restrictions and religious rituals. Pythagoras, for instance, prohibited his disciples
from sacrificing animals and from consuming flesh or beans and encouraged them
to participate in rituals that celebrated the superiority of the intellect over the senses.
Orphism taught that ultimately all souls reunite with the universal deity.

In sum, what Pythagoras and Empedocles seem to have shared, and what they
encouraged in thinkers who would come later, was belief in a soul, or self, that
existed prior to the body, that could be induced to leave the body even while the
body remained alive, and that would outlast the body. These ideas were extremely
consequential. Directly or indirectly, they seem to have powerfully influenced Plato
and, through Plato, various church fathers, including Augustine and, through
Augustine, Christian theology and, through Christianity, the entire mindset of
Western civilization, secular as well as religious. It is ironic, perhaps, that ideas that
eventually acquired such an impressive rational pedigree may have originated in the
dark heart of shamanism, with its commitment to magic and the occult.

In Plato’s Symposium , which is thought to be one of his earlier dialogues,

Diotima explains to Socrates, rather matter-of-factly:

[Overtime,] each living creature is said to be alive and to be the same

individual—as for example someone is said to be the same person from when
he is a child until he comes to be an old man. And yet, if he’s called the same,
that’s despite the fact that he’s never made up from the same things, but is
always being renewed, and losing what he had before, whether it’s hair, or
flesh, or bones, or blood, in fact the whole body. And don’t suppose that this is
just true in the case of the body; in the case of the soul, too, its traits, habits,
opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears—none of these things is ever the same
in any individual, but some are coming into existence, others passing away.

Diotima’s view presented here—that the identity over time of every “mortal”
thing is to be understood in terms of a relationship among its ever-changing parts—
is called a relational view of the identity of objects over time. It is the view to which
virtually all current personal-identity theorists subscribe. Before it could gain
ascendancy, the Platonic view had to be vanquished.

In the Symposium, Plato contrasts identity through change with

unchanging, divine immortality. He goes on to suggest that to the extent that
humans grasp the eternal forms—in particular, beauty—they also, if only in the
moment, participate in immortality. But, as we shall see, in the Phaedo, which may
have been written at about the same time as the Symposium, Plato focused not on
our mortal nature but on the immortality of the soul—the only part of our nature
that he thought persists after bodily death. Consistent with the Symposium, he also
pointed out that there is a difference between the souls of ordinary people, which
persist eternally but constantly change their nature due to their attention to earthly
things, and the souls of philosophers, or lovers of wisdom (philosophia), like
Socrates, who by seeking to know the eternal become one with it. Only such
souls—Plato’s heroes—achieve “real,” that is, unchanging, immortality. Ordinary
people, on the other hand, reincarnate, forgetting themselves in the process
(metempsychosis).

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II. Get to Know the Philosophers

SOCRATES (470 – 399 BC)

“The Father of Western Philosophy”

‘Know thyself!’ Socrates instructed

his disciples. For, as he clearly saw, self-
directed thought (autognosis) raises the
problem that we must know what
knowledge is and who does the knowing.
This became a point of departure for one
of the richest fields of philosophical
investigation, from the Socratics through
the ‘confessions’ of Christian thinkers in
the medieval period to idealism and
materialism in the modern era.
Socratic Thinking - The Socratic
Figure 1; Socrates;
method (also known as method of https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Life-
Elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic and-Times-of-the-Ancient-Greek-
debate) is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based
Philosopher-Socrates
on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out
ideas and underlying presuppositions.

The question of how consciousness and self-awareness connect with personal

identity has accompanied philosophy since antiquity. Sages of diverse orientations
have put forth various elaborate answers, showing among other things that self-
awareness is more than just being conscious. Yet, it seems a self-sustaining pursuit,
producing new puzzles with every solution. That individual identity means being a
rational creature with a personal memory is not the end of the story.

PLATO (428 – 348 BC)

Plato conceives the soul as a knower.

