NUEVA VIZCAYA STATE UNIVERSITY

Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

Module 1

Introduction

It is said to be that understanding oneself is one of the most interesting and exciting undertaking that an individual
can achieve in his life. In today’s generation, people are more preoccupied with various things and give little attention
in exploring and discovering more things about the self.

The purpose of this module is to help you deepen your understanding and appreciation for who you are as a person.
You will explore how you see yourself through different aspects – self from different fields of studies; physical,
emotional, mental, social and spiritual; you will also examine how you respond to the pressures of changes and
transitions in your life.

Course Learning Outcomes:

Week 1-3. Unit Learning Outcomes (ULO): At the end of the unit, you are expected to:
• Explain the nature, concept and meaning of the self.
• Discuss and explain the different roles and philosophical standpoint in understanding the self and how
these philosophical perspectives have molded through times.
• Synthesize and analyze the different philosophical views of self.

Explain the nature, concept and meaning of the self

Self -sometimes referred to as the soul, ego, psyche, identity, I ,me, or being.

Cognitive - relating to or involving conscious intellectual activity

Affective- relating to or arising from feelings influenced by emotions.

Essential Knowledge

To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning outcomes) for the first three (3) weeks of the course, you need to
fully understand the following essential knowledge that will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note that
you are not limited to exclusively refer to these resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other books, research
articles and other resources that are available in the university’s library e.g. ebrary, search.proquest.com, etc.

Activity Number 1 SELF-EXAMINATION

Look at yourself in the mirror and answer the following questions.

1. How can you describe yourself based on your own perspective or point of view?

I am _____________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________

2. What aspect of yourself do you feel good about? Why?

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
Why are you in this subject?
College life said to be the most challenging and exciting phase of your life. It is entirely new adventure that everyone looks forward
to. It is a world different form your primary as well as junior and senior high schools. Since you are in your freshman
year, everything-including this subject is new to you.
▪ What is understanding the Self”?
▪ Is it important in the curriculum?
▪ How will it help me as a student and as a person?

An Overview of Self/Identity
The “self” has many aspects. These aspects make up the “self’s” integral parts, such as self -awareness, self-
esteem, self-knowledge, and self-perception. With these aspects that person is able to alter, change, add/or modify
himself or herself for the purpose of gaining social acceptance.

The “self” is an important study in psychology. It holds either the cognitive and affective representation of an
individual. Knowing oneself is critical to being an effective team member as well as being successful in life, work, and
relationships. Your personal identity influences everything you do, and it changes and evolves over time.

The “self” is a topic that is often taked about but largely goes unnoticed. Every time that ‘
I’ is mentioned (e.g. I will go to the theatre) the self is highlighted as an actor. The consciousness of the existence of
the self has been almost automatic or reflexive. Thus, people are almost unaware of that in our everyday living.
Scholars (i.e., theorists, scientists, philosophers) in different fields have attempted to explain and expound some
several issues about the character, subsistence and dimensionality of the
“self”

The Concept Map

What is the nature of the self?

Philosophical
Perspective

An anthropological Sociological
conceptualization of perspective: The self
Self: The self as Who am I? as a product
embedded in culture
SELF

What am I? The self in western

Psychological and eastern thought
Perspective

Philosophical View of Self

Philosophy is often called as the mother of all disciplines simply because all fields of study began as philosophical
discourses. Philosophy is from the Greek words Philo-(loving) and Sophia (knowledge, wisdom). At simplest,
philosophy is means “loving knowledge” or “loving wisdom”. The term philosophy as originally used by the Greeks
meant, “The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.”

Consequently, Philosophy is a study of fundamental nature, knowledge, reality, existence, especially in an academic
discipline. It also investigates the legitimacy of concepts by rational arguments concerning their implications,
relationships as well as moral judgment and etc. Ample of Philosophies concerns with the essential nature of the
self. The philosophical framework for understanding the self was first introduced by the ancient great Greek
philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved
away from them to understand reality and respond to perennial questions of curiosity, including the questions of the
self. The different views of prominent philosophers regarding the nature of the self are discussed; most of them
agree the self-knowledge is a prerequisite to a happy and meaningful life.

