Understanding Self: Philosophy & Key Thinkers

Understanding the Self & Philosophy

• Philosophy seeks to answer questions about ourselves and the world.
• Questions like: What establishes right and wrong? What defines the good life? Does God exist? What is the mind?

Skills Developed via Philosophy

• Philosophy enhances critical thinking, argumentation, communication, reasoning, analysis, and problem-solving abilities.

Pythagoras

• Pythagoras coined the term "Philosophy" - the Love of Wisdom
• Philo means "love" and Sophia means "wisdom" in Greek.

Origin of Philosophy & Logic

• The origin is from the necessity to search for: truth, meaning, importance, significance, value, and relevance
• Philosophy involves asking numerous questions

Ancient Greek Philosophers

• Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

"Know Thyself" - Socrates

• Philosophers assert self-knowledge is essential for happiness and a meaningful existence.

Socrates

• Socrates: "An unexamined life is not worth living."
• Every man is dualistic, composed of body and soul

Socrates' Dichotomous Realms

• Body: Imperfect and impermanent
• Soul: Perfect and permanent
• Physical realm: Changeable
• Idea realm: Unchanging, eterternal

Socrates' Philosophy

• Socrates was the first to focus on human reason on the human self: who we are, who we should be and who we will become.
• The soul seeks wisdom and perfection using reason as its tool.
• Bodily needs hinder wisdom.
• A virtuous life achieved through constant soul-searching creates meaning and happiness
• Separating the body from the soul is the best approach.

Plato

• Plato: "The soul is immortal."
• A student of Socrates
• Philosophy of the self can be explained as a process of self-knowledge and purification of the soul.
• Believed in the existence of the mind and soul
• Mind and soul are given in perfection with God.

Plato's Soul

• Souls possess three elements: reason, spirit, and appetite.
• Rational Soul: Divine essence for profound thought and wise choices
• Spirited Soul: Emotions and passions like love, anger, and empathy
• Appetitive Soul: Basic needs of body like hunger, thirst, and sex

Plato's Elements of Self

• These three elements engage in a dynamic, sometimes conflicting, relationship.
• Reason should control the spirit and appetites to achieve harmony

Happiness According to Plato

• True happiness requires Reason to control Spirits and Appetites

Aristotle

• Aristotle: "The soul is the essence of the self"
• A student of Plato
• Body and soul are one, inseparable
• The soul is the body's form and cannot exist without it
• The existence of the soul makes a person a person

Aristotle on Self

• Rational nature guides a good, flourishing life
• The soul's existence is dependent on the body

Aristotle's Soul Divisions

• Aristotle suggested that anything with life has soul and discusses the kinds of souls possessed by man.
• Vegetative: Physical body, includes growth
• Sentiment: Sensual desires, feelings, and emotions
• Rational: Intellect, unique to humans allowing knowledge and understanding

Augustine

• St. Augustine: "I am doubting therefore I am"
• Integrated Platonic and Christian thought.
• Viewed the human person in the medieval world's spirit
• The body and soul unite to create completeness
• Humankind is made in God's image, directed toward good.
• Knowing God is essential to knowing oneself since Knowledge of self comes from knowing God.

Descartes

• Rene Descartes: "I think therefore I am"
• Thinking proves the existence of self.

Descartes' Entities

• Cogito: The thinking mind.
• Extenza: The physical body.

John Locke

• John Locke: "The self is consciousness"
• The mind is a blank slate at birth (tabula rasa)
• Self-construction comes from sense experience
• Babies are born knowing nothing and the mind is empty

Kant

• Immanuel Kant
• The self is a seat of knowledge
• Constructs reality, making the world familiar
• Rationality transcends sensory experience

Merleau - Ponty

• Maurice Merleau - Ponty
• The mind and body are not separate, its futile
• Knowledge comes from subjective experience
• Self is embodied subjectivity

Phenomenology

• Phenomenology studies structure of consciousness
• Bracketing suspends external objects
• Reflect systematically on conscious contents by describing essential structure

Phenomenological Epoché

• Suspend the natural attitude. Scientific, philosophical, cultural, and everyday assumptions.
• A natural attitude hides reality.

Cognitive Processes

• Suspending our everyday understanding of what is 'true'.

Natural Attitude

• Prejudices and unquestioned explicit knowledge of the object.

