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I. THE SELF FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PHILOSOPHYFor centuries, different individuals have sought to understand the reasons of existence, from the cosmocentric (universe), to the theocentric (God), & the anthropocentric (Man) perspective of philosophy.In this part of the lesson, we will consider di...

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I.

THE SELF FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PHILOSOPHY

For centuries, different individuals have sought to understand the reasons of existence, from the cosmocentric (universe), to the theocentric (God), & the anthropocentric (Man) perspective of philosophy.

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In this part of the lesson, we will consider different philosophers, and their perspectives of the self, and as to how their concepts, and beliefs contribute to the understanding of oneself. • •

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Philosophy basically refers to the love of knowledge, or the love of wisdom Philosophy can be traced back all the way to 600 BCE, in Athens, Greece - The Greeks in search for knowledge came up with answers that are both cognitive and scientific in nature (Price, 2000)  They chose to seek natural explanations to events and phenomena around them instead of seeking for supernatural explanations from the gods that was passed down through generations  These philosophers observed changes in the world and wanted to explain these changes by understanding the laws of nature  Their study of change led them to the “idea of permanence” (Price, 2000) Athenians settle arguments by discussion and debate - People skilled in doing this were called Sophists, the first teachers of the West

SOCRATES •

One such Philosopher was Socrates. - The mentor of Plato - Considered to be the wisest of all men by the Oracle of Delphi - Wanted to discover the essential nature of knowledge, justice, beauty and goodness (Moore and Bruder, 2002)

He did not write anything, he is not a writer - A lot of his thoughts were only known through Plato’s writing (The Dialogues) The Socratic Method - This is Socrates’ method for discovering what is essential in the world and in people  In this method, Socrates did not lecture, he instead would ask questions and engage the person in a discussion -

 He would begin by acting as if he did not know anything and would get the other person to clarify their ideas and resolve logical inconsistencies (Price, 2000)  Using this method, the questioner should be skilled at detecting misconceptions and at revealing them by asking the right questions  The goal is to bring the person closer to the final understanding •

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Socrates believed that his mission in life was to seek the highest knowledge and convince others who were willing to seek his knowledge with him - “The unexamined life is not worth living” According to Socrates, real understanding comes from within the person -

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His Socratic method forces people to use their innate reason by reaching inside themselves to their deepest nature

The aim of the Socratic Method is to make people think, seek and ask again and again. Some may be angered and frustrated, but what is important is for them to realize that they do not know everything, that there are things that they are ignorant of, to accept this and to continue learning and searching for answers (Moore and Bruder, 2002)

PLATO •

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Another Greek philosopher with major contributions was Aristocles, also known as Plato - He was nicknamed “Plato” because of his physical built which means wide/broad - Left Athens for 12 years after the death of Socrates - When he returned, he established a school known as “The Academy” Plato’s Metaphysics (philosophical study on the causes and nature of things) - Plato explained that Forms refers to what

are real

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 They are not objects encountered with the senses but can only be grasped intellectually Characteristic of the Plato’s Forms - The Forms are ageless and therefore eternal - The Forms are unchanging and therefore permanent - The Forms are unmoving and indivisible Plato’s Concept of Dualism refers to the existence of two realms - The Realm of Shadows  Composed of changing, ‘sensible’ things which are lesser entities and therefore imperfect and flawed - The Realm of Forms  Composed of eternal things which are permanent and perfect. It is the source of all reality and true knowledge He believed that knowledge lies within the person’s soul - He considered human beings as microcosms of the universal macrocosms i.e. everything in the universe can also be found on people – earth, air, fire, water, mind and spirit (Price, 2000) Plato’s Components of the Soul

The Reason is rational and is the motivation for goodness and truth - The Spirited is non-rational and is the will or the drive toward action - The Appetites are irrational and lean towards the desire for pleasures of the body Plato believed that people are intrinsically good. Sometimes however, judgements are made in ignorance and Plato equates ignorance with evil. (Price, 2000) -

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Plato’s Allegory of the Cave - What people see are only shadows of reality which they believe are real things and represents knowledge - What these people fail to realize is that the shadows are not real for according to Plato, “only the Forms are real” - Recommended Video Presentation on the Allegory of the Cave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1 RWOpQXTltA • Love according to Plato Plato’s love begins with a feeling or experience that there is something lacking - This then drives the person to seek for that which is lacking Thoughts and efforts are then directed towards the pursuit of which is lacking •

• Christian Philosophers on the other hand focused on God, and man’s relationship with God • Comparing Greek & Christian Philosophers - Greek Philosophers - Sees man as basically good and becomes evil through ignorance of what is good - Christian Philosophers - Sees man as sinners who reject/go against a loving God’s commands ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO •

St. Augustine of Hippo, a noteworthy Christian philosopher who initially rejected Christianity for it seemed to him then that Christianity could not provide him answers to questions that interested him

