UNDERSTANDING THE SELF 

 |    MODULE 1

LESSON 1

PHILOSOPHY
2ND MEETING (1 HOUR AND 3O MINS.)
ly
INTRODUCTION
on
LEARNING OUTCOMES

Philosophy employs the inquisitive mind to

discover the ultimate causes, reasons, and

se At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

1.  discuss and explore the concept of the self

u
principles of everything. It goes beyond from the different philosophical perspective;
scientific investigation by exploring all areas of
knowledge such as religion, psychology, politics, 2. appreciate the contribution of each

U
physics, and even medicine. Hence, the philosophical perspective to a better
etymological definition of philosophy "love of understanding of the self;

S
wisdom" could pertain to the desire for truth by
formulating never ending questions to provide 3. examine oneself on how the philosophical

V
answers to every inquiry about the nature of perspectives on the self are applied; and
human existence. The nature of the self is a
topic of interest among philosophers. 4.   make a personal philosophy of the self.

W
 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1

The philosophical framework for

understanding the self was first introduced by
the ancient great Greek philosophers
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In particular,
Socrates suggests: "Know thyself" But what
exactly does "know thyself" mean? What is self
and the qualities that define it? This lesson
presents an overview of the philosophical
perspective of the self to assist students
identify one's own self to gain self-knowledge.
It intends to give a wider perspective in
understanding the self. The different views of
prominent philosophers regarding the nature

y
of the self are discussed and while there are

l
disagreements in how philosophers view the
self, most of them agree that self-knowledge is

n
a prerequisite to a happy and meaningful life.

ACTIVITY: DO YOU TRULY KNOW YOURSELF?

o
Answer the following questions about yourself as fully and precisely as you can.

1. How would you characterize yourself?

se
u
U
2. What makes you stand out from the rest? What makes your self special?

S
V
W
3. How has your self 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?

 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1

ANALYSIS

1. Were you able to answer the questions above with ease? Why? Which questions did you
find easiest to answer? Which ones are difficult? Why?

Questions Easy or difficult to answer Why?

ly
2. How can one truly know the self?
on
se
u
U
ABSTRACTION

S
V
Philosophy as a subject presents various philosophers offering multiple perspectives on just
about any topic including the self. Philosophical, discussion of the self is a basic search for
meaning and purpose in life. Determination, rationalization, and identification of the self set

W
the direction from which an individual travels to fulfill his or her purpose in life. The inability
to define oneself leads to a lot of contradictions within the self later on; hence, it is one of
the many imperatives in life to know oneself and to go on with the business of leading a life
charted by oneself.

Socrates

No historical document proves that Socrates

really existed. We only know Socrates because his
illustrious students (from Plato to Aristotle)
spoke eloquently and generously about his wit,
intellect, and wisdom. Socrates left no known
writings, bur his highly regarded student, Plato,
wrote extensively about him. Some would even
claim that Plato, in positing his own radical ideas
in his era, spoke through the character of
Socrates in his writings. Despite this mystery in
his identity, Socrates is credited for his many
contributions to western philosophy.

