Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry,

known as the Socratic method or method of "elenchus", which he largely applied to the
examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice. It was first described by Plato
in the Socratic Dialogues.

“Know Thyself.” The meaning of these two words are attributed to the Greek
philosopher Socrates and inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Socrates main contribution to Western philosophy is his method of inquiry that was called after him
Socratic method, sometimes also known as elenchus. According to the latter, a statement can be
considered true only if it cannot be proved wrong.

Plato (428/427 - 348/347 BCE) is considered the pre-eminent Greek philosopher,

known for his Dialogues and for founding his Academy north of Athens, traditionally
considered the first university in the western world.

In his dialogues, Plato discussed every kind of philosophical idea, including Ethics (with discussion of the
nature of virtue)

The philosophy of self defines, among other things, the conditions of identity that
make one subject of experience distinct from all others. Contemporary discussions on
the nature of the self are not thereby discussions on the nature of personhood, or
personal identity.

Self-perception theory posits that people determine their attitudes and preferences by
interpreting the meaning of their own behavior. Critcher and Gilovich looked at whether
people also rely on the unobservable behavior that is their mindwandering when making
inferences about their attitudes and preferences.

Augustine (354—430 C.E.) St. Augustine is a fourth century philosopher whose

groundbreaking philosophy infused Christian doctrine with Neoplatonism. He is
famous for being an inimitable Catholic theologian and for his agnostic contributions to
Western philosophy.

St. Augustine was the first city in America. Therefore making it the oldest city in
theUnited States, founded by the Spanish in 1565. 2. The legendary spring, the
Fountain of Youth, made famous by explorer Ponce de Leon, is in St. Augustine and
located on what is now known as the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park. Jun 27, 2013

Blessed Augustine's View of Self

Descartes: The Solitary Self
dividualism is one of the hallmarks of Western philosophy and civilization. No other
intellectual tradition has been as intensively (some would say: excessively)
preoccupied with singling out and defining the individual self than Western
philosophy, and no other polity has made the presumed rights and prerogatives of
the individual as central a concern as Western societies. Individualism is as defining a
characteristic of our present civilization as capitalism, materialism, technology, and
global expansion.

Socrates’ work and example were an important beginning of this individualistic

legacy. Socrates’ inner independence from the community in which he lived set an
important precedent for the way in which a person could conceive of himself or
herself as a separate and distinct being. However radical Socrates’ individualism was,
however, he never ceased to think of himself as a member of a community. His very
individualism was defined as a social role (as his self-conception as Athens’ “gadfly”
clearly shows). And no Greek philosopher in Antiquity ever thought of the individual
as anything else than a social being, a zoon politicon.

John Locke speaks of personal identity and survival of consciousness after

death. ... John Locke holds that personal identity is a matter of psychological
continuity. He considered personal identity (or the self) to be founded on
consciousness (viz. memory), and not on the substance of either the soul or the body.

John Locke speaks of personal identity and survival of consciousness after

death. ... John Locke holds that personal identity is a matter of psychological
continuity. He considered personal identity (or the self) to be founded on
consciousness (viz. memory), and not on the substance of either the soul or the body.

John Locke (1632–1704) is among the most influential political philosophers of the
modern period. In the Two Treatises of Government, he defended the claim that men
are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally
subject to a monarch.Nov 9, 2005
John Locke (1632 – 1704) was another prominent Western philosopher who
conceptualized rights as natural and inalienable. Like Hobbes, Locke believed in a
natural right to life, liberty, and property.

John Locke (1632 - 1704) was an English philosopher of the Age of Reason and early
Age of Enlightenment. His ideas had enormous influence on the development
of Epistemology and Political Philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most
influential early Enlightenment thinkers.

David Hume - There is no Self

iscussion Question: What is the self? Name some properties of it and ways which we define it. In
other words, what exactly are we talking about when we say “I went to the store” or “I am a fan
of the flavor of fake cheese”?

Hume’s Thesis: There is no soul, it is an illusion created by our unfounded trust in cause and
effect. Because our consciousness is constantly changing there is no ‘self’ which remains the
same.

Hume begins by setting up the theory of self which argues that there is a permanent soul:
“There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what
we call our Self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain,
beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity…”(309a)

Hume’s first attack on the self argues that there is no impression of the self. And if there is one,
it is constantly in flux and hence there is no constant and non-changing thing which we can call
the self.
“If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the
same, through the whole course of our lives’ since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But
there is no impression constant and invariable.”(310a)

Hume says that in an extremely deep sleep with no dreams that our perception of self ceases to
exist. This means that if we remove all of our perceptions there is nothing left, no self. This
brings up the question, what is it then that we think we are perceiving when we perceive the self.
He answers:

“I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection
of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a
perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our
perceptions.”(310a)

This thing which we refer to as the self, is nothing more than the perceptions which are available
to our memory. We take these perceptions and recombine them into meaning and substance
using our previous experience as a guide. Unfortunately, Hume says that this previous
experience relies entirely on the principle of cause and effect which itself is not proof of its truth.
We view them as a distinct thing but they are only “connected together by resemblance,
contiguity, or causation.”(311a) Ex. Half circle

Hume then uses the ship analogy to show that the idea of identity is a function of the brain and
of our mental reasoning which is not supported by reality.
“A ship, of which a considerable part has been changed by frequent reparations, is still
considered as the same; nor does the difference of the materials hinder us from ascribing an
identity to it. The common end, in which the parts conspire, is the same under all their
variations, and affords an easy transition of the imagination from one situation of the body to
another.”(311b)

Without memory of previous cause and effect relationships repeatedly happening we would not
have made the conclusion that there is a self. Hence, there is no consistent unchanging self.

Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics. ... His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics,

and aesthetics have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement
that followed him. This article focuses on his metaphysics and epistemology in one of
his most important works, The Critique of Pure Reason.

Notes to Kant's View of the Mind and

Consciousness of Self
1. All further references to Kant will be to this work unless otherwise noted. ‘A’ refers to
passages in the first edition, ‘B’ to passages in the second. ‘=’ means that the passage occurs
in both editions.
2. Section 3 largely repeats things said in Section 2, indeed twice, once beginning at A115,
and a second time beginning just before A120, so we will focus on Section 2.
3. In this context, the term ‘aesthetic’ sounds strange to our ears. Kant is using it in a now-
archaic sense in which it contrasts with ‘anaesthetic’.
4. On the relationship of a prioricity and necessity in Kant's thought and the question of
whether and if so where and how he argued for the necessity of the propositions of
mathematics and physics, see Brook, 1993.
5. This argument is a fine example of a transcendental argument.
6. There has been an enormous debate about what the argumentative structure of the
transcendental deduction is. Henrich and Guyer both claim that Kant had two (or more)
starting points for this deduction, for example. Many aspects of the debate are orthogonal to
the issue of Kant’s model of the mind. We have discussed only the aspects relevant to this
issue.
7. This unifying move may seem fairly unexciting but in fact it has some far-reaching
implications. If right, we have no need of a higher-order thought in order to be conscious of
our own psychological states, for example (Rosenthal 1991). (For a fuller discussion of this
topic, see Brook and Raymont forthcoming, Ch. 5 and 6.