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are easily tricked, and may not provide St. Augustine’s belief of human nature accurate information any time (ex. food focused on two realms will not taste the same if you have a flu) - God as the source of all reality and truth • Descartes questioned if anything can be  This means that people close to known with certainty. Wherein he had God will be the ones closest to dreams which instructed him to construct a understanding the world since system of knowledge, and a system of God is the source of all truth knowing and reality - Through his dreams, he came up with a - The sinfulness of man way of analyzing human knowledge  To put simply, moral goodness • Descartes discussed the two powers of the can only be achieved through human mind God. - Intuition theby ability  The cause of evil is not God’s will but rather the freewill given to or man God to apprehend direction of certain truths The Role of Love according to St. Augustine Deduction or the power to discover - Basically, real happiness can only be what is not known by progressing in an achieved through God orderly way from what is already known - Problems arise when man loves wrong • Descartes deduced that a thinker is a thing things, in the wrong ways. St. Augustine that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, referred to this as disordered love wills, refuses and also imagines and feels  Excessive love of physical (Price, 2000) objects leads to sin of greed - Hence, I Think; therefore I am  Love for other people is not lasting and excessive love for them is the sin of jealousy  Excessive love for the self leads to the sin of people (pride)

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 Love for God is the supreme virtue and only through loving God can man find real happiness European Philosophers such as Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, & Immanuel Kant focused on the concepts of experience and rationalization.

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RENE DESCARTES •

One such philosopher is Rene Descartes who was a prominent rationalist in France, and in Europe. -

He Applied scientific & mathematic methods in philosophy Proponent of the cartesian method and analytic geometry He did not believe in empiricism (a philosophical perspective in which knowledge is derived from sensory experiences). He posited that the senses

Descartes believed that reasoning could produce absolute truths, that is why he believed in Apriori, which means that knowledge is independent from experience. Descartes believed in the concept of dualism, in which he believed that the mind/ soul was separated from the body. He called this the Mind-Body Problem - The body, according to Descartes, is like a machine that is controlled by the will and aided by the mind.

JOHN LOCKE •

John Locke, an English philosopher, on the other hand, believed in contrast to Rene Descartes, wherein understanding requires the senses. - Born in Wrington, England - Interested in politics; Defender of the parliamentary system - At 57 years old, He published a book which played a significant role in the era of Enlightenment (Price, 2000) - Believed in the concept of empiricism

 “no man’s knowledge can go beyond his experience” – John Locke  “nothing exists in the mind that has not first been experienced” – John Locke” •

Locke believed that knowledge results from ideas produced a posteriori or objects that were experienced The process involves 2 forms: - Sensation wherein objects are experienced through senses - Reflection by which the mind ‘looks’ at the objects that were experienced to discover relationships that may exist between them

Locke contended that ideas are not innate, but rather, the mind at birth is a “tabula rasa” (i.e. blank slate) • According to Locke, since ideas are not innate, it then, therefore must come from the senses. That further means, that morals, religion, and political values must have been a product of man’s experiences. - Moral good depends on the conformity of a person’s behavior towards some law - There a 3 laws according to Locke:  Law of Opinion – where actions that are praiseworthy are called virtues and those are not are vices  Civil Law – where right actions are enforced by people in authority  Divine Law – set by God on the actions of man DAVID HUME

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Hume believed that the mind receives material from the senses, and called it perception. He then expounded that there are two types of perception - Impressions – which are immediate sensations of external reality - Ideas – Which are the recollection of the impressions

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In examining the patterns of thinking, Hume formulated three principles on how ideas relate to one another - The Principle of Resemblance which is basically the tendency which ideas become associated if objects they represent are similar  Ex. A photo of a bird resembles a real bird, therefore, they must be related - The Principle of Contiguity refers to the tendency of ideas to be associated if objects are near each other in time & space  Ex. when you see a box of crayons, you immediately associate it to have crayons even if it does not have any. – you automatically think of crayons, not a box of crayons - The Principle of Cause and Effect is the tendency of things being causally related  Ex. the ball caused the window to break Hume saw the self as just a sense of impressions - He believed that like causality, ‘the self’ is also a product of imagination - There is no such thing as ‘personal identity’ behind perceptions and feelings that come and go; THERE IS NO PERMANENT/UNCHANGING SELF

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David Hume, a Scottish philosopher relied on the scientific method believing that it could analyze human nature and explain the workings of the mind - Born in Edinburgh, Scotland - At the time he was enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, he lost his faith - Was credited for giving empiricism its clearest formulation

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IMMANUEL KANT •

Immanuel Kant, a Prussian philosopher, posited the melding of both rationalist, & empirical approaches

Lived in the town of Konisberg in East Prussia (presently Western Russia) Founder of German Idealism Wrote three books: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical reason and Critique of Judgement Kant argued that the mind is not just a passive receiver of sense experience but rather actively participates in knowing the objects it experiences -

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“When the self sees an object, it tends to remember its characteristics and applies on it, the forms of time and space” Kant used the term transcendental apperception to explain the experience of the self in unity with objects •

