The Self From Various

Perspectives
Philosophy
What is Philosophy?
• Love of wisdom
• The enduring search of meaning
• A journey in search for the truth
But in the Philosophy of Self, it is defined among other
things, the conditions of identity that makes one subject of
experience distinct from all others. The self is sometimes
understood as a unified being essentially connected to
consciousness, awareness, and agency (or, at least, with the faculty
of rational choice).
• A soul is our total Self
 SOCRATES
“Knowing what is good is the same as doing what is good.”

• Socrates believe that ourselves should be nurtured and protected by

gaining wisdom to save our Souls, this would lead us to live a virtuous
life.
• He also believe that there was definite right and wrong and people could
accept it and apply it into their daily lives.
• Life should be spent in search of goodness and people should focus on
self-development rather than material wealth.
• An action is right when it promoted true happiness.
• In characterizing the relationship between the soul and the
body, Socrates explains that the soul uses the body as “an
instrument of perception,” and that the soul “rules” the body in
the same way that the divine rules the mortals.
• Socrates argues that because the soul is of a unified,
indissoluble form, we should not be concerned about death
because the soul is incapable of being dispersed into
nonexistence—it must be eternal.
• Our physical existence on earth is merely an imperfect
reflection of ultimate and eternal reality, and our purpose in
life is to achieve communion with this ultimate reality.
PLATO
• He views that the human self is an immaterial soul that can
think.
• Plato held that after death the souls of those who most love the
forms would rise to contemplate the eternal truths, a sort of
heaven beyond space and time.
• According to Plato, the body, with its deceptive senses, keeps
us away from real knowledge; it pins us in a world of material
things which is far removed from the world of reality; and it
tempts us away from the virtuous life.
Parts of the Soul:

• Reason—our divine essence that enables us to think

deeply, make wise choices, and achieve a true
understanding of eternal truths.

• Physical Appetite—our basic biological needs such as

hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.

• Spirit or Passion—our basic emotions such as love,

anger, ambition, aggressiveness, empathy
 ARISTOTLE
• “SELF as an ACTIVITY”
• Defined the soul as the core essence of a living being, but argued
against its having a separate existence.
• He did not consider the soul as some kind of separate, ghostly
occupant of the body. Soul is the first activity in the body, it cannot
be immortal.
• Humans have bodies for rational activity
• “De Anima” (On the Soul)
Calculative The rational side used
4
for making decisions
SECTION Scientific
S
OF THE Desiderative The irrational side
SOUL responsible for
Vegetative identifying our needs
ST. AUGUSTINE
• Augustine emphasized the importance of the will, the ability to
choose between good and evil.
• The fundamental religious duty is to love and serve God; if we
can succeed in this, we will also choose the good and avoid the
evil. But humans are now constantly attracted towards evil, that
is, toward excessive satisfaction of our lower desires for
material things and pleasures.
• Early in his philosophical development he describes the body
as a “snare” and a “cage” for the soul. He considers the body a
“slave” to the soul, and sees their relation as contentious: “The
soul makes war with the body.”
• As his thinking matured, Augustine sought to develop
a more unified perspective on body and soul. He
ultimately came to view that the body as the “spouse”
of the soul, with both attached to one another by a
“natural appetite.” He concludes,
• Augustine's view was that God selects only a few
people to receive grace and be saved. The rest of
humanity will just continue to sin and not repent, and
then they will be punished for it after death in hellfire.
RENE DESCARTES
Cogito, Ergo Sum—“I Think, Therefore I Am.”
• The human ability to reason constitutes the extraordinary instrument we
have to achieve truth and knowledge.
• He explains, “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that
at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” You will
never have the opportunity to construct a rock-solid foundation for your
beliefs about the world and your personal philosophy of life if you don’t
doubt.
• The essence of existing as a human identity is the possibility of being
aware of our selves: being self-conscious (a heightened sense of self-
awareness) in this way is important on having a personal identity.
• Your self-identity is dependent on the fact that you are
capable of being aware you are engaging in these mental
operations while you are engaged in them. 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.
• If you were consistently not conscious of your mental
operations, consistently unaware of your thinking,
reasoning, and perceiving processes, then it would not be
possible for you to have a self-identity, a unique essence,
a you.
JOHN LOCKE
“SELF” - He defines the self as "that conscious thinking
thing, (whatever substance, made up of whether spiritual, or
material, simple, or compounded, it matters not) which is
sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of
happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as
that consciousness extends".

