Philosophical View of Self

Philosophy is often called as the mother of all disciplines simply because all fields of
study began as philosophical discourses. Philosophy is from the Greek words Philo- (loving) and
Sophia (knowledge, wisdom). At simplest, philosophy is means “loving knowledge” or “loving
wisdom”. The term philosophy as originally used by the Greeks meant, “The pursuit of
knowledge for its own sake.” Consequently, Philosophy is a study of fundamental nature,
knowledge, reality, existence, especially in an academic discipline. It also investigates the
legitimacy of concepts by rational arguments concerning their implications, relationships as well
as moral judgment and etc.
Ample of Philosophies concerns with the essential nature of the self. The philosophical
framework for understanding the self was first introduced by the ancient great Greek
philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned
myths and moved away from them to understand reality and respond to perennial questions of
curiosity, including the questions of the self. The different views of prominent philosophers
regarding the nature of the self are discussed; most of them agree the self-knowledge is a
prerequisite to a happy and meaningful life.

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE IN THE EXPLANATION OF SELF

SOCRATES
Socrates was a Greek philosopher. Though, unlike other philosophers during his time, he never
wrote anything. All the information’s about him today is through second-hand information from
his student Plato and historian Xenophon (The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017).

For Socrates the self is synonymous with the soul. He believes that every human possesses an
immortal soul that survives the physical body. Socrates is concerned with the problem of the
self. He is the one to first focus on the full power of reason on the human self: who we are, who
we should be, and who we will become. Socrates believed that the real self is not the physical
body, but rather the psyche (or soul).

Thus, Socrates suggests that man must live an examined life and a life of purpose and value. For
him, an individual can have a meaningful and happy life only if he becomes virtuous and knows
the value of himself that can be achieved through incessant soul-searching (Rappe, 1995). He
added that self-knowledge would open your eyes to your true nature; which is contrary to pop
culture. It is not about how many properties you own or how many “likes” you get in your social
media accounts and even how successful you are in chosen career. In a real sense, your real self
is not even your body. He added that the state of your inner being (soul/self) determines the
quality of your life. Socrates was described to have gone about in Athens questioning everyday
views and popular Athenian beliefs. This leads to some leaders got offended by him. He was
accused of lack or reverence for the gods and for corrupting the minds of the youth. At the age
of 70, he was sentenced to death through drinking a cup of poison hemlock (Brickhouse &
Smith, 2002).

The core of Socratic ethics is the concept of virtue and knowledge. Virtue is the basic and most
basic propensity of man and Self-knowledge is the source of all wisdom, an individual may gain
possession of oneself and be one’s own master through knowledge(The Standford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, 2017). The famous line of Socrates, “Know thy Self”, tells each man to bring his
inner self to light.

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Some Socratic ideas were:
 “The worst thing that can happen to anyone is to live but die inside.”
 “Every person is dualistic”
 “The true task of the philosopher is to know oneself.”
 Body + soul = Man
 Imperfect/permanent (body) + perfect & permanent (soul) = Individual

PLATO
Plato is another Greek Philosopher who elaborates Socrates’ concept of the soul. He was the
student of Socrates. He is best known for his Theory of Forms that asserted the physical world is
not really the “real” world because the ultimate reality exists beyond the physical world. His
philosophy can be explained as a process of self-knowledge and purification of the soul. He
introduces the idea of a three-part soul/self-reason, physical appetite, and spirit or passion. The
self/soul/mind according to Plato, is the best aspect of the human beings by which the FORMS
(ideas) are known.

 REASON is the divine essence that enables us to think deeply, make wise decisions and
achieve the true understanding of eternal truths.
 PHYSICAL APPETITE includes our biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desires.
 SPIRIT or PASSION composes the basic emotions like love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness,
and empathy.

ST. AGUSTINE
The African philosopher, Augustine, is regarded as a saint (St. Augustine of Hippo) in the
Catholic Church. He is one of the Latin Fathers of the church, one of the Doctors of the church,
and one of the most significant Christian thinkers (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2017).

He integrates the ideas of Plato and teachings of Christianity. He adopted Plato’s view that the
“self” is an immaterial (but rational) soul. Augustine believes that the physical body is radically
different form the inferior to its inhabitant, the immortal soul. Giving the Theory of Forms a
Christian perspective, Augustine asserted that these forms were concepts existing within the
perfect and eternal God (The Catholic University of America Press, 1982) where the soul
belonged. He believed that the human being was both a soul and body, and the body possessed
sense, such as imagination, memory, reason, and mind through which the soul experienced the
world.

