WEEK 2

THE SELF
ACCORDING TO
PHILOSOPHY
 PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy is defined as the study of knowledge or wisdom from its
Latin roots, philo (love) and sophia (wisdom). This field is also considered as “
The Queen of All Sciences” because every scientific discipline has philosophical
foundations.

Various thinkers for centuries tried to explain the natural causes of everything
that exist specifically the inquiry on the self preoccupied these philosophers in
the history. The Greek philosophers were the ones who seriously questioned
myths and moved away from them in attempting to understand reality by
exercising the art of questioning that satisfies their curiosity, including the
questions about self. The following lecture will present the different
philosophical perspectives and views about self.
 Socrates
A philosopher from Athens , Greece and said to have the
greatest influence on European thought. According to
the history he was not able to write any of his teachings
and life’s account instead, he is known from the writings
of his student Plato who became one of the greatest
philosophers of his time.
 Plato
A student of Socrates, who introduced the idea of a three
part soul/self that is composed of reason, physical appetite
and spirit or passion.
*The Reason enables human to think deeply, make wise
choices and achieve a true understanding of eternal truths.
Plato is also called this as divine essence.

*The Physical Appetite is the basic biological needs of human

being such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.

*And the spirit or passion is the basic emotions of human

being such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness and
empathy.
 St. Augustine
St. Augustine
He is considered as the last of the great ancient philosophers whose ideas
were greatly Platonic. In melding philosophy and religious beliefs together,
Augustine has been characterized as Christianity’s first theologian.  Like
Plato, Augustine believed that the physical body is different from the
immortal soul. Early in his philosophical development he described body as
“snare” or “cage” of the soul and said that the body is a “slave” of the soul he
even characterized that “the soul makes war with the body”. Later on he
came to view the body as “spouse” of the soul, with both attached to one
another by a “natural appetite.” He concluded, “That the body is united with
the soul, so that man may be entire and complete, is a fact we recognize on
the evidence of our own nature.”
 According to St. Augustine, the human nature is composed of two
realms:

God as the source of all reality and

truth.
Through mystical experience, man
The sinfulness of man.
is capable of knowing eternal
truths. This is made possible
through the existence of the one The cause of sin or evil is an act
eternal truth which is God. He of mans’ freewill. Moral
further added that without God as goodness can only be achieved
the source of all truth, man could through the grace of God.
never understand eternal truth.
This relationship with God means
that those who know most about
God will come closest to
understanding the true nature of
the world.
A French philosopher, mathematician, and considered the founder of modern
philosophy. He explained that in order to gain true knowledge, one must doubt
everything even own existence. Doubting makes someone aware that they are
thinking being thus, they exist. The essence of existing as a human identity is the
possibility of being aware of our selves: being self-conscious in this way is
integral to having a personal identity. Conversely, it would be impossible to be
self-conscious if we did not have a personal identity of which to be conscious. In
other words, the essence of self is being a thinking thing.

The self is a dynamic entity that engages in metal operations – thinking,

reasoning, and perceiving processes. In addition to this, self-identity is
dependent on the awareness in engaging with those mental operations. He
declared that the essential self or the self as the thinking entity is radically
different from the physical body. The thinking self or soul is a non-material,
immortal, conscious being, independent of the physical laws of the universe
while the physical body is a material, mortal, non-thinking entity, fully governed
by the physical laws of nature.

