NORTH CENTRAL MINDANAO COLLEGE

Formerly: Central Mindanao Technical Institute

Maranding, Lala, Lanaodel Norte

College of Arts and Sciences

GEC 1 (Understanding the Self)

THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVE

Philosophical Perspective

Module No. 1

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES:

At the end of the lesson , the student will be able to:

1. Articulate the various philosophical views about the self.

2. Explain why it is essential to understand the self.

3. Examine one’s thoughts and experiences according to the philosophical views of the self.

4. Describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the points of view of various
philosophers across time and place

INTRODUCTION/RATIONALE:

Philosophers Perspective of Self

The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired into the
fundamental nature of self. Along with the question of primary substratum that defines
the multiplicity of things in the world , the inquiry of self has preoccupied the earliest
thinkers in the history of philosophy , the Greeks. The different perspectives and views
on the self can be best seen and understood then by revisiting its prime movers and
identify the most important conjectures made by philosophers from ancient times to the
contemporary world. Since the ancient times until the post modern discourses, many
Philosophers grappled to understand the meaning of human life. They have attempted
to answer the question “Who am I?” and most of their views have influenced the way
we look at our lives today.

Plato

1. Socrates ,Plato, Augustine & Aquinas

The dictum “ Know Thyself” as we hear today is an ancient greeting of the highly
civilized Greeks. It was believed that the temple gods greet to the people with this
salutation as they enter the holy Sanctuary. For the ancient Greeks , the soul is the
essence of the person. Like any other loving relationships , one must be able to bring
about the excellence of the soul of the other as a result of such relationship. To know
thyself , therefore is to examine whether we have achieved moderation, have prudently
chosen what is good , and have brought about the excellence of the soul.

Prior to Socrates , the Greek thinkers, sometimes collectively called the Pre-
Socratics to denote that some of them preceded Socrates while others existed around
Socrates time as well. For Socrates , every man is composed of body and soul. This
means that every human person is dualistic, that is, he is composed of two important
aspects of his person hood. For Socrates , this means all individuals have an imperfect ,
impermanent aspect which is the body , while maintaining that there is also a soul that
is perfect and permanent.

Socrates

Socrates also affirms, claimed by Plato in his dialogues , that the unexamined life is
not worth living. This is perhaps the most satisfying philosophical assertion that
Socrates claimed in order to protect human beings from the shallowness of living their
lives. An examined life is a life that is duty bound to develop self knowledge and a self
dignified with values and integrity . Not only that : living a good life means having the
wisdom to distinguish what is right from wrong . Socrates further argued that the
examined life is no better off than animals.

Influenced by the wise pronouncements of Socrates, Plato proposed his own

philosophy . He started on the examination of the self as a unique experience . The
experience will eventually better understand the core of the self which he called the
Psyche.

Plato, Socrates student basically took off from his masterand supported the idea
that man is dual in nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates beliefs, Plato
added that there are three components of psyche ( soul): the rational soul, the spirited
soul, and the apetitive soul. In his magnum opus, THE REPUBLIC (Plato 2000), Plato
emphasizes that justice in human person can only be attained if the three parts of soul
are working harmoniously with one another. The rational soul forged by reason and
intellect has to govern the affairs of the human person; the spirited soul , which is in
charge of emotions , should kept at bay: and the apetitive soul in charge of base
desires, like eating, drinking,sleeping, and having sexual intercourse is controlled as
well. When this ideal state is attained , the human person’s soul becomes just and
virtuous.
 St. Augustine hailed from Tagaste , Africa in 354 BC, succumed to vices and
pleasures of the world. Augustine was unsettled and restlessly searche for the meaning
of his life until his conversion to Christianity. In his Confessions, he pronounced: You
have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You.

The development of the self for St. Augustine is achieved through self -
representation and self-realization . He was not afraid to accept to himself and tell the
people about his sinfulness . However the realization of the wasted self is achieved
through his conversion to the faith. Thus his journey toward understanding of the self
was centered on the religious convictions and beliefs.