The concepts of the self and knowledge are
inextricably connected. This is because
Plato’s concept of the self is practically
constructed on the basis of his reflections
on the nature of the rational soul as the
highest form of cognition.

For Plato, the human person is

composed of a body and soul. The body is
the material and destructible part of the
human person, while the soul is the Figure 2; Plato;
immaterial and indestructible part. For https://www.pinterest.ph/pin/3972316296
Plato, the soul is the self. 33432727/

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According to Plato, the SOUL has three parts:
● The Rational soul – cognition
Plato considers the rational soul as the superior among the three because it
serves as a moral and rational guide for the spiritual soul and the appetitive
soul.
● The Spiritual soul - emotions
● The Appetitive soul – physical wants/needs

The Concept of “Eudaimonia”

Plato believed that individuals naturally feel unhappiness when they do
something they know and acknowledge to be wrong (Price, 2011). Eudaimonia,
according to Plato, was the highest and ultimate aim of both moral thought and
behaviour.
Nonetheless, while Plato was believed somewhat to have refined the concept,
he offered no direct definition for it. As with Socrates, he saw virtue as integral to
eudaimonia.
One thing is worth noting at this point. If this idea of an ‘ultimate goal’ for
individuals is beginning to sound familiar, rest assured that there is good reason for
thinking so. The similarities between eudaimonia and concepts such as Maslow’s
self-actualization (1968) are indeed widely accepted in the psychological
literature (Heintzelman, 2018).
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
Plato realizes that the general run of humankind can think, and speak, etc.,
without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness of his realm of Forms.
The allegory of the cave is supposed to explain this.
In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to
prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall
of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is
a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the
prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners
are unable to see these puppets, the real objects that pass behind them. What the
prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.
Here is an illustration of Plato’s Cave:

Figure 3; Plato’s Cave;

https://faculty.washington.e
du/smcohen/320/platoscave.
▪ Such prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They
gif; 03/07/21
would think the things
they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real
causes of the shadows.
▪ So when the prisoners talk, what are they talking about? If an object (a book, let
us say) is carried past behind them, and it casts a shadow on the wall, and a
prisoner says “I see a book,” what is he talking about?
▪ He thinks he is talking about a book, but he is really talking about a shadow. But
he uses the word “book.” What does that refer to?
▪ Plato gives his answer at line (515b2). The text here has puzzled many editors,
and it has been frequently emended. The translation in Grube/Reeve gets the point
correctly:
▪ “And if they could talk to one another, don’t you think they’d suppose that the
names they used applied to the things they see passing before them?”

5
▪ Plato’s point is that the prisoners would be mistaken. For they would be taking
the terms in their language to refer to the shadows that pass before their eyes,
rather than (as is correct, in Plato’s view) to the real things that cast the shadows.
▪ If a prisoner says “That’s a book” he thinks that the word “book” refers to the
very thing he is looking at. But he would be wrong. He’s only looking at a
shadow. The real referent of the word “book” he cannot see. To see it, he would
have to turn his head around.
▪ Plato’s point: the general terms of our language are not “names” of the physical
objects that we can see. They are actually names of things that we cannot see,
things that we can only grasp with the mind.
▪ When the prisoners are released, they can turn their heads and see the real objects.
Then they realize their error. What can we do that is analogous to turning our
heads and seeing the causes of the shadows? We can come to grasp the Forms
with our minds.
▪ Plato’s aim in the Republic is to describe what is necessary for us to achieve this
reflective understanding. But even without it, it remains true that our very ability
to think and to speak depends on the Forms. For the terms of the language we use
get their meaning by “naming” the Forms that the objects we perceive participate
in.
▪ The prisoners may learn what a book is by their experience with shadows of
books. But they would be mistaken if they thought that the word “book” refers to
something that any of them has ever seen.
▪ Likewise, we may acquire concepts by our perceptual experience of physical
objects. But we would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts that we grasp
were on the same level as the things we perceive.

