UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

Understanding oneself is essential to understand behaviors and beliefs that affects ourselves and others
specifically in becoming effective and successful person in life, work, and relationship. Moreover, self-
understanding :

(1) provides a sense of purpose;

(2) leads to healthier relationships;

(3) helps harness your natural strength; and ;

(4) promotes confidence.

PERSONALITY

The etymological derivative of personality comes from the word “persona”, the theatrical masks worn
by Romans in Greek and Latin drama. Personality also comes from the two Latin words
“per”and “sonare”, which literally means “to sound through”.

Personality have no single definition since different personality theories have different views on how to
define it. However, the commonly accepted definition of personality is that it is a
relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and
individuality to a person’s behavior (Roberts & Mroczek, 2008).

Personality plays a key role in affecting how people shape their lives. It involves the complex relationship
of people with their environment, how they cope and adjust through life, and how they
respond to demands of physical and social challenges.

Personality is the overall pattern or integration of a person’s structure, modes of behavior, attitudes,
aptitudes, interests, intellectual abilities, and many other distinguishable personality
traits. Personality is the conglomeration of the following components: physical self,
intelligence, character traits, attitudes, habits, interest, personal discipline, moral
values, principles and philosophies of life.

Personality refers to the total person in his/her overt and covert behavior. The determinants of factors
of personality are as follows:

Environmental Factors of Personality. The surroundings of an individual compose the environmental

factors of personality. This includes the neighborhood a person lives in, his school,
college, university and workplace. Moreover, it also counts the social circle the
individual has. Friends, parents, colleagues, co-workers and bosses, everybody plays a
role as the determinants of personality.

2. Biological Factors of Personality. This further includes:

hereditary factors or genetic make-up of the person that inherited from their parents. This describes the
tendency of the person to appear and behave the way their parents are;

physical features include the overall physical structure of a person: height, weight, color, sex, beauty
and body language, etc. Most of the physical structures change from time to time, and
so does the personality. With exercises, cosmetics and surgeries, many physical features
are changed, and therefore, the personality of the individual also evolves; and

brain. The preliminary results from the electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) research gives indication
that better understanding of human personality and behavior might come from the
study of the brain.

3. Situational Factors of Personality. Although these factors do not literally create and shape up an
individual’s personality, situational factors do alter a person’s behavior and response
from time to time. The situational factors can be commonly observed when a person
behaves contrastingly and exhibits different traits and characteristics.

4. Cultural Factors. Culture is traditionally considered as the major determinants of an individual’s

personality. The culture largely determinants what a person is and what a person will
learn. The culture within a person is brought up, is very important determinant of
behavior of a person. Culture is complex of these belief, values, and techniques for
dealing with the environment which are shared among contemporaries and transmitted
by one generation to the next.

Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Personality
traits imply consistency and stability—someone who scores high on a specific trait like
Extraversion is expected to be sociable in different situations and over time. Thus, trait
psychology rests on the idea that people differ from one another in terms of where they
stand on a set of basic trait dimensions that persist over time and across situations.

The most widely used system of traits is called the Five-Factor Model. This system includes five broad
traits that can be remembered with the acronym OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness,
Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

The Five-Factor Model of Personality

Research that used the lexical approach showed that many of the personality descriptors found in the
dictionary do indeed overlap. In other words, many of the words that we use to describe
people are synonyms. Thus, if we want to know what a person is like, we do not
necessarily need to ask how sociable they are, how friendly they are, and how
gregarious they are. Instead, because sociable people tend to be friendly and
gregarious, we can summarize this personality dimension with a single term. Someone
who is sociable, friendly, and gregarious would typically be described as an “Extravert.”
Once we know she is an extravert, we can assume that she is sociable, friendly, and
gregarious.
The most widely accepted system to emerge from this approach was “The Big Five” or “Five Factor
Model” (Goldberg, 1990; McCrae & John, 1992; McCrae & Costa, 1987). The Big Five
comprises five major traits shown in the Figure 2 below. A way to remember these five
is with the acronym OCEAN (O is for Openness; C is for Conscientiousness; E is for
Extraversion; A is for Agreeableness; N is for Neuroticism). The table below provides
descriptions of people who would score high and low on each of these traits.

