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Lecture 1 in
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
Prepared by Ms. Justine Ceriales
PHILOSOPHY
- study of the fundamental nature of
knowledge, reality, and existence,
especially in an academic discipline.
- a particular theory that someone
has about how to live or how to deal
with a particular situation.
PHILOSOPHY
- academic discipline concerned with
investigating the nature of significance of
ordinary and scientific beliefs
- investigates the legitimacy of
concepts by rational argument
concerning their implications,
relationships as well as
reality, knowledge, moral judgment,
etc.
Much of
philosophy concerns
with the fundamental
nature of self.
The Greeks were the ones who
seriously questioned myths and moved
away from them to understand reality
and respond to perennial questions of
curiosity, including the question of the
self.
The following are discussions of
different perspectives and under-
standings of the self according to its
prime movers. From philosophers of the
ancient times to the contemporary period.
THEPRE-SOCRATICS
The Pre-Socratics (Thales,
Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus,
Empedocles, etc.) were concerned with
answering questions such as
• what is the world really made up of?
• why is the world the way it is?
• what explains the changes that happen
around us?
THEPRE-SOCRATICS
• arché- origin or source/the “soul”/the
primal matter
• the soul’s movement is the ultimate
arché of all other movement
• arché has no origin outside itself and
cannot be destroyed
• explains the multiplicity of things in the
world
DO YOU AGREE THAT THERE IS
A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE
BODY AND THE SOUL?
WHAT SEEMS TO BE
QUESTIONNABLE IN
THEIR CONJECTURES?
DavidHUME
• disagrees with the all the other
aforementioned philosophers
• “one can only know what comes from the
senses & experiences” (he is an empiricist)
• “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
DavidHUME
• “the self is nothing but a bundle of
impressions and ideas”
• impression –
- basic objects of our
experience/sensation
- forms the core of our thoughts
• idea –
- copies of impressions
- not as “real” as impressions
- feeling mo lang yun!
DavidHUME
• self = a collection of different
perceptions which rapidly succeed each
other
• self = in a perpetual flux and
movement
• we want to believe that there is a
unified , coherent self, soul, mind, etc.
but ~~actually~~ it is all just a
combination of experiences.
ImmanuelKANT
• agree with that everything
s HUM
perception/sensation of
starts E with
impressions
• there is a MIND that regulates these
impressions
• “time, space, etc. are ideas that one
cannot find in the world, but is built in
our minds
• “apparatus of the mind”
ImmanuelKANT
• the self organizes different impressions
that one gets in relation to his own
existence
• we need active intelligence to
synthesize all knowledge and
experience
• the self is not only personality but also
the seat of knowledge
HOW DO YOU FEEL
ABOUT THE
DISCUSSION SO
FAR?
GilbertRYLE
• denies the internal, non-physical self
• “what truly matters is the behavior that
a person manifests in his day-to-day
life.”
• looking for the self is like entering LU
and looking for the “university”
(explain!)
GilbertRYLE
• the self is not an entity one can locate
and analyze but simply the convenient
name that we use to refer to the
behaviors that we make
MERLEAU-PONTY
• a phenomenologist who says the mind-
body bifurcation is an invalid problem
• mind and body are inseparable
• “one’s body is his opening toward his
existence to the world”
• the living body, his thoughts, emotions,
and experiences are all one.
MERLEAU-PONTY