C. DISCUSSION: Who Am I?

1. SOCRATES, PLATO, AUGUSTINE

The dictum “Know thyself” as we hear today is an ancient greeting of the highly civilized Greeks. It was
believed that the temple gods greet people with this salutation as they enter the holy sanctuary. The
ancient Greek philosophers manifested to the people their various interpretations of the greeting.

In the onset, the greeting seems to be only epistemological. Knowing oneself is only about measurable
facts that pertain to the self-such as age, height, color, blood type or cholesterol level. But the
philosophers insisted that knowing oneself is more than just the basic facts. To know thyself is first an
imperative and then a requirement. It is imperative to know the limits of the self so that one knows
what one is a capable of doing and what one is not. The real meaning of knowing oneself, then is a
requirement for self -moderation, prudence, good judgement, and excellence of the soul. (Ortiz de
Landazuru, 2014)

The original Greek expression γνῶθι σεαυτόν claimed to have a very rich content that is almost
indistinguishable in the English language. The expression is almost. Not only an imperative of self -
knowledge but is also a requirement that one has to have self- moderation. Anything that is excessive is
not good. Thus it is just prudent to strike the balance of things. Too much power might lead to abuse,
too many friends might decrease the quality of relationships: too many problems might bring about
depression ; too much knowledge might make one think, as in the ancient rulers, that there is nothing
else to know about, and so on. It is just wise then to put oneself in moderation so that one is capable of
self-control and sound judgement.

The prudence and judgement aspects of knowledge of knowing. Thyself are already extensions from
self-knowledge to ethics. The expression is an ethical requirement to be wise in choosing moderation
and to be able to make good judgements in desiring what is good and avoiding which will only bring
harm. Moderation in the expression of love for sweethearts, for example will bring the best of the other,
then there will never be prudence and good judgment in the relationship . The ethics in knowing thyself
is very important because such will bring the person to the excellence of the soul.

For the ancient Greeks , the soul is the essence of the person. Like any other loving relationships one
must be able to bring about the excellence of the soul of the other as a result of such relationship. To
know thyself, therefore is to examine whether we have achieved moderation, have prudently chosen
what is good and have brought that excellence of the soul.

To be able to demonstrate this, Socrates proposed a very. Emphatic philosophy.

In Plato’s Apology, Sec.38a Socrates narrates:

And if again I say that. To talk everyday about virtue and other things about which you. Hear me talking
and examining myself and others is the greatest good to.

Man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you. Will believe me still less. This is as I say
gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you, Besides, I. am not accustomed to think that I deserve
anything bad. If I had money, I would have proposed a fine…

Here, Socrates insisted that, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This is perhaps the most
satisfying philosophical assertion that Socrates claimed in order to protect human beings from
shallowness of living their lives. An examined life is. A life that is duty. Bound to develop self-knowledge
and a self-dignified with values and integrity. Not only that. : living a good life means having the wisdom
to distinguish what is right from wrong. Socrates further agreed that. The unexamined life is no better
than animal life.

When we become readily contented with the information we received from the social media for
example and submit to how virtual reality defines life, develop needs and wants, classify morality,
delineate universal values, and mystify human reason, we are not better off than dogs who. Become
contented with crumbs provided by their “masters.

Insisting on the examined life, Socrates maintained that only those who have at least achieved self-
moderation and distinguished what is good from bad, in this case pretentious be knowing themselves
when the fact is contrary. On his account of Socrates claim Plato writes
Only a self-controlled man, then, will know himself and will be capable of looking to see what he actually
knows and what he doesn’t know. By the same token only a self- controlled man will be capable of
examining others to see what a person knows and thinks he knows ( assuming that he does have
knowledge) , and whether there are things which he thinks he knows, but doesn’t really. And no one
else will be capable of doing this(Charmides, 167 a).

Here in fact, Socrates wanted to tell the lawmakers, the community leaders, those who claimed to be
learned, and especially his accusers to recognize their recognize their ignorance . What. Hinders the
experts in seeing reality is the belief that they already know everything. Such a belief will eliminate
altogether the desire for self- determination and ethical prudence. Then Socrates rightly pronounced
the “I know that I do not know.” This perhaps is what. Makes Socrates the wisest among the
philosophers. For Socrates, only in the recognition of one’s ignorance that a person can truly know
oneself.