Augustine view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world
when it comes to man. Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with a new
found doctrine Christianity,Augustine agreed that man is of a biifurcated nature. There
is an aspect of man , which dwells in the world, that is imperfect and continuously
yearns to be with the divine while the other is capable of reaching immortality. The
body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to anticipate living eternally in a realm of
spiritual bliss in communion with God. This is because the body can only thrive in the
imperfect , physical reality that is the world, whereas the soul can also stay after death
in an eternal realm with all the transcendent God.

Aquinas
 Thomas Aquinas the most eminent 13th century scholar and stalwart of the
medieval philosophy, appended something to this Christian view. Adopting some ideas
from Aristotle , Aquinas said that, indeed, man is composed of two parts: matter and
form. Matter or hyle in Greek , refers to the common stuff that makes up everything in
the universe. Man’s body is part of this matter. On the other hand, form , or morphe in
Greek, refers to the essence of a substance or thing. It is what makes it what it is. In
the case of the human person, the body of human person is something that he shares
even with animals. The cells in man’s body is more or less skin to cells of any other
living, organic being in the world. However , what makes a human person a human
person and not a dog or tiger is his soul , his essence. To Aquinas , just for Aristotle ,
the soul is what animates the body, it is what makes us humans.

2. Descartes, Locke, Hume & Kant

Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy , deviate from the theocentric
philosophies on the years before him. He was in fact able to readdress the question
concerning to the self in avery different rational method.
 In his Mediations on First Philosophy , Descartes claimed that we cannot really rely
on our own senses because our sense perceptions can often deceive us. There are
times when we hear something when in fact there is nothing, and that we are only
deceived by our sense of hearing. There are also times when we see someone or
something in the peripheries of our eyes , when in fact there is nothing that resembles
with what we saw. This will be true to our sense of smell , touch, hearing and so on.
Therefore, Descartes refused to believe in the certainty of his sense perceptions and
started to doubt everything.

Here, Descartes started to doubt whether the events he experiences at the moment
are only products of his dreams and therefore illusions . He started to doubt about the
very realities that he had been accepting as true as only illusionary creations of an evil
genius who designed all these false impressions in the world. Descartes is left with
nothing but his doubt

Nonetheless , this same doubt redeemed him from slumber. He claimed that since
he could no longer doubt that he is doubting, there should be a level of certitude that
there must be someone who is doubting - that is him. Then he said “Cogito, ergo Sum.”
This is translated as “ I think therefore I am” or “I doubt therefore I exist.” Only after
the certitude of the “doubting I” can all the other existence (e.g. God, the universe,
things,events, etc.) become certain.

Contrary to the primacy of reason as proposed by Descartes, one British Philospher

and politician, John Locke ,suggested another way of looking at self. Locke opposed the
idea that only reason is the source of knowledge of the self. His proposition is that the
self is comparable to an empty space where everyday experiences contribute to the pile
of knowledge that is put forth on that empty space. Experience ,therefore , is an
important requirement in order to have sense data which , through the process of
reflection and analysis, eventually becomes sense perception.

These sense data are further categorized by Locke according to primary qualities
such as color, odor, temperature and all other elements that are distinguishable by the
subjective individual. Sense perception becomes possible when all these qualities are
put together in the faculty of the mind. It has to be noted here that the validity of sense
perception is very subjective. Perception is changing from one individual to another. For
example, when one reads a text message : “ Congratulations! You won 1M pesos in an
online lottery.” from an unknown number, one text receiver may hastily reply in
excitement and elation while the other text receiver may just totally ignore it as a hoax
or even treat it as a virus! Perception therefore, is very subjective to Locke.

This provides the ,most lenient leeway for every individual to be independent in self
- examination , self management and self control. The individual person, for Locke , is
not only capable of learning from experience but also skillful enough to process
different perceptions from various experiences to form a more complex idea. These
ideas then will become keys to understand complex realities about the self and the
world.

Challenging the position of John Locke, David Hume , a Scottish philosopher and
historian , put forward his skeptical take on the ideas forming the identity of the self.
Hume claimed that there cannot be a persisting idea of self . While Hume agreed that
all ideas are derived from impressions, problematically , it follows that the idea of self is
also derived from the impressions. However, impressions are subjective , temporary ,
provisional , prejudicial and even skewed - and therefore cannot be persisting.

