Lesson 2: The Self According To Philosophy PDF

Lesson 2: The Self According To Philosophy Philosophy Philosophy is defined as the study of knowledge or wisdom from its Greek roots, philo (love) and sophia (wisdom). This field is also considered as “The Queen of All Sciences” because every scientific discipline has philosophical foundations. V...

Lesson 2: The Self According To Philosophy Philosophy Philosophy is defined as the study of knowledge or wisdom from its Greek roots, philo (love) and sophia (wisdom). This field is also considered as “The Queen of All Sciences” because every scientific discipline has philosophical foundations. Various thinkers for centuries tried to explain the natural causes of everything that exist specifically the inquiry on the self preoccupied these philosophers in the history. The Greek philosophers were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away from them in attempting to understand reality by exercising the art of questioning that satisfies their curiosity, including the questions about self. Socrates Pre-Socratics, group of early Greek philosophers, most of whom were born before Socrates, whose attention to questions about the origin and nature of the physical world has led to their being called cosmologists or naturalists. Unlike the Pre-Socratics, Socrates was more concerned with another subject, the problem of the self. He was the first philosopher who ever engaged in systematic questioning about the self. To Socrates, and this has become his life-long mission, the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself. “The Unexamined life is not worth living.” Socratic Method - the method of inquiry and instruction consisting of a series of questionings the object of which is to elicit a clear and consistent expression of something supposed to be implicitly known by all rational beings. According to Socrates, self is dichotomous which means composed of two things: The physical realm or the one that is changeable, temporal, and imperfect. The best example of the physical realm is the physical world. The ideal realm is the one that is imperfect and unchanging, eternal, and immortal. This includes the intellectual essences of the universe like the concept of beauty, truth, and goodness. Moreover, the ideal realm is also present in the physical world. One may define someone as beautiful or truthful, but their definition is limited and imperfect for it is always relative and subjective. For Socrates, a human is composed of body and soul, the first belongs to the physical realm because it changed, it is imperfect, and it dies, and the latter belongs to ideal realm for it survives the death. The self, according to Socrates is the immortal and unified entity that is consistent over time. For example, a human being remains the same person during their childhood to adulthood given the fact that they undergone developmental changes throughout their lifespan. Plato Three components of the soul: The Reason enables human to think deeply, make wise choices and achieve a true understanding of eternal truths. Plato also called this as divine essence. The Appetite is the basic biological needs of human being such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire. And the Spirit is the basic emotions of human being such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness and empathy. These three elements of the self works in every individual inconsistently. According to Plato, it is always the responsibility of the reason to organize, control, and reestablish harmonious relationship between these three elements. Rene Descartes A French philosopher, mathematician, and considered the Father of Modern Philosophy. Descartes, famous principle the “cogito, ergo sum “I think, therefore I am” established his philosophical views on “true knowledge” and concept of self. He explained that in order to gain true knowledge, one must doubt everything even own existence. Doubting makes someone aware that they are thinking being thus, they exist. The essence of self is being a thinking thing. The self is a dynamic entity that engages in mental operations – thinking, reasoning, and perceiving processes. In addition to this, self-identity is dependent on the awareness in engaging with those mental operations. The Self then for Descartes is also a combination of two distinct entities, the cogito, the thing that thinks, which is the mind, and the extenza or extension of the mind which is the body. The body is nothing else but a machine that is attached to the mind. The human person has it but it is not what makes man a man. If at all, that is the mind. St. Augustine He is considered as the last of the great ancient philosophers whose ideas were greatly Platonic. In melding philosophy and religious beliefs together, Augustine has been characterized as Christianity’s first theologian. He concluded, “That the body is united with the soul, so that man may be entire and complete, is a fact we recognize on the evidence of our own nature.” According to St. Augustine, the human nature is composed of two realms: 1. God as the source of all reality and truth. Through mystical experience, man is capable of knowing eternal truths. This is made possible through the existence of the one eternal truth which is God. He further added that without God as the source of all truth, man could never understand eternal truth. This relationship with God means that those who know most about God will come closest to understanding the true nature of the world. 2. The sinfulness of man. The cause of sin or evil is an act of mans’ freewill. Moral goodness can only be achieved through the grace of God. He also stated that real happiness can only be found in God. For God is love and he created humans for them to also love. Problems arise because of the objects humans choose to love. Disordered love results when man loves the wrong things which he believes will give him happiness.  John Locke An English philosopher and physician and famous in his concept of “Tabula Rasa” or Blank Slate that assumes the nurture side of human development. Tabula Rasa - the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions. The self, according to Locke is consciousness. In his essay entitled On Personal Identity (from his most famous work, Essay Concerning Human Understanding) he discussed the reflective analysis of how an individual may experience the self in everyday living. He provided the following key points: 1.) To discover the nature of personal identity, it is important to find out what it means to be a person. 2. ) A person is a thinking, intelligent being who has the abilities to reason and to reflect. 3.) A person is also someone who considers themself to be the same thing in different times and different places. 4.) Consciousness as being aware that we are thinking — always accompanies thinking and is an essential part of the thinking process. 5.) Consciousness makes possible our belief that we are the same identity in different times and different places. The bottom line of his theory on self is that self is not tied to any particular body or substance. It only exists in other times and places because of the memory of those experiences. According to Freud, there are two kinds of instinct that drive individual behavior – the eros or the life instinct and the thanatos of the death instinct. The energy of eros is called libido and includes urges necessary for individual and species survival like thirst, hunger, and sex. In cases that human behavior is directed towards destruction in the form of aggression and violence, such are the manifestations of thanatos. Patricia Churchland claimed that man’s brain is responsible for the identity known as self. The biochemical properties of the brain according to this philosophy of neuroscience is really responsible for man’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Paul Churchland is one of the many philosophers and psychologists that viewed the self from a materialistic point of view, contending that in the final analysis mental states are identical with, reducible to, or explainable in terms of physical brain states. Being an eliminative materialist, he believes that there is a need to develop a new vocabulary and conceptual framework that is grounded in neuroscience. This new framework will be a more accurate reflection of the human mind and self. Eliminative materialism opposes that people’s common sense understanding of the mind is false and that most of the mental states that people subscribe to, in turn, do not actually exist, this idea also applies on the understanding of behavior and emotions. Phineas Gage