Socrates reminds us to "know thyself," a
translation of an ancient Greek aphorism
gnothi Seauton, Socrates posited that if a
person knows who he or she is, all basic
issues and difficulties in life will vanish and
everything will be clearer and simpler. One
could now act according to his or her own
definition of the self without any doubt and
contradiction.
His technique of asking basic questions
such as "Who am I?" "What is the purpose
of my life?," "What am I doing here?" or
"What is justice?" are all predicated on the
fact that humans must be able to define
these simple things so as to move forward
and act accordingly based on their
definition of the self.
Self knowledge, for Socrates, means
knowing one's degree of understanding
about the world and knowing one's
capabilities and potentials. It is only
through self-knowledge that one's self
U
emerges. Therefore, self is achieved and
not just discovered, something to work on
S
and not a product of a mere realization.
V
For Socrates, possession of knowledge is
virtue and ignorance is vice. He argued that
a person's acceptance of ignorance is a
W
springboard for the acquisition of
knowledge later on. So, one must first have
the humility to acknowledge his or her
ignorance so as to acquire knowledge.
(“The only true wisdom is in knowing you
know nothing.”)
Answers will always be subjective and
there is no right or wrong answer to the
questions posited by Socrates. The quality
and quantity of answers are dependent on
the person answering these basic inquiries
and one's subsequent actions are best
understood on how one defines oneself,
thus the constant reminder to "know
thyself."
For Socrates, every man is composed of
body and soul. This means that every
human person is dualistic, that is, he is
composed of two important aspects of his
personhood.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1
For Socrates, this means all individuals
have an imperfect, impermanent aspect to
him, and the body, while maintaining that
there is also a soul that is perfect and
permanent. He argued that the ruler of the
body is the soul. For him, soul pre-existed
the body, and soul is what makes the body
alive.
ly
n
o
e
us
Plato
An ancient Greek philosopher who was a
student of Socrates and a teacher of
Aristotle, Plato produced a substantial
body of work that became the basis for
western thought. He basically took off from
his master and supported the idea that man
is a dual nature of body and soul. In
addition to what Socrates earlier espoused,
Plato added that there are three
components of the soul: the rational soul,
the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul.
In his magnum opus, "The Republic" (Plato
2000), Plato emphasizes that justice in the
human person can only be attained if the
three parts of the soul are working
harmoniously with one another. The
rational soul
forged by reason and intellect has to
govern the affairs of the human person, the
spirited part which is in charge of emotions
should be kept at bay, and the appetitive
soul in charge of base desires like eating,
drinking, sleeping, and having sex are
controlled as well. When this ideal state is
attained, then the human person's soul
becomes just and virtuous.

In terms of the concept of the self, Plato
was one of the first philosophers who
believed in an enduring self that is
represented by the soul. He argued that
the soul is eternal and constitutes the
enduring self, because even after death,
the soul continues to exist.
St. Augustine
U
Augustine's view of the human person
S
reflects the entire spirit of the medieval
world when it comes to man. Following the
V
ancient view of Plato and infusing it with
the newfound doctrine of Christianity,
Augustine agreed that man is of a
W
bifurcated nature. An aspect of man dwells
in the world and is imperfect and
continuously yearns to be with the Divine
and the other is capable of reaching
immortality.
The body is bound to die on earth and the
soul is to anticipate living eternally in a
realm of spiritual bliss in communion with
God. This is because the body can only
thrive in the imperfect, physical reality that
is the world, whereas the soul can also stay
after death in an eternal realm with the all-
transcendent God. The goal of every
human person is to attain this communion
and bliss with the Divine by living his life on
earth in virtue.
However, Augustine in his Confessions
takes this idea and expands it into an entire
genre that critically inquires what it means
to be a person. In other words, he explores
the idea of the self until he discovers
personal subjectivity.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1
As Augustine constructs a view of God that
would come to dominate Western thinking,
he also creates a new concept of individual
identity: the idea of the self. This identity is
achieved through a twofold process:
self-presentation, which leads to self-
realization. Augustine creates a literary
character out of the self and places it in a
narrative text so that it becomes part of
the grand allegory of redemption. In The
y
Confessions, Augustine plays the lead role
nl
in the story of his own life. By telling this
tale he transforms himself into a metaphor
of the struggle of both body and soul to
o
find happiness, which exists only in God’s
love. He reads his life as an allegory to
arrive at a larger truth.
se
Rene Descartes
u
Rene Descartes, Father of Modern
Philosophy conceived of the human person
as having a body and a mind. In his famous
treatise, The Meditations of First
Philosophy, he claims that there is so much
that we should doubt. In fact, he says that
since much of what we think and believe
are not infallible, they may turn out to be
false. One should only believe that since
which can pass the test of doubt (Descartes
2008). If something is so clear and lucid as
not to be even doubted, then that is the
only time when one should actually buy a
proposition. In the end, Descartes thought
that the only thing that one cannot doubt is
the existence of the self, for even if one
doubts oneself, that only proves that there
is a doubting self, a thing that thinks and
therefore, that cannot be doubted.
 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1

