The Self from the Perspective of

Western Philosophy
By: Ms. Carolina O. Tripolca
Socrates (470-399 BC)
Biography
 Born in Athens around 470 BC
 May have followed his father’s trade as a stone mason
 Probably served the Athenian army at some point in life
 Became a member of Athen’s Boule, a citizen council that
voted on important matters of the day
 Became interested in Philosophy
 Upset a lot of people with his philosophical inquiries
 Brought to trial in 399BC under charges of corrupting the
youth
 Found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock
His Ideas
 Care for your soul
 Knowledge of virtue is necessary to become virtuous,
virtue is necessary to attain happiness
 All evil acts are committed out of ignorance and hence
involuntarily
 Committing an injustice is far worse than suffering an
injustice
 “What is the way we ought to live?”
“The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth
Living”
In search of self knowledge, we discover our true
nature
One’s true self is not to be identified with what we
own, our social status, our reputation, or even with our
body
Our true self is our soul
It is the state of our soul or ïnner being” which
determines our quality of life
We should devote our attention, energy and resources
to making our soul as good and beautiful as possible
The next step towards self knowledge is to obtain
knowledge of what is good and evil
Happiness is the end in life and everything we do we
do because we think it will make us happy
There is one supreme good, and possession of this
good alone will secure our happiness
VIRTUE – moral excellence; (Ancient Greece) courage,
temperance, prudence and justice
Knowledge – virtue-happiness
“Why do so many people fail to become virtuous and
instead commit evil acts?
Ignorance- all evil acts are committed involuntarily
When we commit an injustice, we are harming our
own soul
We should choose to suffer harm rather than to inflict
it
Plato (428-347 BCE)
Biography
 Born to a family of political and social elite; father was a
noble aristocrat and mother was related to Solon, the
famed senator
 Studied many subjects from different teachers until he
famously became a disciple of Socrates
 Hated democracy because of his teacher’s execution
 Founded the first Academy
Tripartite Theory of the Soul
Logistikon or the rational soul
 The part of the soul that loves logic, thought and
rational learning
Thimoeides or the spirited soul
 The part of the soul that causes people to experience
strong emotions
Epithymeticon or the appetitive soul
 The part of the soul which cannot resist appetites (base
desires) such as food, power sex
 The major task of the two other parts of the soul is to
resist the appetetive part
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430BCE)
Birth name was Aurelius Augustinus
Born in Numidia (Modern day Algeria)
Patron Saint of Brewers
Lived a life of loose living, parties, entertainment and
worldly ambitions
His sins of impurity and pride made him unable to
understand the Divine truth and thought he could
never live a pure life
Converted to Christianity and at the age of 40, became
Bishop of Hippo
His Ideas
Follows the views of Plato but added Christianity
Man is of a bifurcated nature
 Man dwells in the world and is imperfect; continuously
yearns to be with the divine
 The other is capable of reaching immortality
 Good
 Evil
 Free will
St Thomas of Aquinas (1225-1274)
Italian, A Catholic priest in the Dominican Order and
one of the most important medieval philosophers and
theologians
A jurist of scholasticism – a medieval school of
philosophy that employed critical method of
philosophical analysis
Was able to get Christians into a unified vision
between philosophy and theology
Empiricist
Man = matter + form
Matter or “hyle” – the common stuff that makes up
everything in the universe, including man
Form or “morphe” – the essence of a substance or
living (it makes is what it is)
The soul is the essence of man, its is what animates
the body; it is what makes us human
What makes a human person a person and not a dog
or tiger is the soul
Thomistic Philosophy
Man is substantially body and soul
The soul is united with the human body because it is the substantial
form of the human body.
It is the principle of action in the human body and the principle of life
of the body.
The soul requires the body as the material medium for its operation,
particularly, perception.
The soul has operative functions which do not need a material
medium; they are the man’s intellect and will.
At death, intellection and will remain in the soul which is immortal,
simple and incorruptible.
Body and soul before death are essentially united because the two
exist in a correlative manner.
Modern Philosophy
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Father of Modern Rationalism
Is a renowned French philosopher, mathematician and
scientist
One of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution of the
17th century. 
Claimed that certainty is the only basis of knowledge.
Only Mathematics had given him certain knowledge.
Rationalism - Epistemological school that maintains that
the most important truths about reality are obtained by
means of the intellect (the mind) alone, without relying at
all upon the senses. 
Advocate of “Dualism” – a person is made up of the
body and mind
There is a doubting self – much of what we believe and
think are not infallible, and may turn out to be false
“Cogito Ergo Sum” – I think, therefore , I am!
Self = “cogito” – the mind and “extenza” the body
The body is nothing else but a machine that is
attached to the mind
The human person has it but it is not what makes a
man man
A priori – innate ideas, knowledge based on reason
A posteriori – knowledge based on experience
David Hume (1711-1776)
18th century Scottish philosopher
Epistemology – Empiricism
Empiricism – the theory that all knowledge is derived
from human senses
“the self is not an entity beyond the physical body” 
You know that other people are humans not because
you have seen their soul, but because you see them,
hear them, feel them etc
Bundle theory - “the self is nothing but a bundle of
impressions and ideas” 
Bundle Theory of the Self
Impressions – everything that originate from our
senses
 Basic object of our experience/sensations
Ideas – faint images of thinking and reasoning based
on impressions
To Hume, ideas are always inferior to impressions.
John Locke (1634-1704)
John Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, on Aug.
29, 1632. 
The father, also named John Locke, was a devout,
even-tempered man.
Locke was educated at Westminster School and
Oxford.
He was interested in meteorology and the
experimental sciences, especially chemistry.
He turned to medicine and became known as one of
the most skilled practitioners of his day.
He graduated with a bachelor’s of medicine in 1674.