Table 1. Descriptions of Personality Traits

Table 2. Example behaviors for those scoring low and high for the big 5 traits

Scores on the Big Five traits are mostly independent. That means that a person’s standing on one trait
tells very little about their standing on the other traits of the Big Five. For example, a
person can be extremely high in Extraversion and be either high or low on Neuroticism.
Similarly, a person can be low in Agreeableness and be either high or low in
Conscientiousness. Thus, in the Five-Factor Model, you need five scores to describe
most of an individual’s personality.

Traits are important and interesting because they describe stable patterns of behavior that persist for
long periods of time (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005).

Answering the question 'Who am I?' can lead to a solid self-concept and self-understanding.

For many people, answering this question isn't very easy. For others, a solid understanding of who they
are is a big part of their lives. Understanding of who you are as a person is called self-
concept and understanding what your motives are when you act is called self-
understanding.

In definition, self-concept is generally thought of as our individual perceptions of our behavior, abilities,
and unique characteristics—a mental picture of who you are as a person. For example,
beliefs such as "I am a good friend" or "I am a kind person" are part of an overall self-
concept.
Self-concept tends to be more malleable when people are younger and still going through the process of
self-discovery and identity formation. As people age, self-perceptions become much
more detailed and organized as people form a better idea of who they are and what is
important to them.

According to the book Essential Social Psychology by Richard Crisp and Rhiannon Turner:

The individual self consists of attributes and personality traits that differentiate us from other
individuals. Examples include introversion or extroversion.

The relational self is defined by our relationships with significant others. Examples include siblings,
friends, and spouses.

The collective self reflects our membership in social groups. Examples include British, Republican,
African-American, or gay.

At its most basic, self-concept is a collection of beliefs one holds about oneself and the
responses of others. It embodies the answer to the question "Who am I?"

THE SELF ACCORDING PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology is a scientific study of mental processes and human behavior. It aims to describe, analyse,
predict, control human behavior in general. Self is an essential construct in psychology because it fulfils
the goals of the discipline in studying human and the reason for their action. Many psychologists tried to
define the origin of mental processes and behavior but they all settle down with numerous theories and
assumptions. The following descriptions on the formation of self were presented for you to have a clear
picture on the psychological perspective of self.

THE SELF AS COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTION

• The cognitive aspect of the self is known as self-concept. Self-

concept is defined as self-knowledge, a cognitive structure that
includes beliefs about personality traits, physical characteristics,
abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that an
individual exist as individuals. As humans grow and develop,
self-concept becomes abstract and more complex.

• According to the psychologist Dr. Bruce A. Bracken in 1992,

there are six specific domains that are related to self-concept these
are:
 • the social domain or the ability of the person to interact with others;
• the competence domain or the ability to meet the basic needs;
• the affect domain or the awareness of the emotional states;
• the physical domain or the feelings about looks, health, physical
condition, and overall appearance;
• academic domain or the success or failure in the school; and
• family domain or how well one function within the family unit.

William James and the Me-Self and I-Self

William James is a well-known figure in Psychology who is considered as the founder of functionalism.
He brought prominence to U.S. psychology through the publication of The Principles of
Psychology (1890) that made him more influential than his contemporaries in the field.

James made a clear distinction between ways of approaching the self – the knower (the pure or the I –
Self) and the known (the objective or the Me – Self). The function of the knower (I-Self)
according to James must be the agent of experience. While the known (Me-Self) have
three different but interrelated aspects of empirical self (known today as self- concept):
the Me viewed as material, the Me viewed as social, and the Me viewed as spiritual in
nature.

The material self is consists of everything an individual call uniquely as their own, such as the body,
family, home or style of dress. On the other hand, social self refers to the recognition an
individual get from other people. Lastly, spiritual self refers to the individual inner or
subjective being.

Carl Rogers

Real and Ideal Self

Carl Rogers is best known as the founder of client- centered therapy and considered as one of the
prominent humanistic or existential theorists in personality. His therapy aimed to make
the person achieve balance between their self- concept (real-self) and ideal self.

The real self includes all those aspects of one's identity that are perceived in awareness. These are the
things that are known to oneself like the attributes that an individual possesses.