The id, ego, and superego: According to Freud’s structural model, the personality is divided into the id, ego, and superego. On this diagram, the smaller portion above the water signifies the conscious mind, while the much larger portion below the water illustrates the unconscious Illustration Source: Lumens Candela (n.d) mind. Freud in his 1920 book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he presented 2 kinds of instincts that drive individual behavior - Eros - Life Instinct; the energy is called LIBIDO and urges necessary for individual and species survival like thirst, hunger, and sex - Thanatos - Death Instinct; behavior that is directed towards destruction in the form of aggression and violence Freud further believed that man lives life balancing the forces of life and death, making mere existence a challenge -

“Man’s behavior by his pleasure seeking life instinct and his destructive instinct is said to be born with his ego already in conflict”

GILBERT RYLE Gilbert Ryle, an English Philosopher, believed that many philosophical problems were caused by the wrong use of language. - Ex. the Mind-Body Problem made no sense, as applying non-material things should not have been applied to material concepts  Ryle instead referred to it as “ghost in a machine” •

SIGMUND FREUD •

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Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist emphasized the role of the unconscious in the development of the self - His psychodynamic theory has characteristics of philosophical thought - Freud made use of methods like free association and dream analysis for his clinical practice Freud explained that the mind is structured by the following components Id – the pleasure principle - Ego – the reality principle - Supe Ego – the morality principle

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Ryle believed that freewill was only invented to answer whether actions must be praised or blamed. He further elaborated that actions must be moral for it to be free.

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Ryle touched on two types of knowledge - Knowing-That – This refers to knowing facts and information - Ryle considered this to be empty intellectualism, as it is worthless if you cannot use it to solve practical problems

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Knowing-How – This refers to using facts in the performance of some skills or technical abilities “A person may acquire a great bulk of knowledge but without the ability to use it to solve some practical problems to make his life easier, this bulk of knowledge is deemed to be worthless” – Gilbert Ryle

PATRICIA AND PAUL CHURCHLAND • Patrician Churchland coined the term Neurophilosophy, who together with Paul Churchland was dissatisfied with the particular approach of philosophers and instead sought to guide scientific theorizing with philosophy and guide philosophy with scientific inquiry - The philosophy of neuroscience is the study of the philosophy of the mind, the philosophy of science, neuroscience and psychology.  This aims to explore the relevance of the neuroscientific studies to the philosophy of the mind  “There isn’t a special thing called the mind. The mind is just the brain” – Patricia Churchland • Patricia claims that the man’s brain is responsible for the identity known as ‘the self’ - The biochemical properties of the brain according to this philosophy is really responsible for man’s thoughts, feelings and behavior - “Man is endowed with more than just physical or neurological characteristics. Despite research findings, neurophilosophy states that the self is real, that it is the tool that helps the person tune-in to the realities of the brain and the extant reality” MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY •

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher who was known as the philosopher of the body

Emphasized that the body was the primary site of knowing the world, and that man cannot be separated from the world According to Merleau-Ponty, The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in the ongoing process of man’s ‘becoming’ - He added that perception is nor purely the result of sensations nor is it purely interpretation, rather, consciousness is a process that includes sensing, as well as interpreting/ reasoning -

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II. THE SELF FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIOLOGY Sociology is one of the disciplines in the social sciences which aims to discover the ways by which the social surrounding/environment influences people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. To put simply, its main focus is understanding human societies and its social processes which may aid in people understanding themselves better. In this part, we will discuss the different perspectives, and theories of sociologists in order to better understand how the self develops. GEORGE HERBERT MEAD • George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, and social theorist who studied the self from a social behaviorist perspective - Born on February 27, 1863 in Massachusetts, USA - Graduated and taught Grade School at Oberlin College. - Enrolled in Harvard University in 1887 where his interests were Philosophy and Psychology - He wrote and published articles and book reviews but did not publish his own book. - His students put together number of his articles and edited them for publication. - He died in 1931 due to Heart Failure • Mead was the proponent of Social Behaviorism, in which it was the approach used to describe the power of environment in shaping human behavior. At the center of his theorizing is the concept of self. - Mead described the self as “dimension of personality that is made up of the individual’s self-awareness and selfimage” (Macionis, 2012) • According to Mead, the self cannot be separated from the society.

• Mead posited a set of stages in which a person undergoes in the course of development - Preparatory Stage – A stage in which the self-did not exist at birth but develops over time. It depends on social interaction and social experience.  Children’s behavior is primarily based on Imitation. They become familiar with symbols (verbal and non-verbal) as they interact, and these symbols are the bases of Communication  Knowing and Understanding the symbols are important to constitute their way of communicating with others throughout their lives (Schaefer, 2012) - Play Stage – The stage where the child widens his perspective and realizes that he is not alone and there are others around him which he has to consider.  Knowing and Understanding the symbols of communication to constitute basis for socialization to form social relationship.  Role-taking is the process of assuming the perspective of another person to see how this person might behave or respond in a given situation (Schaefer, 2012) - Game Stage – The stage in which the child has the ability to respond not just to one but several members of his social environment  Begins to consider several tasks and various types of relationships simultaneously.  Generalized other was used to explain the behavior when a person considers other people in the course of his action.

Through this, the person realizes the cultural norms, beliefs, & values incorporated to each self. With this, it forms the basis of self-evaluation

Stage Preparatory Stage Play Stage Gam...