PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE ABOUT THE SELF:
SOCRATES
- Man is a being in search for knowledge.
- This search for knowledge is introspective—knowing the very own self (self-
directed knowledge).
- Knowledge is inherent in man. Thus, one has to recollect.
How to recollect?
- Through Socratic Method—self questioning itself.
- This is a form of self-examination;
“An unexamined life is not worth living for.”
- This self-examination has a therapeutic goal.
Activity:
Make a depiction about yourself (inward and outward characterizations) in a
paragraph form.
PLATO
- Man’s self is a soul (psyche).
- This soul has a composition of three basic elements;
a. Appetitive element
- All pertains to our desires for pleasures, comforts, physical
satisfactions and bodily ease.
- In the structure of the human body, this is represented by belly and
genitals.
b. Spirited element
- This pertains to emotional part of the soul.
- Even being called as “hot-blooded part.”
- This is a part in us that loves to face and overcome great challenges.
- It is represented by heart.
Note: a and b are mostly governed or influenced by blind instinct.
c. Mind (nous)
- This entails the conscious awareness.
- This is regarded as the guiding principle of our existence.
- This is the part that thinks, analyzes, looks ahead, rationally
weighs options, and tries to gauge what is best and truest overall.
- This is represented by head.
Note:
- These three are not and must not be in balance—meaning of equal
position to each other.
- Rather, the mind must be the in-charge of all.
- If this does not happen, then the soul is in a state of ignorance or
deception.
Activity:
- Read the “Allegory of the Cave.”
- Make reaction or reflection composition.
ST. AUGUSTINE
- Man’s self is a creature—created by God (the Absolute Good).
- Man’s self is created out of the goodness of God.
- Hence, man is good.
- Yet, this goodness was lost due to man’s sin—alienation from God.
- Thus, man’s life in this world is in the state of moral quest and restoration of
such relationship with his Creator.
“Oh God You have created us for Yourself so that our hearts are restless
until they find rest in You.”
- In sin, man becomes incomplete—lacking happiness (union with God).
How must this be corrected and restored (relationship with God)?
Ways are;
a. By correcting and redirecting the “disordered love” into the
ultimate love of God.
b. By not expecting too much from thing which its nature cannot
provide.
c. By realizing that we are not self-sufficient.
- These ways require the exercise of “free will.”
- Free will here means “choosing to turn towards God or away from God.”
- But in choosing to be with God needs God’s grace—for we do not
possess spiritual powers to do the good we have chosen.
RENE DESCARTES
- Man’s self is a being in search for an absolute certain knowledge (truth).
- Man must subject all things without any exemption into the test of a
methodic doubt.
Methodic doubt is expressed in this statement;
“Because I wished to give myself entirely to the search after truth, I
thought it was necessary for me… to reject as absolutely false everything
concerning which I could imagine the least ground of doubt.”
This means that it is necessary to sweep away all former opinions, so that
they might later on be replaced, either by others which were better, or by
same, when they have been made conform to the uniformity of a rational
scheme.
So what is the foundation of this certainty?
- Is expressed in this formula: “cogito, ergo, sum” (I think therefore I
am).
Why does this become the foundation?
- Because in the very act of doubting, it is impossible to doubt that I
doubt.
- In the very mental act of doubting I am affirming my own existence.
- My existence is that I am a thinking being.
What does it mean by “I am a thinking being?”
- A being that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, and
refuses, imagines and feels.
But what is this being that thinks in me?
- It is the soul, and it is not the same with the body.
- The soul is the seat for thinking while the body is the extension or
space.
JOHN LOCKE
- Man is a being in search into the origin, certainty and extent of human
knowledge.
- This emphasizes the issue about what constitute knowledge and how
it is being obtained.
- For him, human knowledge is restricted to “ideas.”
- Yet, these ideas are not innate—inherent in the human mind and not
dependent on experience (as thought of or assumed by the
rationalist).
- On the contrary, ideas come to us through some kind of experience.
- This entails that the human mind is “tabula rasa”—a sort of blank
sheet upon which experience can subsequently write knowledge.
- Nothing comes to mind or exists in the mind which was not first in the
senses.
So what knowledge then can man have?
- Degrees of knowledge;
- Intuitive knowledge
- It is immediate, leaves no doubt, and is the “clearest
and most certain that human frailty is capable of.”
Example: square is not a circle
- Demonstrative knowledge
- This happens when the mind tries to discover the
agreement or disagreement of ideas by calling
attention to still other ideas.
- Sensitive knowledge
- It happens when one is aware and assured that other
selves and things exist but only as they are when we
experience them.
DAVID HUME
- Man is a being in quest for knowledge.
- This knowledge is not inherent in man’s nature or in the mind itself.
- Rather, this knowledge is a form of content being infused into the mind.
- So, what is this knowledge?
- This refers to the materials given to us by the senses and
experience.
- This is called in one term “perception.”
This perception takes two forms;
- Impression
- This is the original stuff of thought.
- This refers to the direct givenness of anything that the human
senses have perceived.
- This is the moment that will take place in perception.
- Ideas
- These are merely the copies of impressions.
