LESSON 1: Philosophical Perspectives on the Self

Socrates (469-399 BC)

Place of Origin: ATHENS, GREECE

• The Father of Western Philosophy, t h e Wisest man in Greece,

• The goal of life is to “Know Thyself”
• OUR TRUE SELF IS OUR SOUL. <What is it that, when present in a body, makes it living? — A soul.>
• Soul is the thinking and willing part of us
• “Evil acts are committed out of ignorance and hence involuntarily.”
• If one truly knew what they were doing was evil, they would refrain from such an action. But
because all evil acts are committed out of ignorance, Socrates held that all evil acts are committed
involuntarily.
• He has 5 Core Life Teachings:

1. “The unexamined life is not worth living”.

2. “The truth lies within each of us”.
3. “We should strive for excellence in all areas of life”.
4. “No one knowing does evil”.
5. “It is better to suffer wickedness than to commit it”.

▪ “The unexamined life is not worth living” <wisdom is learning to recollect>

Schools of Thought:

a. Rationalism - the search for truth and clarity through questioning,

through reason
b. Dualism - The self is the immortal soul that exists over time. The self is not separated from
the soul.

Plato (427-347 BC)

“I am the wisest man olive, for I know one thing, and that is, that I know nothing.”

• Plato elaborated on Socrates’ concept of the soul (the Greek word is psyche). He introduced the idea
of a three-part soul/self-constituted by:

REASON / MIND / RATIONAL SOUL

• Our divine essence enables us to think deeply, make wise choices, and achieve a
true understanding of eternal truths.
PHYSICAL APPETITE / APPETITIVE SOUL
• Our basic biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.
SPIRIT OR PASSION
 • Our basic emotions such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, and empathy.

• Plato likened the soul to a chariot drawn by two powerful winged horses—a noble horse, representing
Spirit, and a wild horse, embodying Appetite. The charioteer is Reason, whose task is to guide the
chariot to the eternal realm by controlling the two independent-minded horses.
• Plato believed that genuine happiness can only be achieved by people who consistently make sure
that their Reason is in control of their Spirits and Appetites.

Aristotle
• All living beings have souls.
• 3 kinds of soul
Vegetative Soul – the physical body that can grow- 3 basic requirements to be called
living. grow, reproduce, and feed
Sensitive/Sentient souls- vegetative soul + capability for sensation –
Rational Soul – vegetative + sensitive + capability for thinking

Saint Augustine (354-430 C.E.)

Place of Origin: Taghaste, North of Africa

• For St. Augustine, the Self is a great mystery. A person regardless of the many sins he/she has
committed can have a great and mysterious life, through the mercy and forgiveness of God.
The self must continue to search for the truth for his/ her soul to be rested.
• The soul is a portion of God that had fallen into the corporeal world. The soul is of divine origin
and even God-like.
• The human mind as an image of GOD
• He possessed the certainty that Jesus Christ is the only way to truth and salvation.
• Man is made in the image and likeness of God - but the image and likeness do not refer to the
body, but rather, the “inner man” / soul.

School of Thought:
• Platonism-the use of reason to influence a person to do good

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

• We should question the knowledge “handed down” by authorities – use our thinking.
• Descartes concluded that everything he was taught was questionable and likely false.
His radical solution was to establish a fresh start on gaining true and well-supported beliefs.
• METHODICAL DOUBT- wholesale and systematic doubting of all things you have been taught.
• “I think therefore I am.” Cogito ergo sum. The only thing we are sure about is that we are a thinking
entity, aware of ourselves.

John Locke (1634-1704)

• An Empiricist- all knowledge comes from direct sense experience
• Locke’s main point
To discover the nature of our identity, we’re going to have to find out what it means to be a
person
A person is a thinking, intelligent being who can reason and reflect.
 A person is also someone who considers himself to be the same thing in different times and
different places.
Consciousness - being aware that we are thinking
- always accompanies thinking and is an essential part of the thinking process

School of Thought:
• Knowledge consists of a special kind of relationship between different ideas.