Socrates: Know Yourself

He is principally concerned with man. He was the first philosopher who engages in
systematic questioning about the self. “Every man is composed of body and soul.” – i. e. dualism
[Man is composed of two important aspects of his personhood] Therefore, 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. [Platonic] He considers man from the point of view of his
inner life. The famous life of Socrates tells each man to bring his inner self to light. A bad man is
not virtuous through ignorance. The core of Socratic ethics is the concept of virtue and
knowledge. Virtue is the deepest and most basic propensity [strong natural tendency to do something] of

man. Knowing one’s own virtue is necessary and can be learned. Since virtue is innate in the mind and self-
knowledge is the source of all wisdom, an individual may gain possession of oneself and be one’s own master through
knowledge.

Plato: The Ideal Self, perfect self

Plato claimed in his dialogues that Socrates affirmed that the unexamined life is
not worth living. With this, he basically took off from his master and supported the idea
that man is dual in nature. He added that there are components of the soul:

a] rational soul;

b] spiritual soul; and

c] appetitive soul.

The republic – he 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/ copied by
reason and intellect that govern the affairs of the human person; the spiritual soul which in charge of emotions; and
appetitive soul in charge of base desires. Therefore, when this ideal state is attained, the human person’s soul becomes
just and virtues. To make it simple, a man was omniscient before he came to be born into this world. In practical terms,
this means that man in this life should imitate his former self; he should live a life of virtue in which true human
perfection exists.

“Love in fact is one of the links between the sensible and the eternal world.” – Plato

Rene Descartes: Cogito, ergo sum/ I think, therefore I am

He conceived of the human person as having a body and a mind. He

claims that there is so much that we should doubt since much of what we
think and believe is not infallible, they may turn out to be false. Rene
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.

The self then for Rene is also a combination of two distinct entities, the COGITO, the thing that thinks, which
is the mind, and the EXTENZA of the mind, which is the body, ie. like a machine that is attached to the mind. The
human person has the body but it is not what makes a man a man. If at all, that is the mind. Descartes: says: “What
then am I? A thinking thing, that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also and perceives.
To sum, although the mind and the body are independent of each other and serve their own function, man must use
his own mind and thinking abilities to investigate, analyze, experiment, and develop himself.
 David Hume: the self is the bundle theory of mind

He is an empiricist who believes that one can know only through

the senses and experiences. Example: Ana knows that Lenard is a man not
because she has seen his soul. Ana knows Lenard just like her because she
sees him, hears him, and touches him. Hume posits that self is nothing else
but a bundle of impressions. What are impressions? For Hume, they can
all be categorized into two: impressions and ideas. The first one is the basic
objects of our experience or sensation. So, it forms the core of our
thoughts. Example: when one touches fire, the hotness sensation is an
impression which is the direct experience. On the contrary, Ideas are
copies of our impressions. Because of this, they are not as lively and clear
as our impressions. Example: the feeling of being in love for the first time that is an idea. According to Hume, the self
is a bundle or collection of various perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a
perpetual flux and movement. Thus, the self is simply a collection of all experiences with a particular being.

Immanuel Kant: respect for self

Every man is thus an end in himself and should never be treated merely as a means – as per the order
of the Creator and the natural order of things.

To Kant, there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions that men get from the external
world. Time and Space are ideas that one cannot find in the world but built-in our human mind.
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. Thus, the self is not just what gives one his personality. It is also the
seat of knowledge acquisition for all human persons.

Gilbert Ryle: The mind-Body dichotomy

For Ryle, what truly matters is the behavior that a person manifests in his day-today life. For
him, looking for and trying to understand the self as it really exists is like visiting your friends‟
university and looking for the “university.” Ryle says that 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.

Merleau Ponty: Phenomenologist

He insisted that body and mind are so intertwined from one another. One cannot find any
experience that is not an embodied experience. All experience is embodied. One’s body is his
opening toward his existence to the world. Because men are in the world. For him, the Cartesian
problem is nothing but plain misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.

The Christian or Biblical view of Self

The Holy Bible

“God created man in His image; in the divine image He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed
them, saying, „Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds in
the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.” Gen. 1:24-28
Thus, it is appropriate to think of the self as the “multi-bejeweled crown of creation –the many gems thereof
representing and radiating the glorious facets of man’s self that include the physical, intellectual, moral, religious,
social, political, economic, emotional, sentient, aesthetic, sensual, and sexual aspects.