In as much as we wanted to be persistent , constant and stable with our knowledge

about our selves, Hume asserted that this is just impossible. As long as we only derive
our knowledge from ourselves are just bundles of temporary impressions. Perhaps this
supports the difficulty of answering the question “ Who am I?” because what we can
readily answer are impressions such as name, height, color of hair, affiliations, skills,
achievements and the like. All these are temporary and non- persisting . in fact, Hume
harshly claimed that there IS no self.

Hume could have made us all agnostic about our knowledge of the self, and be
content with whatever fragmented idea at least we have about ourselves had it not by
the rescue efforts of Immanuel Kant. Kant is a Prussian metaphysicist who synthesized
the rationalist view of Descartes and the empiricist views of Locke and Hume. His new
proposition maintained that the self is always trancedental. In fact he calls his
philosophy the Trancendental Unity of Apperception.
 His theory explains that being or the self is not in the body , it is outside the body
and even outside the qualities of the body - meaning transcendent. For Kant , ideas are
perceived by the self, and they are connecting the self and the world. The similarity of
ideas between individuals is made possible because , for Kant, we all have the sensory
apparatus by which we derive our ideas. This means that we need not reject our ideas ,
unlike Hume, no matter how temporary and non persistent they are because there is
unity in ideas.

Kant is only saying that our rationality unifies and makes sense the perceptions
we have in our experiences and make sensible ideas about ourselves and the world.
This ingenious synthesis saved the empirical theories of the sciences and the rational
justification innate ideas. Kant also solved the problem of the ability of the self to
perceive the world.

3. Freud, Ryle, Churchland and Merleau-Ponty

Just as the philosophers celebrate the “ unity” of the self as achieved by Kant,
Psychologist Sigmund Freud lamented the victory and insisted on the complexity of the
self. Freud , refusing to take the self or subject as technical terms, regarded the self as
the “I” that ordinarily constitute both the mental and physical actions. So we say “ I run
“, “ I eat”, “ I decide”, “ I feel the tingling sensation” or “ I refuse to cheat because it is
wrong .” Admittedly, the question “ Who am I?” will not provide a victorious unified
answer but a complicated diverse features of moral judgments, inner sensations, bodily
movements and perceptions. The “ I” will never be the same and it will continue to
change overtime. In other words ,Freud sees the “ I “ as a product of multiple
interacting processes, systems and schemes. To demonstrate this , Freud proposed two
models: The topographical and Structural Models( Watson, 2014)

Topographical Model. According to Freuds concept of hysteria, the individual

person may both know and do not know certain things at the same time. We may say,
for example, that we know the disadvantage and perils of missing classes without any
reason , but we are not really sure why we still do it anyway. We are certain about the
many wrongs that may be brought about by premarital sex, ie. Early
pregnancy ,sexually transmitted infections , ruined relationships and depression, but we
never understand why there is this something somewhere inside us that makes many of
us do what we know is wrong.

Freud’s solution to this predicament is to divide the “ I” into conscious and the
unconscious. The unconscious keeps what it knows by what Freud calls “ censorship” so
that the unconscious will be left on its own. Clearly , the self for Freud will never be
arbitrarily taken as unified whole. There will always be fragments and discontinuity and
struggle inside the same “I “.

Structural Model. Similar to the disintegration of the self in Topographical Model,

Freud’s Structural Model will also represent the self in three different agencies. This is
popularly known as the id, ego and the superego. The id is know as the primitive or
instinctive component. The ego is described by Freud as that part of the id which has
been modified by the direct influence of the external world. Many interpreters of Freud
see the ego as the “I” and the superego as above “I”. The superego synthesizes the
morals , values and systems in society in order to function as the control outpost of the
instinctive desires of the id (Mcleod, 2007).

We often equate the ego as the self , the subject or the ‘I”. However , Freud does
not readily approve this equation because while the three agencies are distinct from
one another , oftentimes, thye ego is not able to control the instincts of the id , and
cannot even manipulate the thought of the superego. This even leaves the ego as only
a marginal and impotent agency of the mind- not the ideal philosophical self or soul
that we want to figure out. Freud remarked that it is even the id - this devil, instinctual,
unthoughtful, fearless and primitive agency of the mind - that is the core of our being
( Freud, 2011).
 In an attempt to offer an explanation to some behavior that are difficult to justify
by reason, Gilbert Ryle , a British Philosopher , proposed his positive View in his
“ Concept of the Mind”. It started as a stern critique of Descartes’ dualism of the mind
and body. Ryle said that the thinking I will never be found because it is just a “ghost in
the machine”. It means he finds the philosophy of Descartes totally absurd. The mind is
never separate from the body. He proposed that physical actions or behaviors are
dispositions of the self. These dispositions are derived from our inner private
experiences. In other words , we will only be able to understand the self based from
the external manifestation - behaviors, expressions, language, desires and the like. The
mind therefore, is nothing but a disposition of the self.