ARISTOTLE (BC 384 – BC 322) :

The Soul is the Essence of the Self

Another Greek philosopher, Aristotle, believes

that the soul is merely a set of defining features and
does not consider the body and soul as separate
entities. He suggests that anything with life has a
soul. Aristotle holds that the soul is the essence of all
Figure 4; Aristotle;
living things. Thus, the soul is the essence of the self. https://www.essay.ws/essay-on-
However, humans differ from other living things philosophy-aristotle/
because of their capacity for rational thinking. His
discussion about the self focuses on the kinds of soul possessed by a person. Thus,
he introduces the three kinds of soul: vegetative, sentient, and rational. The
vegetative soul includes the physical body that can grow. Sentient soul includes
sensual desires, feelings, and emotions. Rational soul is what makes man human.
It includes the intellect that allows man to know and understand things. Thus,
Aristotle suggests that the rational nature of the self is to lead a good, successful,
and fulfilling life (self-actualized). The pursuit of happiness is a search for a good
life that includes doing virtuous actions. In saying this, he posits that part of the
rational soul is characterized by moral virtues such as justice and courage.

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ST. AUGUSTINE (354 – 430 CE)
He believed that man is bifurcate (divided into
two branches) in nature, which is our physical body
and the soul. One aspect of us is imperfect and
worldly while the other is capable of divinity and
immortality.
He believes that the goal of each person is to
be with God again someday and achieve divinity and
in order to that we must live our lives virtuously.
Manicheanism was the religion that
Augustine bought into in the first part of his life. It's
founder, Mani, conceived of himself as some kind of
Christian. It was outlawed, reviled, discredited and Figure 5; St. Augustine;
so on time and time again through early Christianity, https://pixels.com/featured/
but kept cropping up. saint-augustine-of-hippo-
berto-di-giovanni.html
Augustine's rejection of Manicheanism meant that
he had to come up with an alternative account of Evil, and his efforts to do so, which
are detailed in his Confessions, are influential among Christian theologians to this
day.

The Main Components are:

● The Big Picture Argument. Just because something considered in isolation

seems vile, disgusting, stupid, and the like, doesn't mean that it is evil. For it
might be a necessary part of the virtue, beauty, or intelligence of the larger
whole of which it is a part. Agatha Christie novels always have a murder in
them, which is sort of ugly in isolation, but without the murder, how interesting
would the whole mystery be? (This isn't Augustine's example).
● The Free-will Defense. God thought that a world with Free Agents in it would
be better than one without. He could have had a world with virtuous
automatons, who did just what he programmed them to do. But what a bore that
would be. And if one of those automatons loved Him, what would that
mean? So he created a world with Free Beings in it, even though he realized
that by doing so, inevitably some would choose to do evil things. Hence, as an
instance of the Big Picture point, the best of all possible worlds, because it
contains freedom, also contains evil
● Angels, Devils, and Natural Evil. When we think of free creatures, we
naturally think of humans, who certainly do their share of evil deeds. But not
all evil seems to stem from human action. How about cancer? And the
suffering of innocent animals? And earthquakes. However, Augustine thought
that there were a lot of other free creatures creating havoc.
● Pride. This all suggests that God has some plan, such that, if we could see it,
we could see that this is, in spite of the genocide of Indians, the Holocaust,
cancer, war, pestilence, and so on, the best of all possible worlds. If we could
see the Big Picture, all would fall into place. But who can see such a
picture? But to expect to see the Big Picture is to commit the sin of pride. God

7
 is infinite, we are finite, very finite, so we shouldn't expect to figure out what
He might have had in mind.