He was an associate of Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and other
leading Oxford scientists.
In 1667 Locke became confidential secretary and personal
physician to Anthony Ashley Cooper, later lord chancellor and
the first earl of Shaftesbury.
He supervised a dangerous liver operation on Shaftesbury that
likely saved his patron’s life.
Shaftesbury was indicted for high treason. He was acquitted,
but Locke was suspected of disloyalty.
In 1683, he left England for Holland and returned only after the
revolution of 1688.
Locke never married or had children
Empirical Theory of Knowledge 
Rejected the philosophy that man has innate ideas 
Tabula Rasa – (blank slate) a Latin word that
originates from the Roman tabula or wax tablet used
for notes, which was blanked by heating the wax and
then smoothing it.
Sees knowledge as the connection and agreement, or
disagreement and repugnancy, of the ideas humans
form.
All ideas are based on sensation – arriving at
explanation by observing phenomena. 
Learning should be a gradual process ,slow &
cumulative
 The two fountains of knowledge are sensation and
reflection 
 There are two kinds of ideas: The simple and The
complex ideas. 
Simple ideas - an immediate object of sensation or
reflection.
Complex ideas - an idea formed by the mind out of
simple ideas 
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
German (Königsberg, Prussia) philosopher who is
widely considered to be a central figure of modern
philosophy.
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an
increasingly influential philosopher.
He argued that fundamental concepts structure
human experience, and that reason is the source of
morality.
Theory of Perception: understanding of the external
world comes from experience and knowledge
Immanuel Kant
Self knowledge and perception
Inner self –(understanding)
Outer self – senses and the physical world (sensibility)
Apperception – mentally assimilating new ideas into
old ones
 Prior knowledge + new knowledge creates better
understanding
 Making sense of new things
Representation -mental imagery based on past
sensations and experiences.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis - a method of analyzing psychic
phenomena and treating emotional disorders that
involves treatment sessions during which the patient is
encouraged to talk freely about personal experiences
and especially about early childhood and dreams.
He created an entirely new approach to the
understanding of the human personality.
He is regarded as one of the most influential - and
controversial - minds of the 20th century.
Psychosexual Stages of Development
 Oral (0 – 1.5 years of age): Fixation on all things oral. If not
satisfactorily met there is the likelihood of developing negative oral
habits or behaviors.
 Anal (1.5 to 3 years of age): As indicated this stage is primarily related
to developing healthy toilet training habits.
 Phallic (3 – 5 year of age): The development of healthy substitutes
for the sexual attraction boys and girls have toward a parent of the
opposite gender.
 Latency (5 – 12 years of age): The development of healthy dormant
sexual feelings for the opposite sex.
 Genital (12 – adulthood): All tasks from the previous four stages are
integrated into the mind allowing for the onset of healthy sexual
feelings and behaviors.
Freud’s Structure of the Mind
 Id - the most primitive of the three structures, is concerned
with instant gratification of basic physical needs and urges. It
operates entirely unconsciously
 Superego - is concerned with social rules and morals—similar
to what many people call their ” conscience ” or their “moral
compass.”
 Ego - In contrast to the instinctual id and the moral superego,
the ego is the rational, pragmatic part of our personality. It is
less primitive than the id and is partly conscious and partly
unconscious. It’s what Freud considered to be the “self,” and its
job is to balance the demands of the id and superego in the
practical context of reality. 
Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976)
British, son of a prosperous doctor
Followed “ordinary language philosophy”
 asserts that problems and false assumptions develop as we
distort meanings of words
Behaviorist – “behaviors and actions give us our sense of
self”
Argued that the mind does not exist and therefore can't be
the seat of self.
The Self comes from behavior.
We are all just a bundle of behaviors caused by the
physical workings of the body.
The Concept of the Mind
Argued that the idea of the soul –which he described
as ‘The Ghost in the Machine’- was a ‘category
mistake’
He argued that it was a mistake in the use of language.
The mistake was that it resulted in people speaking of
the mind and the body as different phenomena – as if
the soul was something identifiably extra within a
person.
The very concept of the “mind” is a category mistake
Category Mistake - an error in logic in which one
category of something is presented as belonging to
another category
 Semantic category mistakes – the confusion of
meaning e.g – organization
 Ontological category mistakes – the confusion of
actual things
 Ontology – the study of existence
 E.g. – The dolphin is a fish
Ryle’s examples
 The University
 Esprit de Corps
 The Military Division
 The Constitution
 Juan dela Cruz
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)
French
Father was killed in WW1
Became one of the foremost French philosophers of
the period during, and immediately following World
War II
Was a soldier during WWII
Phenomenology – examines how people describe
things and experiences through their senses
the philosophical study of the structures of experience
and consciousness
Perception - the background of experience which
guides every conscious action
Perception is not purely sensation, nor is it purely
interpretation. Consciousness is a process that
includes sensing as well as reasoning.
Consciousness is a projective activity which develops
sensory data beyond their own specific significance
and uses them for the expression of spontaneous
action
Bodily experience gives perception a meaning beyond
that established simply by thought.
Substance expresses existence, and existence realizes
itself through substance
Thought precedes speech, in that speech is a way of
expressing thought.
Speech can express the thoughts of the person who is
speaking, and the listener can receive thoughts from the
sounds of spoken words.
Thoughts may exist through speech, and speech may be
the external existence of thought.
Existence is a condition that includes the existence of
conscious beings and of non-conscious things.
Memory is a capacity to recall or recognize the past, and
may be influenced by changes in perceptions.
Freedom is a mode of being-in-the-world which enables
us to transcend ourselves.
Paul and Patricia Churchland
Canadian neurophilosophers, professors and
educators
Neurophilosophy
The Self is the Brain
Axons
Synapse
Neurons
Neural Circuits
Myelin sheath