In his work, Confessions, Augustine describes that humankind is created in the image and
likeness of God. Everything created by God is all good is good. Therefore, the human person,
being a creation of God is always geared towards the good.

St. Augustine highlighted the significance of reflection, as well as prayers and confessions to
arrive at justifications for the existence of God. He believed that both the soul and body is
meant to tend to higher, divine, and heavenly matters because of his/her capacity to ascent and
comprehend truths through the mind (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017;
Mendelson, 206). St. Augustine believes that a virtuous life is dynamism of love. It’s the
constant turning point towards life. Loving God means loving one’s fellowmen; and loving one’s
fellowmen denoted never doing any harm to another or as the golden rule of justice denoted,
doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love and justice as the foundation of
the individual self.

RENE DESCARTES

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The Latin phrase Cogito Ergo Sum – “I think therefore I am” is the keystone of Descartes’
concept of self. For him, the act of thinking about the self – of being self-conscious – I in it proof
that there is a self. He asserted that everything perceived by the senses could not be used as
proof of existence because human senses could be fooled.

Descartes’ claims about the “self” are:

 It is constant; it is not prone to change; and it is not affected by time.
 Only the immaterial soul remains the same throughout the time.
 The immaterial soul is the source of our identity.

Some distinctions between the soul and body as pointed out by Descartes are:

In particular, he introduces the idea of the thinking self (soul) as non-material, immortal,
conscious being, and independent of the physical laws of the universe. In contrast, the physical
body is a material mortal, non-thinking entity, fully governed by the physical laws of the nature.
On the other hand, each other, the body and the soul are independent of one another and each
can exist and function without the other.

JOHN LOCKE
John Locke is an English philosopher and physician. For Locke, the human mind at birth is Tabula
rasa or a blank slate. He expanded the definition of the “self” that includes the memories of
that thinking thing. He feels that the “self” or personal identity is basically constructed from the
experiences – like what people see, smell, taste, hear and feel. He also interpreted that to mean
the “self” - it must consist of memory; meaning the person existing today is the same person
yesterday (Natsoulas, 1994; Fuchs, 2017).

For Locke, the memories of a person provide the continuity of its experiences that allows
him/her to really identify himself as the same person over the time (Winkler, 1991). Since Locke
account that the person is the same “self” in the passing of time, therefore, he/she is
accountable for whatever behaviors he will act. Locke's denial of innate ideas put a premium on
individual effort, on the labor necessary to gain knowledge from experience (Tarcov, P. 83). Man
could be ruled and be free - man is endowed with natural rights such as life, liberty and
property (Cranston,, p. 12)

Some of John Locke’s ideas about the “self”:

 Believed that at birth human mind is a blank slate; a tabula rasa (empty of ideas)
 All ideas are based on sensation – arriving at explanation by observing phenomena.

DAVID HUME
Scottish Philosopher David Hume suggests that if people carefully examine their sense of
experience through the process of introspection, they will discover that there is no self.
According to him, what people experience is just bundle or collection of different perceptions
Monilla, M.J. & Ramirez, N. (2018). He was a fierce opponent of Descartes’ Rationalism.
Rationalism is a theory that reason, rather than experience, is the foundation of all knowledge.

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He was one of the figureheads of the influential British Empiricism movement. Empiricism is the
idea that the origin of all knowledge is experience (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017).

Hume is identified with the Bundle Theory wherein he described the “self” or person (which
Hume assumed to be “mind”) as a bundle or collection of different perceptions that are moving
in a very fast manner. He believed that the human intellect and experiences are limited;
therefore, it is impossible to attribute it to an independent persisting entity (i.e., soul) (Pike,
1967; Seigel, 2005).

Hume divided the mind’s perceptions into two groups:

1) Impressions - Perceptions that are the strongest. These are directly experienced; they result
from inward and outward sentiments.
2) Ideas - The less lively counterparts of impressions. These are mechanisms that copy and
reproduce sense data formulated based upon the previously perceived impressions.

For Hume, the “self” was nothing but a series of incoherent impressions received by the senses
(Montgomery, 1889). Hume compared the “self” to a nation; where a nation retains its “being a
nation “not by some single core of identity but by being composed of different, constantly
changing elements like people, systems, culture and beliefs. Hume did not believe in the
existence of the “self”. He insisted that your perceptions are only active for as long as your are
conscious. In line with this, Hume seemed to reduce the “self” as a light bulb that may be
switched on and off.

