Self-Understanding: understanding what your
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION TO SELF-
UNDERSTANDING
What is Self-Understanding?
• provides a sense of purpose
• helps harness your natural strength
• leads to healthier relationships
• promotes confidence
What is Personality?
• persona - the theatrical masks worn by
Romans in Greek and Latin drama
• per - “to sound through”
• ‘sonare’
• a relatively permanent traits and unique
characteristics that give both
consistency and individuality to a
person’s behavior (Roberts & Mroczek,
2008)
• overall pattern or integration of a
person’s structure, modes of behavior,
attitudes, aptitudes, interests, intellectual
abilities, and many other distinguishable
personality traits
• Associated words: habits, physical self,
principles, philosophies of life,
intelligence, moral values, attitudes,
personal discipline, interest, character
traits
Determinants of Personality
1. Environmental Factors - Surroundings of
an individual; social circle
2. Situational Factors - Alter a person’s
behavior and response
3. Biological Factors - Hereditary factors;
physical features; brain
4. Cultural Factors - Determines what a
person is and what a person will learn
Personality Traits
1. reflect people’s characteristic patterns
of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
2. imply consistency and stability
3. describe stable patterns of behavior that
persist for long periods of time (Caspi,
Roberts, & Shiner, 2005)
The Five-Factor Model
O – Openness
C – Conscientiousness
E – Extraversion
A – Agreeableness
N – Neuroticism
Self-Concept: understanding of who you are as
a person
motives are when you act
Different Types of Selves
1. Individual Self - consists of attributes and
personality traits that differentiate us
from other individuals
2. Relational Self - defined by our
relationships with significant others
3. Collective Self - reflects our membership
in social groups
“Don’t be confused between what people say
you are and who you know you are.” — Oprah
Winfrey
LECTURE 2: THE SELF ACCORDING TO
PHILOSOPHY
What is Philosophy?
• The study of the basic ideas about
knowledge, right and wrong, reasoning,
and the value of things
• Philo – love; Sophia – wisdom
• Means love of wisdom
• The queen of all sciences
1. Socrates
• A philosopher from Athens, Greece and
said to have the greatest influence on
European thought
• Socratic method - involves the search
for the correct/proper definition of a
thing
• ‘Know Thyself’ - Foundation of Socrates’
philosophy
• Self is dichotomous - physical realm
(changeable, temporal and imperfect)
and ideal realm (unchanging, eternal
and immortal)
• A human is composed of body (physical)
and soul (ideal)
2. Plato
• Student of Socrates
• Introduced the idea of the three – part
soul/self:
o Reason – enables human to think
deeply, make wise choices and
achieve a true understanding of
eternal truths, divine essence
o Physical Appetite - basic
biological needs of human being
o Spirit or Passion - basic emotions
of human being
 • Assumed that there is no self; there are
only two distinct identities: impressions
and ideas
• The self that is being experienced by an
individual
• is nothing but a kind of fictional self
o Fictional Self - created to unify the
mental events and introduce
order into an individual lives, but
this “self” has no real existence

7. Sigmund Freud
• A well-known Australian psychologist
3. St. Augustine
• The Father and Founder of
• Christianity’s first theologian Psychoanalysis
• Believed that the physical body is • Dualistic view of self
different from the immortal soul o conscious self -governed by
• Human nature is composed of two reality principle
realms: o unconscious self - governed by
o God as the source of all reality pleasure principle
and truth • There are two kinds of instinct
o The sinfulness of man that drive individual behavior:
• Real happiness can only be found in God o eros or the life instinct
o thanatos or the death instinct
4. Rene Descartes
• A French philosopher and 8. Gilbert Ryle
mathematician • A British analytical philosopher: an
• Founder of modern philosophy important figure in the field of Linguistic
• ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ – “I think, therefore I Analysis which focused on the solving of
am” philosophical puzzles through an analysis
• The essence of self is being a thinking of language
thing • The self is best understood as a pattern of
• The self is a dynamic entity that engages behavior, the tendency or disposition for
in mental operations a person to behave in a certain way in
• Declared that the essential self or the self certain circumstances
as the thinking entity is radically different • Opposed the notable ideas of the
from the physical body previous philosophers and even claimed
that those were results of confused
5. John Locke conceptual thinking he termed,
• An English philosopher and physician category mistake
• Tabula Rasa - blank slate that assumes
• the nurture side of human development 9. Immanuel Kant
• The self is consciousness • A German Philosopher who made great
• Not convinced with the assumptions of contribution to the fields of metaphysics,
Plato, St. Augustine and Descartes that epistemology, and ethics
the individual self necessarily exists in a • Widely regarded as the greatest
single soul or substance philosopher of the modern period
• Self is not tied to any particular body or • An individual self makes the experience
substance of the world comprehensible
• It is the self that make
6. David Hume consciousness for the person to
• A Scottish philosopher and an empiricist make sense of everything
o Empiricist – person who supports • The kingdom of God is within man
the idea that all learning comes
from only experience and 10. The Churchlands
observations • Canadian - American philosophers
interested in the fields of philosophy of
mind, philosophy of science, cognitive
 neurobiology, epistemology, and 3. Superego - primarily dependent on
perception learning the difference between right
• The self is a product of brain activity and wrong; moral principle
• The behavior of the self can be
attributed to the neuropharmacological
states, the neural activity in specialized
anatomical areas

11. Patricia Churchland

• Neurophilosophy - the modern scientific
inquiry that looks into the application of
neurology to age-old problems in
philosophy
• Philosophy of Neuroscience
o the study of the philosophy of
science, neuroscience, and
psychology
o aims to explore the relevance of
neurolinguistic
experiments/studies to the
philosophy of the mind
• Man’s brain is responsible for the identity
known as self

12. Paul Churchland

• Viewed the self from a materialistic point
of view
• Being an eliminative materialist,
he believes that there is a need to
develop a new vocabulary and
conceptual framework that is grounded
in neuroscience
o Eliminative materialism - the
radical claim that our ordinary,
common-sense understanding of
the mind is deeply wrong

13. Maurice Merleau - Ponty

• A French philosopher and
phenomenologist
o Phenomenology – philosophy of
experience; For phenomenology,
the ultimate source of all meaning
and value is the lived experience
of human beings
o The self is experienced as a unity
in which the mental and physical
are seamlessly woven together
o Developed the concept of self-
subject and contended that
perceptions occur existentially

The Three Levels of the Mind

1. Id - primarily based on the pleasure
principle
2. Ego - primarily based on the reality
principle