David Hume (1711-1776)

• He used the same empiricist principles as Locke, and came to a startling conclusion: THERE IS NO
SELF.
• If we examine our experiences, we see that they form a fleeting stream of sensations in our mind
and that nowhere among them is the sensation of a “constant and invariable” self. Because the self
cannot be found among these continually changing sensations, we conclude that there is no good
reason to believe that the self exists
• For Hume, the self is a “bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with
an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”
• According to him, there are only two distinct Identities:

Impressions
 Impressions are the basic sensations of our experience,
 the elemental data of our minds: pain, pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief, fear,
exhilaration, and so on.
 These impressions are “lively” and “vivid.”

Ideas
 are copies of impressions, and as a result, they are less "lively” and “vivid.”
 This includes thoughts and images that are built up from our primary impressions
through a variety of relationships, but because they are derivative copies of
impressions, they are once removed from reality.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

“All our knowledge begins with the senses proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason”

• Deeply alarmed by Hume’s ideas about the self

• German Philosopher widely regarded as the greatest philosopher of the modern period.
• His philosophy is called the Transcendental Unity of Apperception.
The self is always transcendental.
The self is not in the body, instead it is outside the body and qualities of the body. It is
mystical.

SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939)

"Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this
illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will henceforth avoid falling ill."

• Psychologist. Freud founded the school of psychoanalysis which became one of the most
influential theories of psychology and therapy in the twentieth century.
• There are two selves - one Unconscious and one Conscious.
 Unconscious (reality principle)
 This contains basic instinctual drives including sexuality, aggressiveness,
and self-destruction; traumatic memories
Conscious (pleasure principle)
 self is governed by the level of functioning, behavior, and experience
which are organized in ways that are rational, practical, and
appropriate to the social environment.

• The self was multitiered, divided among the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious as seen
in his theory on psychoanalysis.

Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976)

"l discover that there are other minds in understanding what other people say and do."

• Advocate of behaviorism. No more inner selves, immortal souls, states of consciousness, etc.- focus
on what you can observe (observable behavior)
• He attacked Cartesian Dualism and called it the “official doctrine” that dominated academic
disciplines for a long time, calling it unsound and conflicting with what we know
• Self = pattern of behavior, the tendency for a person to behave in a certain way in certain
circumstances

Paul and Patricia Churchland (1942)

• The self is the brain. The self can be understood in terms of neuroscience that focuses on the function
of the brain and how it affects one's behavior
• Eliminative materialism – We need to develop a new vocabulary that is based on neuroscience
• Mind-body connection. Scientists are now able to correlate specific areas of the brain with mental
functioning.
• Psychotropic drugs are shown to affect emotional states. The assumption of this approach is to fully
understand the nature of the mind, we have to fully understand the nature of the brain.
• Introduce the simple Identity Formula:

MENTAL STATE = BRAIN STATES

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)

• The self is embodied subjectivity.

• The division between the “mind” and the “body” is a product of confused thinking.
• The self is seen as a unity in which the mental and physical are seamlessly woven together.
This unity is the primary experience of the self, and one only begins to doubt it when the
mind is used to concoct abstract notions of a separate “mind” and “body.”
• There is no mystery in the body
• The philosophy of Ponty is known as the Phenomenology of Perception which is derived from the
conviction that all knowledge of the self and the world is based on the “phenomena” of experience.
Lesson 2: Sociological Perspective on the Self

What is Sociology?
- Study of human social relationships and institutions

 Using the lens of sociology (your relationship with other people and your place in the society), how
would you define yourself? Who is the “I”?