RENE DESCARTES (1596 – 1650)

“Founder of Modern Philosophy”

Descartes was more concerned with

understanding the thinking process we use to answer
questions. He agreed with the great thinkers before
him that the human ability to reason constitutes the
extraordinary instrument we have to achieve truth
and knowledge. But instead of simply using reason to
try to answer questions, Descartes wanted to
penetrate the nature of our reasoning process and
understand its relation to the human self. He was Figure 5; Rene Descartes;
https://commons.wikimedia.o
convinced that to develop the most informed and rg/wiki/File:PSM_V37_D740
well-grounded beliefs about human existence, we _Rene_Descartes.jpg
need to be clear about the thinking instrument we are
employing. For if our thinking instrument is flawed, then it is likely that our
conclusions will be flawed as well.
Descartes is convinced that committing yourself to a wholesale and
systematic doubting of all things you have been taught to simply accept without
question is the only way to achieve clear and well-reasoned conclusions. More
important, it is the only way for you to develop beliefs that are truly yours and not
someone else’s.
This, then, is the beginning of Descartes’s quest for true knowledge that
leads to his famous first principle: Cogito, ergo sum— “I think, therefore I am.”

Descartes’ Analysis of the Self

Cogito, ergo sum is the first principle of Descartes’s theory of

knowledge because he is confident that no rational person will doubt his or her
own existence as a conscious, thinking entity—while we are aware of thinking
about our self. Even if we are dreaming or hallucinating, even if our consciousness
is being manipulated by some external entity, it is still my self-aware self that is
dreaming, hallucinating, or being manipulated. Thus, in addition to being the first
principle of his epistemology, cogito ergo, sum is also the keystone of Descartes’s
concept of self. The essence of existing as a human identity is the possibility of
being aware of our selves: Being self-conscious in this way is integral to having a
personal identity. Conversely, it would be impossible to be self-conscious if we
didn’t have a personal identity of which to be conscious. In other words, having a
self-identity and being self-conscious are mutually dependent on one another.

For Descartes, then, this is the essence of your self—you are a “thinking
thing,” a dynamic identity that engages in all of those mental operations we
associate with being a human self. For example:

▪ You understand situations in which you find yourself.

▪ You doubt the accuracy of ideas presented to you.
▪ You affirm the truth of a statement made about you.

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 ▪ You deny an accusation that someone has made.
▪ You will yourself to complete a task you have begun.
▪ You refuse to follow a command that you consider to be unethical.
▪ You imagine a fulfilling career for yourself.
▪ You feel passionate emotions toward another person.

JOHN LOCKE (1632 – 1704)

John Locke speaks of personal identity

and survival of consciousness after death. A
criterion of personal identity through time is
given. Such a criterion specifies, insofar as
that is possible, the necessary and sufficient
conditions for the survival of persons. John
Locke holds that personal identity is a matter
of psychological continuity. He considered
personal identity (or the self) to be founded on
consciousness (viz. memory), and not on the
substance of either the soul or the body.
Figure 6: John Locke:
Against Cartesian Theory https://www.istmira.com/w-
John Locke (29 August 1632-28 hist/modern-history/2945-john-
October 1704) was one of the philosophers who were against locke-briefly.html
the Cartesian theory
that soul accounts for personal identity. Chapter XXVII on “Identity and Diversity”
in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke, 1689/1997) has been said
to be one of the first modern conceptualizations of consciousness as the repeated
self-identification of oneself, in which Locke gives his account of identity and
personal identity in the second edition of the Essay. Locke holds that personal
identity is a matter of psychological continuity. Arguing against both the
Augustinian view of man as originally sinful and the Cartesian position, which
holds that man innately knows basic logical propositions, Locke posits an “empty”
mind, a tabula rasa, which is shaped by experience, and sensations and reflections
being the two sources of all our ideas.
Locke creates a third term between the soul and the body, and Locke’s
thought may certainly be meditated by those who, following a scientist ideology,
would identify too quickly the brain with consciousness. For the brain, as the body
and as any substance, may change, while consciousness remains the same.
Therefore, personal identity is not in the brain, but in consciousness. However,
Locke’s theory also reveals his debt to theology and to Apocalyptic “great day”,
which in advance excuses any failings of human justice and therefore humanity’s
miserable state. The problem of personal identity is at the centre of discussions
about life after death and immortality. In order to exist after death, there has to be
a person after death who is the same person as the person who died.
Personal identity for Locke is psychological continuity. But his theory
is criticized by both Butler and Reid as a “wonderful mistake” or “reduced to
absurdity”. However, Locke’s theory has had a profound influence in the field of
education and the development of psychology.
DAVID HUME (1711 – 1776)

