2. Philosophical V
iews of Self: The
philosophy of self seeks to describe essential
qualities that constitute a person's uniqueness or
essential being.
3. Socrates(469-399 BC), ancient Athenian
philosopher/ Plato’s teacher/ Socratic method/ Dualistic
❖ Apology (Plato)/ Angkop sa Tao (Ferriols, 1992)
❖ Nosce te ipsum (Know thyself)
❖ Socrates’ Ethos – “The goal of life is to know thyself
and to improve our souls through virtuous living”
❖ Unexamined life is not worth living (“Ang buhay na
hindi sinusuri ay hindi buhay tao”)
4. What is SELF?
▪ Socrates as the first thinker in Western history
underscored the full power of reason on the
human self:
• who we are?;
• who we should be?; and
• who we will become?
5. What is SELF?
SELF
Physical Body
Soul (Mind)
Dualistic • Two dichotomous realms
• Changeable, transient, and
imperfect
• Unchanging, eternal, and
immortal
Physical Realm
Ideal Realm
7. Plato (c.429-c.347 BC), Greek philosopher/ disciple of
Socrates/ teacher of Aristotle/ Academy in Athens
Philosophical
writings:
❖ Apology
❖ Crito
❖ Phaedo
❖ Republic
❖ Sophist
❖ Symposium
❖ The first and best victory is to conquer self.
❖ The essence of knowledge is Self-knowledge
❖ Self-knowledge (from Charmides) is a practical task in life
which consists of self-examination about what one is
really doing in life/ acknowledging the limit
❖ Self-knowledge (from Phaedo) is a process of self-
recognition/ the real self is the soul (self-reflection and
purification)
❖ Self-control is knowing oneself
8. What is SELF?
SELF
Reason
Spirit (Passion)
Physical Appetite
• Basic biological needs such as hunger,
thirst, and sexual desire
• Divine essence that allows us to think
deeply, make wise choices, and achieve a
true understanding of eternal truths
• Basic emotion such as love, anger,
ambition, aggressiveness, and empathy
9. What is SELF?
SELF
Reason
Spirit
(Passion)
Physical
Appetite
• I pursue a career in medicine so that I can earn
more to buy food, drinks, and other needs
• I pursue a career in medicine because I have
excellent academic performance.
• I pursue a career in medicine because I am
compassionate to heal the sick people
Career
Telos
10. St. August
i
ne (354-430), doctor of church;
known as St. Augustine of Hippo; Bishop of Hippo in
North Africa in 396; writings (Confession and City of God)
❖ “You have made us for You, for our heart is restless, for they rest in You,
late that I have love You”.
❖ Self – “Man is rational, immortal and earthly soul using a body”
❖ Self – “ I am doubting, therefore I am”
❖ Self (The Confession) – individual identity (idea of the self); self-
presentation to self-realization
❖ Self (happiness and completeness) – omnipotent (having ultimate power
and influence) and omniscient (knowing everything)
12. Rene Descar
t
es(1596-1650), French
philosopher, mathematician and man of science. In mathematics, he
developed the use of coordinates to locate a point in two or three
dimensions.
❖ Skepticism – the theory that certain knowledge is impossible
❖ Dualism (body and mind or soul) – a theory or system of thought
that regards a domain of reality in terms of two independent
principles, especially mind and matter (Cartesian dualism)
❖ He concluded that everything was open to doubt except conscious
experience and existence as necessary condition: “Cogito ergo
sum” (I think therefore I Am)
❖ Self is thinking not sensing.
13. John Locke (1632-1704), English
philosopher; founder of empiricism and political liberalism.
❖ Empiricism – the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-
experience (phenomenalism – human knowledge is founded on
the realities)
❖ Tabula rasa (empty/ blank tablet) – having no innate ideas
❖ Human Understanding (1690) – he argued that all knowledge is
derived from sense-experience
❖ Self is identical with consciousness and consciousness is
accessible empirically (Azeri, 2011)
❖ The identity of the self depends on the consciousness of the
person
❖ Consciousness – is an element that accompanies all acts of
thinking including the act of recollection.
14. David Hume (1711-1776), Scottish
philosopher, economist, and historian. He rejected the
possibility of certainty in knowledge. “Skepticism”
❖ He reject the notion of identity over time and the idea that
there are no persons that continue to exist over time
(impression)
❖ Argument against identity: “ All ideas are ultimately derived
from impression. Hence, the idea of persisting self is
ultimately derived from impression but, no impression is a
persisting thing. Therefore, there cannot be any persisting
idea of self.”
Notable works:
❖ A treatise of
human nature
(1739-40)
❖ History of
England (1754-
62)
15. David Hume
❖ Self is constant, persisting, and stable thing.