The ideal self is defined as one’s view of self as one wishes to be. This contains all the aspirations or
wishes of an individual for themselves.
A wide gap between the ideal self and the self-concept indicates incongruence and an unhealthy
personality. Psychologically healthy individuals perceive little discrepancy between their
self-concept and what they ideally would like to be.

MULTIPLE VERSUS UNIFIED SELF

According to Multiple Selves Theory, there are different aspects of the self exist in an individual. From
here, we can say that self is a whole consist of parts, and these parts manifest
themselves when need arise.

Gregg Henriques proposed the Tripartite Model of Human Consciousness, wherein he described that self
is consist of three related, but also separable domains these are the experimental self,
private self, and public self.

The experiential self or the theatre of consciousness is a domain of self that defined as felt experience of
being. This includes the felt consistency of being across periods of time. It is tightly
associated with the memory. This is a part of self that disappears the moment that an
individual enter deep sleep and comes back when they wake up.

The private self consciousness system or the narrator/interpreter is a portion of self that verbally
narrates what is happening and tries to make sense of what is going on. The moment
that you read this part, there is somewhat like a “voice” speaking in your head trying to
understand what this concept is all about.

Lastly, the public self or Persona, the domain of self that an individual shows to the public, and this
interacts on how others see an individual. Henriques’ Tripartite Model attempts to
capture the key domains of consciousness, both within the self and between others.

Unified being is essentially connected to consciousness, awareness, and agency. A well-adjusted person
is able to accept and understood the success and failure that they experienced. They are
those kinds of person who continually adjust, adapt, evolve and survive as an individual
with integrated, unified, multiple selves.

Donald Winnicott

True versus False Self

Donald Winnicott was a paediatrician in London who studied Psychoanalysis with Melanie Klein, a
renowned personality theorist and one of the pioneers in object relations and
development of personality in childhood.

According to him, false self is an alternative personality used to protect an individual’s true identity or
one’s ability to “hide” the real self. The false self is activated to maintain social
relationship as anticipation of the demands of others. Compliance with the external
rules or following societal norms is a good example of this. false self can be a healthy
 self if it is perceived as functional for the person and for the society and being compliant
without the feeling of betrayal of true self. On the other hand, unhealthy false self
happens when an individual feels forced compliance in any situation.

On the contrary, true self has a sense of integrity and connected wholeness that is rooted in early
infancy. The baby creates experiences of a sense of reality and sense of life worth living.
Winnicott claimed that true self can be achieved by good parenting that is not
necessarily a perfect parenting.

The Self as Proactive and Agentic

Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura is a psychologist and Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford
University. He is known for his theory of social learning by means of modeling. He is
famous for his proposed concept of self- efficacy.

His personality theory, The Social Cognitive Theory asserts that a person is both proactive and agentic,
which means that we have the capacity to exercise control over our life. This theory
emphasized that human beings are proactive, self-regulating, self-reflective, and self-
organizing.

Self as proactive means an individual have control in any situation by making things happen. They act as
agent in doing or making themselves as they are. Agency is a defining feature of modern selfhood.
Agents assume some degree of ownership and control over things, both internally (I control my own
thoughts) and externally (I make things happen in the environment). The ability of an individual to
pursue their goals in life is an example of agentic approach to self.

According to Bandura (1989), self-efficacy beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate
themselves and behave. Such beliefs produce these diverse effects through four major
processes. They include cognitive, amotivational, affective and selection processes. A
strong sense of efficacy enhances human accomplishment and personal well-being in
many ways.

In contrast Bandura (1989) said that people who doubt their capabilities shy away from difficult tasks
which they view as personal threats. They have low aspirations and weak commitment
to the goals they choose to pursue. When faced with difficult tasks, they dwell on their
personal deficiencies, on the obstacles they will encounter, and all kinds of adverse
 outcomes rather than concentrate on how to perform successfully. They fall easy victim
to stress and depression.

THE SELF ACCORDING TO PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy

Philosophy is defined as the study of knowledge or wisdom from its Latin roots, philo (love) and sophia
(wisdom). This field is also considered as “The Queen of All Sciences” because every
scientific discipline has philosophical foundations.

Various thinkers for centuries tried to explain the natural causes of everything that exist specifically the
inquiry on the self preoccupied these philosophers in the history. The Greek
philosophers were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away from
them in attempting to understand reality by exercising the art of questioning that
satisfies their curiosity, including the questions about self. The following lecture will
present the different philosophical perspectives and views about self.

