A. Philosophy Unit 1 PDF

A. PHILOSOPHY UNIT 1 / THE SELF FROME VARIOUS PERSPECTIVE PHILOSOPHERS AND SELF ✲ SOCRATES ✲ AGUSTINE ➝ “Know thyself”...

A. PHILOSOPHY UNIT 1 / THE SELF FROME VARIOUS PERSPECTIVE PHILOSOPHERS AND SELF ✲ SOCRATES ✲ AGUSTINE ➝ “Know thyself” ➝ Believes that human person has ➝ Was very fascinated with the quest for knowing an imperfect aspect which desires to oneself. be with the same time consists with ➝ He believes that the unexamined life is not worth another one which aims to become of living, thus he questioned his self in in immortal. questioning the youth under his tutelage about ➝ Supported the idea of the unity of essential facts leading to self understanding. the body and soul ➝ The worst thing according to him is to die ➝ The body according to him dies uninformed about self, a virtue that is supposed to and the soul anticipate to live with be preserved in after-life soul. God. Thus a human person tries to ➝ “ Every person has body and soul that are live virtuous life on earth to attain imperfect and perfect respectively.” communion with God. ➝ To him, unless a person believes, he/she will not understand. ✲ PLATO ➝ A student of Socrates who claimed that the “self is the soul”. ✲ LOCKE ➝ He supported Socrates’ belief that “the soul is ➝ John Locke opposed the idea of something divine that lives with the body” innate knowledge, thus, he proposed ➝ He explains that the body is a vessel where souls that knowledge are simple ideas that stay. came from experiences using the ➝ He believes in reincarnation. senses. ➝ The latter should be nourished with virtues not ➝ He theorized that a child was born vices. with nothing, a tabula rasa or blank ➝ Every individual should devote slate and he/she may only know a his/her life to what is best fitted for him/her. certain thing if he/she experienced it. ➝ For Locke, “there is nothing in the mind except was first in the senses.” ✲ DESCARTES ➝ The self therefore, according to ➝ “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am”. Locke is made up of consciousness regards self as a thinking self. with the used of the senses. ➝ He believes that he is capable of thinking and since there is no more doubt in his thought about his self, he strongly contends that he exists. Unless ✲ HUME according to Descartes a person is no longer ➝ contends that all knowledge is doubting on something, then, it’s the truth. derived ➝ His Cartesian dualism on the other hand,point out from human senses, that is, a the existence of separate entities of self: the mind person may which is the seat of consciousness that doubts, only know about a thing through affirms, etc. and the body which has different personanal experiences. functions. ➝ He argued on the existence of innate ideas as he held that knowledge occurs through experience and those are not perceived tangibly, are just illusions.  ➝ To him, the self is an illusion, and there is no permanent self that continuous over time. ✲ RYLE ➝ The self (ego) according to Gilbert Ryle is best measured by a person’s ✲ KANT action. ➝ Immanuel Kant recognizes the importance of ➝ “ I act therefore I am” senses for he believes that all of our ➝ What we do is based on what the knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds to mind tells us. But the mind, is distinct understanding and ends with reason. from the body.It is not just a ghost in a ➝ There is however a mind that organizes all that machine. There is no such thing as have been sensed. non-physical self. ➝ He explained that a person has an inner self and outer self. ➝ The outer self are the experiences that a ✲ CHURCHLAND person get from his/her external world which ➝Noted for her neurophilosophy, are synthesized by inner self (mind). Patricia Churchland supports the idea that to understand the mind, we must understand the brain. ✲ FREUD ➝ She argues that common sense must ➝ “You may know me but you have no idea who I be revised in a physically am.” reductionistic way (in biological level) ➝ Sigmund Freud argues that the unconscious mind to understand more about the brain governs behaviour. function. ➝ Past experiences greatly shaped a person’s ➝ For her, mind does not exist; it’s just personal functioning. imaginary self but brain is essential ➝ He used the iceberg principle of personality which that could explain mental state and he considers as the three levels of the mind, and behaviour. these are the unconsciousness, preconscious (subconscious) and consciousness to describe a ✲ MERLEAU-PONTY person’s behaviour. ➝ “Truth does not inhabit only the inner ➝ What happened in the past are embedded in the man, man is in the world, and only in unconscious but has the possibility of getting into the the world does he know himself.” preconscious until it reach consciousness, especially ➝ To Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the when a similar experience occur. body is the primary contact with the ➝ He also formulated his Psychosexual Stages of world, as for him, we cannot totally Development wherein he identified specific changes perceived the world unless we have in the sexual parts of the body (mouth, anus, phallic, the experience of it, thus, the body is genital ) he called erogenous zones that corresponds essential. to an individual’s age/ developmental stage (from ➝ He combined physical body and infancy to early adulthood). experiences to compose the self. ➝ The manifestations of untoward or fixated adult behaviour according to Freud are the products of unsatisfied desire in any of those stages. ➝ So for him, the changes experienced by a person, be it sexual or social should be understood in its full context: unless you understand your past experiences, you cannot understand your present self.