Phenomena

• Only phenomena is the setting aside by suspension

Phenomenology and Eidetic Reduction

• The reduction of phenomenological experience to pure essence.
• Analyzing the essence.

Religious Perspective

• Love may be God's activity or presence
• Tinatamad na kac ako noh :(

Psychology Defined

• Psychology defines itself as the science researching human behavior. It observes, describes, understands, predicts, and controls behavior.
• It uses objective and projective methods

Freud's Psychoanalysis Theory

• Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalysis Theory
• Humans are biological organisms driven by satisfaction of bodily needs for achiving pleasure.
• Childhood shapes adult personality

Freud's Structures of Mind

• The Unconscious Mind -Preconscious – Stored knowledge -Conscious- Thoughts and Perception -Unconcious- Fears and unacceptable desires -Freud compared the mind to an iceberg

Freud's Structural Model

• Id: Contains innate biological instincts Ego:Mediates instincts with societal rules Superego: Internalizes rules

Anxiety

• Anxiety is fear, dread, and uneasiness
• Reality: fear of real events.
• Neurotic: basic fear of the Id
• Moral: shame from breaking moral code.

Defense Mechanisms (Freud)

• Projection: Attributing unacceptable traits to someone else
• Distortion: Misinterpreting the environment to fit desires.
• Identification: Adopting behavior from someone of power
• Intellectualization: Avoiding feelings with reason and logic
• Regression: Reverting to an earlier developmental stage

Types of Defense Mechanisms Cont.

• Sublimation: Substituting impulses with healthier alternatives
• Dissociation: Disconnecting from thoughts and identity
• Displacement: Taking out feelings on a less threatening target.

Adler's Inferiority/Superiority Complex

• The Individual Psychology by Alred Adler

• striving for superiority (becoming a better version of self)

• inferiority feelings are inescapable

• Compensation:We form strategies to strive for higher development.

• Inferiority complex: feeling not as good as others

Birth Order, According to Adler

Family Constellation Structure:

• Describe members' places system
• Parents children & any extended Family members -How the first child's attention affects family -The child defines other family members and how self is same as or different to them
• Position affected by whom the child aligns with.

Types on Position

• Only Child- never cooperates
• Oldest- attention all for them
• Second born- Sees first as more favorable
• Middle children- Seen as caught between oldest or most babied
• Youngest- overindulged and babied

Behaviorism Theory- Watson

• Focused on overt behavior
• Argued to be a science we have to focus on tangible
• "Little Albert" experiment
• Watson believed personality shaped by environment NOT hereditary

Behaviorism

• Psychology based on trained + changed behavior
• Founded by Jon B Watson
• Conditioning through interaction

Skinner

• March 20, 1904 - August 18,1990
• Skinner is Best Known for developing theory of Behaviorism

Learning & Behaviorism

• Principle of Frequency States the more stimulus, the more response gets repeated

• Principle of Recency States that the more stimulus equals a repeated response.

Observation with the Albert Experiment,

• Positive and negative learning consistency in knowledge
• Albert shows that stimulus affects reaction

Elements of Classification

Neutral stimulus - ex noise

• Stimulus- loud or unexpected

Operant Conditioning

• To understand behavior- look at consequences to their actions It's called operant conditioning, with terms of renforcement

###Types

• Neutral,reinforcers & punishers

Types Of Stimulus

• Neutral- Neither increases probability of repeated behavior.
• Reinforces - increase probability of repeated behavior & can be either positive or negative
• Punishers- Weaken chances, weakens behavior

Reinforcement

• Positive shows they'll likely press for the lever to get it again. Ensure they'd act again and again. Positive- Get teacher reward - likely you will do again

More Skinner

• He removed a negative reinforcement(shocking grid), to strengthen behavior
• Negative- Removal of an adverse - 'rewarding'

Classical conditioning

• Neutral,stimulus and response.

Modeling Behavior

• Modeling others' action w/o punishment.
• Known as Modeling & social learning

Bandura-

• Cannot account 4-all, direct stimulus cannot account.
• Bandura- Cannot account 4-all, direct stimulus cannot account.

Bobo doll experiment

• Test if youth could mirror behavior of adult through Bobo"" clown- showed if test mirrors adult or not.
• Bandura concluded mirror, observe and model.
• Bandura- See bad things punish-will not.

BANDAURA

• Mind can reflect

Classical,

• learning = force on environment.
• Bandura :Mind works, does not need punishment to still work