IMMANUEL KANT
For German philosopher Immanuel Kant, it is the self that makes experiencing an intelligible
world possible because it is the self that is actively organizing and synthesizing all of our
thoughts and perceptions (Monilla, M.J. & Ramirez, N. (2018). He also proposed that the human
mind creates the structure of human experience.

Kant’s view of the “self” is transcendental, which means the “self” is related to spiritual or
nonphysical realm. For Kant, the self is not in the body. The self is outside the body, and it does
not have qualities of the body. He proposed that it is knowledge that bridges the “self” and the
material things together (Boee, 1999; Brook, 2004).

Two kinds of consciousness of self (rationality):

1) Consciousness of oneself and one’s psychological states in inner sense, and
2) Consciousness of oneself and one’s states by performing acts of appreciation.

Appreciation is the mental process by which a person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it
to the body of ideas he or she already possesses.
Kant’s point is that what truly exist are your ideas and your knowledge of your ideas that you
perceive in the outside. He defended the diverse quality or state of the body and soul (self)
presenting that “bodies are objects of the outer souls; souls are objects of inner sense”
(Carpenter, 2004).

 Kant did NOT put forward a Moral Argument for the Existence of God.
 Kant rejected all attempts to argue from the world to God.
 Kant believed that God was a postulate of practical reason, meaning you can argue from
Reason to God.

➢ All human beings desire and seek happiness

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➢ All human beings ought to be moral and do their duty
➢ The universe (not just the physical universe) is fair
➢ The Summum Bonum (highest good) represents virtue and happiness
➢ Everyone seeks the summum bonum (from (1) and (2))
➢ What is sought must be achievable because the universe is fair (see (3))
➢ The Summum Bonum is not achievable in this life
➢ So it is necessary to POSTULATE a life after death in which the Summum Bonum can be
achieved AND it is necessary to POSTULATE a God to guarantee fairness

Kant did not believe that either Life after Death nor God could be proved, only that they could
be postulated. If the universe if fair and if the Summum Bonum can be achieved, then there
must be a God to ensure it.

SIGMUND FREUD
(6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) born in Vienna was an Austrian neurologist who became
known as the founding father of psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud developed the best-known theory of personality focused upon internal growth
or psychodynamics’. The theory stresses the influence of unconscious fears, desires and
motivation on thoughts and behavior. Freud psychoanalysis became both a theory of
personality and a method of psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic theory has three major parts: A
theory of the structure of personality, in which the id, ego and superego are the principal
parts.

A theory of personality dynamics, in which conscious and unconscious motivation and ego
defense mechanisms play a major role. A theory of psychosexual development, in which
differentmotives and body regions influence the child at different stages of growth, with
effects persisting in the form of adult personality traits.

Structure of personality: Freud thought of personality as being based upon a structure of three
parts: the id, the ego and the superego.
ID – Pleasure
EGO – Reality
SUPEREGO – For perfection/ideal

Psychoanalytic Model
ID (primitive, instinctive component of personality) – Latin word of Id is ‘It’ Id is the original
source of personality, which is present in a newborn.
 The Id, the most primitive part, can be thought of as a sort of storehouse of biologically
based urges: to eat, drink, eliminate, and especially, to be sexually stimulated.
 The sexual energy that underlies these urges is called the libido.
 It is present in the deepest level of the unconscious and represents the inner world of
subjective experience.
 It is unconcerned with objective reality and is unaffected by the environment Id is
completely selfish; concerned with immediate gratification of instinctual needs, and the
biological drives, like hunger, sex.

Ego (the decision-making component) – The Latin word of ego is ‘I’ which means ‘self’.
 The ego acts as a mediator or balance between the demands of Id and superego.

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  Ego is based on the Reality Principle.
 Ego delays the discharge of tension.
 It postponed the desires.
 This adaptive measure of Ego is refereed as secondary process thinking.

Process Thinking – Ego waits for the right moment for the satisfaction of desire, whereas id
satisfies desires immediately. Ego develops from Id and works for Id. Ego is an executive, which
mediate between the demands of id and realities of world and demands of super ego

Functions of Ego
 Control and regulation of instinctual derives.
 Relation to reality
 Sense of reality or Reality testing
 Adaptation to reality
 Primary autonomous function
 Perception
 Thinking
 Speaking
 IQ
 Memory

Superego (the moral component)– It is ideal rather than real.