Influenced by the wise pronouncement of Socrates, Plato proposed his own philosophy of self. He
started on the examination of the self as a unique experience. The experience will eventually better
understand the core of the self which he called the Psyche.

For Plato , the psyche is composed of three elements. These are the appetitive, spirited, and the mind.
The appetitive element of the psyche included one’s desires , pleasures, physical satisfactions, comforts,
etc. The spirited element is part of the psyche that is excited when given challenges, or fights back when
agitated, or fights for injustice when unjust practices are evident. Ina way, this is the hot blooded part of
the psyche that is excited when given challenges or fights back when agitated or fights for

justice when unjust practices are evident. In a way this is a hot blooded part of the psyche. The mind
however, is what Plato considers as the most superior of all the elements. He refers to this element. He
refers to this element as the nous which means conscious awareness of the self. The nous is the
superpower that controls the affairs of the self. It decides , analyses, thinks ahead, proposes superpower
that controls both the appetitive and the spiritual elements of the psyche.

We take as an example – college life – to illustrate Plato’s psyche. College students want to hung out
with their friends , spend time on computer games, eat the favorite food, do thrilling activities that will
excite the whole gang. These satisfy the appetitive element of the psyche. However, when professors
throw challenging projects and assignments that would require tremendous amount of time and effort,
the spirited psyche kicks in to face the challenges head on. All these are going on because the mind of
the nous is orchestrating these pursuits according to the quality of the nous a person has .a person has.
In other words, in order to have a good life, one has to develop the nous and fill it with the
understanding of the limits of the self, and correct ethical standards.

Another concrete example of a highly self-controlled nous is the life of St. Augustine. He hailed from
Tagaste, Africa in 354 BC . He succumbed to vicesand pleasures of the world. Augustine was unsettled
and restlessly searched for the meaning of his life until his conversion to Christianity. In his conversion to
Christianity , he pronounced : You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it
finds rest in You.

Augustine returned to his homeland and embraced ascetic life. He dedicated his Christian life to the
pursuit of contemplative ideals. He practiced extreme self-denial and self- mortification. Later he was
elected bishop of Hippo, He fought bravely the errors of his time through his sermons and many
writings. He died in 439 and later was declared Doctor of the Church.

The development of the self for St. Augustine is achieved through self-presentation and self-realization .
He was not afraid to accept to himself and tell the people about his sinfulness. However the realization
of the wasted self is achieved through his conversion to the faith. This his journey toward the
understanding of the self was centered on his religious convictions and beliefs.

This could be true to all religions. When Christians and Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu believers (or any
other traditional or indigenous religions) struggle between the pleasures of the body and the demands
of the soul in pursuit of the ultimate happiness of the self, one must be able to recognize the love of that
Supreme Being or the Divine and morally or ethically respond to that love. To St. Augustine, mans end
goal is happiness. Only in God can man attain true and eternal happiness, made possible in his
contemplation of the Truth and the Divine Wisdom., i.e. God Himself. Christianity is the full and true
philosophy. It is the full revelation of the true God. Human beings along, without God, are bound to fail.
2. Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant

Rene Descartes , the father of modern philosophy , deviated from theocentric philosophies on the years
before him. He was in fact able to readdress the question concerning the self in a very different rational
method. He started his quest of discovering the self by his methodic doubt.

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes claimed that we cannot really rely on our senses
because our sense perceptions can do often deceive us. There are times when we hear something when
in fact there is nothing, and that we are only deceived by our sense of hearing. These are also times
when we see someone or something in the peripheries of our eyes when in fact there is nothing that
resembles with what we thought we saw. This will be true to our sense of smell, touch, hearing and so
on. Therefore Descartes refused to believe in the certainty of his sense perceptions and started to doubt
everything.

Everything must be subjected to doubt. Our existence, our religion, our world, our God, our special
someone, even our teacher! There will never be certain in this world as long as it passes our senses.
Further, Descartes cannot even distinguish between the events in his dream and in reality. He claimed
that when dreaming, it felt so real that even our heartbeat , breathing and feelings are just so
comparable to the real events. When we dream about our crush, we feel the intensity of the dream that
we would wake up frustrated realizing that it was only a dream. Likewise when we dream about our
most dreaded experiences in life, we would wake up happy after realizing that it was only a dream.