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 Regarding the issue of personal
identity, (1) Hume’s skeptical claim is
that we have no experience of a simple,
individual impression that we can call the
self—where the “self” is the totality of a
person’s conscious life.
He writes, “For my part, when I
enter most intimately into what I call
myself, I always stumble on some
particular perception or other, of heat or
cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or
pleasure. I never can catch myself at any
time without a perception, and never can
observe anything but the perception”
Figure 7: David Hume - https://milindo-
(Treatise, 1.4.6.3). (2) Even though my taid.net/2013/david-hume-human-nature-
perceptions are fleeting and I am a and-understanding/
bundle of different perceptions, I
nevertheless have some idea of personal identity, and that must be accounted
for (Treatise, 1.4.6.4). Because of the associative principles, the resemblance or
causal connection within the chain of my perceptions gives rise to an idea of
myself, and memory extends this idea past my immediate perceptions (Treatise,
1.4.6.18 ff.). (3) A common abuse of the notion of personal identity occurs when
the idea of a soul or unchanging substance is added to give us a stronger or more
unified concept of the self (Treatise, 1.4.6.6).

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IMMANUEL KANT (1724 – 1804)

Two Kinds of Consciousness of Self

1. Empirical Self-Consciousness (Inner Sense)

Inner sense is, according to Kant, the means by which

Figure 8: Immanuel Kant;
https://news.stanford.edu/2015/0
8/25/kant-newton-friedman-
082515/
we are aware of alterations in our own state. Hence all
moods, feelings, and sensations, including such basic
alterations as pleasure and pain, are the proper subject
matter of inner sense. Ultimately, Kant argues that all
sensations, feelings, and those representations
attributable to a subject must ultimately occur in inner
sense and conform to its form—time (A22-3/B37;
A34/B51).

2. Transcendental Apperception (Apperception)

Kant uses the term “apperception” to denote the capacity for the
awareness of some state or modification of one’s self as a state. For one capable of
apperception, there is a difference between feeling pain, and thus having an inner
sense of it, and apperceiving that one is in pain, and thus ascribing, or being able
to ascribe, a certain property or state of mind to one’s self. For example, while a
non-apperceptive animal is aware of its own pain and its awareness is partially
explanatory of its behavior, like avoidance, Kant construes the animal as incapable
of making any self-attribution of its pain. Kant thinks of such a mind as incapable
of construing itself as a subject of states, and it is thus unable to construe itself as
persisting through changes of those states. This is not necessarily to say an animal
incapable of apperception lacks any subject or self. But, at the very least, such an
animal would be incapable of conceiving or representing itself in this way (See
Naragon (1990); McLear (2011).

SIGMUND FREUD (1856 – 1939)

According to Freud, the Self is multi-

layered.
According to Freud, these two levels of
human functioning—the conscious and the
unconscious—differ radically both in their
content and in the rules and logic that govern them.
The unconscious contains basic instinctual drives
including sexuality, aggressiveness, and self-
destruction; traumatic memories; unfulfilled
wishes and childhood fantasies; thoughts and
feelings that would be considered socially taboo.
The unconscious level is characterized by the most
primitive level of human motivation and human Figure 9; Sigmund Freud;
https://www.pinterest.ph/pin/34
functioning. At this level, the most basic
3962490285395213/
instinctual drives seek immediate gratification or