Thus, his famous, cogito ergo sum, "I think
therefore, I am." The fact that one thinks
should lead one to conclude without a
trace of doubt that he exists. The self then
for Descartes is also a combination of two
distinct entities, the cogito, the thing that
thinks, which is the mind, and the extenza
or extension of the mind, which is the body.
If you have heard of the saying that man is
a rational animal, one is actually positing
the ideas of Rene Descartes. To
acknowledge him, Filipinos have a unique
term, "diskarte," a derivative of the
surname of Descartes, which denotes
finding a way or making things possible.

In Descartes's view, the body is nothing

else but a machine that is attached to the
ly
mind. The human person has it but it is not
what makes man a man. If at all, that is the
mind. Descartes says, "But what then, am I?
A thinking thing. It has been said. But what
on
e
is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts,
understands (conceives), affirms, denies,

s
wills, refuses; that imagines also, and
perceives" (Descartes 2008).

For Descartes, the existence of anything

that you register from your senses can be u
John Locke

U
John Locke's main philosophy about
doubted. For example, if you are staring at
personal identity or the self is founded on
a burning building, you are not certain if

S
consciousness or memory. For Locke,
that building is really burning or it is
consciousness is the perception of what
something you are only reconstructing
passes in a Man's own mind. He rejected

V
from your dream. One can always doubt
that brain has something to do with
about the certainty of things but the very
consciousness as the brain, as well as the
fact that one doubts is something that

W
body may change, while consciousness
cannot be doubted. This is what "I think,
remains the same. He concluded that
therefore I am" means.
personal identity is not in the brain but in
one's consciousness.
The self, for Descartes, is nothing else but a
mind-body dichotomy. Thought (mind)
In his work, "Identity and Diversity” in An
always precedes action (body). It has
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
always been in that sequence. Everything
(1689), he pondered, if the same Substance
starts with a thought. Humans think first
which thinks be changed, it can be the same
about doing something and then do it.
person, or remaining the same, it can be a
When one thinks that he or she will have a
different person." Here, he supports that
very busy week, then he or she will plan
consciousness can be transferred from one
what to do from Monday to Sunday. It is
substance (body and soul) to another.
the thought that sets direction to human
While the soul is changed, for instance,
actions but humans are always free to
consciousness remains the same, thereby
choose. So, if one says he or she will have a
maintaining the personal identity through
very busy week, then he or she can push
the change. On the other hand,
through with the tasks he or she needs to
consciousness may be lost involuntarily
do for the week or not.
through forgetfulness while the soul stays
Humans are self-aware and being such
the same. With this, he claimed that there
proves their own place in the universe.
is the same soul but a different person.
Humans create their own reality and they
Thus, the same soul is unnecessary or
are the masters of their own universe.
insufficient in the formation of one's
Western philosophy is largely based on the
personal identity over time when
writings of Descartes.
consciousness is lost.