Here, Descartes started to doubt redeemed him from slumber. He claimed that since he could no longer
doubt that he is doubting , there should be a level of certitude that there must be someone who is
doubting – that is him. Then he said “Cogito ,ergo Sum.” This is translated as “I think therefore I am” or
“I doubt therefore I exist “ Only after the certitude of the “doubting I “ can all the other existence (e.g
God, the universe, things ,events,etc.) become certain .

Descartes discovery of the cogito revolutionizes the way we view ourselves and the world around us. It
has also dramatically changed the way we evaluate ourselves. The primary conditions, therefore of the
existence of the self, at least according to Descartes, is human rationality. Simply put, we need reasons
in order to evaluate our thoughts and actions. We need reason to live fully the demands, challenges and
call of our religion. We need reason in order to establish universal firm foundations of universal truth
and morals. We need reason in order to exist and to continue to survive the generations to come by
protecting our environment. We need reason in order to protect ourselves from our being savage to one
another. We need reason in order to build and live out our peace.

Contrary to the primacy of reason as proposed by Descartes, one British philosopher and politician, john
Loke, suggested another way of looking at the self. Locke opposed the idea that only reason is the
source of knowledge of the self . His proposition is that the self-comparable to an empty space whereby
everyday experience s contribute to the pile of knowledge that is put forth in empty space. Experience,
therefore , is an important requirement in order to have sense of date which, through the process of
reflection and analysis, eventually becomes sense perception.

These sense data are further categorized by Locke according to primary qualities such as numbers,
solidity, figure, motion among others, and also secondary qualities such as

color, odor, temperature and all other element that are distinguishable by the subjective individual.
Sense perception becomes possible when all these qualities are put together in the faculty in the faculty
of the mind.

It has to be noted that. The validity of sense perception is very subjective. Perception is changing from
one individual to another. For example, when one reads a text message : “CONGRATULATIONS! You won
1 M pesos in an online lottery.” From an unknown number, one text receiver may hastily reply
excitement and elation while the other text receiver may just totally ignore it is a hoax or even treat it as
a virus! Perception, therefore is very subjective to Locke.

This provides the most lenient leeway for every individual to be independent in self-examination, self-
management and self-control. The individual person, for Locke, is not only capable of learning from
experience but also skillful enough to process different perceptions from various experiences to form a
more complex idea. These ideas then will become keys to understand complex realities about the self
and the world.

Challenging the position of John Locke, David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian, put forward
his skeptical take on the ideas forming the identity of the self. Hume claimed that there cannot be a
persisting idea of self. Hume agreed that all ideas are derived from impressions, problematically, it
follows that the idea of the self is also derived from impressions. However, impressions are subjective,
temporary, provisional ,prejudicial and even skewed - and therefore cannot be persisting.

Inasmuch as we wanted to be persistent, constant and stable with our knowledge about ourselves,
Hume asserted that this is just impossible. As long as we only derive our knowledge from sense
impressions, there will never be the “self.” This means that for Hume, all we know about ourselves are
“just bundles of temporary impressions”. Perhaps this supports the difficulty of answering the question
“Who am I?” because what can we can readily answer are impressions such as name, height, color of
hair, affiliations, skills achievements and the like. All these are temporary and non-persisting . In fact,
Hume harshly claimed that there IS no self

Hume could have made us all agnostic about our knowledge of the self, and be content with whatever
fragmented ideas at least we have about ourselves had it not by the rescue efforts of Immanuel Kant
,Kant is a Prussian metaphysicist who synthesized the rationalist view of Descartes and the empiricist
views of Locke and Hume. His new proposition maintained that the self is always transcendental. In fact
he calls his philosophy the Transcendental Unity of Apperception.