Socrates

A philosopher from Athens, Greece and said to have the greatest influence on European thought.

According to the history he was not able to write any of his teachings and life’s account instead, he is
known from the writings of his student Plato who became one of the greatest
philosophers of his time. Socrates had a unique style of asking questions called Socratic
Method.

Socratic Method or dialectic method involves the search for the correct/proper definition of a thing. In
this method, Socrates did not lecture, he instead would ask questions and engage the
person in a discussion. He would begin by acting as if

I he did not know anything and would get the other person to clarify their ideas and resolve logical
inconsistencies (Price, 2000).

The foundation of Socrates philosophy was the Delphic

The foundation of Socrates philosophy was the Delphic Oracle’s that command to “Know Thyself”. Here,
Socrates would like to emphasize that knowing or understanding oneself should be
more than the physical self, or the body.

According to Socrates, self is dichotomous which means composed of two things: The physical realm or
the one that is changeable, temporal, and imperfect. The best example of the physical
realm is the physical world. The physical world is consisting of anything we sense – see,
smell, feel, hear, and taste. It is always changing and deteriorating. The ideal realm is
the one that is imperfect and unchanging, eternal, and immortal. This includes the
intellectual essences of the universe like the concept of beauty, truth, and goodness.
Moreover, the ideal realm is also present in the physical world. One may define
 someone as beautiful or truthful, but their definition is limited and imperfect for it is
always relative and subjective. It is only the ideal forms themselves that are perfect,
unchanging, and eternal.

For Socrates, a human is composed of body and soul, the first belongs to the physical realm because it
changed, it is imperfect, and it dies, and the latter belongs to ideal realm for it survives
the death.

Socrates also used the term soul to identify self.

The self, according to Socrates is the immortal and unified entity that is consistent over time. For
example, a human being remains the same person during their childhood to adulthood
given the fact that they undergone developmental changes throughout their lifespan.

Plato

A student of Socrates, who introduced the idea of a three part soul/self that is composed of reason,
physical appetite and spirit or passion.

The Reason enables human to think deeply, make wise choices and achieve a true understanding of
eternal truths. Plato also called this as divine essence.

The physical Appetite is the basic biological needs of human being such as hunger, thirst, and sexual
desire.

And the spirit or passion is the basic emotions of human being such as love, anger, ambition,
aggressiveness and empathy.

These three elements of the self works in every individual inconsistently. According to Plato, it is always
the responsibility of the reason to organize, control, and reestablish harmonious
relationship between these three elements

Plato also illustrated his view of the soul/self in “Phaedrus” in his metaphor: the soul is like a winged
chariot drawn by two powerful horses: a white horse, representing Spirit, and a black
horse, embodying appetite. The charioteer is reason, whose task is to guide the chariot
to the eternal realm by controlling the two independent-minded horses. Those
charioteers who are successful in setting a true course and ensuring that the two steeds
work together in harmonious unity achieve true wisdom and banquet with the gods.
However, those charioteers who are unable to control their horses and keep their
chariot on track are destined to experience personal, intellectual, and spiritual failure.

St. Augustine
He is considered as the last of the great ancient philosophers whose ideas were greatly Platonic. In
melding philosophy and religious beliefs together, Augustine has been characterized as
Christianity’s first theologian. Like Plato, Augustine believed that the physical body is
different from the immortal soul.

Early in his philosophical development he described body as “snare” or “cage” of the soul and said that
the body is a “slave” of the soul he even characterized that “the soul makes war with
the body”. Later on he came to view the body as “spouse” of the soul, with both
attached to one another by a “natural appetite.” He concluded, “That the body is united
with the soul, so that man may be entire and complete, is a fact we recognize on the
evidence of our own nature.”

According to St. Augustine, the human nature is composed of two realms:

God as the source of all reality and truth. Through mystical experience, man is capable of knowing
eternal truths. This is made possible through the existence of the one eternal truth
which is God. He further added that without God as the source of all truth, man could
never understand eternal truth. This relationship with God means that those who know
most about God will come closest to understanding the true nature of the world.

