PHILOSOPHICAL

PERSPECTIVE
The Self from Various Perspectives
Understanding the Self

Prepared by: Jinky D. Alzate, RPm

study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, & language

from Greek: φιλοσοφία,

philosophia, 'love of wisdom'
Philosophy
The self is an
immortal soul
that exists over
time.
Aristotle

St.
Socrates Thomas
Aquinas
Saint
Augustine

Plato Francis
Bacon
 The self is a
unifying subject, The self is the
The self is a an organizing
way people
consciousness
thinking thing, behave.
distinct from the
that makes Gilbert Ryle
intelligible
body. experience
possible.
Rene Immanuel
Descartes Kant

David
Hume

John Locke Paul

Personal identity is Churchland
made possible by
self-consciousness. Maurice There is no
“self "only a
Merleau- bundle of The self is the
Ponty constantly
changing
brain. Mental
perceptions states will be
passing superseded by
The self is through the brain states.
embodied theatre of
subjectivity. our minds.
“
Know thyself.

Socrates
”
psyche, the “true self” or “soul
 Socrates’ Core Teachings
The truth lies
The unexamined life is not
within each of
worth living.
us.

We should strive “It is better to

No one knowingly
for excellence in all suffer wickedness
does evil.
areas of life. than to commit it.”
“
The soul is
immortal.
Plato
”
Dichotomy between ideal (World of forms) and material world.
“
Man is made up of
matter and form.
St. Thomas Aquinas
”
Matter (hyle) – common stuff that makes up everything
Form (morphe) – essence of the living
1. Man must observe four cardinal virtues as prudence, temperance, justice, and
fortitude. These virtues are revealed in nature, and are binding on the self.
2. There are three theological virtues that should also be observed by the “self”; faith,
hope, and charity.
3. Man uses his reasons to grasp the truth about God and to experience salvation
through that truth.
4. The goal of self/existence is union and eternal fellowship with God. This goal can
be achieved through beautific vision-an event in which a person experiences
perfect, unending happiness by comprehending the very essence of God. This vision
which occurs only after death is a gift from God to those who experienced salvation
and redemption through Jesus Christ while living on earth.
5. A person’s will must be ordered toward right things such as charity, peace, and
holiness as a way to happiness.

Other concepts of Aquinas on the Nature of Self

“ The human
person is a
rational animal.
Aristotle
”
Soul is the principle of life.
✓ Nutritive soul (plants)
✓ Sensitive soul (all animals) 3 Corresponding
✓ Rational soul (human beings) degrees of soul
“ Augustine’s

https://cruciality.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/augustine-of-hippo.jpg
sense of self is
his relation to God
Saint Augustine
”
Augustine's sense of self is his relation to God, both in his recognition of God's love and his
response to it—achieved through self-presentation, then self-realization. Augustine believed
one could not achieve inner peace without finding God's love.
Man is bifurcated by nature.
Two aspects of a person:
Imperfect (earthly)
Capable of reaching immortality
Goal of the person:
To attain communion with the divine
The world of the materials is not our final home
but only a temporary one.
The real world is the one where God is.
Man should love the sinner but hate his
sin.
Nothing can conquer the self except
truth and victory of truth is love.
Christ is the teacher of men.
There is no salvation of the selves outside
the Church.
Influential quotations from St. Augustine’s writings
“ Ipsa scientia potestas est.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Somer_Franci
Knowledge itself is power.

Francis Bacon
”

s_Bacon.jpg
Philosopher, lawyer, essayist, historian, champion od modern science
1. Knowledge of self is the power of establishing the dominion of man over earth for
knowledge is power.
2. To arrive at knowledge, the self must study natures with the intention of grasping their
forces. Natures are the natural phenomena of heat, sound, light, etc. forms are
imminent forces of the natural phenomena.
3. Human mind must be free of all prejudices (idols) and pre-conceived attitudes
because they prevent successful study natural phenomena. There are four prejudices
(idols) of the human mind. These are from human nature (idols of the tribe), prejudices
coming from the psychic condition of the human soul (idols of the cave); prejudices
resulting from social relationships (idols of the marketplace); and prejudices deriving
from false philosophical systems (idols of the theatre).

Bacon’s concept of self

“
‘cogito, ergo sum—“
I think, therefore I am

Rene Descartes
”
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/com
mons/7/73/Frans_Hals_-
_Portret_van_Ren%C3%A9_Descartes.jpg

founder of modern philosophy

Meditations on First Philosophy
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.
 • 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
“ the fact that you are capable
of being aware you are
engaging in these mental
operations while you are
engaged in them ”
your self-identity is dependent on
“
Self is
consciousness
John Locke https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/libsoc-
wiki/images/7/78/220px-
John_Locke.jpg/revision/latest?cb=2019062
”
7015916

nature of knowledge (epistemology)

and the nature of the self
Descartes… Locke
Rationalism
 The view that reason is the primary
source of all knowledge and that only
our reasoning abilities can enable us
to understand sense experience and
reach accurate conclusions.
Empiricism
 The view that sense experience is
the primary source of all knowledge
and that only a careful attention to
sense experience can enable us to
understand the world and achieve
accurate conclusions.
John Locke, from On Personal Identity
Locke makes the following points, implicitly asking the question
of his readers, “Aren’t these conclusions confirmed by
examining your own experiences?”
1. To discover the nature of personal identity, we’re going to
have to find out what it means to be a person.
2. A person is a thinking, intelligent being who has the abilities to
reason and to reflect.
3. A person is also someone who considers itself to be the same
thing in different times and different places.
4. Consciousness—being aware that we are thinking—always
accompanies thinking and is an essential part of the thinking
process.
5. Consciousness is what makes possible our belief that we are
the same identity in different times and different places.
“
There Is No Self