11
discharge. Unheedful of the demands and restrictions of reality, the naked impulses
at this level are governed solely by the “pleasure principle.”
Our unconscious self embodies a mode of operation that precedes the
development of all other forms of our mental functioning. It includes throughout
our lives the primitive rock-bottom activities, the primal strivings on which all
human functioning is ultimately based. Our unconscious self operates at a
prelogical and prerational level. And though it exists and influences us throughout
our lives, it is not directly observable and its existence can only be inferred from
such phenomena as neurotic symptoms, dreams, and “slips of the tongue.”
In contrast, the conscious self is governed by the “reality principle” (rather
than the “pleasure principle”), and at this level of functioning, behavior and
experience are organized in ways that are rational, practical, and appropriate to the
social environment. Although the ultimate goals of the conscious self are the same
as the unconscious self—the gratification of needs and the reduction of tensions to
optimal levels—the means of achieving these goals are entirely different. Instead
of seeking these goals by means that are direct, impulsive, and irrational, the
conscious self usually takes into account the realistic demands of the situation, the
consequences of various actions, and the overriding need to preserve the
equilibrium of the entire psychodynamic system. To this end, the conscious self
has the task of controlling the constant pressures of the unconscious self, as its
primitive impulses continually seek for immediate discharge.

GILBERT RYLE (1900 – 1976)

Gilbert Ryle believes that our behavior

makes us who we are. The Self is not merely an
entity that you can easily locate or analyze but
simply the convenient name that people use to
refer to all the behaviors that people make. The
Self is open for exploration into different facets.
Gilbert Ryle argued that "the sorts of
things that I can find out about myself are the same
as the sorts of things that I can find out about other
people, and the methods of finding them out are
much the same. … John Doe's ways of finding out
Figure 10; Gilbert Ryle;
about John Doe are the same as John Doe's ways https://www.newstatesman.com/
of finding out about Richard Doe" (1949, p. 155). culture/books/2018/07/how-
He further claimed that "our knowledge of other crack-consciousness
people and ourselves depends on noticing how
they and we behave" (1949, p. 181). According to behaviorism, we can know our
own mental states only by observing our own behavior or relying on the
testimony of others who have. Of course, often others are better positioned to
observe our behavior than we are. Hence, the joke "One behaviorist meeting
another on the street said, 'You feel fine! How do I feel?'" (Ziff 1958). The
behaviorist view of self-knowledge seems untenable. We need not rely on
observations of our behavior to know whether we are in pain, or are visualizing a
red sunset, or are just now thinking to ourselves that behaviorism is untenable.

12
PAUL CHURCHLAND (1942)

Eliminative materialism. This view is

embodied in the work of philosophers like Paul
Churchland, who believes that the mind is the
brain and that over time a mature neuroscience
vocabulary will replace the “folk psychology”
that we currently use to think about ourselves and
our minds.
He begins by acknowledging that a simple
identity formula—mental states = brain states—
is a flawed way in which to conceptualize the
relationship between the mind and the brain. Figure 11; Paul Churchland;
Instead, we need to develop a new, neuroscience- https://peoplepill.com/people/pau
l-churchland
based vocabulary that will enable us to think and
communicate clearly about the mind,
consciousness, and human experience. He refers to this view as eliminative
materialism.
Churchland’s central argument is that the concepts and theoretical
vocabulary we use to think about ourselves—using such terms as belief, desire,
fear, sensation, pain, joy—actually misrepresent the reality of minds and selves.
All of these concepts are part of a common sense “folk psychology” that obscures
rather than clarifies the nature of human experience. Eliminative materialists
believe that we need to develop a new vocabulary and conceptual framework that
is grounded in neuroscience and that will be a more accurate reflection of the
human mind and self. Churchland proceeds to state the arguments that he believes
support his position.
Paul Churchland believes that the brain is the essence of the Self. He
believes that by empirically investigating how the brain functions, we will be able
to predict and explain how we function. Therefore, we are our brain.