 The superego is that part of personality that represents internalized value, ideals and
moral attitude of society.
 It is outgrowth of learning the taboos and moral values of society.
 It refers to conscience and is concerned with right and wrong.
 It inhabits the ID desires.
 Sex and aggressive superego operates through the ego system and compel the ego to
inhibit desires that are considering wrong or immoral.
 Its psychiatric function expresses as guilt, self-criticism and consciences.

Rewarding functions
Ego ideal- superego develops with Oedipus complex.
 It strives for perfection.
 It is society himself.
 It is extreme of Id and it is for self-preservation by society norms.
 Consciences: negative part of superego.
 It is developed by punishment, lack of reward, conditioning of childhood brings conscience.
 It gives guilt and self-criticism.
 Child takes or interjects the moral standards of parents.
Ego Ideal: It is rewarding function of superego. It is by positive reinforcement for i.e. copy, rimes
of father or any beloved person.

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
 Conscious level
 Preconscious level
 Unconscious part
Conscious level
 Relates to the awareness of an individual to his environment. It functions when the individual
is awake.
 It is concerned with thought, feelings and sensations, memory, IQ.

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 Conscious as sense organ of attention. It is only 1/9 of total mind.
 Through attention, person becomes conscious of perceptual stimuli from the outside world
within the organism.
 Only elements in pre conscious enter consciousness.
 It is one-way traffic to unconscious mind.
 Conscious part of mind is aware of here and now as it relates individual and his environment.

Preconscious level is described as that part of mind in which ideas and reactions are stored and
partially forgotten.
 It also acts as a watchman because it prevents certain painful, unpleasant, unacceptable,
distributing unconscious memories from reaching the conscious mind.
 Slip of tongue, slip of pen.  Preconscious region of mind is not present at birth but develops
in childhood.
 It is accessible to both unconscious and conscious mind.
 Elements of unconscious mind are accessible to conscious through preconscious.

Unconscious part is the largest part of mind (9/10).

 It is hidden part of iceberg that floats under water.
 It contains repressed ideas and affects.
 Elements of unconscious mind are in accessible to consciousness.
 They become conscious only through preconscious mind.
 Repressed ideas may reach to consciousness when censor is over powered or relaxed (dream
state).
 It is storehouse for all the memories, feelings and responses experienced by the individual
during his entire life.

GILBERT RYLE
(1900–1976) Analytic Philosopher. An important figure in the field known as ‘Linguistic Analysis’
which focused on the solving of philosophical puzzles through an analysis of language. He
mounted an attack against Cartesian mind/body dualism and supported a behaviorist theory of
mind.
Denies the internal, non-physical self “what truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life.” looking for the self is like entering LU and looking for the
“university”.
The self is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply the convenient name that we use
to refer to the behaviors that we make

In philosophy one of the chief advocates of this view is Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976), a British
philosopher whose book, The Concept of Mind, had a dramatic impact on Western thought.
Ryle’s behaviorism was a different sort from that of psychology. He thought of his approach as a
logical behaviorism, focused on creating conceptual clarity, not on developing techniques to
condition and manipulate human behavior. Ryle begins his book by launching a devastating
attack on “Descartes’ myth,” characterizing it as the “official doctrine” that has insidiously
penetrated the consciousness of academics, professionals, and average citizens alike. According
to Ryle, it’s high time that this destructive myth of dualism is debunked once and for all, and
replaced with a clearer conceptual and linguistic understanding of the true nature of the self.

Ryle, The Concept of Mind (“I ACT THEREFORE I AM”)

Ryle summarizes the essential elements of the dualistic view of the self—mind and body as
distinct entities—first articulated by Plato and then perpetuated in various incarnations through

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St. Augustine, Descartes, and others. Under this view, the body is seen as a physical entity,
subject to the physical laws of the universe, whereas the mind.

(soul, spirit) is a nonphysical entity and exempt from the laws of the universe. As a result, the
body is mortal and dies, whereas the mind is at least potentially able to continue existing
beyond the death of the body. According to Ryle, this dualistic view has serious implications for
what we can know and not know. Although each person has direct knowledge of his or her
mind, it is impossible for us to have any direct knowledge of other minds. Ryle observes, these
transactional events “can be inspected neither by introspection nor by laboratory experiment.
They are theoretical shuttlecocks which are forever bandied from the physiologist back to the
psychologist and from the psychologist back to the physiologist.” And in Ryle’s mind (note the
commonly used spatial metaphor!) there are even more serious implications of a dualistic
perspective

Behaviorism- The view that the “self” is defined by observable behavior.