The sinfulness of man. The cause of sin or evil is an act of mans’ freewill. Moral goodness can only be
achieved through the grace of God.

He also stated that real happiness can only be found in God. For God is love and he created humans for
them to also love. Problems arise because of the objects humans choose to love.
Disordered love results when man loves the wrong things which he believes will give
him happiness. Furthermore, he said that if man loves God first and everything else to a
lesser degree, then all will fall into its rightful place.

Rene Descartes

A French philosopher, mathematician, and considered the founder of modern philosophy.

Descartes, famous principle the “cogito, ergo sum—“I think, therefore I exist” established his
philosophical views on “true knowledge” and concept of self.

He explained that in order to gain true knowledge, one must doubt everything even own existence.
Doubting makes someone aware that they are thinking being thus, they exist. The
essence of existing as a human identity is the possibility of being aware of our selves:
being self-conscious in this way is integral to having a personal identity. Conversely, it
would be impossible to be self-conscious if we did not have a personal

identity of which to be conscious. In other words, the essence of self is being a thinking thing.

The self is a dynamic entity that engages in metal operations – thinking, reasoning, and perceiving
processes. In addition to this, self-identity is dependent on the awareness in engaging
with those mental operations.

He declared that the essential self or the self as the thinking entity is radically different from the physical
body. The thinking self or soul is a non-material, immortal, conscious being,
 independent of the physical laws of the universe while the physical body is a material,
mortal, non-thinking entity, fully governed by the physical laws of nature.

He also maintained that the soul and the body are independent of one another and each can exist and
function without the other. In cases in which people are sleeping or comatose, their
bodies continue to function even though their minds are not thinking, much like the
mechanisms of a clock.

He identified the physical self as part of nature, governed by the physical laws of the universe, and
available to scientific analysis and experimentation, and the conscious self (mind, soul)
is a part of the spiritual realm, independent of the physical laws of the universe,
governed only by the laws of reason and God’s will. And because it exists outside of the
natural world of cause-and-effect, the conscious self is able to exercise free will in the
choices it makes.

John Locke

An English philosopher and physician and famous in his concept of “Tabula Rasa” or Blank Slate that
assumes the nurture side of human development.

The self, according to Locke is consciousness. In his essay entitled On Personal Identity (from his most
famous work, Essay Concerning Human Understanding) he discussed the reflective
analysis of how an individual may experience the self in everyday living. He provided the
following key points:

To discover the nature of personal identity, it is important to find out what it means to be a person.

A person is a thinking, intelligent being who has the abilities to reason and to reflect.

3. A person is also someone who considers them self to be the same thing in different times and
different places.

4. Consciousness as being aware that we are thinking always accompanies thinking and is an essential
part of the thinking process.

5. Consciousness makes possible our belief that we are the same identity in different times and different
places.

Although Locke and Descartes believed that a person or the self is a thinking intelligent being who has
the abilities to reflect and to reason, Locke was not convinced with the assumptions of
Plato, St. Augustine and Descartes that the individual self necessarily exists in a single
soul or substance. For Locke, personal identity and the soul or substance in which the
personal identity is situated are two very different things. The bottom line of his theory
on self is that self is not tied to any particular body or substance. It only exists in other
times and places because of the memory of those experiences.

David Hume

He was a Scottish philosopher and also an empiricist.

His claim about self is quite controversial because he assumed that there is no self! In his essay entitled,
“On Personal Identity” (1739) he said that, if we carefully examine the contents of [our]
experience, we find that there are only two distinct entities, "impressions" and "ideas".

Impressions are the basic sensations of our experience, the elemental data of our minds: pain, pleasure,
heat, cold, happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, and so on.

On the other hand, ideas are copies of impressions that include thoughts and images that are built up
from our primary impressions through a variety of relationships, but because they are
derivative copies of impressions, they are once removed from reality.

Hume considered that the self does not exist because all of the experiences that a person may have are
just perceptions and this includes the perception of self. None of these perceptions
resemble a unified and permanent self-identity that exists over time.

He further added that there are instances that an individual is limited in experiencing their perception
like in sleeping. Similarly, when someone died all empirical senses end and according to
him, it makes no sense to believe that self exists in other forms. As an empiricist, Hume
provide an honest description and analysis of his own experience, within which there is
no self to be found.