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY (1908 – 1961)

Ponty, (pronounced as pon-ti-yey)

believes that the definition of the Self is all
about one’s perceptions of his or her
experiences and how we interpret those
experiences. He believes that the mind and
body is intertwined or connected and that they
cannot be separated from one another. He
dismisses the Cartesian Dualism and says that
the living body, our thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.
Merleau-Ponty's view of (especially
perceptual) consciousness as fundamentally a
Figure 12; Maurice Merleau-
matter of the lived body in "communion" with Ponty;
the world does not demote or minimize the role https://probaway.wordpress.com/20
of consciousness. But it does share with 15/08/01/philosophers-squared-
contemporary "illusionist" views of maurice-merleau-ponty/
consciousness the idea that it's time to reject a

13
kind of localized internalism of qualia about consciousness, and to move toward
seeing consciousness and self not as things to be found in an inner place, but to see
that the only conscious self we do have is the one embodied and immersed in the
world.

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References/Additional Resources/Readings
A Lesson from Socrates That Will Change the Way You Think. Retrieved from
https://youtu.be/yH86jaBQ0F4; 03/07/21

Aristotle. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3749985;

Augustine. Retrieved from https://iep.utm.edu/augustin/; 03/07/21

Brawner, D. (2018) Understanding the Self. Quezon City: C & E Publishing, Inc

Coulmas, F. (2019). Identity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. (available
for download at b-ok.asia)

David Hume. Retrieved from https://iep.utm.edu/hume/; 03/07/21

Descartes’ Modern Perspective of the Self. Retrieved from

https://revelpreview.pearson.com/epubs/pearson_chaffee/OPS/xhtml/ch03_sec_04.xht
ml; 03/07/21

Go-Monilla, M.J.A., Ramirez, N.C. (2018). Understanding the Self. Quezon City: C & E
Publishing, Inc.

John Locke on Personal Identity. Retrieved from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115296/; 03/07/21

John Locke on Personal Identity. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/e1iy8fMCe0o; 03/07/21

Kant: Philosophy of Mind. Retrieved from https://iep.utm.edu/kantmind/#SH2c;

03/07/21

Martin, R., Barresi, J. (2006). The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of
Personal Identity. Columbia University Press. (available for download at b-ok.asia)

Philosophy – Plato. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/VDiyQub6vpw; 03/07/21

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/1RWOpQXTltA; 03/07/21

Plato’s Concept of the Self. Retrieved from

https://philonotes.com/index.php/2020/09/10/platos-concept-of-the-self/; 03/07/21

Saint Augustine. Retrieved from https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/saint-augustine;

03/07/21

Self-Knowledge. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-
transcripts-and-maps/self-knowledge; 03/07/21

Socratic Method. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method; 03/07/21

The Allegory of the Cave. Retrieved from

https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm; 03/07/21

The Embodied Self. Retrieved from https://iai.tv/articles/merleau-ponty-and-the-embodied-

self-consciousness-auid-1582; 03/07/21
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The Self is Multilayered: Freud. Retrieved from
https://revelpreview.pearson.com/epubs/pearson_chaffee/OPS/xhtml/ch03_sec_08.xht
ml; 03/07/21

The Self is the Brain: Physicalism. Retrieved from

https://revelpreview.pearson.com/epubs/pearson_chaffee/OPS/xhtml/ch03_sec_10.xht
ml; 03/07/21

Weeks, M., Szudek, A. (2019). How Philosophy Works. DK Publishing. pp. 146-147
(available for download at b-ok.asia)

Weeks, M., Szudek, A. (2019). How Philosophy Works. DK Publishing. pp. 154-155
(available for download at b-ok.asia)

What is Eudaimonia? Aristotle and Eudaimonic Well-Being. Retrieved from

https://positivepsychology.com/eudaimonia/; 03/07/21

Who am I? A Philosophical Journey. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/UHwVyplU3Pg;

03/07/21

Who are you, really? The Puzzle of Personality. Retrieved from

https://youtu.be/qYvXk_bqlBk; 03/07/21

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