UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

LESSON 1: From the Perspectives of PLATO

Philosophy
PARTS OF THE SOUL/SELF
The true self of the human person is the “rational
What is Philosophy? soul”.
The human person is composed of body and
soul.
Body
Material and destructible part of the human
person.
SOCRATES
Soul
SOCRATIC/DIALECTIC METHOD
Immaterial and indestructible part of the human
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only
person.
make them think.”
The soul/self has 3 parts
“The unexamined life is not worth living. The
touching of the soul may mean helping the Rational Soul
person to get in touch with his true self.
- Located in the head
- Enables the human person to think, reflect,
The soul is the true self. analyze, and do other cognitive functions.
⊷ The soul is the intellectual and moral Spiritual Soul
personality of humans
- Located in the chest
⊷ The soul is the responsible agent in knowing
and acting rightly or wrongly - Enables the person to experience happiness,
joy, sadness, abomination, anger, and other
Devote considerable amount of attention, energy, emotional feelings.
and resources to making our soul as good and
beautiful as possible. Appetitive Soul
- Located in the abdomen

KNOWLEDGE - Drives the human person to experience

physical pain, hunger, thirst, and other physical
WISDOM wants
VIRTUE
It’s not money, fame, elegant clothes, nice
house, beautiful and expensive car, or high-tech
gadgets that makes life meaningful but
knowledge, wisdom, and virtue

ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

Man should rely on God’s commands and his
judgment of what constitutes good and evil

Two realms:

 God as the source of all reality and truth

 The sinfulness of man

The role of LOVE

 Love of physical objects lead to the sin

of greed
 Love for other people is not lasting and
excessive love for them is the sin of
jealousy.
 Love for the self leads to the sin of
pride. RENE DESCARTES
 Love for God is the supreme virtue and MIND-BODY DUALISM
only through loving God can man find
real happiness. “I think, therefore I am.”

ARISTOTLE
“Human person is a “rational animal.”
“Human person is not a soul distinct from the
body.”

The mind is the real self

The mind or soul is an immaterial, nonextended
substance that thinks.
By thinking, means being conscious of one’s self
and the object of its thinking

DAVID HUME
IMPRESSION & IDEA
“The self is nothing but a bundle of impressions
and ideas.”
 4. Consciousness—being aware that we are
thinking—always accompanies thinking and is
an essential part of the thinking process.
5. Consciousness is what makes possible our
belief that we are the same identity in different
times and different places.

Consciousness is what makes possible our

belief that we are the same identity in
JOHN LOCKE different times and different places.

PERSONAL IDENTITY ⊷ You consider your self to be the same self

who was studying last night, attending a party at
“A person-or self-is a thinking, intelligent being a friend’s house two weeks ago, and taking a
that has the abilities to reason and to reflect.” vacation last summer.
Sensation & Reflection ⊷ How can you be sure it’s the same self in all
of these situations?
⊷ Locke denies that the individual self
necessarily exists in a single soul or substance.
⊷ For Locke, the essence of the self is its
conscious awareness of itself as a thinking,
reasoning, reflecting identity.
⊷ Personal identity is not in the brain, but in
consciousness. ⊷ In Locke’s mind, conscious awareness and
memory of previous experiences are the keys to
⊷ In order to exist after death, there has to be a
understanding the self.
person after death who is thesame person as the
person who died. ⊷ In other words, you have a coherent concept
of your self as a personal identity because you
⊷ Consciousness can be transferred from one
are aware of your self when you are thinking,
substance to another, and thus, while the soul is
feeling, and willing.
changed, consciousness remains the same,
thereby preserving personal identity through the
change.
“On Personal Identity”
1. To discover the nature of personal identity,
we’re going to have to find out what it means to
be a person.
2. A person is a thinking, intelligent being who IMMANUEL KANT
has the abilities to reason and to reflect.
EXPERIENCE & REASON
3. A person is also someone who considers itself
to be the same thing in different times and
different places.
“The mind is not just a passive receiver of sense person manifests in his
experience but rather participates in knowing the
day-to-day life.
objects it experience.”
"I act, therefore I am."

Both experience and reason plays an important

role in constructing our self and knowledge of PATRICIA & PAUL CHURCHLAND
the world.
NEUROPHILOSOPHY
Instead of the mind conforming to the world, it
is the external world that conforms to the mind. “The biochemical properties of the

The self is the seat of knowledge acquisition brain is responsible for man’s
for all human persons. thoughts, feelings, and behavior.”
➢ When the self sees an object, it tends to
remember its characteristics and applies on it,
the forms of time and space. Neurophilosophy

