Understanding

the Self
Instructor: Edz Lualhati
 Introduction
How well do you know your self ?
Are you aware of your talents? Skills?
Weakness and Strengths?

“Who Am I?”
Chapter 1: THE SELF FROM
VARIOUS PERSPECTIVE

•PHILOSOPHY
What is Philosophy?

Philosophy is from a Greek words Philia and Sofia.

Philia means love

Sofia means wisdom

Philosophy - love of wisdom

Philosopher – lover of wisdom
How did ancient thinker view a human
being?

Who were those curious enough to study

how human beings perceive themselves?
• Socrates
Socratic Method – idea was tested by asking a series
of questions to determine underlying beliefs and the
extent of knowledge to guide a person toward
better understanding (Maxwell, 2015)

“ The unexamined life is not worth living”

Self – knowledge – the examination of one’s self, as

well as the question about how one ought to live
one’s life, are very important concerns because
only knowing yourself can hope you to improve
your life (Rappe, 1995)
Socrates said existence is two kinds:
Visible – changes (body)
Invisible – remains constant (soul)

“When the soul and the body are together nature assigns our body to
be a slave and to be ruled and the soul to be the ruler and the
master.”

The goal of life is to be happy.

Plato
• Collection and Division
• Theory of Forms – physical world is not really the
“real” world because the ultimate reality exists
beyond the physical world.

Soul – is indeed the most divine aspect of human

being. (not spiritual being but rather one that has an
intellectual connotation.)
Three parts of soul according to Plato:
• The appetitive (sensual) – elements that enjoy sensual experiences such as
food, drinks and sex)

• The rational (reasoning) – the element that forbids the person to enjoy the
sensual experiences; the part that loves truth, hence should rule over the other
parts of the soul through the use of reason.

• The spirited (feeling) – the element that is inclined towards reason but
understand the demands of passion, the parts that loves honor and victory.
St. Augustine of Hippo
- Influential theological system ( Christian Thinker)

- Adopted Plato’s view that the “self” is an immaterial (but

rational) soul.

- “self” was an inner, immaterial “I” that had self – knowledge and All knowledge leads
self – awareness. to God

- He believed that human body was both a soul and body, and the
body possessed senses, such as imagination, memory, reason,
and mind through which the soul experience the world

- A person is similar to God as regards to the mind and its ability

Rene Descartes
- Hyperbolical / metaphysical doubt (methodological
skepticism) – a systematic process of being skeptical about
the truth of one’s beliefs in order to determine which
beliefs could be ascertained as true.

• Doubt was a principal tool of disciplined inquiry.

“Cogito ergo sum” –
“I think, therefore I Am”
Descartes claims about the self are:
- It is constant, it is not prone to change; and it is not
affected by time.
- Only the immaterial soul remains the same throughout
time.
- The immaterial soul is the source of identity
John Locke
- “self” is identified with consciousness

- “self” is consist of memory

- He asserted that the state of the person who cannot

remember his/her behavior is the same as the state of
the person who never committed the act, which
meant the person was ignorant.

- Tabula rasa
David Hume
Rationalism
-reason is the foundation of all knowledge.

Empiricism – idea that the origin of all knowledge is sense

experience.

Bundle Theory – wherein Hume described the “self” or person

as a bundle or collection of different perception that are moving
in a very fast and successive matter.

Hume divided the mind’s perception into two groups:

- Impression
- ideas
Hume compared thee “self” to a nation; whereby a nation retains it “being a nation” not
by a single core or identity but by being
composed of different, constantly changing elements, such as people, system, culture
and beliefs.

“self” according to Hume is not just one impression but a mix and a loose cohesion of
various personal experiences.

“self” - Hume stressed that your perceptions a re only active for as long as you are
conscious.
Immanuel Kant
- Proposed that human mind creates the structure of human
experience.

- Kant’s view of “self” is transcendental, which means the

“self” is related to a spiritual or nonphysical realm.

- He proposed that it is knowledge that bridges the “self” and

the material beings together (Booree, 1999; Brook, 2004).

