UNDERSTANDING
THE SELF
RICHARD VICTOR POLICAR
SATURAY
Instructor
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
• It is FUNDAMENTAL course in the General Education
Curriculum for tertiary education.
• Help the students understand the nature of identity
including factors that influence and shape Personal
Identity
• Develop a more critical and reflective attitude in
exploring the issues and concerns of the self and identity
for better and proper understanding one’s self.
• Emphasizes the integration of personal daily experiences
of the students with their learning experiences inside the
classroom to encourage them to improve themselves for a
BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
Major Parts:
• First Chapter
– Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology
• Second Chapter
– Biological self, Material Self, Political Self, Spiritual
Self and the Digital Self
• Third Chapter
– Issues of concern for young students these days,
which are learning, goal setting, and stress.
CHAPTER I
Defining the Self: Personal and Developmental Perspectives on Self and
Identity
The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective
Objectives:
1. Explain why it is essential to understand the self
2. Describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the
points of view of various philosophers across time and place.
3. Compare and contrast how the self has been represented in
different philosophical schools.
4. Examine one’s self against the different view of self that were
discussed in class.
My NAME
is____.
NAME
Respected Politician
Historical personality
Saint
Celebrity
Randomly pick a combination of letters and
number
3Sha143
• A name, no matter how intimately bound it is with the
bearer, however, is not the person. It is only a signifier.
• A person who was named after a saint most probably will not
become an actual saint.
• The self is thought to be something else than the name.
• The self is something that a person perennially molds, shapes,
and develops.
• The self is not a static thing that one is simply born with like a
mole on one’s face or is just assigned by one’s parents just like
a name.
INDIVIDUAL
and
GROUP ACTIVITY
Do You Truly Know Yourself?
Answer the following question about your “self” as fully and
precisely as you can.
1. How would you characterize your “self”?
2. What makes you stand out from the rest? What makes your
“self”?
3. How has your “self” transformed it self?
4. How is your “self” connected to your body?
5. How is your “self” related to other selves?
6. What will happen to your “self” after you die?
ANALYSIS:
Where you able to answer the questions
with ease? Why? which questions did you
find easiest to answer? Which ones are
difficult? Why?
QUESTIONS EASY or WHY?
DIFFICULT
TO ANSWER
• Socrates
• Plato
• Augustine
• Descartes
• Hume
• Kant
• Ryle
• Merleau-Ponty
Contents:
• Self Understanding
• Monitoring Egocentrism
• Making a commitment to fair-mindedness
• Recognizing mind’s three distinctive
Functions
• Understanding the special relationship to
mind
Monitoring The Egocentrism in
Your Thought and Life
• Egocentrism is a challenge in developing.
• What is egocentrism?
• Why are we egocentric?
• The insight into the nature of own thinking and emotions.
• Stereotypical and Simplistic
Thinking
• How emotions affect thinking.
• How to avoid egocentrism?
• Are you egocentric?
• How egocentric you are.
• Self-understanding
Self Understanding
Understand Human mind through evaluating
one own self.
Making a commitment to Fair Mindedness
• The concept of egocentric (caring too much
about yourself and not about other people)
• Born into certain culture, family and set of
believes
• People who share same culture and believes
with us are correct other people who have
different cultures are wrong
• People who share same believes assume that
they have an insight view of the truth
Making a commitment to Fair Mindedness
cont.
• Our behavior always indicate that we are
attracted to people that we share similar
values with
• We hold same values even if they conflict with
ethical manners
• How to become a fair mindedly?
Mind’s three Distinctive Functions
DO U KNOW?
Three basic functions of Human Mind
Thinking:
• Simply means to create meaning
• Categorizes the events of life
• Makes sense of the world
Feeling:
• Evaluation of the meaning of events in
life
• Categorizing the positive and Negative
• It tells how one feels about the
particular event
Wanting:
• Allocates energy to action
• It tells how one should react to a specific
situation
• Whether is it worth taking or not
Understanding that you have a special
relationship to your mind:
Thinking:
• Thinking changes the way a person looks at a
situation.
• Feelings and desires can only change by
thinking.
• Thinking controls a person’s
emotions and decisions.
Thinking: cont.
• Every person has his own way of looking at
things. Different perspectives.
• Different perspective are created by different
thoughts and different ways of thinking.
• This is why we reactions vary from one to
another.
Conclusion:
• Self-understanding is basically how a person
reacts, feels, and thinks.
• A person’s wishes, desires, and needs are all
linked to his thinking.
• Thinking defers from one person to another.
• Anything is achievable, if its been thought
through.
Culture and Cultural Identity
The importance of identity
Who am I?
I am… I am…
I am… I am… Multiple
I am…
Identities
I am…
IDENTIT Y
“the reflective self-conception or self-
image that we each derive from our
family, gender, cultural, ethnic, and
individual socialization process”.
Three levels of identity (Hall):
Personal (what makes us unique)
Relational (our relationships with others)
Cultural, Communal or Social (large-scale communities such as
nationality, ethnicity, gender, religious or political affiliation)
Selected Social Identities
Racial Identity – a socially constructed idea
Ethnic Identity – derived from a sense of shared heritage, history,
traditions, values, area of origin, and sometimes language
Gender Identity (different than sexual identity) – how a particular
culture differentiates masculine and feminine social roles
National Identity – the nation/country one was born into
( or a sense of place)
The dark side of identity
Stereotypes- categorization that mentally organizes your experience with, and guides your behavior toward, a particular group of
people.
Prejudice – is a deeply held negative feeling associated with a particular group (anger, fear, aversion, anxiety).
Racism – an extension of stereotyping and prejudice. The belief that one race is inherently superior to another; “genetic endowment.”
Ethnocentrism – one’s own culture is superior to any other.