Ryle continued that the mind will depend on how words are being told and
expressed and delivered. In a way , he demystified the operations of the mind because
the operations of the mind are simply manifested by the dispositions of knowing and
believing. To illustrate this position, we take the visitor around the city. We bring him to
the City Hall , to the park to the known schools , to big malls , to beautiful gardens, to
night life venues , to the known landmarks and to your house. After the tour , your
visitor will ask : Where is the City? All those parks and malls and places consist the city .
This same observation is true to the disposition of the mind. All the manifestations in
physical activities or behavior are a dispositions of the self, the basis of the statement;
“I at therefore I am” or “ you are what you do”.
 Bringing this argument a little further , couple Paul and Patricia Churchland
promoted the position they called”eliminative materialism” which brings forth
neuroscience into the fore of understanding the self . For centuries , the main concern
of philosophy and even psychology is the understanding of the state of self , and still
they failed to provide satisfactory position in the understanding the self. For the
Churchlands, these philosophical aand psychological directions will eventually be
abandoned only to be replaced by a more acceptable trend in neuroscience that
provides explanation of how the brain works.

This position is a direct attack against folk psychology. Eliminative materialism sees
the failure of the folk psychology in explaining basic concepts such as sleep , learning
mental illness and the like. Given the length of time that these sciences have
investigated these concepts and yet there is no definitive explanation offered to
understand the mind is tantamount to “ eplanatory poverty” ( Weed , 2018). It is not
remotely impossible that folk psychology will be replaced by neurobiology. As the
Churchlands wanted to predict, when people wanted to ask what is going on with
themselves, they might as well go for MRI scan or CT Scan to understand the present
condition of the brain and how it currently works.
 Interestingly , Maurice Merleau- Ponty , a French philosopher , seemed to
support the emerging trends in understanding the self. His philosophy , the
Phenomenology of Perception draws heavily from the contemporary research Gestalt
psychology and neurology. He developed a kind of phenomenological rhythm that will
explain the perception of the self. The rhythm involves three dimensions. First is the
empiricist take on perception, followed by the idealist-intellectual alternative, and lastly ,
the synthesis of both positions.

Merleau - Ponty is a phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-body bifurcation

that has been going on for a long time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem.
Unlike Ryle who simply denies the self , Merleau- Ponty instead says that mind and
body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another. One cannot
find any experience that is not an embodied experience. All experience is embodied.
One’s body is his opening toward his existence to the world. Merleau - Ponty dismisses
the Cartesian Dualism that has spelled so much devastation in the history of man. For
him , the Cartesian problem is nothing else but plain misunderstanding. The living body,
his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.

On the onset, Merleau- Ponty rejected classical empiricism because it eliminates the
indeterminate complexities of experience that may have an effect on perception. In the
same way he also rejected the idealist - intellectual position because it will only falsify
perception based from one’s biases and prejudices. What Merleau- Ponty proposes is
treating perception as a casual process. It simply means that our perceptions are
caused by the intricate experiences of the self, and processed intellectually while
distinguishing truthful perceptions from illusory. Therefore the self is taken as a
phenomenon of the whole - a Gestalt understanding of perceptual synthesis.

In closing , this section discussed the philosophical perspective of understanding

the self through historical approach. In the Ancient and Medieval times, we have
identified the self as the perfection of the soul. To achieve this requires self -
examination and self- control. In the Modern period , understanding the self is
recognized in the dialectic synthesis between Rationalism and Empiricism.
Contemporary philosophy takes a wide variety of theories in understanding the self.

In the end we realize that we are not yet done in answering the question “ Who am I?”
although we already have achieved a lot in our philosophical reflections about it. We
continue our quest for understanding who we really are.

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