Understanding The Self (PD101) - PRELIM TOPICS PDF

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF (PD101) PRELIM TOPICS Prepared by: Harley Queen B. Uy, LPT ACTIVITY NO. 1  Pretend that you are a fresh graduate ready to enter the real world of the labor force. While looking at the Classified Ads, you came across the advertisement of your dream company, h...

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF (PD101) PRELIM TOPICS Prepared by: Harley Queen B. Uy, LPT ACTIVITY NO. 1  Pretend that you are a fresh graduate ready to enter the real world of the labor force. While looking at the Classified Ads, you came across the advertisement of your dream company, hiring a qualified candidate who can genuinely take the role and contribute to the advancement of the company. Then, you sent your resume for evaluation and surprisingly, you got a phone call from the HR Department asking you to come in for an interview. How are you going to sell yourself to get hired? What characteristics about yourself are you going to say to the Interviewer? Write as many descriptions as you can to define yourself. Use the space provided below and answer the questions that follow. 1. How do you feel about choosing the best descriptions about yourself? 2. Why do you think you feel that way? 3. Do you really know yourself? 4. Do you want to know yourself?  LESSON 1 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SELF OBJECTIVES: Define the Self based on the Philosophical perspective; Recognize the similarities and differences of self conceptualization according to the point of view of philosophy; Evaluate one’s concept of the ‘self’ as compared to its philosophical perspectives. This lessons explores the philosophies of the self, which breaks into several key theories about human existence that have been a heated debate throughout history and are still being argued about up until now. In an effort to answer the countless inquiries about the self, the greatest thinkers, known as the Philosophers, have immersed themselves in search for knowledge about the nature of being human. Questions like: “What does it mean to be a person?” “Who am I?” “Do I really matter?” “How do I know that I will continue to be me in the future?” PHILOSOPHERS SOCRATES Most of his accounts come from people’s writings long after his death. He was born in Athens around 469 B.C. Stone mason and served in the Athenian army His ideas earned him many followers in Athens. He was brought to trial in 399 B.C. under charges of corrupting the youth of the city. Found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock poison. Considered by the Athenian city- state as “dangerous” What was Socrates’ philosophy? An EXAMINER – a QUESTIONER Constantly looks for the imperfections in the ideas of others, which is actually the heart of his philosophy. Highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others. Establishing a higher standard of truth, which must be logically consistent and not contradicting itself. Socrates asserts that one should examine more closely the things we call ‘TRUE,’ considering that there are vast concepts that are not easily defined. To Socrates, man has to look at himself to understand his long-standing mission, to “KNOW YOURSELF.” For him, “an unexamined life is not worth living” Basically the most horrible thing that can happen to anybody is to “live but die inside” Therefore, to preserve our souls for the afterlife, we must be fully aware of who we are and the virtues that come with its attainment. He believed that individual’s personhood is composed of the BODY and SOUL. The SOUL for him, is IMMORTAL. For this, he insisted that the death is not the end of existence. Rather, it simply a separation of the soul and from the body. Socrates also raised the point that just because something seems true does not mean it is true. Socrates made a distinction between knowledge and belief. The former being always and universally true while the latter is only true in certain circumstances. What made Socrates a menace was the fact that even matters of faith fall short of his standard of truth since every religion in the world is full of contradictions. By undermining religion, Socrates is essentially questioning the foundation of his society. So the Athenians made the worst decision they could have made —they took him and turned him into a martyr. PLATO Socrates’ student, got mad at the plight of his master, enough to write tons of books about him, making sure that his dangerous ideas lived on. Plato sustained the idea that man is composed of a dual nature of body and soul. Plato believed that the soul is immortal and separated from the body. However, he took it to a higher level, claiming that the soul is eternal. According to Plato, the soul does not exist with the body. Instead, it exists prior to being joined to the body. Resembling the idea of reincarnation, Plato ascertained that the soul lives within a body and upon death, the soul moves onto another body afterwards. Building on this belief, Plato called the body the prison of the soul. In his dialogue, “The Republic” (Santas, 2010), Plato argued that the human soul or the psyche is divided into three parts labelled as appetitive, spirited, and rational. For justice in the human person to be attained, these parts of the soul should be in tune with one another. Imagine this, there are three things in front of you: a moist, warm piece of chocolate cake, a slice of your self-baked but half- burnt pie, and your favorite fruit. Which one would you end up selecting to eat? Plato’s theory tells us that if we are left with our own instincts to decide what is good for us, then we are most likely to choose based on our desires (appetitive soul) to satisfy our needs in ways that are easier and more likeable for all of us. We are also likely to choose based on our mood or emotions (spirited soul) that have to be kept in control at all times to prevent causing us problems. We also choose based on logic and intellect (rational soul), choosing the healthy one for us. When these three work in with each other, then the tendency to be enslaved by our own false opinions is lesser and the human soul becomes just and virtuous through our capability of making rational decisions, capable of breaking free of opinions, scrutinizing misleading sensory perceptions and discovering true knowledge (Shoefield, 2006). ST. AUGUSTINE Like Socrates, he also asserted that the soul is immortal. He believed that the soul AND the body make up a human. He does not believe that the soul jumps from one body to another. Instead, one person is made up of one body and one soul. Augustine’s view of the human person states that the body is that imperfect aspect of man that is bound to perish on earth, which incessantly longs to be in communion with the spiritual realm of the Divine God. The soul, on the other hand, is “capable of reaching immortality by staying after death in an eternal realm with the all- transcendent God. The purpose, therefore, of every human person is to attain this spiritual union with God by living his life according to virtues. Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, in his theory of self-knowledge, claimed that all our experiences about the world around us determine our self-knowledge. He argues that our experiences greatly shape our awareness of ourselves — the more experience we have, the more we get to know ourselves. Answering the question, ’Who am I?’ can only be unraveled from the inside by me, the one asking the question. Such question can be resolved by reasoning taken from life encounters as evidences. For Aquinas, our being is not composed of isolated minds or selves, rather, we are agents interacting with the environment. Note that answering the said question requires becoming more aware of ourselves as we engage with real-life experiences. This is Aquinas’ deeper sense of self - having a strong sense of self and self-esteem is about knowing and embracing who you truly are, independent of external influences or the need for validation from others. Rene Descartes Rene Descartes is known to be the “Father of Modern Philosophy” and one of the most famous dualistic thinkers of all time. Dualism is the concept that reality or existence is divided into two parts: the mind and the physical body. According to dualism, the mind is somehow separate from the physical attributes of the body. The body is nothing but a part attached to the mind, while the mind is part of the unseen creation. Literally speaking, if a human skull is opened-up, one can use his senses to find out something about the human brain, but can never find anything about the mind. Descartes asserted that one cannot rely on his senses because they are sometimes misleading. He further believed that the mind is the seat of consciousness. Because it houses our drives, intellect, passion and understanding, it gives us our identity and our sense of self. In short, all that we really are comes from the mind. As Descartes puts it, “I THINK, THEREFORE I AM” (“Cogito, ergo, sum” in Latin). He argued that the only thing that cannot be doubted is the existence of the self, as man himself was the one doing the doubting in the first place. One thing should be clear by now, we exist, because we think; we think, therefore we exist. In the second meditation, he explored on the idea that he is “nothing but a THINKING THING that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing to, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions.” JOHN LOCKE Identity has been defined in so many ways but for philosophers, identity means being one thing and not another. It is what makes you “you” and me “me”. John Locke believed that our identity is tied with our consciousness, which to him, is the perception of what passes in a man's In other words, it comprises our memories.  Was there ever a time that you asked yourself, “Am I still the person I once was?”  To answer this, Locke used his principle of individuation, the idea that a person keeps the same identity over time. For instance, would we be a different person if we lost an arm or a leg?  Locke’s answer was simple: Of course, not! To Locke, our identity is not defined by our physical being. Whether we grow taller, lose hair, go blind or get a face lift, our memories are still the same. Therefore, Locke simply tells us that our memories give us our identity. DAVID HUME  David Hume is known for his lack of self theory. He held to empiricism, the theory that all knowledge is derived from human senses. Basically, he believes that it is only through our physical experiences using our sense of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell that we know what we know.  To understand his lack of self beliefs, Hume made a clear distinction between impressions (everything that originate from our senses) and ideas (which are just faint images of thinking and reasoning based on impressions) in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).  For instance, our sense of touch tells us that a sea urchin is spiny and therefore, sharp (Impression). This is an impression and is wild because it is a product of our direct experience with the world. From this impression, we form the idea that it is dangerous to the touch(Ideas). The concept of ‘dangerous’ is difficult to define completely since it cannot be seen, touched or tasted — it is just an idea. Hume also argued that these impressions are the changing shifting elements of our existence and because of this, our personal identity cannot persist through time. In short, we perceive a sense of self depending on how our mind put impressions together and makes sense of them as ’me.’ To Hume, the idea of the self that we make is a bunch of physical impressions. He argued in his bundle theory, the assertion that the properties we can sense are the only real parts of an object. If an orange fruit is round and orange in color, the theory holds that if we remove all the properties of an orange, the idea of the orange vanishes and we are left with nothing. In the same manner, Hume emphasized that if a human is stripped off of all his/her physical properties, the idea of the human also disappears. Therefore, our sense of self is simply a combination of all the impressions that we have, that, once removed, leave us with a complete lack of self. IMMANUEL KANT Several philosophers during Immanuel Kant's time take into account empiricism as the only path to true knowledge, which asserts that knowledge is only attained through the senses. In other words, ’To see is to believe!’ Hence, if something cannot be seen, tasted, touched, heard, or physically experienced, it might as well be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! Then again, many of Kant's supporters advocated rationalism, a theory which states that reason is the foundation of all knowledge, rather than experience. Say for example, while watching a 3D movie, your eyes tell you that a dinosaur is about to jump out of a screen. However, your rational mind lets you know that it is not! Therefore, seeing is not believing — reasoning is! In the middle of this heated debate on self-knowledge and perception between empiricism vs. rationalism was Kant, who believed that we all have an inner and an outer self which together, form our consciousness. The inner self is comprised of our psychological state and our rational intellect. The outer self includes our sense and the physical world. To Kant, both of these theories are incomplete when it comes to the self. When speaking of the inner self, there is apperception, which is how we mentally assimilate a new idea into old ones. Basically, it is how we make sense of new things. Consider Person A to be the owner of a 180-lb. dog. For him, his dog is huge so whenever he meets an 80- lb. dog (or any other weight less than his dog’s, for that matter), he does not consider it to be big. On the other hand, to a person who spends all day with a small breed dog like a Chihuahua, the same 80- lb dog would seem immense. With this, Person A’s rational thoughts on ‘big’ are based on the already formed apperception of his big dog, while the other person’s is based on undersized canines. According to Kant, neither is right nor wrong — the idea of ‘big’ is just based on internal reasoning that cannot be experienced through senses. As a fragment of the outer self, Kant argued about a mental imagery based on past sensations and experiences called representation, which occurs through our senses. Let us say that you are a person who is not into cold places. You have never been to Alaska but based on the photos you found online and your personal experiences with snow even in other places in the past, you already have imagined what Alaska would feel like. Gilbert Ryle While many philosophers support, “I think, therefore I am,” Gilbert Ryle in a way said, “I act, therefore I am!” Ryle unravels the separation between the mind and the body by claiming that it is our behaviors and actions that give us our sense of self. In other words, we are all just a bundle of behaviors that if someone thinks she is beautiful, it is because she acts beautifully. If someone thinks he is intelligent, it is because he acts intelligently. Ryle tells us that those who think that the mind exists separately from the body are committing a category mistake, an error in logic in which one category of something is presented as belonging to another category (Hofstadter, 1951). This concept is best explained below: “One day a girl visited a college campus. After seeing the buildings, teachers, students, and dorms, she looked at the tour guide and sweetly asked, ‘This is all nice, but when do I get to see the university?' With this question, the girl committed a category mistake. Rather than realizing everything she saw made up the university, she thought it existed as a separate category.” To Ryle, the idea that “there is something called ‘mind’ over and above a person’s behavioral dispositions” is questionable. He argued that the mind does not exist and therefore cannot be the seat of self. In other words, we neither get our sense of self from the mind nor from the body, but from our behaviors in our day-to-day activities. PAUL CHURCHLAND When it comes to discussing the mind, many Western philosophers held to dualism, which asserts that the mind and the body are separate. In other words, we all have a physical brain, but we also have a separate mind. Because the mind is the seat of our consciousness, it is what gives us our identity. But Paul Churchland, a modern-day philosopher, believed otherwise. Instead of dualism, he holds to the belief that the physical brain is where we get our sense of self. This is known as eliminative materialism, the belief that nothing but matter exists (Churchland, 1981). In short, if it cannot be recognized by our senses, then it is simply a fairy tale. Therefore, since the mind cannot be experienced by our senses, then it does not really exist. For him, it is the physical brain and not the imaginary mind that gives us our sense of self. To prove this, Churchland points out that if the mind is the seat of the self, how can personalities be altered by physical injuries or brain trauma? Using this argument, he claims that the physical brain is the origin of the ‘self’ and that the belief in the mind is rather unnecessary. MERLEAU-PONTY Maurice Merleau-Ponty believed the physical body to be an important part of what makes up the subjective self (Carbone, 2004). Subjectivity, or subject is something that has being (Zahavi, 2005; Clark, 1997). It is defined as a real thing that can take real action and cause real effects. In short, it exists. However, he argued that this concept contradicts with rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism asserts that reason and mental perception, rather than physical senses and experience, are the basis of knowledge and self (Alloa, 2017). Merleau-Ponty believed that the mind is the seat of our consciousness (Barbaras, 2014). The body is just a shell and it is the subject behind what it means to be human. On the other hand, empiricism is the belief that our physical senses are our only source of knowledge. If the source of knowledge cannot be seen, touched, heard, tasted, etc., it really cannot be trusted. While the rationalists would say, ‘I think, therefore I am,” Empiricists would say, “I sense, therefore I am!.” Merleau-Ponty disagreed with these concepts. Rather than seeing and perceiving the mind and the body as two separate entities, Merleau-Ponty argued that they are interconnected. They both are our seat of knowledge, and they both give us our sense of self. Like love and marriage, you cannot have one without the other! In other words, the self and perception are encompassed in a physical body. The physical body is part of the self — the body is not a prison house of self, rather, it is the subject that embodies self.