Category mistake- Representing the facts or concepts as if they belonged in one logical category
when they actually belong in another.

In our everyday experience, we act and speak as if we have much more direct knowledge of
other minds and what they’re thinking without having to go through this tortured and artificial
reasoning process. We encounter others, experience the totality of their behavior, and believe
that this behavior reveals directly “who” they are and what they’re thinking. Ryle goes on to
analyze how this apparent conflict between the theory of Cartesian dualism (“the ghost in the
machine”) and our everyday experience of others is actually the result of confused conceptual
thinking, a logical error that he terms a “category mistake.”

PAUL CHURCHLAND
American philosopher (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1969); Areas of interest include
philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive neurobiology, epistemology, and
perception. Authored several works on mind, including The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the
Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain (MIT, 1995).

The philosopher Paul Churchland articulates such a vision in the following essay. He begins by
acknowledging that a simple identity formula—mental states = brain states—is a flawed way in
which to conceptualize the relationship between the mind and the brain. Instead, we need to
develop a new, neuroscience-based vocabulary that will enable us to think and communicate
clearly about the mind, consciousness, and human experience. He refers to this view as
“eliminative materialism.”
Churchland’s central argument is that the concepts and theoretical vocabulary we use to think
about ourselves—using such terms as belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain, joy—actually
misrepresent the reality of minds and selves.

All of these concepts are part of a commonsense “folk psychology that obscures rather than
clarifies the nature of human experience. Eliminative materialists believe that we need to
develop a new vocabulary and conceptual framework that is ground in neuroscience that will be
a more accurate reflection of the human mind and self. Churchland proceeds to state the
arguments that he believes support his position.

Churchland’s point is that the most compelling argument for developing a new conceptual
framework and vocabulary founded on neuroscience is the simple fact that the current “folk

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psychology” has done a poor job in accomplishing the main reason for their existence—
explaining and predicting the commonplace phenomena of the human mind and experience.

And in the same way that science replaces outmoded, ineffective, and limited conceptual
frameworks with ones that can Materialism: The Self Is the Brain 141 explain and predict more
effectively, so the same thing needs to be done in psychology and philosophy of mind. This new
conceptual framework will be based on and will integrate all that we are learning about how the
brain works on a neurological level. Although he believes strongly in the logic of his position,
Churchland recognizes that many people will resist the argument he is making for a variety of
reasons.
“The physical brain and NOT the imaginary mind give us our sense of self”

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
For Merleau-Ponty, everything that we are aware of—and can possibly-knows—is contained
within our own consciousness. It’s impossible for us to get “outside” of our consciousness
because it defines the boundaries of our personal universe. The so-called real world of objects
existing in space and time initially exists only as objects of my consciousness. Yet in a cognitive
sleight-of-hand, we act as if the space/time world is primary and our immediate consciousness
is secondary.

In cases when the two worlds conflict, scientists automatically assume that the scientific
perspective is correct, and the direct experience of the individual wrong. This is the difficulty we
pointed out with the concept of the unconscious: it was considered by Freud and many of his
followers to be of such supreme authority that no individual’s contrasting point of view can
measure up to the ultimate truth of the unconscious interpretation.

As a philosophical theory of knowledge, phenomenology is distinctive in the sense that its goal
is not to explain experience, but rather to clarify our understanding of it. A phenomenologist
like Merleau-Ponty sees his aim of describing what he sees and then assuming that his
description will strike a familiar chord with us, stimulating us to say, “I understand what you’re
saying—that makes sense to me!” From this perspective, the responsibility of philosophy is not
to provide explanations but to seek the root and genesis of meaning, “to reveal the mystery of
the world and of reason,” to help us think and see things more clearly.

For example, to develop a clear understanding of your “being in love,” you need to delay using
elaborate psychological theories and instead begin by describing the phenomena of the
experience in a clear, vivid fashion, trying to uncover the meaning of what you are experiencing.
Then you can begin developing concepts and theories to help you make sense of the
phenomena of “being in love.” The danger of using theories prematurely is that you may very
well distort your actual experience, forcing it to conform to someone else’s idea of what “being
in love” means instead of clearly understanding your unique experience.
“Physical body is an important part of the self”