- Apperception – is the mental process by which a person

makes sense of an idea by assimilating to the body of ideas
he or she already possess.
Two components of the “self” according to Kant:
1. Inner self – the self by which you are aware of alterations in your own state. This includes
your rational intellect and your psychological state, such as moods, feelings, sensations,
pleasure and pain.

2. Outer self – It includes your senses and physical world. It is the common boundary between
the external world and the inner self. It gathers information from the external world through
the senses, which the inner self interprets and coherently expresses.

Kant proposed that the “self” organizes information in three ways:

1. Raw perceptual input,
2. Recognizing the concept, and
3. Reproducing in the imagination.

“Self” is the subject of these experiences.

Sigmund Freud
Most important contribution particularly in psychology, was
psychoanalysis, a practice devised to treat those who are mentally ill
through dialogue.

Psyche – the totality of human mind, both conscious and unconscious

(Watson, 2014)

Freuds three level of consciousness:

• Conscious – deals with awareness of present perception, feelings,
thoughts, memories and fantasies at any particular moment;
• Pre-conscious/Subconscious – related to the data that can be
readily brought to consciousness; and
• Unconscious – refers to the data retained but not easily available to
the individual’s conscious awareness or scrutiny.
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory – a personal theory based on the notion that an
individual gets motivated by unseen forces, controlled by conscious and rational
thought.
Freud’s structure the psyche / mind in three parts:
• Id – It operates the pleasure principle. When the id achieves its demands, you experience
pleasure; when it is denied, you experience “unpleasure” or tension.

• Ego – It operates according to the reality principle. It works out realistic ways of satisfying the Id’s
demands. The ego considers social realities, norms, etiquette, and rules in deciding how to
behave. If the ego fails to use the reality principle, anxiety is experienced, and unconscious
defense mechanism are employed to help ward off unpleasant feelings.

• Superego – It incorporates the values and morals of society. The superego’s function is to control
the id’s impulses. It persuades the ego to choose moralistic goals and to strive for perfection
rather than simply realistic ones.

Superego consists of two systems:

1. Conscience – if the ego gives in to the id’s demands, the superego make the person feel bad
through guilt.
2. Ideal self – it is an imaginary picture of how you ought to be. It represents career aspirations; how
to treat other people; and how to behave as a member of society.
Gilbert Ryle
- He wrote “The Concept of Mind” (1949)
- Believes Descartes commits a category mistake.
- Ghost in the machine – Ryle’s explain that there is no hidden
entity or ghost called “soul” inside a machine called “body”.
(Ryle, 1992)

- Criticized the theory that the “mind” is a place where mental

images are apprehended, perceived or remembered. He
asserted that sensations, thoughts, and feelings do not belong
to a mental world separate from the physical world.

- Ryle asserted that the “self” is from our behaviors and actions.
Your actions define your own concept of “self” (who you are).
Paul Churchland
• Known for his studies in neurophilosophy and philosophy of mind.
• His philosophy stands on materialistic view or the belief that nothing
but matter exists.
• Unchanging soul/self does not exists because it cannot be experience
by the senses (1989).
• Eliminative materialism – claim that people’s common-sense
understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false, and that
certain classes of mental state which most people believe in do not
exists (Churchland, 1989; Baker, 1995).
• He asserted the sense of “self” originated from the brain itself, and
that this “self” is a product of electrochemical signals produced by the
brain.
Maurice Merleau – Ponty
- Body is the primary site of knowing the world.
- Ponty’s idea of “self” is an embodied subjectivity.
- Embodied means to give a body to (usually immaterial substance like
soul).
- Subjectivity in philosophy, is the state of being subject – an entity that
possess conscious experiences, such as perspective, feelings, beliefs and
desires.
- A subject acts upon or affects some other entity, which in philosophy
called object.
- Mind and body are intrinsically connected.
- Center of the consciousness is the “mind”. (Thompson,2004).
- He asserted that human beings are embodied subjectivities,
understanding the “self” should begin from this fundamental fact.
- Body acts what the mind perceives as unified one.