The Self from Various Perspectives

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms related to the self and its representations across philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

Self

The enduring sense of personal identity that persists through change; analyzed across philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

Socratic Method

A dialogic technique of asking questions to stimulate critical thinking and reveal beliefs.

Theory of Forms

Plato's idea that eternal, perfect archetypes underlie the imperfect objects we experience.

Realm of Shadows

Plato's term for the changing, sensible realm of appearances that are shadows of the Forms.

Allegory of the Cave

Plato's story illustrating how people mistake shadows for reality and can be enlightened.

Tripartite Soul

Plato's view of the soul consisting of Reason, Spiritedness, and Appetites.

Eros

Freud's life instinct, the energy driving survival, growth, and libido.

Thanatos

Freud's death instinct, the impulse toward aggression and destruction.

Id

Freud's primal, pleasure-seeking part of the psyche.

Ego

Freud's rational mediator between the id and reality.

Superego

Freud's internalized moral standards and conscience.

Cogito Ergo Sum

Descartes' statement asserting that thinking proves the existence of the self.

Cartesian Mind-Body Dualism

The view that mind and body are distinct substances.

Tabula Rasa

The idea that the mind is a blank slate at birth, with knowledge from experience.

Empiricism

The theory that knowledge arises from sensory experience; associated with Locke and Hume.

A Posteriori

Knowledge or justification that depends on experience.

Transcendental Apperception

Kant's idea of the unified self that organizes experience through time and space.

Personal Identity

Question of what makes a person the same over time despite changes.

Neurophilosophy

Field combining neuroscience and philosophy to study the mind and self.

Churchland

Patricia and Paul Churchland; proponents of neurophilosophy seeking to ground philosophy in neuroscience.

Body-Subject

Merleau-Ponty's concept that the body is the primary site of knowing and perceiving the world.

Merleau-Ponty

French philosopher who emphasized embodiment and the embodied nature of perception.

Impressions

In Hume, vivid, immediate experiences that inform ideas.

Ideas

Hume's mental copies formed from impressions; memories and thoughts.

Category Mistake

Ryle's critique that dualism misclassifies categories, treating the mind as a thing.