His theory explains that. Being or the self is not in body, it is outside the body and even outside the
qualities of the body – meaning transcendent . For Kant, ideas are perceived by the self, and they are
connecting the self and the world. The similarity of ideas between individuals is made possible because,
for Kant, we all have the sensory apparatus by which we derive our ideas. This means that we need not.
Reject our ideas, unlike Hume, no matter how temporary and non-persistent they are because there is
unity in ideas.

Kant further argues that even if we eliminate everything or in the case of Descartes, doubt everything,
there will still be space and time and that will remain in us. The space and time belong to us. These are
categories that. Cannot be outside of the self, and they help provide the perception of the self.
Perception here does not belong to the world; it belongs to the self through its temporal-spatial faculty.
Rightly, Kant is able

to claim that. All things in the world are in themselves and part of it belongs to the self. This is possible
because the mind possess the order and unity of all raw sensations. In other words, the thing in itself
cannot provide the idea but it is only the spatial -temporal faculty of the self that makes the idea
sensible

In short, Kant is only saying our rationality unifies and makes sense the perceptions we have in our
experiences and make sensible ideas about ourselves This ingenious synthesis saved the empirical
theories of the sciences and the rational

justification innate ideas. Kant also solved the problem of the ability of the self to perceive the world.

FREUD. RYLE, CHURCHLAND AND MERLEAU-PONTY

Just as the philosophers celebrate the “unity” of the self as achieved by Kant psychologist
Sigmund Freud lamented by the victory and insisted on the complexity of the self. Freud, refusing to
take the self or subject as technical actions. So we say,” I run” “I” eat, “I decide”, “I feel the tingling
sensation” or “I refuse to cheat because it is wrong. Admittedly the question “who am I?” will not
provide a victorious unified answer but a complicated diverse feature of moral judgements, inner
sensations, bodily movements and perceptions. The “I” will never be the same and It will continue to
change overtime. In other words, Freud sees the “I” as a product of multiple interacting processes,
systems and schemed. To demonstrate this, Freud proposed two models:

The Topographical and Structural Models (Watson, 2014)

According to Freud’s concept of hysteria, the individual person may both know certain things at the
same time. We may say, for example, that we know the disadvantage and perils of missing classes
without any reason, but we are not really sure why we do it anyway. We are certain about the many
wrongs that may be brought about the premarital sex, ie. early pregnancy, sexually, ie. early pregnancy,
sexually transmitted infections, ruin relationships and depression, but we never understand why there is
something somewhere inside us that makes many of us do what we know is wrong.

Freud’s solution to this predicament is to divide the “I” into conscious and the unconscious. The
unconscious keeps what it knows by what Freud call :censorship” so that the conscious will be left on its
own. Clearly, the self for Freud will never arbitrarily taken as a unified whole. There will always be
fragment and discontinuity and struggle inside the same “I”.

Structural Model

Similar to the disintegration of the self in Topographical Model. Freud’s Structural Model will also
represent the self in the three different agencies. This is the popularly known as the id, ego and the
superego. The Id is known as the primitive of instinctive component. The ego is described by Freud as
the part of the Id which has been modified by. The direct influence of the external world. Many
interpreters of Freud see the ego as the “I” and the super ego as above “I”

. The superego synthesizes the morals, values and systems in society in order to functions as the control
outpost of the instinctive desires of the Id )McLeod,2007)

We often equate the ego as the self, the subject or the “I.” However, Freud does not readily approve this
equation because while the three agencies are distinct from another

oftentimes, the ego is not able to control the instincts of the id, and cannot even manipulate the
thoughts of the superego. This even leaves the ego as only a marginal and impotent agency of the mind
– not the ideal philosophical self-soul that we want to figure out. Freud remarked that it is even the id –
is the devil, instinctual, unthoughtful, fearless and primitive agency of the mind – that is the core of our
being (Freud,2011)

in the experiences of the child that made him deviant of the otherwise deal upbringing? How can we
know? Freud claims that there is nothing else above the “I” that will consolidate the three agencies.
There is only plurality of these ant

The sensationlization of the self as unifying agent and a powerful command center of the other agencies
simply do not exist in Freud’s Structural Model. Although the ego initiates the command, it simply lacks
the power to control and put limits to the rage of the id. Moreover, the ego will only content itself with
the very limited information revealed by the vast databank of information in the unconscious. The ego
own a scanty knowledge about the unconscious which oftentimes are incomplete and inaccurate.