His philosophy can be understood easily in
his illustration of “The Prince and the
Cobbler." Suppose a prince will die and
have its soul resurrected in the body of a
cobbler whose soul has departed. With this
exchange, the prince will still act and think
as a prince even though he finds himself in
a new body. This idea supports the
possibility that the same person may
appear in a different body at the time of
resurrection and yet still be the same
person.
The other remarkable contribution of this
country physician was the notion of tabula
rasa. This concept posits that everyone
started as a blank slate, and the content is
provided by one's experiences over time.
U
David Hume
S
David Hume a Scottish philosopher, has a
very unique way of looking at man. As an
empiricist who believes that one can know
V
only what comes from the senses and
experiences, Hume argues that the self is
W
nothing like what his predecessors thought
of it.
The self is not an entity over and beyond
the physical body. One can rightly see here
the empiricism that runs through his veins.
Empiricism is the school of thought that
espouses the idea that knowledge can only
be possible if it is sensed and experienced.
Men can only attain knowledge by
experiencing. For example, Jack knows that
Jill is another human person not because
he has seen her soul. He knows she is just
like him because he sees her, hears her, and
touches her.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1
To David Hume, the self is nothing else but
a bundle of impressions. What are
impressions? For David Hume, if one tries
to examine his experiences, he finds that
they can all be categorized into two:
impressions and ideas. Impressions are the
y
basic objects of our experience or
l
sensation. They therefore form the core of
our thoughts. When one touches an ice
n
cube, the cold sensation is an impression
Impressions therefore are vivid because
o
they are products of our direct experience
with the world.
e
Ideas, on the other hand, are copies of
impressions Because of this they are not as
s
lively and vivid as our impressions. When
one imagines the feeling of being in love for
u
the first time that still is an idea.
Hume's materialism views the soul as a
product of the imagination. There is no
primordial substance that houses the self.
Any concept of the self is simply memory
and imagination. Hume stressed that there
is no stable thing called self, for the self is
nothing but a complex set of successive
impressions or perceptions.
If you are looking for a self, you can't find
it; the only thing that you can discover is
a set of individual impressions like
happiness or sadness, hotness or
coldness, hunger or fullness, hate or love,
and many others. What you think and
what you feel constitute what you are at
this very moment. So, if at this moment,
you are happy, then you are happy. If you
are hungry, then you are hungry. That is
what you are; that is who you are.
What is the self then? Self, according to
Hume, is simply “a bundle or collection of
different perceptions, which succeed each
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and
are in a perpetual flux and movement”.
(Hume and Steinberg 1992) Men simply
want to believe that there is a unified,
coherent self, a soul or mind just like what
the previous philosophers thought. In
reality, what one thinks is a unified self is
simply a combination of all experiences
with a particular person.

Immanuel Kant
German philosopher Immanuel Kant
theorized that consciousness is formed by
one's inner and outer sense. The inner sense
se Kant recognizes the veracity of Hume's
is comprised of one's psychological state
and intellect. The outer sense consists of
one's senses and the physical world. u However, Kant thinks that the things that
U
Consciousness of oneself and of one's
S
psychological state (or inner sense) was
referred to by Kant as empirical self-
V
consciousness while consciousness of
oneself and of one's state via acts of
apperception is called transcendental
W
apperception.
The source of empirical self-consciousness
is the inner sense. All representational
states are in the inner sense such as moods,
feelings, and sensations including pleasure
and pain. One must be phenomenally
conscious to be aware of something in the
inner sense.
Apperception is the faculty that allows for
application of concepts. The act of
apperceiving allows one to synthesize or
make sense of a unified object.
Transcendental apperception makes
experience possible and allows the self and
the world to come together.
Consciousness being unified, Kant argued,
is the central feature of the mind (Brook,
2013). Mind should perform both the unity
of consciousness and the unity of
apperception.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1
It is the self that organizes sensations and
thoughts into a picture that makes sense to
a person. This picture constitutes the "you"
at the center of the universe, looking at the
universe from one's point of view. For
example, think about a moment when you
shared memorable experiences with
someone but each of you had radically
different experiences-swimming, attending
reunion, or walking at a party.
ly
Reflect on the way each person
instinctively describes the situation from
n
his or her perspective. This is the unity of
consciousness that Kant described. The
o
self is able to perform this synthesizing and
unifying function because it transcends
sense experience.
account that everything starts with
perception and sensation of impressions.
men perceive around them are not just
randomly infused into the human person
without an organizing principle that
regulates the relationship of all these
impressions. To Kant, there is a mind that
organizes the impressions that men get
from the external world. Time and space,
for example, are ideas that one cannot find
in the world, but is built in our minds. Kant
calls these the apparatuses of the mind.
Along with the different apparatuses of the
mind goes the "self." Without the self, one
cannot organize the different impressions
that one gets in relation to his own
existence. Kant therefore suggests that it is
an actively engaged intelligence in man
that synthesizes all knowledge and
experience. Thus, the self is not just what
gives one his personality. In addition, it is
also the seat of knowledge acquisition for
all human persons.

Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud emphasized the inner dynamics of
unconscious motives. He asserted that the
sex urges in the unconscious constitute the
main human drive. This is known as the
“libido” theory.
Many human desires are directed and
complicated by unconscious motives which
we are not directly aware of because they
lie in the substrata of our consciousness
but which are nevertheless powerful drives
that may dominate our lives.
Basic to Freud’s theory is the conception
that the unacceptable (forbidden,
punished} wishes/desires of childhood
principally libidinal (sexual) are repressed
in our consciousness or get driven out of
awareness. Repressed drives press to find
expression in dreams, slips of speech, and
in unconscious mannerisms. They are the
reasons for many of our inner conflicts in
U
life. Freud believed that all human behavior
is energized by psychodynamic forces. One
S
needs psychic energy in order to satisfy his
basic urges. He viewed human as an
inherently negative creature who is
V
relentlessly “driven” by two kinds of
biological instincts (or motives).
W
Two Kinds of Biological Instincts
1. Eros or life instinct – helps the
individual survive; directs life-
sustaining activities. Ex. respiration,
eating, sex
2. Thanatos or death instinct – is viewed
as the destructive forces present in all
human beings.
Ex. destructive acts like arson, murder, war
Freud’s Structure of the Human Mind
According to Sigmund Freud, our
personality develops from the interactions
among what he proposed as the three
fundamental structures of the human mind:
the id, ego, and superego.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1
Three Components/Structures of the
Mind
y
l
1. id – the most primitive of the three
structures, is concerned with instant
n
gratification of basic physical needs
and urges without fear of
o
consequences nor regard for discipline
or control. It operates by the pleasure
principle; it includes all the erotic
secravings including sex drives, pleasure
drives, aggressive drives, and other
instinctual forces which seek
u
expression. The id occupies the
unconscious level of the mind, and
when a person is id-dominated, he is
aggressive, self-centered, sadistic,
arrogant and ambitious for himself
alone.
For example, if your id walked past a
stranger eating ice cream, it would most
likely take the ice cream for itself. It
doesn’t know, or care, that it is rude to take
something belonging to someone else; it
would care only that you wanted the ice
cream.
2. superego – Moral Arm of Personality or
obey the morality principle. It is concerned
with social rules and morals. It represents
the ideal, and strives for perfection rather
than pleasure or for reality. It also serves
as the conscience. It develops as a child
learns what their culture considers right
and wrong.

For example: If your superego walked past
the same stranger, it would not take their
ice cream because it would know that that
would be rude. However, if both your id
and your superego were involved, and your
id was strong enough to override your
superego’s concern, you would still take
the ice cream, but afterward you would
most likely feel guilt and shame over your
actions.
se
u
Conflict within the mind: According to Freud, the
job of the ego is to balance the aggressive/pleasure-
U
seeking drives of the id with the moral control of
the superego.
S
3. ego – In contrast to the instinctual id
V
and the moral superego, the ego is the
rational, pragmatic part of our personality.
W
It obeys the reality principle and block the
id’s irrational thinking. It delays
gratification and find realistic ways of
gratifying the instinct. It is less primitive
than the id and is partly conscious and
partly unconscious. It’s what Freud
considered to be the “self,” and its job is to
balance the demands of the id and
superego in the practical context of reality.
So, if you walked past the stranger with ice
cream one more time, your ego would
mediate the conflict between your id (“I
want that ice cream right now”) and
superego (“It’s wrong to take someone
else’s ice cream”) and decide to go buy your
own ice cream. While this may mean you
have to wait 10 more minutes, which would
frustrate your id, your ego decides to make
that sacrifice as part of the compromise–
satisfying your desire for ice cream while
also avoiding an unpleasant social situation
and potential feelings of shame.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1
Conflicts among these three structures,
and our efforts to find balance among what
each of them “desires,” determines how we
behave and approach the world. What
balance we strike in any given situation
determines how we will resolve the conflict
between two overarching behavioral
tendencies: our biological aggressive and
pleasure-seeking drives vs. our socialized
y
internal control over those drives.
l
on
Freud's Three Levels of Mind
Freud delineated the mind in the distinct
levels, each with their own roles and
functions. Freud likened the three levels of
mind to an iceberg.
1. The conscious mind contains all of
the thoughts, sensations, memories,
feelings, and wishes of which we are
aware at any given moment. This is the
aspect of our mental processing that
we can think and talk about rationally.
This also includes our memory, which is
not always part of consciousness but
can be retrieved easily and brought
into awareness. It is likened to the tip
of an iceberg that you can see above
the water.
2. The preconscious mind includes
thoughts, feelings, sensations, or
memories we are not aware of at the
moment, but may be brought to
consciousness. Compared to the part of
the iceberg that is submerged below
the water, but is still visible.
 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1

