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Understanding The Self W2 Notes

- The document discusses various philosophical perspectives on the self from thinkers including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, Gilbert Ryle, Paul Churchland, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It covers their key ideas and contributions to understanding topics like virtue, knowledge, reason, the mind-body problem, the unconscious, behaviorism, neuroscience, and phenomenology.

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Avrianna Avery
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46 views4 pages

Understanding The Self W2 Notes

- The document discusses various philosophical perspectives on the self from thinkers including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, Gilbert Ryle, Paul Churchland, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It covers their key ideas and contributions to understanding topics like virtue, knowledge, reason, the mind-body problem, the unconscious, behaviorism, neuroscience, and phenomenology.

Uploaded by

Avrianna Avery
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Understanding the Self (Advance Notes based on syllabus)

Handouts/Notes/averynotes
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I. The Self from Various Perspectives


a. Philosophy
- Philosophy means love of wisdom, it is an academic discipline and the activity of
people to undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about
themselves, the world in which they live and their relationship to the world and to
others.
- It is based on logical reasoning

A true to life based philospher Without him there will be no existence of the greats
• Socrates (BIG 3)

When we - Socrates was a moral philosopher. He was not interested in mathematics or


say a deep science but was concerned with the quality of his soul and that of others.
thinker he Socrates' philosophy examines how we should live. This led him to discussions
would
carefully on various virtues, things like wisdom, justice, courage, piety, and so on.
examine - A deep thinker and an answer seeker.
someting - Roamed the area of to find some people to discuss it. Father of Philosophy?
based on
solely facts - Thinking and using their intellect for daily lives.
and - He is not poor nor rich but his family have an average wealth
evidence - Greek Philosopher
through
the use of - “Sometimes you keep wall up not to keep people out but see who cares enough
people to break them down.”
-

• Plato Focuses mainly on life? Because of his Teacher (Socrates)


- Envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelations, starting
with the most fundamental among them (the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral
psychology he developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of
knowledge
- Teacher of Aristotle and Student of Socrates
- One of the great philosophers (GREEK PHILOSOPHER)
- Great contributors of WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
● Western Philosophy (Came with the ideas of secularism humanism and scientific
temperament,progress and development.) (Socrates,Plato and Aristotle) Focused
on Individual Rights.
● Eastern Philosophy (Accepts the truth as given and is more interested in
balance.) (Buddha,Lao Tzu, Confucius) Focused on Social Responsibility.
- https://youtu.be/VDiyQub6vpw
- “At the touch of love,everyone becomes a poet.
Happiness=Eidaimonia
• Aristotle
- three basic things: what Eudaimonia is, what Virtue is, and That We Become Better
Persons Through Practice.
- The moral theory of Aristotle, like that of Plato, focuses on virtue, recommending the
virtuous way of life by its relation to happiness. Alexander the Great, a
- Influential Philosopher Macedonian king, conquered the
- Alexander the great TUTOR eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, the
- https://youtu.be/csIW4W_DYX4 Middle East, and parts of Asia
- Categorized knowledge into different field (physics,ethics, and math.)
- Disciple of Plato
- Based on Factual Data / Greek Philosopher
- “No great mind was ever existed without the touch of madness.”

• Rene Descartes (Deycart)


Cartesian Plane
- https://youtu.be/CAjWUrwvxs4
- Three innate ideas: the idea of God, the idea of (finite) mind, and the idea of (indefinite)
body.
- René Descartes is generally considered the father of modern philosophy. He was
the first major figure in the philosophical movement known as rationalism, a
method of understanding the world based on the use of reason as the
means to attain knowledge.
- “Conquer yourself rather than the world”
- French Philosopher

• John Locke
- English Philosopher (
- founder of modern “liberal” thought, Locke pioneered the ideas of natural law, social
contract, religious toleration, and the right to revolution that proved essential to both the
American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution
- John Locke was, like Aristotle, an empiricist.(a person who supports the theory that all
knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses.) A central idea of Lockean
thought was his notion of the Tabula Rasa: the “Blank Slate.” John Locke believed that
all human beings are born with a barren, empty, malleable mind; every facet of one's
character is something observed, perceived, and learned via the senses.
- John Locke's philosophy inspired and reflected Enlightenment values in its recognition
of the rights and equality of individuals, its criticism of arbitrary authority (e.g., the divine
right of kings), its advocacy of religious toleration, and its general empirical and scientific
temperament.
- https://youtu.be/bZiWZJgJT7I
-

• David Hume
- https://youtu.be/HS52H_CqZLE
- One of the most lasting contributions of Hume's discussion of the passions is his
argument that human actions must be prompted by passion, and never can be motivated
by reason.
- Great Philosophy voices
- We are more influenced than feelings rather than our reasons
- Scottish Philosopher

• Immanuel Kant
- https://youtu.be/nsgAsw4XGvU
- His moral philosophy is a philosophy of freedom. Without human freedom,
thought Kant, moral appraisal and moral responsibility would be impossible. Kant
believes that if a person could not act otherwise, then his or her act can have no
moral worth.
- Critique of Pure Reason
- German Philosopher
• Sigmund Freud,
- Austrian Neurologist
- https://youtu.be/bZiWZJgJT7I
- Sigmund Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind, and a
primary assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind governs
behavior to a greater degree than people suspect. Indeed, the goal of
psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious.
- Freud is famous for inventing and developing the technique of
psychoanalysis; for articulating the psychoanalytic theory of motivation, mental
illness, and the structure of the subconscious; and for influencing scientific and
popular conceptions of human nature by positing that both normal and abnormal
thought.
• Gilbert Ryle
- British Philosopher
- We are just bundle of behaviors
- He had an enormous influence on the development of 20th Century Analytic
Philosophy, particularly in the areas of Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy
of Language.
- the traditional conception of the human mind—that it is an invisible
ghostlike entity occupying a physical body—is based on what he called a
“category mistake.”
- Category mistake -supposing that mind and body are distinct and equal
when they are not of the same logical category.

• Paul Churchland
- Canadian Philosopher
- Churchland believes that beliefs are not ontologically real; that is, he believes
that a future, fully matured neuroscience is likely to have no need for "beliefs"
(see propositional attitudes), in the same manner that modern science discarded
such notions as legends or witchcraft.
- Ontological- ontology seeks the classification and explanation of entities.

• Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- https://youtu.be/ZvWGkC8vM_I
- French Philosopher
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty's work is commonly associated with the philosophical
movement called existentialism and its intention to begin with an analysis of the
concrete experiences, perceptions, and difficulties, of human existence.

- Existentialism - a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the


existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their
own development through acts of the will.

- phenomenology
Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) is best known for his contributions to
phenomenology, in particular to phenomenological approaches to the
body, perception, and consciousness in relation to nature.

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