CENTRAL LUZON STATE UNIVERSITY

Science City of Munoz 3120

Nueva Ecija, Philippines

INSTRUCTIONAL MODULE FOR THE COURSE

PSYCH 1100 (UNDERSTANDING THE SELF)

I. THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

1.1. PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATION OF THE SELF

Philosophy – (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally "love of wisdom") is the study of
general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.
Philosophical Perspective on Understanding the Self

• Inquiry into the fundamental nature of the self

• The inquiry has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy Greeks.
• Views on the self can be best understood by revisiting its prime movers and identify the
most important conjectures made by philosophers
• Ancient times to the contemporary period.
SELF based on philosophical perspective

• Something that a person perennially molds, shapes, and develops

• Not a static thing that one is simply born with
• Everyone is tasked to discover one’s self.
Socrates

• "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing"

• KNOW THYSELF
• Question everything
• "Only the pursuit of goodness brings happiness"
• Socratic Method: Question and Answer; leads students to think for themselves.
Plato

• "Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."
• Dualism
o man is a dual nature, composed of BODY AND SOUL
• Tripartite Soul (reason, spirit, appetite)
o Reason (ruling class) - desires to exert reason and attain rational decisions
o Spirit (military class) - desires supreme honor
o Appetite (commoner) - desires body pleasures such as food, drink, sex, etc.
Aristotle
 • "All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature,
compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire."
• Contributed the foundation of both symbolic logic and scientific thinking.
• The best way to gain knowledge was through "natural philosophy", which is what we
would now call science.
• Happiness, which is dependent in an individual's virtues, is the central purpose of
human life and a goal in itself.
St. Augustine of Hippo

• "The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself."
• An important figure in the development of Western Christianity.
• His philosophy of man brings together wisdom of the Greek philosophy and the divine
truths contained in the scripture.
• The absolute and immutable is the living God, the creator of the entire universe.
• To love God means to love one's fellowmen, and to love one's fellowmen means never to
do any harm to another.
• "Do unto others, what you want others do unto you"
Rene Descartes

• Father of modern philosophy

• "Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum" (I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I am)
• The Self is defined as a subject that thinks.
• The self that has full competence in the powers of human reason.
• Having distanced the self from all sources of truth from authority and tradition, the self
can only find its truth and authenticity within its own capacity to think.
• "The fact that I am doubting, cannot be any more open to doubt."
John Locke

• Personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity

• Personal identity (or the self) is founded on consciousness
• Identity over time is fixed by awareness of the past
• 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.
• "Our concept of personal identity must derive from inner experience."
David Hume

• "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence"

• Rejects the notion of identity over time
• There are no "persons" that continue to exist over time, there are merely impressions.
• "The self is bundle of impression"
Immanuel Kant

• "To be is to do."
• Consciousness is the central figure of the self.
 • Two kinds of consciousness:
o Internal Self - composed of psychological states and informed decisions;
remembering our own state, how can we combine the new and old ideas with
our mind.
o External Self - made up of ourselves and the physical world where the
representation of objects.
Gilbert Ryle

• "I made it, and so I am."

• Rejects the theory that mental states are separable from physical states.
• Concluded that adequate descriptions of human behavior need never refer to anything
but the operations of human bodies.
• His form of Philosophical Behaviorism (the belief that all mental phenomena can be
explained by reference to publicly observable behavior) became a standard view for
several decades.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

• "We know not through our intellect but through our experience."
• His work is commonly associated with the philosophical movement called
"existentialism" and its intention to begin with an analysis of the concrete experiences,
perceptions, and difficulties of human existence.
• Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately
intertwined and mutually "engaged"
• Our perception of the self is a collection of our perceptions of our outside world.