- Theses result when you have to reflect what you have got by
impressions.
- These take place consequent to impressions.
Knowledge happens due to association of ideas.
- This association means some bond of union or associating quality by
which one idea naturally introduces another.
- So, what we know are just confined to impressions and ideas; and
these are just simply subjective states and are not clear proof of an
external reality beyond the human mind.
IMMANUEL KANT
- Man’s self is an “I”—a transcendental unity of apperception.
- Being as such, man is a knowing being in a particular way.
How does man know?
- Through transforming the raw data given to our senses into a coherent
and related set of elements (called in a term “experience”).
But can this coherent and related set of elements happen?
- This coherence or unity of the experience implies a unity of a self.
- This unity of a self implies various sequences—sensation, imagination,
memory, as well as the capacity of intuitive synthesis.
- In other words, it must be the same self that at once senses an object,
remembers its characteristics, and imposes upon it the forms of space
and time and the category of cause and effect.
- Thus, the idea of the self is an “a priori” as a necessary condition for the
experience we do have of having knowledge of a unified world of nature.
- The self with its mind knows a thing as it is experienced but it inevitably
perceives the thing through the “lenses” of our a priori categories of
thought.
- This entails that the mind rather imposes its ideas upon the
manifold experience.
- This does not mean that the self with its mind produces an
objective reality; instead, it can only know a thing as it appears to
the self and is organized thereby.
- The self can only know thing as it appears (phenomenal) but not as
what it is (noumenal).
- Hence, man knows thing by using the categories of thought and forms of
intuition.
- What are these categories of thought and forms of intuition?
- These are the a priori—space and time/ quantity, quality, relation, and
modality.
- These are all ways of thinking that constitute the act of synthesis
through which the mind strives to make a consistent single world out
of the manifold of sense impressions.
GILBERT RYLE
- Man’ self is the mind that expresses the entire system of thoughts, emotions
and actions.
- The self then exists within the observable behaviors.
- 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.
Activity:
• Now think about yourself. Assume the perspective of someone who knows
you well and describe yourself as he might see you, based solely on your
observable behavior. What aspects of your self do you think his description
would capture? What aspects of your self do you think his portrait of you
would omit?
• Identify several of the defining qualities of yourself: for example, empathetic,
gregarious, reflective, fun-loving, curious, and so on. Then, using Ryle’s
approach, describe the qualities in terms of “a tendency to act a certain way
in certain circumstances.”
• Analyze your characterizations. Do your descriptions communicate fully the
personal qualities of yourself that you identified? If not, what’s missing?
PAUL CHURCHLAND
- He adheres to materialism, the belief that nothing but matter exists. In
other words, if it can't somehow be recognized by the senses then it's
akin to a fairy tale.
- Applying this argument to the mind, Churchland asserts that since the
mind can't be experienced by our senses, then the mind doesn't really
exist. Based on this assertion, Churchland holds to eliminative
materialism.
• Stated simply, eliminative materialism argues that the ordinary
folk psychology of the mind is wrong. It is the physical brain and
not the imaginary mind that gives us our sense of self.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
- Man’ self is a body-subject.
- This entails that man is the union of mental subject and bodily subject.
But what does to exist as a union of mental subject and bodily subject mean?
• This means that man is an existent with perceptual nature of body that
constructs and shapes sensory data.
• Thus, there is the primacy of perception as man exists.
Yet what does this primacy of perception mean?
• This means that the experience of perception is our presence at the
moment when things, truths, values are constituted for us…it is not a
question of reducing human knowledge to sensation, but of assisting at
the birth of this knowledge, to make it as sensible as the sensible, to
recover the consciousness of rationality.
• To put in other words, our perceptual experiences are shaped by
inherent forms and structures which give sense, meaning, and value to
our experiences.
• This is encapsulated by this statement “I am my body.”
- Hence, what man knows or does have is only relative knowledge.
- But what does this relative knowledge mean?
• This means that…
- “Every perception takes place within a certain horizon and
ultimately in the ‘world.’” This follows that perception
results from a person’s bodily presence in the world. A
bodily presence already means that as a subject, a person
is situated in the world at a certain time and with a unique
perspective. The ideas we ultimately have reflect this
partial view and our experience in time so that the ideas to
which we recur are valid for only a period in our lives. The
things we perceive are not a complete thing or ideal unity
possessed by the intellect. It is rather a totality open to the
horizon of an indefinite number of perspectival views.
• Therefore, the most we can get from our perception of the world is a
route (path), an experience which gradually clarifies itself, which
gradually rectifies itself and proceeds by dialogue with itself and
others.
WILLIAM JAMES
- Man’s self is in search of truth.
- But the emphasis here is not on what is truth; not the definition of truth
for the self.
- On the contrary, it is more on what concrete difference will its being true
make in anyone’s actual life.
- In other words, the self of man is finding and identifying more on the
practical effectiveness of a truth if it is so.
- Applied the scenario to our way of knowing, our ideas can become true
only in so far as they make successful connections among various parts of
our experiences.
- Truth hence is part of the process of living.
- As part of a process, successful experiences make truth—this constitutes
the verification process.
