The Self from Various Perspectives – Key Vocabulary

28 vocabulary flashcards summarizing the key philosophers and concepts about the self covered in the lecture notes.

Know Yourself (Socrates)

The philosopher’s lifelong mission urging individuals to examine their inner life to achieve wisdom and virtue.

Unexamined Life

Socrates’ notion that a life without reflection and self-knowledge is not worth living.

Dualism

View that a human being is composed of two distinct parts—body and soul/mind—found in Socrates, Plato, Descartes, and others.

Body (Plato)

The material, impermanent aspect of a human concerned with worldly gratification.

Mind (Plato)

The faculty oriented toward the realm of ideas and higher knowledge.

Soul (Plato)

The driving force that gives identity and direction to the person.

Rational Soul

Plato’s soul‐component governed by reason and intellect (the ‘thinker’).

Spirited Soul

Plato’s soul‐component responsible for emotions and courage (the ‘defender’).

Appetitive Soul

Plato’s soul‐component that manages desires and bodily needs (the ‘provider’).

Golden Mean

Aristotle’s ethical principle of moderation—avoiding extremes to live in accordance with reason.

Virtue as Order of Love

St. Augustine’s teaching that true virtue is loving God and neighbor, doing no harm.

Matter (Thomas Aquinas)

The bodily component of a person—what a thing actually is.

Form (Thomas Aquinas)

The soul of a person—the principle that animates matter and gives potential for many acts.

Cogito

Descartes’ ‘I think,’ the thinking substance or mind that proves personal existence.

Extensa

Descartes’ term for the physical body, viewed as a machine attached to the mind.

Tabula Rasa

John Locke’s idea that the mind at birth is a blank slate; all knowledge comes from experience.

Apparatus of the Mind (Kant)

Innate structures that organize sensory impressions into coherent experience.

Sensibility (Kant)

Mental faculty that receives raw data as intuitions in time and space.

Understanding (Kant)

Faculty that organizes intuitions via categories, producing concepts and judgments.

Reason (Kant)

Faculty that seeks unity, explanation, and ultimate ideas such as ‘world’ or ‘self.’

Impressions (Hume)

The vivid, original sensory experiences that form the core of thought.

Ideas (Hume)

Faint copies of impressions, used in thinking and memory; cannot exist without prior sensation.

Ghost in the Machine

Gilbert Ryle’s pejorative phrase for the mistaken belief in a hidden inner self separate from behavior.

Behaviorist Self (Ryle)

Concept that the self is the totality of observable behaviors and dispositions in everyday life.

Embodied Self (Merleau-Ponty)

Phenomenological view that mind and body are inseparable; the body is what we are, not what we have.

Eliminative Materialism

Paul Churchland’s stance that folk psychological terms (belief, desire) should be replaced by neuroscience vocabulary.

Neural Pattern Self

Churchland’s idea that the self is a dynamic pattern of neural activity, not a fixed entity.