The Looking Glass Self Theory by Charles Horton Cooley

• The self grows as it interacts with more and more people. To Cooley, one can only become truly human
through social experience
• “I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I AM WHAT I THINK YOU THINK I AM.” –
How do you think your classmates see you? Do you think your classmates see you as intelligent?
Beautiful or handsome? Unremarkable? Is this what you also think you are?
 The ideas and feelings that people have about themselves — their self-concept or self-image — are
developed in response to their perception and internalization of how others perceive and evaluate them
• Charles Cooley (1902) proposed three steps to how interactions with others form self-identity: -
- People imagine how they appear to other people;
- People imagine how others are judging them based on appearance and how they present themselves;
- People imagine how others feel about them based on the judgments they make.
• You’re a product of your imagination (about what people think of you). Have you ever wondered why
you are the way you are? Why am I hardworking? Because [I imagine that] people appreciate hard
working people. Imagination could be accurate or inaccurate. People can react either by proving other
people wrong or by simply accepting how others see them and it becoming their own view of
themselves.
• One’s perceptions of others’ judgments can be highly inaccurate. For example, many people who see
themselves as “intelligent” or “handsome/beautiful” may in fact be wrong, but will continue to act as if
they are intelligent or handsome/beautiful. Some people may also see themselves as unremarkable or
unattractive and act like such when in fact others see in them the opposite. How would you describe
yourself? Is this how you think others also describe you?

Theory of the Self by George Herbert Mead

• Self begins as a privileged, central position in the person’s world (I). Then a self emerges from social
interactions (Me). It is developed over time from social interactions and experiences.
• Two versions of the self: “I” and “Me”
• “I” is spontaneous and unpredictable. The part of self that has nothing to do with society. I: “No one and
nothing is as important as you”
• “Me” is the socialized part of the self. Emerges from social interactions. When children mature, they
develop greater concern about the reaction of others.
• The self is a balance of the “I” and “Me”

Lesson 3: Anthropological Perspective on the Self

What is Anthropology?
 • “the study of humanity”
• From the Greek words anthropos which means human being and logos which means study
• The study of the origin and development of human societies and cultures

Taxonomy of Humans
Kingdom – Animalia
Phylum - Chordata
Class - Mammalia
Order - Primates
Family - Hominidae
Genus - Homo
Species – sapiens (“wise man”)

The Origin of Humans

3.8 billion years ago  A best estimate for the beginning of life on earth
 Carbon-based molecules + water (from iced comets and
asteroids)
 Prokaryotes – the earliest life form – bacteria and archaea

900 million years ago  First multicellular life develops

530 million years ago  First true chordates (animals that have a backbone) emerge -
Pikaia
440 million years ago  Lobe-finned fish
417 million years ago  Lung-fish – fish that can breathe out of water
397 million years ago  First four-legged animals appear (tetrapods)
178 million years ago  First mammals (morganucodontids)
55 million years ago  First primates (dryomomys)
34 million years ago  Propliopithecidae – ancestor of apes and old world monkeys
25 million years ago  Apes / hominoids
18 million years ago  Human / Chimp / Gorilla ancestor
8 million years ago  Chimpanzee and human lineage diverge
6 million years ago  Orrorin Tugenensis – base of human evolution
4 million years ago  Australopithecines – bipedal, larger brain than those of apes
3.2 million years ago  Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis)
2.5 million years ago  Homo habilis – hominids that used stone tools (Oldowan
industry)
2 million year ago  Homo erectus – first true hunter-gatherer. Human-like features
1 million year ago  Sporadic use of fire
500,000 years ago  First evidence of purpose-built shelters – wooden huts
400,000 years ago  Early humans began hunting with spears
300,000 year ago  Homo sapien appears
280,000 years ago  First complex stone blades and grinding stones
230,000 years ago  Neanderthal Man
 170,000 years ago  Mitochondrial Eve, the direct ancestor to all living people
today
140,000 years ago  First evidence of long-distance trade

50,000 years ago • “Great leap forward” – humans buried their dead ritually,
created clothes from animal hides, complex hunting
techniques
• Verbal language
33,000 years ago  Oldest cave art at Lascaux and Chauvet in France
 Homo erectus dies out in Asia, replaced by modern man

18,000 years ago  Homo floresiensis - Indonesia

12,000 years ago  Modern humans reach America via Beringia Land Bridge
10,000 years ago  Agriculture developed and spread. First villages
5,500 years ago  Bronze Age. Humans begin to smelt and work copper and tin,
and use them in place of stone implements
5,000 years ago  Earliest known writing – the Cuneiform Script
4,000 to 3,500 years  Mesopotamian Civilization – the world’s first civilization
ago