• Locke posits an "empty" mind, a tabula rasa, which is

shaped by experience; sensations and reflections being
the two sources of all our ideas.
• Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education is
an outline on how to educate this mind: he
expresses the belief that education make the
man, or, more fundamentally, that the mind is an
"empty cabinet", with the statement, "I think I
may say that of all the men we meet with, nine
parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful
or not, by their education."
• “The little and almost insensible impressions on our
tender infancies have very important and lasting
consequences.“
• He argued that the "associations of ideas" that one
makes when young are more important than those
made later because they are the foundation of the
self: they are, put differently, what first mark
the tabula rasa.
 DAVID HUME
• BUNDLE THEORY OF SELF
• Pointed out that we think that we are the same person we were five
years ago. Though we have changed in many aspect, the same person
appears present as was present then.
• We are never intimately conscious of anything but a particular
perception; man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which
succeed one another with an unthinkable rapidity and are in perpetual
flux and movement.
• There is no such thing as self, because in every situations, time, and
circumstances, we portray a different person and different identity.
 IMMANUEL KANT
• We construct the Self
• Our primary experience of the world is not in terms of a disconnected stream
of sensations (feelings). Instead, we perceive and experience an organized
world of objects, relationships, and ideas, all existing within a fairly stable
framework of space and time.
• Conscious self who is the knowing subject at the center of our universe.
• All our knowledge begins with experience, but it does not follow that it all
arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our empirical
(observed) knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions
(imitations) and of what our own capacity of knowledge supplies from itself.
• Knowledge is entitled a PRIORI (Independent), and distinguished
from the empirical, which has its sources a POSTERIORI
(Dependent/need experience), that is, in experience.
• Our minds actively sort, organize, relate, and synthesize the
fragmented, fluctuating collection of sense data that our sense
organs take in.
• Constructing activity is precisely what our minds are doing all of
the time: taking the raw data of experience and actively making it
into the familiar, orderly, meaningful world in which we live.
• Self is the one that makes experiencing an understandable world
as possible, because it’s the self that is responsible for creating the
discreet data of sense experience into a meaningful whole.
Behaviorism- (Psychology)
Logical Behaviorism- (Philosophy) a theory of mind that mental
concepts can be explained in terms of behavioral concepts
• Their solution to the mind/body “problem” is to simply deny—or
ignore—the existence of an internal, nonphysical self, and
instead focus on the dimensions of the self that we can observe
(Overt behavior).
• No more inner selves, immortal souls, states of consciousness,
or unconscious entities (Covert behavior): instead, the self is
defined in terms of the behavior that is presented to the world.
GILBERT RYLE
• The self is how you behave
• Ryle summarizes the essential elements of the dualistic view of the
self—mind and body as distinct entities.
• Under this view, the body is seen as a physical entity, subject to the
physical laws of the universe, whereas the mind (soul, spirit) is a
nonphysical entity and exempt from the laws of the universe.
• Each mind is its own private, personal universe.
• Our physical bodies are just the opposite of our minds: our bodies
and their movements are available to everyone, including ourselves.
• Ryle goes on to analyze how this apparent conflict between the
theory of Cartesian dualism and our everyday experience of
others is actually the result of confused conceptual thinking, a
logical error that he terms a “category mistake.”
• University is a concept expressing the entire system of
buildings, curricula, faculty, administrators, and so on.
• Ryle believes that the mind is a concept that expresses the
entire system of thoughts, emotions, actions, and so on that
make up the human self.
• The category mistake happens when we speak about the self
as something independent from the physical body: a purely
mental entity existing in time but not space.
MATERIALISM
• The health of our bodies, the things we ingest, the
experiences we endure—all of these dimensions of our
physical self-have a profound effect on our mental and
emotional functioning.
• Similarly, our emotional states, the way we think about
things, our levels of stress, the optimism (or pessimism)
we feel—all of these dimensions of our mental self-have
a dramatic impact on our physical condition.
PAUL CHURCHLAND
• Self as a Brain
• Materialists believe that to fully understand the nature of
the mind we have to fully understand the nature of the
brain.
• He begins by acknowledging that a simple identity
formula mental states = 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.
• “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.
MERLEAU- PONTY
• The self is embodied subjectivity
• The division between the “mind” and the “body” is a product of
confused thinking.
• The simple fact is, we experience our self as a unity in which the
mental and physical are seamlessly woven together.
• This unity is our primary experience of ourselves, and we only
begin to doubt it when we use our minds to create abstract ideas
of a separate “mind” and “body.”
• The “ghost in the machine”—are not real, any more than ghosts or
Leprechauns are real.
• Merleau-Ponty, it’s these mental creations that result in the
apparent mysteries and paradoxes such as the mind/body
“problem.”
• In other words, our “living body” is a natural synthesis of
mind and biology, and any attempts to divide them into
separate entities are artificial and nonsensical.
• From Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s vantage point, it’s the
moments of direct, primal experience that are the most
real, what they call the Lebenswelt or “lived world,”
which is the fundamental ground of our being and
consciousness.
ACTIVITY
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