SIGMUND FREUD

• Austrian neurologists whose psychodynamic theory has

characteristics of philosophical thought.
• His revolutionary ideas of the probable factors that
determine human behavior pave the way for science to look
into the workings of the unconscious mind.
• In Freud clinical practice, therapy involves several techniques
that would help the person recognized repress thoughts and
thus bring him back to emotional stability.
• He made use of methods like free association and dream
analysis.
STRUCTURES OF THE MIND
• At Freud's Psychodynamic Theory would tell that the
workings of the mind or one's mental life impacts strongly on
the body resulting in either emotional stability or
psychological dysfunctions.
• He presented the topography of the mind. He made use of
the typical iceberg to show how the mind works based on his
theorizing. The tip of the iceberg represents conscious
awareness which characterizes the person as he deals with
his external world. The person's observable behavior,
however, is further controlled by the workings of his
unconscious/subconscious mind.
• He explained that the subconscious serve as repository of past
experiences, repressed memories, fantasies and urges.
• The three levels of the mind are structured by the following
components:
1. Id - the structure that is primarily based on the pleasure
principle
2. Ego - the structure that is base on the reality principle.
3. Superego - the last structure to develop and is primarily
dependent on learning the difference between right and
wrong.
• Freud in his 1920 book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle presented
two kinds of instincts that drive individual behavior. These are
eros or the life instinct and thanatos or the death instinct. The
energy of eros is called libido and includes urges necessary for
individual and species survival like thirst, hunger, sex. There are
cases, however, wherein man's behavior is directed towards
destruction in the form of aggression and violence. Such
according to Freud are manifestation of thanatos.
FREUD'S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
• Freud's psychoanalysis sees man as a product of his past
lodged within his subconscious. Man's behavior by his
pleasure seeking life instinct and his destructive death
instinct is said to be born with his ego already in conflict.
Man then lives his life balancing the forces of life and death-
opposing forces that make mere existence a challenge.
GILBERT RYLE
• He was an English philosopher whose ideas contradicted
Cartesian Dualism.
• In his book, “The Concept of the Mind,” he urges that
dualism “involves category mistakes and is a philosophical
nonsense.”
• The category mistake involved in the mind-body problem is
how a non-material substance known as the “mind” can
influence a physical, material body.
• he stated that many of philosophical problems were caused
by the wrong use of language.
RYLE'S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE AND KNOWLEDGE
• Ryle thought that freewill was invented to answer the question of
whether an action deserves praise of blame.
• He touched the two types of knowledge: “KNOWING-THAT and
KNOWING-HOW.
• Just 'knowing-that' according to Ryle is considered an empty
intellectualism. What is more important is how to make use of these
facts. A person may acquire a great bulk of knowledges but without
the ability to use it to solve some practical problems to make his life
easier, this bulk of knowledge is deemed to be worthless. Thus, Ryle's
point of view on this is that knowing involves an ability and not just
an intellect.
PATRICIA and PAUL CHURCHLAND
• Gave the term neurophilosophy.
• They sought scientific theorizing with philosophy and guide
philosophy with scientific inquiry.
• Man's brain is responsible for the identity known as the self.
The biochemical properties of the brain according to the
philosophy of neuroscience is really responsible for man's
thought, feelings, and behavior.
CHURCHLANDS VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
• Human nature is complicated. Man is endowed with more
than just physical or neurological characteristics. Despite
research findings, neurophilosophy states that the self is
real, that it is a tool that helps the person tune-in to the
realities of the brain and the extant reality. it can
malfunction, but can also allow human beings to do amazing
things.
• Man is a work of art, constantly evolving and at the same
time being molded by experiences of the world.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
• He is a French Phenomenological Philosopher.
• He wrote books on perception, art and political thought.
• The center of his philosophy is the emphasis placed on the
human body as the primary site of knowing the world.
 MERLEAU-PONTY VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
AND THE SELF
• He developed the concept of body-subject and contended that
perceptions occur existentially. Thus the consciousness, the world and the
human body are all interconnected as they mutually perceive the world.
• The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in the ongoing
process of man's becoming.
• Base from Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty described the
nature of man's perceptual contact with the world. Phenomenolgy
provides a direct description of the human description of the human
experience while perception forms the background of the experience
which serves to guide man's conscious actions.
• Perception is not purely the result of sensations nor it is
purely interpretation. Rather consciousness is a process that
includes sensing as well as interpreting/reasoning.
• Merleau-Ponty has been known as a philosopher of the
body. He made use of the concept of the body schema in
discussions that ranged across a number of cognitive and
existential issues.