Origins of Social Behavior

• Sociality among our primate ancestors emerged about 52 million years ago. The earliest
primates sought safety by being solitary and inconspicuous, moving only at night. It seems
that when they shifted to daytime activity, they sought safety in numbers.
• Group forms and persists because all individuals involved somehow gain genetically.
•  Increased protection against predators
Access to potential mates
 Increased foraging efficiency
 Access to social information

Origins of Language
• Self-awareness is an outcome of communication of complex social cognition.
• When did humans start speaking? We don’t know for sure. Words (spoken) leave no archaeological
mark. Some experts say it happened between 100,000 to 50, 000 years ago. Some say as early as
million years earlier (Homo erectus).
• Bickerton (2002) argues that the basic elements that make up sentence structure were not developed
when man started speaking, but had already existed as concepts a long time. They developed as part
of what Bickerton calls a 'social calculus', which developed when reciprocal altruism did.
 Reciprocal Altruism - The basic idea is 'If I do something good for you now, you'll do something
good for me later'. This mechanism is applied to a variety of social interactions within a group of
animals, including grooming, sharing food and aiding each other in disputes.
 Social Calculus - a mental 'score sheet' used to keep track of hundreds of interactions within the
group an individual lives in
• Our faces and vocal tracts changes over the course of evolution, giving us the capacity for human
speech
Lesson 4: Psychological Perspective on the Self

What is Psychology?
• Greek “psyche” which means soul and “logos” which means study.
• Study of the mind and behavior

THE FOUR WAVES OF PSYCHOLOGY

1. PSYCHOANALYTIC / DISEASE MODEL - psychology was concerned with curing mental disorders, such as
schizophrenia and human complexes of various kinds. Over time, this disease focus pushed psychology
towards the dark recesses of the human mind and away from the deeper well-springs of human energy and
potential.
 Psychologists became victimologists and pathologizers (they forgot that people make choices and
have responsibility);
 They forgot about improving normal lives and high talent (the mission to make relatively untroubled
people happier, more fulfilled, more productive), and;
 In their rush to repair the damage, it never occurred to them to develop interventions to make
people happier.

SIGMUND FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

• One of the most influential theories on psychologies yet also one of the most controversial.
• His attention was captured by a colleague’s intriguing experience with a patient; the colleague was
Dr. Josef Breuer and his patient was the famous “Anna O.,” who suffered from physical symptoms
with no apparent physical cause. Dr. Breuer found that her symptoms abated when he helped her
recover memories of traumatic experiences that she had repressed, or hidden from her conscious
mind. This case sparked Freud’s interest in the unconscious mind and spurred the development of
some of his most influential ideas.

Freud’s Model of the Mind

 Perhaps the most impactful idea put forth by Freud was his model of the human mind. His model
divides the mind into three layers, or regions:
1. This is where our current thoughts, feelings, and focus live;
Conscious:
2. (sometimes called the subconscious): This is the home of everything we can recall or retrieve
Preconscious
from our memory;
3. Unconscious: At the deepest level of our minds resides a repository of the processes that
drive our behavior, including primitive and instinctual desires (McLeod, 2013).

In this model, there are three metaphorical parts to the mind:

1. Id: The id operates at an unconscious level and focuses solely on instinctual drives and desires. Two
biological instincts make up the id, according to Freud: eros, or the instinct to survive that drives us
to engage in life-sustaining activities, and thanatos, or the death instinct that drives destructive,
aggressive, and violent behavior.
2. Ego: The ego acts as both a conduit for and a check on the id, working to meet the id’s needs in a
socially appropriate way. It is the most tied to reality and begins to develop in infancy;
3. Superego: The superego is the portion of the mind in which morality and higher principles reside,
encouraging us to act in socially and morally acceptable ways (McLeod, 2013).

Defense Mechanisms
Freud believed these three parts of the mind are in constant conflict because each part has a different
primary goal. Sometimes, when the conflict is too much for a person to handle, his or her ego may engage in
one or many defense mechanisms to protect the individual.

