Welcome to the Asynchronous class

A. Activity
Try to know more about yourself by answering the following questions in the
boxes provided:
1. Aside from your name, age, address, physical attributes, and interests,
how would you characterize yourself?
2. Reflecting on your younger years, how did yourself develop?
3. How is yourself related to others, and what makes it different from
others?
4. What do you think is the connection of your “self” to your physical
body?
5. Do you think a separate “self” exists after death? What do you think
happens to this entity?
From the above activity, were you able to know more about yourself as well
as the concept of “self”?
If we at least understand ourselves and others, what can we do with such
knowledge?
The question “Who am I” had been asked since the time of the philosophers.
Here’s how the philosophers view the self.
Socrates (489-399 BCE)
Background information
• Ancient Greek philosopher, scholar, teacher
• Main source of the Western thought
• Known for Socratic Method (Q & A)
• This method laid the groundwork for Western Systems of logic and
philosophy
• The ultimate wisdom comes from knowing oneself
• The more the person knows, the greater is his ability to reason and
make choices that will bring true happiness
• He pointed out that human choice was motivated by the desire for
happiness
• He was condemned to death
 • He described death as a release of the soul from the body

His concept of Self

• He provided a change of perspective by focusing on the self
• His life and ideas showed how he applied systematic questioning of the
self
• He believed that it is the duty of a philosopher to know oneself
• He saw a person as dualistic – composed of body and soul
- there is an imperfect and impermanent aspect in us - the physical
body
- there is the perfect and permanent – the soul
Plato (428-347 BCE)
Background information
• Athenian philosopher, known for his dialogues
• A student of Socrates
• One of the most important figure of Ancient Greek world and the entire
history of the 5th Century of Western thought
• Later he taught Aristotle
• He founded the Academy –an academic program considered to be the
first Western University
• He envisioned a civilization governed not by lowly appetite but by the
pure wisdom of a philosopher – king
His concept of self
 Further expounded on the idea of the soul and the spirited soul
- appetitive soul – responsible for the desires cravings of a person
- rational soul – is the thinking, reasoning, and judging aspect
- spiritual soul – 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, he emphasized that all three parts of the soul
must work harmoniously to attain justice and virtue on a person
 • The rational soul must be well-developed and in-charge
- the emotions from the spiritual self are checked
- the desires of the appetitive must be controlled and focused to
those that give life, like eating, drinking, and sleeping among others.
St. Augustine (354- 430 CE)
Background information
• One of the most influential theologian in Western Christians
• He was not a catholic and known for spiritual skepticisn
• He lived worldly vices
• Through the prayers of his mother, St. Monica, he was converted to
catholic beliefs and became a theologian
• One of the most significant Christian thinkers
His concept of Self
• He also believed 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, this must die for the soul to reach the
eternal realm
• This communion of the soul with God can only be attained if the body
lives in this world with virtue
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
(day-kart)
Background information
• French philosopher. Scientist. Mathematician
• Known for Cartesian coordinate system
• Formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism
• Regarded as the founder of modern philosophy
• He dismissed the apparent knowledge derived from authority, the
senses, and reason
 • Intuition
His concept of self
• He developed a metaphysical dualism that distinguishes the mind and
matter
MIND – the essence of which is thinking
MATTER- the essence of which is
• He claimed that the person is composed of the cognito 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
• 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
• A thinking thing is a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies,
wills, refuses; that imagines and perceives
• He concluded that the only thing that a person cannot doubt is the
existence of his or her “self”
• “I think, therefore, I am”
Enlightenment Era
• A European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18 centuries
• Ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized
into a worldview
• Central to Enlightenment thought were the use of reason, the power by
which humans understand the universe and improve own condition
• The goal of rational humanity were knowledge, freedom, and
happiness
John Locke (1632-1704)
Background information
• laid most of the ground work for the Enlightenment Era
• Made central contribution to the development of liberalism
• Trained in medicine, he was a key advocate of the empirical
approaches of the scientific revolution
 • An English philosopher, political theorist, and physician
• His work as a physician provided him with an idea that deviated from
the duality of the body and soul
His concept of self
• A person’s mind is a blank slate or tabula rasa at birth
• It is through experiences that this blank slate is filled, and personal
identity or “self” is formed
• This self cannot be found in the soul or in the body but one’s
consciousness
• Note: consciousness is not the brain itself; it is something that goes
beyond the brain
David Hume (1711-1776)
Background information
• Scottish philosopher
• Believes that one can know only what comes from the senses and
experiences
• Held that passion rather than reason governs human behavior
• He said that reason is only to be the slave of passion
Concept of Self
• He argued that there is no permanent self
• He argued that there is no self beyond what can be experienced
• The /self is “bundle or collection of different perceptions, which
succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a
perpetual flux and movement”
• The self is the combination of the experiences of the person
• These experiences can be categorized into impressions and ideas
- impressions are real or actual experiences
- ideas are copies of impression or representations of the world and
sensations like love, faith
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Background information
 • A German philosopher
• One of the most influential philosophers in Western Philosophy
• Contributed to the fields of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics
•
• His comprehensive and systematic work in epistemology (the theory of
thought, ethics, and aesthetics) greatly influenced all subsequent
philosophy
• One of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment and arguably one of
the greatest philosophers of all time
• He is a rationalist who thinks that reason is the foundation of
knowledge
Concept of Self
• While everything starts with sensation and impressions, he believes
that there must be something in us that organizes these sensations to
create knowledge and ideas
• It is the self that organizes and synthesizes our experiences
• It is something that transcends or is above even our consciousness
Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976)
Background information
• British philosopher
• Considered a modern classic
• “The Concept of the Mind” is the best known and important work of
Ryle
• He challenges the distinction between body and mind as delineated by
Rene Descartes
• To him, mind is a philosophical illusion
Concept of Self
• he proposed that we should focus on the observable behavior of the
person in defining the “self”
• he 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.”
Maurice Jean Merlou-Ponty (1908-1961
• French philosopher
• A leading French existentialist and phenomenologist

• Perception plays a foundational role in the human experience of the

world we live in
• He emphasized that the body is the primary site of knowing the world
• He maintained that the perceiving body and the perceived world could
not be disentangled from each other
• He stated 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 the person
Paul Churchland (1942-)
• Canadian philosopher
• He claims that our common sense understanding of psychological
states and processes is deeply mistaken
• He claims that the old terms we use to describe the mind are outdated,
if not mere “folk psychology”
• He further utilized knowledge from other academic and research fields
to talk about the self and the mind
• He proposed the use of “eliminative materialism” or eliminativism,”
• Thus, the need to use more accurate and scientifically proven terms,
especially based on neuroscience research
• He argued that the self is located in the brain, and that the actions of
the mind or the self are processes of the brain
Assignment (to be submitted next meeting)
Read the poem Invictus and answer the questions briefly:
1. Research about the background or an interpretation of the poem. Cite
your source(s).
2. In your own perspective, how was the “self” represented in the poem?
3. Based on your reading of the poem as well as the information you have
researched, which of the philosophical ideas discussed in this lesson best
describes the representation of idea about the self in this poem? Provide a
brief explanation.
4. From the discussions, what now is your idea about the “self”?

INVICTUS
Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced or cried aloud
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My body is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate

How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.