Let us take a hypothetical example of a child who is born in a happy, loving and affluent family. He is well
provided by his well -mannered parents who are respected professionals in their fields. The family never
misses family the Sunday ritual of going to Mass. He is raised with plenty of time to work and play and
study. He is sent to an expensive private school until he found himself kicked out by the school because
of drug addiction and cutting classes. He steals the family fortune to afford his vices . He destroyed many
lives of his friends. He disrespected his parents and siblings and accuse them of not loving him. He
ended up broke , wasted

, imprisoned and a menace to society. Now, we ask: Where is the self? How can we understand the “I” in
this example? What is in the self that was not able to control the piles of self - destructive

Activities of the child? What is it agonistic and independent agencies.

In an attempt to offer an explanation to some behaviors that. Are difficult to justify by reason, Gilbert
Ryle, a British Philosopher, proposed his positive view in his “Concept of the Mind.” It started as a stern
critique if Descartes’ dualism of the mind and body. Ryle said that the thinking I will never be found
because it is just a “ghost in the machine”. It means he finds philosophy of Descartes totally absurd. The
mind is never separate from the body. He proposed that physical actions or behaviors are dispositions of
the self. These dispositions are derived from our inner private experiences. In other words, we will only
be able to understand the self based from the external manifestation – behaviors, expressions,
language, desires and the like. The mind therefore, is nothing but a disposition of the self.
Ryle continued that. The mid will depend on how works are being told and expressed and delivered. In a
way, he demystified the operations of the mind because the operations of the mind are simply.
Manifested by. The dispositions of knowing and believing. To illustrate this position, we take the visitor
on a tour round the city. We bring him to the City Hall, to the park, to the known schools, to big malls,
The beautiful gardens, to the night life venues, to the known landmarks and to your house. After the
tour, your visitor will ask: Where is the city? All those parks and malls and places consist the city. This
same observation is true to the disposition of the mind. All the manifestations in the physical activities
or behavior are the dispositions of the self, the basis of the statement: “I act therefore I am” or “You are
what you do.”

Bringing this argument a little further, couple Paul and Patricia Churchland promoted the position they.
Called “eliminative materialism” which brings forth neuroscience into the fore of

understanding the self. For centuries, the main concern of philosophy and even of psychology is the
understanding of the state of the self, and still thewy failed to provide satisfactory position in the
understanding of the self. For the Churchlands, these philosophical and psychological directions will
eventually be abandoned only. To. Be replaced by a more acceptable trend in the neuroscience that
provides explanation of how brain works

This position is a direct attack against folk psychology. Eliminative materialism sees the failure of folk
psychology in explaining basic concepts such as sleep, learning, mental illness and the like. Given the
length of time that these sciences have investigated these concepts and yet there is no definitive
explanation offered to understand the mind s tantamount to “explanatory poverty” (Weed 2018). It is
not remotely impossible that folk psychology will be replaced by. Neurobiology. As the Churchlands
wanted to predict, when people wanted to ask what is going on with themselves, they might as well go
for MRI scan or CT scan to understand the present condition of the brain and how it currently works.

Interestingly , Maurice Merleau -Ponty, a French philosopher seemed to support the emerging trends in
understanding the self,. His philosophy, the Phenomenology of Perception draws heavily from the
contemporary research Gestalt psychology and neurology. He developed a kind of phenomenological
rhythm that will explain the perception of self. The rhythm involves three dimensions. First is the
empiricist take on perception, followed by the idealist-intellectual alternative, and lastly, the synthesis
of both positions.

On the onset, Merleau-Ponty rejected classical empiricism because it eliminates the indeterminate
complexities of experience that may have an effect on perception . In the same way , he also rejected
the idealist -intellectual position because it will only falsify perception based from one’s biasi3s and
prejudices. What Merleau -Ponty proposes is treating perception as a causal process. It simply means
our perceptions are caused by the intricated experiences of the self, and processed intellectually while
distinguishing truthful perceptions from illusory. Therefore, the self is taken as a phenomenon of the
whole- a Gestalt understanding of perceptual synthesis.