These defense mechanisms include:

1. Repression: The ego pushes disturbing or threatening thoughts out of one’s consciousness;
2. Denial: The ego blocks upsetting or overwhelming experiences from awareness, causing the individual
to refuse to acknowledge or believe what is happening;
3. Projection: The ego attempts to solve discomfort by attributing the individual’s unacceptable
thoughts, feelings, and motives to another person;
4. Displacement: The individual satisfies an impulse by acting on a substitute object or person in a
socially unacceptable way (e.g., releasing frustration directed toward your boss on your spouse
instead);
5. Regression: As a defense mechanism, the individual moves backward in development in order to cope
with stress (e.g., an overwhelmed adult acting like a child);
6. Sublimation: Similar to displacement, this defense mechanism involves satisfying an impulse by
acting on a substitute but in a socially acceptable way (e.g., channeling energy into work or a
constructive hobby) (McLeod, 2013).

2. BEHAVIORISM - Free will was an illusion, and human behavior was largely dependent on the consequences
of our previous actions. Given the right structure of rewards and punishments, human behavior could be
totally modified in an almost mechanical sense.
 BF Skinner, Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson
WATSON AND PAVLOV’S CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
 A type of unconscious or automatic learning in which the learning process creates a conditioned
response through associations. In simple terms, two stimuli are linked together to produce a new
learned response in a person or animal.

BF SKINNERS’S OPERANT CONDITIONING

• Behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and behavior followed by
unpleasant consequences is less likely to be repeated.
• Behavior which is reinforced tends to be repeated (i.e., strengthened); behavior which is not
reinforced tends to die out-or be extinguished (i.e., weakened).
1. Positive Reinforcement - a response or behavior is strengthened by rewards, leading to the repetition
of the behavior. The reward is a reinforcing stimulus.
Negative Reinforcement - This is known as negative reinforcement because it is the removal of an
adverse stimulus which is ‘rewarding’ to the animal or person. Negative reinforcement strengthens
behavior because it stops or removes an unpleasant experience
2. Positive Punishment - something unpleasant is given that makes the behavior less likely to continue
or reoccur
3. Negative Punishment - something pleasant is “taken away” that makes the behavior less likely to
continue or reoccur

3. HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY - Every human being is responsible for working out his identity and his life’s
meaning through the interaction between himself and his surroundings
• The humanistic movement was about adding a holistic dimension to psychology. Humanistic
psychologists believed that our behavior is determined by our perception of the world around us and
its meanings, that we are not simply the product of our environment or biochemistry, and that we
are internally influenced and motivated to fulfill our human potential.
• Humanistic psychology emphasizes the inherent human drive towards self-actualization, the process
of realizing and expressing one’s own capabilities and creativity.
• The 5 basic principles or postulates of humanistic psychology are:
1. Human beings, as human, supersede the sum of their parts. They cannot be reduced to components;
2. Human beings have their existence in a uniquely human context, as well as in a cosmic ecology;
3. Human beings are aware and are aware of being aware – i.e. they are conscious. Human
consciousness always includes an awareness of oneself in the context of other people;
 4. Human beings have the ability to make choices and therefore have responsibility;
5. Human beings are intentional—they aim at goals, are aware that they cause future events, and seek
meaning, value, and creativity.

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S HUMANISTIC THEORY

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• A key reason why Maslow’s work triggered a movement is owed to the way he positioned the role of
human unconsciousness. Like Freud, a proponent of the dominant psychoanalytic approach at the
time, Maslow acknowledged the presence of the human unconscious. However, whereas Freud argued
that much of who we are as people is inaccessible to us, Maslow argued people are acutely aware of
their own motivations and drives in an ongoing pursuit of self-understanding and selfacceptance.
These ideas were ultimately reflected in his seminal works on self-actualization and his hierarchy of
human needs.
• Self-actualization - Maslow related it to the feeling of discontent and restlessness when one is not
putting their strengths to full use: “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must
write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call
selfactualization.”

