Philosophical Perspectives on the Self NOTES PDF

Philosophical Perspectives on the Self As a broad field about knowledge, thinking, reasoning, nature, as well as how we should live, among others, it is almost inevitable that the study of philosophy would lead for the philosophers to reflect on themselves and ask, "Who am I? What char...

Philosophical Perspectives on the Self As a broad field about knowledge, thinking, reasoning, nature, as well as how we should live, among others, it is almost inevitable that the study of philosophy would lead for the philosophers to reflect on themselves and ask, "Who am I? What characterizes this self that I say I am?" Here are several philosophers and their ideas that we can also reflect on. Greek thinkers prior to Socrates, like Thales, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus, among others, focused on the composition and processes of the world around them. Unsatisfied with mere mythological and supernatural explanations, these so-called Pre-Socratic philosophers turned to observation, documentation, and reasoning. SOCRATES Socrates (469-399 BCE) provided a change of perspective by focusing on the self. His life and ideas, documented by his students, the historian Xenophon and the philosopher Plato, showed how Socrates applied systematic questioning of the self. Socrates believed that it is the duty of the philosopher to know oneself. To live without Socrates and Plato knowing who you are and what virtues you can attain is the worst that can happen to a person. Thus, he noted that an "unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates saw a person as dualistic, that is, every person is composed of body and soul. There is an imperfect and impermanent aspect of every one of us, which is our physical body, and then, there is also the perfect and permanent, which is our soul. PLATO Plato (428-347 BCE) further expounded on the idea of the soul by stating that it has three parts or components: the appetitive soul, the rational soul, and the spirited soul. The appetitive soul is the one responsible for the desires and cravings of a person; the rational soul is the thinking, reasoning, and judging aspect; and the spirited soul is accountable for emotions and also makes sure that the rules of reason is followed in order to attain victory and/or honor. In his work The Republic, Plato emphasized that all three parts of the soul must work harmoniously to attain justice and virtue in a person. The rational soul must be well- developed and in-charge, the emotions from the spirited soul are checked and the desires of the appetitive must be controlled and focused to those that give life like eating drinking and sleeping among others ST. AUGUSTINE St. Augustine (354-430 CE) is considered as one of the most significant Christian thinkers, especially in the development of the Latin Christianity theology. His idea of the "self" merged that of Plato and the then new Christian perspective, which led him to believe in the duality of a person. He believes that there is this imperfect part of us, which is connected with the world and yearns to be with the divine, and there is a part of us that is not bound by this world and can therefore attain immortality. The imperfection of the body incapacitates it from thriving in the spiritual communion with God, thus, it must die for the soul to reach the eternal realm. However, this communion of the soul with God can only be attained if the body lives in this world with virtue. RENE DESCARTES René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. He claimed that the person is composed of the cogito or the mind, and the extenza or the body, which is the extension of the mind. He argues that a person should only believe the things that can pass the test of doubt (Descartes 2008). In his "Discourse on the Method" and "Meditations on First Philosophy," he therefore concluded that the only thing that a person cannot doubt is the existence of his or her "self." Because even doubt about the self proves that there is a thinking or doubting self. Thus, his famous quote "cogito ergo sum." What makes a person a person is therefore the mind, and the body is just some kind of a machine that is attached and controlled by it. In his words, "But what then, am 1? A thinking thing. It has been said. But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands (conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and perceives" (Descartes 2008). JOHN LOCKE Locke (1632-1704) was an English philosopher, political theorist, and physician. His works as a physician provided him with an idea that deviated from the duality of the body or soul. A person's mind is a blank slate or tabula rasa at birth. It is through experiences that this blank slate is filled, and a personal identity or "self" is formed. This "self" cannot be found in the soul nor the body but in one's consciousness (Nimbalkar 2011). Note, however, that the consciousness is not the brain itself. It is something that goes beyond the brain and thus, for Locke, the consciousness and the "self" that comes with it can be transferred from one person or body to another (Nimbalkar 2011). DAVID HUME Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish philosopher and an empiricist who believes that all concepts as well as knowledge come from the senses and experiences. Based on such perspective, he argued that there is no self beyond what can be experienced. We do not know others because we have seen or touched their souls; we know them because of what we can actually observe. The "self," according to Hume, is "a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement" (Hume and Steinberg 1992). Simply, the self is a combination of experiences of a person. We can categorize these experiences into impressions and ideas. Impressions are real or actual experiences or sensations, like feeling the rough edges of a stone or tasting a sweet ice cream. Ideas are copies of impressions or representation of the world and sensations, like love, faith, or even an association that this certain event is caused by something in the past could possibly create another reaction in the future. IMMANUEL KANT One of the most influential philosophers in Western philosophy, Kant (1724-1804) contributed to the fields of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics among others. While everything starts with sensations and impressions, Kant believes that there must necessarily be something in us that organizes these sensations to create knowledge and ideas. Against the empiricist Locke, Kant is a rationalist who thinks that reason, not mere experience, is the foundation of knowledge. It is like seeing a visual effect in television, your experience say it is there, but reason says it is only a computer-generated Immanuel Kant image. For Kant, it is the self that organizes and synthesizes our experiences into something meaningful for us. It can do such thing because it is independent from sensory experiences. It is something that transcends or is above even our consciousness. GILBERT RYLE A British philosopher mainly associated with the Ordinary Language Philosophy Movement, Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) proposed that we should instead focus on the observable behavior of a person in defining the "self”. One of the things that the duality approach seems to state is that there can be a private, unobservable aspect of person and a different public and observable part. One can describe one's "self" as good but do otherwise in real life. Ryle do not adhere to this idea and sees the self as an entirety of thoughts, emotions, and actions of a person that relates to observable behavior. We get to know others by observing their behavior and inferring about their "selves." We can apply the same observation and reflection on ourselves. MAURICE JEAN MERLEAU-PONTY Maurice Jean Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), a leading French existentialist and phenomenologist, also contributes to the idea by stating that mind and body are interconnected with each other and therefore cannot be separated. Our body is our connection to the external world, including other people, thus all experiences are embodied. This also includes the thoughts and emotions of a person. PAUL CHURCHLAND More recent philosophers, like Paul Churchland (1942-) further utilized knowledge from other academic and research fields to talk about the self as well as the mind. He was one of those who proposed the use of "eliminative materialism" or "eliminativism," which claims that the old terms we use to describe the mind are outdated, if not mere "folk psychology," thus the need to use more accurate and scientifically proven terms, especially based on neuroscience research. Neuroscience somehow shows a connection of what we call mental states to that of the physical activities of the brain. It can be argued therefore that the self is actually located in the brain, and that the actions of the mind or the self-are processes of the brain. The dual perspective of the "self" continues to exist, perhaps because our brains are programmed to think of dualities. Our religious beliefs that of a mortal body and an immortal soul, also affects such continuity. However, new ideas from other academic fields as well as findings from technological advances are being considered and incorporated in this debate and the discovery of the self. Being open to such new ideas may help us know more about our own "self."