Hume explained that the self that is being experienced by an individual is nothing but a kind of fictional
self. Human created an imaginary creature which is not real. “Fictional self” is created to
unify the mental events and introduce order into an individual lives, but this “self” has
no real existence.

Sigmund Freud

A well-known Australian psychologist and considered as the Father and Founder of Psychoanalysis. His
influence in Psychology and therapy is dominant and popular in the 20th to 21st
century.

The dualistic view of self by Freud involves the conscious self and unconscious self.

The conscious self is governed by reality principle. Here, the self is rational, practical, and appropriate to
the social environment. The conscious self has the task of controlling the constant
pressures of the unconscious self, as its primitive impulses continually seek for
immediate discharge.

The unconscious self is governed by pleasure principle. It is the self that is aggressive, destructive,
unrealistic and instinctual. Both of Freud’s self needs immediate gratification and
reduction of tensions to optimal levels and the goal of every individual is to make
unconscious conscious.

Freud proposed how mind works, he called this as provinces or structures of the mind. By illustrating the
tip of the iceberg which according to him represents conscious awareness which
characterizes the person in dealing with the external world. The observable behavior,
however, is further controlled by the workings of the sSubconscious serves as the
 repository of past experiences, repressed memories, fantasies, and urges. The three
levels of the mind are:

Id. This is primarily based on the pleasure principle. It demands immediate satisfaction and is not
hindered by societal expectations.

Ego. The structure that is primarily based on the reality principle. This mediates between the impulses of
the id and restraints of the superego.

Superego. This is primarily dependent on learning the difference between right and wrong, thus it is
called moral principle. Morality of actions is largely dependent on childhood upbringing
particularly on rewards and punishments.

According to Freud, there are two kinds of instinct that drive individual behavior – the eros or the life
instinct and the thanatos of the death instinct. The energy of eros is called libido and
includes urges necessary for individual and species survival like thirst, hunger, and sex,
in cases that human behavior is directed towards destruction in the form of aggression
and violence, such are the manifestations of thanatos.

Gilbert Ryle

A British analytical philosopher. He was an important figure in the field of Linguistic Analysis which
focused on the solving of philosophical puzzles through an analysis of language.

According to Ryle, the self is best understood as a pattern of behavior, the tendency or disposition for a
person to behave in a certain way in certain circumstances.

He opposed the notable ideas of the previous philosophers and even claimed that those were results of
confused conceptual thinking he termed, category mistake.

The category mistake happens when we speak about the self as something independent of the physical
body: a purely mental entity existing in time but not space

Immanuel Kant

A German Philosopher who made great contribution to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and
ethics. Kant is widely regarded as the greatest philosopher of the modern period.

Kant maintained that an individual self makes the experience of the world comprehensible because it is
responsible for synthesizing the discreet data of sense experience into a meaningful
whole.

It is the self that makes consciousness for the person to make sense of everything. It is the one that help
every individual gain insight and knowledge. If the self failed to do this synthesizing
function, there would be a chaotic and insignificant collection of sensations.
Additionally, the self is the product of reason, a regulative principle because the self regulates
experience by making unified experience possible and unlike Hume, Kant’s self is not the
object of consciousness, but it makes the consciousness understandable and unique.

Transcendental apperception happens when people do not experience self directly, instead as a unity of
all impressions that are organized by the mind through perceptions. Kant concluded that

all objects of knowledge, which includes the self, are phenomenal. That the true nature of things is
altogether unknown and unknowable (Price, 2000).

For Kant, the kingdom of God is within man. God is manifested in people’s lives therefore it is man’s
duty to move towards perfection. Kant emphasized that people should always see duty
as a divine command (Price, 2000).

Paul and Patricia Churchland

An American Philosopher interested in the field of philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive
neurobiology, epistemology and perception.

Churchland central argument is that the concepts and theoretical vocabulary that people used to think
about themselves- using such term as desire, fear, sensation, misrepresent the reality of
minds and selves. He claims that the self is product of brain activity.

The behavior of the self can be attributed to the neuropharmacological states, the neural activity in
specialized anatomical areas.