David Hume https://schoolworkhelper.net/wp-

content/uploads/2010/08/David-
Hume.jpg
”
empiricist, believing that the source of all genuine knowledge is our direct sense experience
two
distinct Impressions Ideas
entities
• the basic sensations
of our experience,
the elemental data
of our minds: pain,
pleasure, heat, cold,
happiness, grief, fear,
exhilaration, and so
on
• copies of
impressions
• include thoughts and
images that are built
up from our primary
impressions through
a variety of
relationships, but
because they are
derivative copies of
impressions they are
once removed from
reality
What is the self we experience according to Hume?
What is our mind?

Self: bundle or collection of

different perceptions, which
succeed each other with an
inconceivable rapidity, and
are in a perpetual flux and
movement
Mind: a kind of theatre, where
several perceptions successively
make their appearance, pass,
repass, glide away, and mingle
in an infinite variety of postures
and situations
“
We Construct
the Self
Immanuel Kant
”
create the conceptual scaffolding of modern consciousness in the areas of metaphysics,
epistemology, and ethics
Kant’s Epistemological Framework

 Where does the order and organization of our world come from?
 According to Kant, it comes in large measure from us. Our minds
actively sort, organize, relate, and synthesize the fragmented,
fluctuating collection of sense data that our sense organs take
in.
 How do our minds know the best way to construct an intelligible
world out of a never-ending avalanche of sensations?
 We each have fundamental organizing rules or principles built into
the architecture of our minds
 We construct our world through these conceptual operations; and,
as a result, this is a world of which we can gain insight and
knowledge
 Unity of
Consciousness
1. The experiences must
have a single common
subject (A350);and,
2. The consciousness that this
subject has of represented
objects and/or
For Kant, consciousness being
unified is a central feature of the representations must be
mind, our kind of mind at any
rate. In fact, being a single unified.
integrated group of experiences
(roughly, one person’s
experiences) requires two kinds of
unity.
 Categorical
Imperative
The The Formula of
Universalizability Humanity
Commands you must Principle • Act so that you treat
follow regardless of
• Act only to that humanity, whether in
your desires
maxim which you can your own person or in
Moral obligations are at the same time will that of another,
derived from pure that it should become always as an end,
reasons a universal law never as a means.
without contradiction
“
The Self Is
How You Behave
Gilbert Ryle
”
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/90/b4/cd/90b4cd
eb74729fa805603e1778f52cb2.jpg

No more inner selves, immortal souls, states of consciousness,

or unconscious entities: instead, the self is defined in terms of the behavior that is
presented to the world, a view that is known in psychology as behaviorism
Ryle’s key points  Denies the existence of internal, non-physical self.
 The self is not an identity one can locate. It is a name we use
to refer to all behaviour.
 Neither the personal history of the mind’s experiences nor the
public history of the body and its movements can describe
the moment of their (mind-body) intersection.
 We can only make inferences regarding the mind that is
producing these actions
 The mind is a concept that expresses the entire system of
thoughts, emotions, actions, and so on that make up the
human self.
 The self is best understood as a pattern of behaviour, the
tendency or disposition for a person to behave in a certain
way in certain circumstances
“
Eliminative

oDmpYf1GdXRbmAf4Vp8nDCmkK2mCgjYw6Gk0D8CWWuFiHAEcuSp3z7NOKzUNLCTYQtI37LmmPIveHvlzHPNLwlW5srFrUcXIq
Materialism
”

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/dVAWK4UsBNLA-
Paul Churchland

Gv2A
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 our selves and our
minds
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.

Of courses, there are many people who believe that there are fundamental differences between the
life of the mind and neuroscientific descriptions of the brain’s operation. Many people believe that,
no matter how exhaustively scientists are able to describe the physical conditions for consciousness,
this does not mean that the mental dimensions of the self will ever be reducible to these physical
states. Why? Because in the final analysis, the physical and mental dimensions of the self are
qualitatively different realms, each with its own distinctive vocabulary, logic, and organizing
principles. According to this view, even if scientists were able to map out your complete brain activity
at the moment you were having an original idea or experiencing an emotional epiphany, that
neurobiological description of your brain would provide no clue as to the nature of your personal
experience at that moment. Articulating and communicating the rich texture of those experiences
would take a very different language and logic.
“ The Self Is
Embodied
Subjectivity
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETFQ9alWsAArgko.jpg
”
Denies dualism
The mind and the body cannot be separated.
“ Consciousness must be reckoned as a self-contained system of Being, as a
system of Absolute being, into which nothing can penetrate and from which
nothing can escape. On the other side, the whole spatio-temporal world, to
which man and the human ego claim to belong as subordinate singular
realities, is according to its own meaning mere intentional Being, a Being,
therefore, which has the merely secondary, relative sense of a Being for a

”
consciousness.

What aspect of our experience is the most ‘real’?

It’s the moments of immediate, pre-reflective experience that are the most real
The living, physical body and its experiences are all one, a natural synthesis,
what Husserl and Merleau-Ponty called the Lebenswelt (a German word
meaning “lived world”).
Thank you!