CARL ROGER’S HUMANISTIC THEORY

 For a person to "grow", they need an environment that provides them with genuineness (openness
and self-disclosure), acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regard), and empathy (being
listened to and understood). Without these, relationships and healthy personalities will not develop
as they should, much like a tree will not grow without sunlight and water.
Carl Rogers (1959) believed that humans have one basic motive, that is the tendency to selfactualize
- i.e., to fulfill one's potential and achieve the highest level of 'human-beingness' we can.
 Unconditional Positive Regard - Unconditional positive regard is where parents, significant others
(and the humanist therapist) accepts and loves the person for what he or she is. Positive regard is
not withdrawn if the person does something wrong or makes a mistake. The consequences of
unconditional positive regard are that the person feels free to try things out and make mistakes,
even though this may lead to getting it worse at times. People who are able to self-actualize are
more likely to have received unconditional positive regard from others, especially their parents in
childhood.

Congruence – amount of overlap between self-image and ideal self

4. POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY - positive psychology is psychology with a positive orientation, concerned with
authentic happiness and a good life. The humanistic movement wanted to look at what drives us to want to
grow and achieve fulfillment. However, even though their conceptual ideas of human nature did influence
the development of positive psychology, they are separate. While the humanistic approach used more
qualitative methods, positive psychology is developing a more scientific epistemology of understanding
human beings.

Lesson 4: The Self on Eastern Thought

The Teachings of the Buddha

 The idea of “individual self” is an illusion. It is not possible to separate self from its
surroundings.
 Personal identity is delusional.
Dependent Origination - Everything is dependently arisen; everything exists only if the necessary
conditions are there. This means nothing is ever truly independent or separate from everything else.
The same is true of mental and cognitive states, perceptions, thoughts, and even personality. There
is no separate, immutable self or soul that can continue forever, but the process of which we are a
part continues.
 The 3 Characteristics of Existence
 Anicca - “Impermanence”; Nothing is immutable or permanent.
 Dukkha - “Suffering.” The solution to suffering represents an application of the principle of
dependent origination. If suffering is, it must have come into being as a result of causal
conditions, and if suffering is to cease, those conditions must cease. This solution is expressed
in the form of the Four Noble Truths
The Four Noble Truths
o The Truth of Suffering
The Truth of the Cause of Suffering
The Truth of the End of Suffering
The Truth of the Path Leading to the End of Suffering
 Anatta - “Nonself” - there is no self or soul. This sets Buddhism apart from practically all
other religious, philosophical, and psychological theories and positions. According to the
teaching of the Buddha, the idea of a [personal] self is an imaginary, false belief which has no
corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of “me” and “mine,” selfish desire,
craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements,
impurities, and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world, from personal conflicts
 to wars between nations… To this false view can be traced all the evil in the world (Rahula,
1974).
o If there is no self, what is there then? The impermanent gestalt / composite formed
by transient elements called the skandhas (form, feelings, perceptions, impulses,
consciousness).
 Realizing that there is no self is liberation, enlightenment, or awakening. When all cravings, desires,
and dualistic ideas have been completely extinguished through the realization of anicca and anatta,
the ultimate state of mind called nirvana is achieved.

Lesson 6: The Physical Self

• Body Image – how you think and feel about how you look like
2 Elements of Body image’
1. Mental picture – how you imagine your self / body (physical appearance)
2. Attitude – how you think and feel about your body (Do I like my appearance?)
• Culture on Body Image and Self Esteem. Culture affects how we perceive beauty because it sets the
standard of beauty and exerts pressure on people to conform to this beauty standard.

TIPS TO DEVELOP A HEALTHY BODY IMAGE

1. Practice positive self-talk – Be kind and gentle to yourself.

2. Be Mindful of comparisons – you can either become depressed or conceited if you always
compare yourself to others.

3. Be wary of stereotypes – beauty does not have only one standard. It is in the eye of the
beholder.

4. Have an attitude of gratitude – be thankful for everything, even the parts of you that
consider your flaws or imperfections. They make you who you are.

5. Improve what you can and accept what you cannot – aim for
self-improvement/enhancement but don’t force yourself to be someone you cannot be.