➢ Therefore, a self must exist, according to ⊷ Modern scientific inquiry looks into the
Kant, or there could be no memory or application of neurology to ageold problems in
knowledge. philosophy, one of which is the mind-body
problem.
⊷ Neurophilosophy concludes that what and
GILBERT RYLE who the person is – how he/she makes decisions,
control impulses, and how he/she sees
SELF & BEHAVIOR
him/herself is largely determined by his/her
“The self is not an entity one can locate and neurons, hormones, and overall genetic make-
analyze but simply the convenient name that up.
people use to refer to all the behaviors that
people make.”
2 Types of Knowledge
1. Knowing-that – refers to knowing
facts/information
2. Knowing-how – refers to using facts in the
performance of some skill or technical abilities.
⊷ Just ‘knowing-that’ is considered as empty
intellectualism. What is more important is how
to make use of these
facts. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
SELF & PERCEPTION
What truly matters is “The focus is on the relationship
the behavior that a between self-experience and the
experience of other people.” He described the self as a ‘dimension of
personalitythat is made-up of the individual’s
⊷ Consciousness, the world and The human self-awareness and self-image’ (Macionis,
body are all interconnected as they mutually 2012).
perceive the world.
⊷ The world is a field of perception, and human
consciousness assigns meaning to the world.
Thus, man cannot separate himself from his
perceptions of the world.
‘generalized other’
⊷ Perception is not purely the result of
sensations nor is it purely interpretation. The term Mead used to explain the behaviour of
the person when he sees/considers other people
⊷ For instance, when perception towards a
in the course of his actions.
particular object takes place, the perception is
not constant i.e., the meaning assigned to this Theory of the Self
particular object is subject to change depending
on the perspective upon which it is seen. It is ✘ The self is not present at birth but begins as a
therefore possible that one object may be central character in a child’s world.
perceived from various perspectives.
✘ Children see themselves as the center of their
‘universe’ and is having difficulty understanding
others around them.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
✘ As they grow and mature, there is a change in
From the Perspective of Sociology
the self. Begins to see other people and is now
concerned about people’s reactions. They are the
significant others who strongly influence his
SOCIOLOGY development (Schaefer,
is one of the disciplines in the social sciences 2012).
which aims to discover the ways by which the
social surrounding/environment influences ✘ The formation of the self is not the end of the
people’s thoughts, feelings and behavior. processof socialization.

✘ It continues for as long as the person is alive.

✘ The self may change based on life

circumstances thathave strong impact on it.
Events such as death of a loved one, disease or
disability may reshape the self.
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD ✘ Though a person may have no control over
such events,he has control over how he reacts
and deals with it which is still an important
MEAD’s SOIAL SELF aspect of the self (Macionis, 2012).
Social Behaviorism is the approached used
todescribe the power of the environment in
shaping human behaviour. Other sociological approaches to
understanding the self
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY (1864-1929) the process of altering how the personpresents
himself to others.
People learn who they are through their
He sees similarities of real social interaction to a
social interaction with other people. Although
theatrical presentation. This is the reason for the
seeing oneself is based on contemplating one’s label dramaturgical

personal qualities, the view of the self is also approach to his view.

significantly influenced by the impression and Face-work

perception of others. a phrase used to describe another aspect of the

self. This was usually observed in situations
where face-saving measures are resorted to in
the maintenance of a proper image of the self in
frustrating or embarrassing situations.
He called this the looking-glass self or the self
that is a
product of social interaction. Cooley believed
that the
process of developing a self has three phases:

1. People imagine how they present themselves

to others.
2. People imagine how others evaluate them.
3. People develop some sort of feeling about
themselves as a result of those impressions.

THE SELF FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF

ANTHROPOLOGY
ERVING GOFFMAN (1922-1982)

“What man is now, is a product of his past”

He wrote how he observed that people early in
their social interactions learned to slant their
presentation of themselves in order to create
Everything in anthropology is interconnected
preferred appearances and satisfy particular
and a complete understanding is necessary to
people.
achieve the goal ofman understanding himself
Impression management better.
Anthropology
 socially transmitted through communication and
imitation from generation to generation.
A field of social sciences that focuses on the
study of man. This does not pertain only to one
aspect of man (i.e. his mind or his environment)
Cultural diversities are manifested in different
but rather on the totality of what it means to be
ways and at different levels of depth. Symbols
human.
are considered the most superficial level of
culture and values belong to the deepest level or
are considered the core of culture.
Archaeology
Archaeologists’ focus is the past and how it may
have contributed to the present ways of how The following are the ways in which
people conduct their daily lives. As a result,
culture may manifest itself in people:
what archaeologists have so far discovered are
the unique ways in which human beings adapted 1. Symbols 2. Heroes
to changes in their environment in orde rfor
them to survive. 3. Rituals 4. Values

Biological Anthropology
Focus primarily on how the human body adapts
to thevdifferent earth environments. They look
atthe probable causes of disease, physical
mutation and death. They also want to know
how human beings might have evolved from
their early forms.

Linguistic Anthropology
Human survival is primarily linked to their
ability to communicate. This is another
capability that resulted from big
humanbrains.Thebraincomes
equippedwithspecializedareas specifically for
the purpose of communication. In addition, an
essential part of human communication is
language.

Cultural Anthropology
Culture is described as a group of people’s way
of life. It includes their behaviours, beliefs,
values and symbols that they accept that are