Rene Descartes
 John Locke

An English philosopher and physician and famous in his concept

of “Tabula Rasa” or Blank Slate that assumes the nurture side of
human development.
 John Locke
The self, according to Locke is consciousness. In his essay entitled
On Personal Identity (from his most famous work, Essay
Concerning Human Understanding) he discussed the reflective
analysis of how an individual may experience the self in everyday
living. He provided the following key points:
1. To discover the nature of personal identity, it is important 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 themself to be the same
thing in different times and different places.
4. Consciousness as being aware that we are thinking— always
accompanies thinking and is an essential part of the thinking
process.
5. Consciousness makes possible our belief that we are the same
identity in different times and different places
 John Locke
Although Locke and Descartes believed that a person or the self is a
thinking intelligent being who has the abilities to reflect and to reason,
Locke was not convinced with the assumptions of Plato, St. Augustine
and Descartes that the individual self necessarily exists in a single soul
or substance. For Locke, personal identity and the soul or substance in
which the personal identity is situated are two very different things. The
bottom line of his theory on self is that self is not tied to any particular
body or substance. It only exists in other times and places because of the
memory of those experiences.
 David Hume
He was a Scottish philosopher
and also an empiricist. His claim
about self is quite controversial
because he assumed that there is
no self! In his essay entitled, “On
Personal Identity” (1739) he said
that, if we carefully examine the
contents of [our] experience, we
find that there are only two
distinct entities, "impressions"
and "ideas"
Hume considered that the self does
not exist because all of the
experiences that a person may
have are just perceptions and this
includes the perception of self.
None of these perceptions
resemble a unified and permanent
self-identity that exists over time .
He further added that there are instances that
an individual is limited in experiencing their
perception like in sleeping. Similarly, when
someone died all empirical senses end and
according to him, it makes no sense to believe
that self exists in other forms. As an empiricist,
Hume provide an honest description and analysis
of his own experience, within which there is no
self to be found. Hume explained that the self
that is being experienced by an individual is
nothing but a kind of fictional self. Human
created an imaginary creature which is not real.
“Fictional self” is created to unify the mental
events and introduce order into an individual
lives, but this “self” has no real existence.
 Sigmund Freud
A well-known Australian psychologist and
considered as the Father and Founder of
Psychoanalysis. His influence in Psychology and
therapy is dominant and popular in the 20th to
21st century.
 Freud proposed how mind works, he called this as
provinces or structures of the mind. By illustrating the tip
of the iceberg which according to him represents conscious
awareness which characterizes the person in dealing with
the external world. The observable behavior, however, is
further controlled by the workings of the
subconscious/unconscious mind. Subconscious serves as
the repository of past experiences, repressed memories,
fantasies, and urges. The three levels of the mind are:
1. Id. This is primarily based on the pleasure principle. It
demands immediate satisfaction and is not hindered by
societal expectations.
2. Ego. The structure that is primarily based on the reality
principle. This mediates between the impulses of the id and
restraints of the superego.
3. Superego. This is primarily dependent on learning the
difference between right and wrong, thus it is called moral
principle. Morality of actions is largely dependent on
childhood upbringing particularly on rewards and
punishments.
According to Freud, there are two kinds of
instinct that drive individual behavior – the
eros or the life instinct and the thanatos of
the death instinct. The energy of eros is
called libido and includes urges necessary for
individual and species survival like thrist,
hunger, and sex. In cases that human
behavior is directed towards destruction in
the form of aggression and violence, such are
the manifestations of thanatos.
Gilbert Ryle
A British analytical philosopher. He was an
important figure in the field of Linguistic
Analysis which focused on the solving of
philosophical puzzles through an analysis of
language. According to Ryle, the self is best
understood as a pattern of behavior, the
tendency or disposition for a person to
behave in a certain way in certain
circumstances. He opposed the notable
ideas of the previous philosophers and even
claimed that those were results of confused
conceptual thinking he termed, category
mistake. The category mistake happens
when we speak about the self as something
independent of the physical body: a purely
mental entity existing in time but not space
 Immanuel Kant

A German Philosopher who made

great contribution to the fields of
metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
Kant is widely regarded as the greatest
philosopher of the modern period. 
Kant maintained that an individual self
makes the experience of the world
comprehensible because it is
responsible for synthesizing the discreet
data of sense experience into a
meaningful whole.
For Kant, the kingdom of God is
within man. God is manifested in
people’s lives therefore it is man’s
duty to move towards perfection.
Kant emphasized that people
should always see duty as a divine
command (Price, 2000).
SoPaul and Patricia Churchlandcial
media
An American philosopher interested in the fields of philosophy of mind,
philosophy of science, cognitive neurobiology, epistemology, and
perception. Churchlands’ central argument is that the concepts and
theoretical vocabulary that people use to think about the selves— using such
terms as belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain, joy— actually misrepresent the
reality of minds and selves. He claims that the self is a product of brain
activity.
Patricia Churchland claimed that man’s brain is responsible for the identity known as
self. The biochemical properties of the brain according to this philosophy of neuroscience
is really responsible for man’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
Paul Churchland is one of the many philosophers and psychologists that viewed the self
from a materialistic point of view, contending that in the final analysis mental states are
identical with, reducible to, or explainable in terms of physical brain states. This
assumption was made due to the physiological processes of the body that directly affecting
the mental state of the person. The advent of sophisticated technology and scientific
research gives hope to understand the connection between the physical body and the
mind/brain relationship that integrated in the self. Being an eliminative materialist, he
believes that there is a need to develop a new vocabulary and conceptual framework that is
grounded in neuroscience. This new framework will be a more accurate reflection of the
human mind and self.,498,300
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty

A French philosopher and phenomenologist. He took a very different approach to

the self and the mind/body “problem.” According to him, the division between
the “mind” and the “body” is a product of confused thinking. The self is
experienced as a unity in which the mental and physical are seamlessly woven
together. This unity is the primary experience of selves and begin to doubt it
when an individual use their minds to concoct abstract notions of a separate
mind and body. Developed the concept of self-subject and contended that
Phenomenology provides a direct description of the
perceptions occur existentially. Thus, the consciousness, the world, and the
human body are all interconnected as they mutually perceive the world.
human experience which serves to guide man’s
According to him, the world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in the conscious actions. He further added that, the world is a
ongoing process of man’s becoming. field of perception, and human consciousness assigns
meaning to the world. Thus man cannot separate
himself from his perceptions of the world. Perception
is not purely the result of sensations nor it is purely
interpretations. Rather consciousness is a process that
includes sensing as well as interpreting/reasoning.
 Submitted to:
mr. mariel june magsino
Submitted by:
Jovelyn A. Sanchez
Mark lester b. Lopez
Bsba mm 1203

Subject: understanding the self

THANKYOU
AND
GODBLESS!