Augustine: Love and justice as the foundation of the individual self

Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world when it comes to man. He
combined the platonic ideas into Christianity perspective. Augustine agreed that man is of a
bifurcated/ dual nature. An aspect of man dwells in the world and is imperfect and continuously
years 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 communion with God. He
believes that a virtuous life is the dynamism of love. Loving God means loving one’s fellowmen;
and loving one’s fellowmen denotes never doing any harm to another.

Thomas Aquinas: Angelic doctor

Adapting some ideas from Aristotle, Aquinas said that indeed, man is composed of
two parts: matter and form. Matter/ hyle refers to the common stuff that makes
up everything in the universe. Forms/ morphe refers to the essence of the
substance of things. It is what makes it what it is. In the case of the human person,
the body of the human person is something that he shares even with animals. What
makes a human person a human person is his essence. Like Aristotle, the soul is
what animates the body; it is what makes us humans.

SIGMUND FREUD (6 May 1856- 23 September 1939)

born in Vienna was an Austrian neurologist who became known as the founding father of
psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud developed the best-known theory of personality focused upon
internal growth or psychodynamics’. The theory stresses the influence of unconscious fears,
desires and motivation on thoughts and behavior. Freud psychoanalysis became both a theory
of personality and a method of psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic theory has three major parts: A
theory of the structure of personality, in which the id, ego and superego are the principal
parts. A theory of personality dynamics, in which conscious and unconscious motivation and
ego-defense mechanisms play a major role. A theory of psychosexual development, in which
different motives and body regions influence the child at different stages of growth, with effects persisting in
the form of adult personality traits.

STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY:Freud thought of personality as being based upon a structure of three parts: the id,
the ego and the superego.

• ID – Pleasure
• EGO – Reality
• SUPEREGO - For perfection/ideal

Psychoanalytic Model ID (primitive, instinctive component of personality)

Latin word of Id is ‘It’ Id is the original source of personality, which is present
in a newborn.

▪ The Id, the most primitive part, can be thought of as a sort

of storehouse of biologically based urges: to eat, drink,
eliminate, and especially, to be sexually stimulated.
▪ The sexual energy that underlies these urges is called the
libido.
 ▪ It is present in the deepest level of the unconscious and represents the inner world of subjective
experience.
▪ It is unconcerned with objective reality and is unaffected by the environment Id is completely selfish;
concerned with immediate gratification of instinctual needs, and the biological drives, like hunger,
sex.

Ego (the decision-making component) The Latin word of ego is ‘I’ which means ‘self’.

▪ The ego acts as a mediator or balance between the demands of Id and superego.
▪ Ego is based on the Reality Principle.
▪ Ego delays the discharge of tension.
▪ It postponed the desires.
▪ This adaptive measure of Ego is refereed as secondary process thinking.

Process Thinking

- Ego waits for the right moment for the satisfaction of desire, whereas id satisfies desires immediately. Ego
develops from Id and works for Id. Ego is an executive, which mediate between the demands of id and realities
of world and demands of super ego

FUNCTIONS OF EGO

✓ Control and regulation of instinctual derives.

✓ Relation to reality
✓ Sense of reality o Reality testing
✓ Adaptation to reality
✓ Primary autonomous function
✓ Perception
✓ Thinking
✓ Speaking
✓ IQ
✓ Memory

Superego (the moral component) It is ideal rather than real.

▪ The superego is that part of personality that represents internalized value, ideals and moral attitude of
society.
▪ It is outgrowth of learning the taboos and moral values of society.
▪ It is refer to conscience and is concerned with right and wrong.
▪ It inhabits the ID desires.
▪ Sex and aggressive superego operates through the ego system and compel the ego to inhibit desires that are
considering wrong or immoral.
▪ Its psychiatric function is expresses as guilt, self-criticism and consciences.

Rewarding functions

Ego ideal-superego develops with Oedipus complex.

• It strives for perfection.

• It is society himself.
• It is extreme of Id and it is for self-preservation by society norms.
• Consciences: negative part of superego.
• It is developed by punishment, lack of reward, conditioning of childhood brings conscience.
• It gives guilt and self-criticism.
• Child takes or interjects the moral standards of parents.

Ego Ideal:
It is rewarding function of super ego.It is by positive reinforcement for i.e. copy, menu rimes of father or any
beloved person.

