LESSON 1: Philosophical Perspectives on the Self

The Body

a general medium for having a world and we know it is not through our intellect but through our experiences.

- Socrates
- Plato
- St. Augustine
- Rene Descartes
- Paul and Patricia Churchland
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Enumerate the 7 philosophers mentioned in this lesson

gnothi seauton

means 'Know Thyself'

Socrates

He pointed out that if an individual knows who or she is, all the basic issues and difficulties in life will vanish and everything will be clearer.

Self-knowledge

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

virtue

Possession of knowledge is _____

vice

Ignorance is ______

Socrates

He suggests that the man must live an examined life-a life of purpose and value.

empirical reality

Plato insisted that the ________________ we experience in the experiential world is fundamentally unreal and is only a shadow.

ultimate reality

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

Plato

He believed that the self is synonymous with the soul.

3 Parts of Soul or Self

1. Reason
2. Physical appetite
3. Spirit or passion

Reason

divine essence that enables us to think deeply

Physical appetite

hunger, thirst, sexual desire

Spirit or passion

love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, empathy

Genuine happiness

It can only be achieved by people who consistently make sure that their reason is in control of their Spirits and Appetites.

Subjective Body

as lived and experienced

Objective Body

as observed and scientifically investigated.

Self as Embodied Subjectivity

It sees human beings neither as disembodied minds nor as complex machines.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

He believes that we are living creatured whose subjectivity (consciousness) is actualized in the forms of their physical involvement with the world.

"I am my body"

He accepts the idea of mental states but he also suggests that the use of the mind is inseparable from our bodily, situated, physical nature. Hence, __________.

Consciousness

It cannot simply be immaterial but must be embodied.
It is both perceiving and engaging.

St. Augustine

He integrated the ideas of Plato and Christianity.

Time

- something that people measure within their memory
- not a property of the world, but a property of the mind

Rene Descartes

He believed that the self is:
"A thinking thing or a substance whose whole essence or nature is merely thinking."

Cogito, Ergo Sum

I think, therefore I am

Cogito, Ergo Sum

The existence of anything that you register from your senses can be doubted.

Self

For Descartes, ______ is nothing else but a mind-body dichotomy.

Self

- It is real and not just an illusion.
- It is different from the body.

Rene Descartes

"Father of Modern Philosophy"

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"

folk psychology

__________ or Common Sense is something that is FALSE.

BRAIN

For the Chruchland's, self is nothing else but the ______.

Patricia Churchland

In her book, she mentioned that to understand the self, one must study the brain, not just the mind.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

His main interest was the constitution of meaning in human experience.

!. Subjective Body
2. Objective Body

Maurice distinguished the body into two types:

Depression

Living in past

Anxiety

Living in future

Peace

Living at present

Memory

Is the entity through which one can think meaningfully about temporal continuity

Socrates

Soul and Body

Plato

Self and Soul

St. Augustine

Mind and Expectations

Rene Descartes

Mind and Body

Paul and Patricia Churchland

BRAIN

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Self and Body

Hubris

Only humans have the_____ or excessive pride-of thinking such irreverent questions on existence and purpose of life.

Introspection

Inquiry of the soul, then of the mind, , and thought. This confirms the superiority of humans over other organisms