❖ All Knowledge is derived from impressions which are transient and non-persisting
variable thing therefore, there is no self.
❖ Self is a bundle of impression or perception of others (individual impression)
❖ The bundle of impression is just a collection of variable and interrupted part.
❖ Identity – is just a union created in the imagination
❖ “ When the mind receives a series of uninterrupted impression that are similar, it
assumes that the only thing that is changing is time, and not the impression
themselves. The mind then infers mistakenly that this underlying series of
impression is itself, a persisting individual thing such as identity”
16. Immanuel Kant(1724-1804), German
philosopher; central figure in modern philosopher
(metaphysic).
❖ He argued that the human mind creates the structure of human experience that
reason is source of morality; aesthetics arises from a faculty disinterested
judgment; space and time are forms of human sensibility; the world is
independent of humanity’s concepts of it.
❖ Critique of pure reason (1781) – He attempted to explain the relationship
between reason and human experience. He argued that our experiences are
structured by necessary features of our minds
❖ In his writing, he countered Hume’s skeptical empiricism by arguing that any
affirmation or denial regarding the ultimate nature of reality (noumenon) makes
no sense.
17. Immanuel Kant’s
Metaphys
i
cs of t
he Self
(Selbst)
❖ Kant’s metaphysics of the self (Marshall, 2010) – Wittgenstein claims that the self or
subject doesn’t belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world.
❖ Self is individuated as “I” (thinking) (whole man = body + soul); and “Am” (object of
inner sense and soul)
❖ Kant’s discussion on phenomena and noumena, he states that without the possibility
of a corresponding intuition, a concept has no sense, and is entirely empty of content;
that without empirical intuitions concepts have no objective validity at all, but are rather
a mere play
❖ Limits of our cognition: “We have no cognition of our selves as we are in ourselves; We
have no knowledge of any facts about ourselves outside of how we appear.”
18. Gilber
tRyle (1900-1976), British
philosopher; known for his critique of Cartesian dualism
(ghost in the machine)
❖ The Concept of Mind (1949) – disagree on Descartes’ dualism
❖ Logical behaviorism – focused on creating conceptual clarity, not on developing
techniques to condition and manipulate human behavior
❖ Self (“ghost in the machine”) is thought to be spiritual, immaterial ghost rattling
around inside the physical body, conflicts directly with our everyday experience,
revealing itself to be a conceptually flawed and confused notion that needs to be
revised
❖ 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.
19. Gilber
t
Ryle
❖ Category mistake happens when we think of the self as existing apart from certain
observable behaviors, a purely mental entity existing in time but not space.
❖ Category mistake refers to a type of informal fallacy in which things that belong to
one grouping are mistakenly placed in another.
❖ Ryle claims that 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
(human behavior).
20. Paul Churcland (Born on October 21,
1942), Canadian philosopher known for his study in
neurophilosophy and philosophy of mind
❖ Physicalism – is the philosophical view that all aspect of the universe are
composed of matter and energy and can be fully explained by physical law
❖ The self is the brain (mental state = brain state)
❖ Philosophy of mind – studies the nature of the mind
❖ Neurophilosophy -
❖ Folk psychology – is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and
mental state of other people
❖ Eliminative materialism (eliminativism) – is the radical claim that our ordinary,
common-sense understanding of mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the
mental state posited by common-sense do not actually exist.
21. Philosopher Philosophy Philosophy of Self
Socrates Dualism/ Rationalism Know thyself (Nosce te ipsum)
Plato Dualism/ Rationalism Self-knowledge
Augustine Theology of self Individual identity/ Self-realization
Rene Descartes Skepticism Self is cognition (Cogito ergo sum)
John Locke Empiricism Self is identical to consciousness
David Hume Empiricism Self is a bundle of impression
Immanuel Kant Metaphysics Self is the limit of the world
Gilbert Ryle The Concept of the Mind Self refers to the human mind/ pattern of behavior
Paul Churchland Neurophilosophy Self refers to the mental state (Brain)
Self: Philosophical Perspectives
22. What is Self?
The self is a
immortal soul
that exists over
time
Socrates, Plato, Augustine
The self is
thinking thing,
distinct from the
body
Rene Descartes
Personal
identity is made
possible by self-
consciousness
John Locke
There is no self only
a bundle of
constantly changing
perceptions passing
through the theater
of our minds
David Hume
The self is unlying
subject, an
organizing
consciousness that
makes intelligible
experience possible
Immanuel Kant
Gilbert Ryle
The self is the
way people
behave
The self is the brain.
Mental state will be
superseded by brain
states
Paul Churchland