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

• Conscious level
• Preconscious level
• Unconscious part

Conscious level

✓ Relates to the awareness of an individual to his environment. It functions when the individual is awake.
✓ It is concerned with thought, feelings and sensations, memory, IQ.
✓ Conscious as sense organ of attention. It is only 1/9 of total mind.
✓ Through attention, person becomes conscious of perceptual stimuli from the outside world within the
organism.
✓ Only elements in pre conscious enter consciousness.
✓ It is one-way traffic to unconscious mind.
✓ Conscious part of mind is aware of here and now as it relates individual and his environment.

Preconscious level
✓ is described as that part of mind in which ideas and reactions are stored and partially forgotten.
✓ It also acts as a watchman because it prevents certain painful, unpleasant, unacceptable,distributing
unconscious memories from reaching the conscious mind.
✓ Slip of tongue, slip of pen.
✓ Preconscious region of mind is not present at birth but develops in childhood.
✓ It is accessible to both unconscious and conscious mind.
✓ Elements of unconscious mind are accessible toconscious through preconscious.
Unconscious
✓ part is the largest part of mind (9/10).
✓ It is hidden part of iceberg that floats under water.
✓ It contains repressed ideas and affects.
✓ Elements of unconscious mind are in accessible to consciousness.
✓ They become conscious only through preconscious mind.
✓ Repressed ideas may reach to consciousness when censor is over powered or relaxed (dream state).
✓ It is storehouse for all the memories, feelings and responses experienced by the individual during his entire
life.
Category mistake
- Representing the facts or concepts as if they belonged in one logical category when they actually belong in anothe.

In our everyday experience, we act and speak as if we have much more direct knowledge of other minds and what they’re thinking
without having to go through this tortured and artificial reasoning process. We encounter others, experience the totality of their
behavior, and believe that this behavior reveals directly “who” they are and what they’re thinking. Ryle goes on to analyze
how this apparent conflict between the theory of Cartesian dualism (“the ghost in the machine”) and our everyday experience of others
is actually the result of confused conceptual thinking, a logical error that he terms a “category mistake.

PAUL CHURCHLAND
The philosopher Paul Churchland articulates such a vision in the following essay. He begins
by acknowledging that a simple identity formula mental state = brain states is a flawed way in
which to conceptualize the relationship between the mind and the brain. Instead, we need to
develop a new, neuroscience-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 commonsense “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 frame work that is ground in neuroscience 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. Churchland’s point is that the most compelling argument for developing a new conceptual
framework and vocabulary founded on neuroscience is the simple fact that the current “folk psychology” has done
a poor job in accomplishing the main reason for their existence explaining and predicting the common place phenomena
of the human mind and experience.

And in the same way that science replaces outmoded, ineffective, and limited conceptualframeworks with
ones that can Materialism: The Self Is the Brain 141 explain and predict more effectively, so the same thing needs to be
done in psychology and philosophy of mind.

This new conceptual framework will be based on and will integrate all that we are learning about how the brain
works on a neurological level. Although he believes strongly in the logic of his position, Churchland recognizes that
many people will resist the argument he is making for a variety of reasons.

Notable Different Philosophical Perspectives on Self

This section shows how philosophers view the self from different perspective. It must be remembered that in studying the theories about
the self, one should take into account the philosophers’ orientation and historical background.

Philosopher Orientation Philosophy Description

Renaissance
David Hume Empiricist Skeptical Philosophy -all knowledge passes through the senses
-separate ideas can be joined in the mind
-there is no self, only a bundle of
perceptions
Immanuel Kant Rationalist/Empiricist Metaphysics of the self - Reason is the final authority of
morality
- There is inner self and outer self
- The inner self includes rational
reasoning and psychological state
- The outer self includes the body and
physical mind, where representation
occurs.
Modern Time
Gilbert Ryle Empericist The Concept of the mind - “I act therefore, I am”
- The mind is not the seat of the self.it
is not a separate, parallel thing to
our body.
- The mind is a category mistake,
brought about by habitual use. The
only way it can affect the others is
through the external world.
Paul Churchland Empiricist Neurophilosophy - A fully matured neuroscience will
eliminate the need for belies since
“they are not real”.
- The physical brain gives us a send of
self.
Maurice Existentialist Phenomenology of - Both empiricism and intellectualism
Merleau-Ponty Empiricist Perception are flawed in nature.
- “we are our bodies”
- Our bodily experiences do not
detach the subject/object,
mind/body, rational/irrational.