Neurophilosopy was coined by Patricia Churchland, the modern scientific inquiry looks into the
application of neurology to age-old problems in philosophy. The philosophy of
neuroscience is the study of the philosophy of science, neuroscience, and psychology. It
aims to explore the relevance of neurolinguistic experiments/studies to the philosophy
of the mind.

Patricia Churchland claimed that man’s brain is responsible for the identity known as self. The
biochemical properties of the brain according to this philosophy of neuroscience is really
responsible for man’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

Paul Churchland is one of the many philosophers and psychologists that viewed the self from a
materialistic point of view, contending that in the final analysis mental states are
identical with, reducible to, or explainable in terms of physical brain states. This
assumption was made due to the physiological processes of the body that directly
affecting the mental state of the person. The advent of sophisticated technology and
scientific research gives hope to understand the connection between the physical body
and the mind/brain relationship that integrated in the self.

Being an eliminative materialist, he believes that there is a need to develop a new vocabulary and
conceptual framework that is grounded in neuroscience. This new framework will be a
more accurate reflection of the human mind and self.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

A French philosopher and phenomenologist. He took a very different approach to the self and the
mind/body “problem.” According to him, the division between the “mind” and the
“body” is a product of confused thinking. The self is experienced as a unity in which the
mental and physical are seamlessly woven together. This unity is the primary experience
of selves and begin to doubt it when an individual use their minds to concoct abstract
notions of a separate mind and body.

Developed the concept of self-subject and contended that perceptions occur existentially. Thus, the
consciousness, the world, and the human body are all interconnected as they mutually
perceive the world.

According to him, the world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in the ongoing process of
man’s becoming.

Phenomenology provides a direct description of the human experience which serves to guide man’s
conscious actions. He further added that, the world is a field of perception, and human
consciousness assigns meaning to the world. Thus man cannot separate himself from his
perceptions of the world.

Perception is not purely the result of sensations nor it is purely interpretations. Rather consciousness is
a process that includes sensing as well as interpreting/reasoning.

THE SELF ACCORDING TO SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Sociology and Anthropology

Sociology and Anthropology are two interrelated disciplines that contributes to the understanding of
self.

Sociology presents the self as a product of modern society. It is the science that studies the
development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of human being.

Anthropology is the study of humanity. This broad field takes an interdisciplinary approach to looking at
human culture, both past and present. The following set of sociologists and
anthropologist offered their views about self
George Herbert Mead and the Social Self

Mead is well-known for his theory of self.

He postulated that, the self represents the sum total of people’s conscious perception of their identity
as distinct from others. Mead argued that the self like the mind is social emergent. This
means that individual selves are the products of social interaction and not logical or
biological in nature.

He claimed that the self is something which undergoes development because it is not present instantly
at birth. The self arises in the process of social experience and activity as a result of their
relations to the said process as a whole and to other individuals within that process. In
other words, one cannot experience their self alone, they need other people to
experience their self.

The social emergence of self is developed due to the three forms of inter-subjective activity, the
language, play, and the game.

He proposed the stages of self formation:

Preparatory Stage.

The Play Stage.

The Game Stage.

Generalized other the person realizes that people in society have cultural norms, beliefs and values
which are incorporated into each self. This realization forms basis of how the person evaluate
themselves.

The self, according to Mead is not merely a passive reflection of the generalized other. The responses of
the individual to the social world are also active, it means that a person decides what they will do in
reference to the attitude of others but not mechanically determined by such attitudinal structures.
Here, Mead identified the two phases of self:

1. the phase which reflects the attitude of the generalized other or the “me”; and

2. the phase that responds to the attitude of generalized other or the “I”.

In Mead’s words, the "me" is the social self, and the "I" is a response to the "me". Mead defines the
"me" as "a conventional, habitual individual and the “I” as the “novel reply” of the individual to the
generalized other.

Generally, Meads theory sees the self as a perspective that comes out of interactions, and he sees the
meanings of symbols, social objects, and the self as emerging from negotiated interactions
The Self as a product of modern society among other constructions Georg Simmel

Simmel was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. He was intensely interested in the ways in
which modern, objective culture impacts the individual’s subjective experiences.

In contrast to Mead, Simmel proposed that there is something called human nature that is innate to the
individual. This human nature is intrinsic to the individual like the natural inclination to religious impulse
or the gender differences. He also added that most of our social interactions are individual motivations.