3.  The unconscious mind

is a reservoir of feelings,
thoughts, urges, and
repressed memories,
instincts and wishes we
are not aware of or that
are outside of our
conscious awareness. The
unconscious contains
contents that are
unacceptable or
unpleasant, such as
feelings of pain, anxiety,
or conflict. The bulk of
the iceberg that lies

y
unseen beneath the

l
waterline represents the
unconscious.

on
se
Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle, a British philosopher, opposed u

Ryle supported the basic notions of
behavioristic psychology. His theory is
called logical behaviorism or analytical

U
Rene Descartes that the self is a "thinking behaviorism-a theory of mind which states
thing." He maintained that the mind is not that mental concepts can be understood

S
separate from the body (mind-body through observable events.
dichotomy). Mind consists of dispositions

V
of people based on what they know, what In his work Concept of Mind (1949), he
they feel, what they want, and so on. described Descartes mind-body dualism as
People learn that they have their own "ghost in the machine." For him, Descartes

W
minds because they behave in certain ways. idea is a category mistake supporting that
What truly matters is the behavior that a there is an immaterial mind in a material
person manifests in his day-to-day life. body. Descartes thought that one has soul
in the body that possesses talents,
For Ryle, looking for and trying to memories, and character.
understand a self as it really exists is like
visiting your friend’s university and looking
for the "university." One can roam around
the campus, visit the library and the
football field, and meet the administrators
and faculty and still end up not finding the
"university." This is because the campus,
the people, the systems, and the territory
all form the university. Ryle suggests that
the "self is not an entity one can locate and
analyze but simply the convenient name
that people use to refer to all the behaviors
that people make.

The properties of a person are better
understood as adjectives modifying a body,
than as noun (objects) parallel to it.
Kindness, for example, is not a thing that
exists apart from and parallel to the body,
but rather a collection of properties a body
has. Kindness includes properties such as
being generous, humble, courteous, loyal,
and honest. Someone who never exhibited
any of these traits would not be called kind;
and anyone who is considered kind exhibits
some of these traits. The only proof of the
mind's operation is visible and evident in
activities like singing, running, walking, and
the like. Knowing and believing are just
dispositions but these influence people's
actions. To understand Ryle's illustration of
the mind, think of this scenario: You went
to a forest and you saw the trees, animals,
falls, and caves. You might ask, "Where is
the forest?" This is similar to asking,
"Where is the mind?" All the things you saw
is the forest. Therefore, the disposition to
U
know, believe, feel, and act is called the
mind.
S
As for Ryle's concept of the self, the self is
V
a combination of the mind and the body.
While the focus of other philosophers is
towards the separation of mind and body (a
W
dualist view), for Ryle, self is taken as a
whole with the combination of the body
and the mind. Ryle also posited the maxim,
"I act, therefore I am." For him, the mind is
not the seat of self but the behavior,
opposing Descartes' immaterial mind in a
material body. The self is the way people
behave.
Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland
 
Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland,
who are both neuroscientists, introduced
eliminative materialism-"a radical claim
that ordinary, common sense
understanding of the mind is deeply wrong
and that some or all of the mental states
posited by common sense do not actually
exist" (Ramsey, 2013). For theme it is false
to claim that folk psychology, or common
sense psychology, is the capacity to explain
mental states of people.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1
ly
Most people think that we have a stream of
n
consciousness that contains images and
conceptions of things about which we have
o
beliefs and attitudes. Our beliefs and
attitudes are supported by our feelings,
e
which include mental states like joy and
sorrow, or anxiety and relief. It is also a folk
s
belief that our sense of the world and of
ourselves is a direct representation of how
u
the world is formed, thus making our
bodies reflect or adapt the way the world is
(Weed, 2011).
The Churchlands argued that talk of mental
states would eventually be abandoned in
favor of a radically different view of how
the brain works not identified with mental
states. For them, self is nothing else but
brain, or simply, the self is contained
entirely within the physical brain.
In Patricia Churchland's
book Touching a Nerve: The
Self as Brain (2013), she
wrote:
"My brain and I are inseparable.I am
who I am because my brain is what it is.
Even so, I often think about my brain in
terms different from those I use when
thinking about myself. I think about my
brain as that, and about myself as me. I
think about my brain as having neurons,
but I think of me as having a memory.
Still, I know that my memory is all about
the neurons in my brain. Lately, I think
about my brain in more intimate terms-
as me."
This supports the idea that to understand
the self, one must study the brain, not just
the mind.
 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF   |    MODULE 1

MauriMerleau-Ponty
 
Merleau-Ponty is a phenomenologist who asserts
that the mind-body bifurcation that has been going
on for a long time is a futile endeavor and an
invalid problem. Unlike Ryle who simply denies the
"self," Merleau- Ponty instead says that the mind
and body are so intertwined that they cannot be

y
separated from one another. One cannot find any

l
experience that is not an embodied experience. All
experience is embodied. One's body is his opening

n
toward his existence to the world. Because of
these bodies, men are in the world. Merleau-Ponty

o
dismisses the Cartesian Dualism that has spelled
so much devastation in the history of man. For him,

e
the Cartesian problem is nothing else but plain
misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts,

s
emotions, and experiences are all one.

u
He distinguished the body into two types: the subjective body, as lived and experienced, and
the objective body, as observed and scientifically investigated. For him, these two are not
different bodies." The former is the body as-it-is-lived. He wrote, "But I am not in front of my
body, I am in my body, or rather I am my body.” He regarded self as embodied subjectivity. It

SU
sees human beings neither as disembodied minds (existing without body) nor as complex
machines, but as living creatures whose subjectivity (consciousness) is actualized in the
forms of their physical involvement with the world. The body is the general medium for
having a world and we know not through our intellect but through our experience. The latter

V
is the body as observed and scientifically investigated. It is the body that is known to others.
These are bodies that people see, admire, imitate, criticize, or even dissect.

W
For phenomenological philosophers, to be a subject (a self) essentially requires a body.
Consciousness cannot simply be immaterial but must be embodied. The "I think" implies "I
can,” in the sense that "I can” go somewhere else as a being possessing a body. This is where
Merleau-Ponty opposed the dualist account of subjectivity. Mind and body are essentially
correlated and it is not possible to understand subjectivity without taking into account this
essential correlation. He also opposed the Cartesian cogito. For him, consciousness is both
perceiving and engaging.

To sum it up, Merleau-Ponty's, "I am my body" cannot simply be interpreted as advocating a

materialist, behaviorist type position. He accepts the idea of mental states but he also
suggests that the use of the mind is inseparable from our bodily, situated, physical nature.
The body cannot be viewed solely as an object, or material entity of the world.