Understanding the Self [Prelims]

Socrates

He is credited for his many contributions to western philosophy.

gnothi seauton

Know thyself

Self-Knowledge

Means knowing one's degree of understanding about the world and knowing one's capabilities and potentials.

Socrates

He's a dualist.

Plato

Student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle.

Empirical Reality

We experience in the experiential world is fundamentally unreal and is only a shadow or a mere appearance.

Ultimate Reality

Is real as it is eternal and constitutes abstract universal essences of things.

Ideas

Are objects of the intellect known by reason alone and are objective realities that exists in a world of their own.

Plato

Was one of the first philosophers who believed in an enduring self that is represented by the soul.

St. Augustine

Argued that as far as the consciousness can be extended backward to any past action or forward to actions to come, it determines the identity of the person.

Memory and Expectations

The existence of past and future for St. Augustine is only possible through -

Rene Descartes

A French philosopher and mathematician.

Cogito, ergo sum

I think, therefore I am.

Rene Descartes

Western Philosophy is largely influenced by him.

Self

Is real and not just an illusion.

Self

Is a feature not of the body but of the mind and thus a mental substance rather than a physical substance.

Mind and Body

Humans are self-aware and they are the masters of their own universe.

Paul and Patricia Churchland

They are Canadian-American philosophers whose work has focused on integrating the disciplines of philosophy of mind and neuroscience in a new approach that has been called Neurophilosophy.

Eliminative Materialism

A radical claim that ordinary, common sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common sense do not actually exist.

Self

For the Churchland's, it is nothing else but the BRAIN, or simply, it is contained entirely within the physical brain.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

He was a French Phenomenological Philosopher.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Stated "I am my body".

Subjective Body

As lived and experienced.

Objective Body

As observed and scientifically investigated.

George Mead

Sociologist, argued that the self is not biological but social.

George Mead

He proposed the idea that the self develops through social interaction.

Self-awareness

Conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives and desires.

Self-image

The idea one has of one's abilities, appearance and personality.

Role Playing

By putting oneself in the position of others, one is able to reflect upon self.

Preparatory Stage

A child imitates the behavior of his or her parents like sweeping the floor.

Play Stage

The child playing the roles of others such as acting as a teacher, soldier, carpenter, etc.

Game Stage

The child comes to themselves from the perspective of other people.

I

Is the phrase of the self that is unsocialized and spontaneous.

Me

Is the self that results from the progressive stages of role playing or role-taking and the perspective one assumes to view and analyze one's own behaviors.

Generalized Others

An organized community or social group which gives to the individual his or her unity of self.

Looking-glass Self

In this view, the self is developed as a result of one's perceptions of other people's opinions.

Postmodernism

Report on the mindset of western culture in the latter half of the 20th century.

Multiphrenia

Refers to the many different voices speaking about "Who we are and what we are."

Protean

A self capable of changing constantly to fit the present conditions.

De-centered

A belief that there is no self at all since the self is constantly being redefined or constantly undergoing change.

Self in relation

Means that humans do not live their lives in isolation but in relation to people and to certain cultural contexts.

Culture

Is derived from the Latin word cultura or cultus meaning care or cultivation.

Personal Identity

The way they see themselves as an individual.

Collective identity

The way they see themselves as a member of a certain group.

Identity

Refers to "who the person is," or the qualities and traits of an individual that make him or her different from others.

Cultural Identity

Refers to the identity or feeling of belongingness to a certain culture group.

Cultural Identity Theory

It explains why a person acts and behaves the way he or she does.

Nation

Is a group of people built on the premise of shared customs, traditions, religion, language, art, history, and more.

National Identity

Refers to the identity or feeling of belongingness to one state or nation.

Rupert Emerson

He defines National Identity as "A body of people who feel that they are a nation."

National Identity

Is socially constructed. It is influenced and shaped by material and non-material cultures.

Individual Self

Reflects the cognitions related to traits, states and behaviors that are stored in memory.

Relational Self

Reflects cognitions that are related to one's relationships.

Collective Self

Reflects cognitions that are related to one's group.

Identity Struggles

It characterizes the discrepancy between the identity a person claims to possess and the identity attributed to the person by others.

William James

He is an American philosopher and psychologist. For him a human being has the capacity to be a thinking subject and the object of his or her thinking at the same time.

I

Is responsible for the thinking and makes awareness and self-awareness possible. [Subjective]

Me

When he or she makes himself or herself the object of his or her own thinking. [Objective]

Self-feeling

Because of his or her knowledge and appraisal of his or her empirical existence in the world.

Self-seeking

The effort of every individual to preserve and improve oneself based on one's self-knowledge and resulting self-feelings.

Constituent-self

Composed of material self, social self, spiritual self and pure ego.

Material Self

Consists of one's body, clothes, family, home and other material possessions.

Social Self

Connotes the image of an individual in the eyes of the people around him or her.

Spiritual Self

Beliefs and feelings.

Pure Ego

Is the most puzzling aspect of the self. It is empirical self.

Carl Rogers

He is an American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology.

Real Self

Is who an individual actually is, intrinsically.

Ideal Self

Is the perception of what a person would like to be or thinks he or she would be.

Congruence

An agreement between the selves, which happens when the ideal self is closer to the real self.

Self-Actualization

Achieved when people attained congruence.

Self-worth

Is what one thinks about oneself.

Self-concept

Is defined as the totality of complex, organized and dynamic system of learned beliefs, attitudes and opinions.

Existential Self

It begins when an individual recognized his or her existence as a separate entity from others.

Categorical Self

It starts after a child recognizes his or her existence as a separate entity and starts categorizing themselves in terms of age, sex, height and weight.

Self-image

Is how one sees themselves. Includes the influence of body image on inner personality.

Ideal Self

Is the person that one wants to be.

Sigmund Freud

He was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis

ID

responsible for anything pleasure

Ego

The one who is aware and conscious

Superego

Tell not to do something because it is not right (Moral principle)

Regression

Inverting to inner state

Reaction Formation

Doing the opposite thing we do

Denial

Denying what you truly feel

Rationalization

Try to rationalize things even we are young

Displacement

Displacing target when you are bad mood

Carl Jung

He was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology

The ego

It is the center of consciousness

The personal Unconscious

Refers to all information stored in a person's mind that are readily accessible to consciously recall

The collected Unconscious

Refers to the unconscious mind shared by all human beings such as instincts and archetypes

Sublimation

Substituting the feelings in much acceptable manner

Individualism

- Is an orientation concerned with the independence and self-reliance of the individual.

Individualistic cultures

Puts more emphasis on promoting the individual and the immediate family's welfare

Collectivism

Is an orientation characterized by belongingness to larger groups or collectives

Collectivistic cultures

Give more importance to loyalty to the ingroup, which in turn takes care of the individual's welfare

Buddhism

The ATMAN is impossible to perceive by one's senses for it does not actually exist in any metaphysical, material and spiritual level

❖ Physical Body ❖ Feelings ❖ Perceptions ❖ Responses ❖ The Flow of Consciousness

A human being is a product of 5 changing processes that experiences them all

Confucianism

The ethical teachings of Confucius are based on human relationships

Relational Self

Individual identity is defined by membership in the reference group to which one belongs

Subdued Self

The condition to respond to perceptions, not of its own needs and aspirations but of social requirements and obligations

Taoism

Tao is nothing but the expression of the unity of the universe and of the path which human beings must take to reserve that unity