Simmel as a social thinker made a distinction between subjective and objective culture.

The individual or subjective culture refers to the ability to embrace, use, and feel culture.

Objective culture is made up of elements that become separated from the individual or group’s control
and identified as separate objects.

There are interrelated forces in modern society that tend to increase objective culture according to
Simmel. These are urbanizations, money, and the configuration of one’s social network.

Urbanization is the process that moves people from country to city living. This result to the
concentration of population in one place brought about by industrialization. This paved way to the
organization of labor or increased division of labor, which demands specializations wherein this creates
more objective culture.

Money creates a universal value system wherein every commodity can be understood. Money also
increases individual freedom by pursuing diverse activities and by increasing the options for self-
expression. Money also makes the individual to be less attached to the commodities because the
individual tends to understand and experience their possession less in terms of their intrinsic qualities
and more of their objective and abstract worth. Additionally, money also discouraged intimate ties with
people. Money comes to stand in the place of almost everything – and this includes relationship! Money
further discourages intimate ties by encouraging a culture of calculation.

Because of urbanization, Simmel observed that social networks also changed. Group affiliations in urban
is definitely different from rural settings wherein the relationship are strongly influenced by family. An
individual tends to seek membership to the same group which makes the family as basic socialization
structure. This natural inclination to join groups is called by Simmel as organic motivation and the
grouping is called primary group. This group is based on ties of affection and personal loyalty endure
over long periods of time, and involve multiple aspects of a person’s life.

On the other hand, in the modern urban settings, group membership is due to rational motivation or
membership due to freedom of choice. This characterized the secondary group which is goal and
utilitarian oriented, with a narrow range of activities, over limited time spans. As a result, it is more
likely that an individual will develop unique personalities. Moreover, Simmel said that a complex web of
group affiliations produces role conflicts and blasé attitude. Role conflict is a situation that demands a
person of two or more roles that clash with one another. Blasé attitude is an attitude of absolute
boredom and lack of concern. This is the inability or limited ability to provide emotional investment to
other people.

The Self and Person in the Contemporary Anthropology

The subfields of Anthropology are as follows:

Archaeology. Focus on the study of the past and how it may have contributed to the present ways of
how people conduct their daily lives.

Biological Anthropology. Focus on how the human body adapts to the different earth environments.

Linguistic Anthropology. Focused on using language as means to discover a group’s manner of social
interaction and their worldview.

The Self and Person in the Contemporary Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology. Focused in knowing what makes one group’s manner of living forms an essential
part of the member’s personal and societal identity. This encompasses the principles of Theory of
Cultural Determinism which suggests that the human nature is determined by the kind of culture he is
born and grew up in.
Cultural diversities are manifested in different ways and different levels of dept. The following are the
ways in which culture may manifest itself in people:

Symbols. These are the words, gestures, pictures or objects that have recognized or accepted meaning
in a particular culture. Example: colors have similar meaning across all cultures.

Heroes. These are persons from the past or present who have characteristics that are important in
culture. They may be real of work of fictions. Example: Fiction Thor, Captain America; Real – Jose Rizal,
Apolinario Mabini.

Rituals. These are activities participated by a group of people for the fulfilment of desired objectives and
are concerned to be socially essential. Example: Wedding, fiesta, Christmas celebration, graduation, etc.

Values. These are considered to be the core of every culture. These are unconscious, neither discuss or
observed, and can only be inferred from the way people act and react to situations. Example:
hospitality, respect for elders etc.

The Self Embedded in the Culture Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz was an Anthropology Professor at the University of Chicago. He studied different cultures
and explored on the conception of the self in his writings entitled, “The Impact of the Concept of Culture
on the Concept of Man” (1966) in his fieldwork at Java, Bali and Morrocco.

The analysis of Geertz (1966) in his cultural study about the description of self in Bali is that the Balinese
person is extremely concerned not to present anything individual (distinguishing him or her from others)
in social life but to enact exclusively a culturally prescribed role or mask. In one instance, Geertz (1973)
gave an example of the stage fright that pervades persons in Bali because they must not be publicly
recognizable as individual selves and actors points precisely to the fact that agency or an ability to act in
one’s own account is an integral ability of human beings—an ability which continually threatens the
culturally established norm of non-individuality