BAETIONG, AYANA MAE || MANUEL.

KHRYSTYN || PAHILAGAO, DAN ||

PALACIO, ANGELA ||PASCUAL, RAYMOND
SOCRATES
Biography
Socrates, (born c. 470 BCE, Athens [Greece]—
died 399 BCE, Athens); Greek philosopher whose way
of life, character, and thought exerted a profound
influence on ancient and modern philosophy. He was
considered as the “Father of Western Philosophy”. An
enigmatic figure, he made no writings, and is known
chiefly through the accounts of classical writers writing
after his lifetime, particularly his students Plato and
Xenophon. He was the first Greek philosopher to
seriously explore questions of ethics. His influence on
the subsequent course of ancient philosophy was so great
that the cosmologically oriented philosophers who
generally preceded him are conventionally referred to as
the “pre-Socratics.” His "Socratic method," laid the
groundwork for Western systems of logic and
philosophy. When the political climate of Greece turned,
Socrates was sentenced to death by hemlock poisoning
in 399 BC. He accepted this judgment rather than fleeing
into exile.
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Philosophical Perspective of Self and Identity

Socrates believed that philosophy should achieve practical results for the greater well-being of
society. He attempted to establish an ethical system based on human reason rather than theological
doctrine. He pointed out that human choice was motivated by the desire for happiness. Ultimate
wisdom comes from knowing oneself. The more a person knows, the greater his or her ability to reason
and make choices that will bring true happiness. Socrates believed that this translated into politics with
the best form of government being neither a tyranny nor a democracy. Instead, government worked
best when ruled by individuals who had the greatest ability, knowledge, and virtue and possessed a
complete understanding of themselves.

 Know thyself: a moral epistemological and injunction

1.1 “An unexamined life not worth living“
1.2 Philosophy does not mean, as in the sophists, the acquisition of knowledge but a
way of questioning, to challenge, a form of self-concern.
This assertion, imperative in the form, indicates that man must stand and live according his
nature. Man has to look at himself. To find what? By what means?

Socrates’ most famous statement: “the unexamined life is not worth living”; examining one’s self
is the most important task one can undertake, for it alone will give us the knowledge necessary to answer
the question ‘how should I live my life’. As Socrates explained: “once we know ourselves, we may learn
how to care for ourselves, but otherwise we never shall.”

When we turn our gaze inward in search of self-knowledge, Socrates thought we would soon
discover our true nature. And contrary to the opinion of the masses, one’s true self, according to Socrates,
 is not to be identified with what we own, with our social status, our reputation, or even with our body.
Instead, Socrates famously maintained that our true self is our soul.
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https://academyofideas.com/2015/03/the-ideas-of-socrates-transcript/

PLATO
Biography
Plato, (born 428/427 BCE, Athens, Greece—died
348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of
Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy,
best known as the author of philosophical works of
unparalleled influence. His writings explored justice, beauty
and equality, and also contained discussions in aesthetics,
political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology and
the philosophy of language. Plato founded the “Academy in
Athens”, one of the first institutions of higher learning in the
Western world. He’s also known for his Dialogues.
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https://www.ancient.eu/plato/

Philosophical Perspective of Self and Identity

Theory of Human Nature – The Tripartite Structure of the Soul – Having encountered the social self
of Confucianism, the divine self of Hinduism, and the no-self of Buddhism, we come to dualism.

Plato is a dualist; there is both immaterial mind (soul) and material body, and it is the soul that
knows the forms. Plato believed the soul exists before birth and after death. We don’t see perfect circles
or perfect justice in this world, but we remember seeing them in Platonic heaven before we were born.
Thus he believed that the soul or mind attains knowledge of the forms, as opposed to the senses. Needless
to say, we should care about our soul rather than our body.

The soul (mind) itself is divided into 3 parts: reason; appetite (physical urges); and will (emotion,
passion, spirit.) The will is the source of love, anger, indignation, ambition, aggression, etc. When these
aspects are not in harmony, we experience mental conflict. The will can be on the side of either reason or
the appetites. We might be pulled by lustful appetite, or the rational desire to find a good partner. To
explain the interaction of these 3 parts of the self, Plato uses the image is of the charioteer (reason) who
tries to control horses representing will and appetites. Elsewhere he says that reason uses the will to
control the appetites.

Plato also emphasized the social aspect of human nature. We are not self-sufficient, we need
others, and we benefit from our social interactions, from other person’s talents, aptitudes, and friendship.

Reason (ruling class) - desires to exert reason and attain rational decisions
Will (military class) - desires supreme honor
Appetite (commoner) - desires body pleasures such as food, drink, sex, etc.

https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/10/11/theories-of-human-nature-chapter-7-plato-part-1/
https://quizlet.com/328948234/understanding-the-self-philosophical-perspective-flash-cards/
ARISTOTLE
Biography

Aristotle (c. 384 B.C. to 322 B.C.) was an Ancient

Greek philosopher and scientist who is still considered
one of the greatest thinkers in politics, psychology and
ethics. When Aristotle turned 17, he enrolled in Plato’s
Academy. In 338, he began tutoring Alexander the
Great. In 335, Aristotle founded his own school, the
Lyceum, in Athens, where he spent most of the rest of
his life studying, teaching and writing. Some of his most
notable works include Nichomachean
Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics, Poetics and Prior
Analytics.
Aristotle was born circa 384 B.C. in Stagira, a small town on the northern coast of Greece that
was once a seaport.
Aristotle’s father, Nicomachus, was court physician to the Macedonian king Amyntas II.
Although Nicomachus died when Aristotle was just a young boy, Aristotle remained closely
affiliated with and influenced by the Macedonian court for the rest of his life. Little is known
about his mother, Phaestis; she is also believed to have died when Aristotle was young.
After Aristotle’s father died, Proxenus of Atarneus, who was married to Aristotle’s older sister,
Arimneste, became Aristotle’s guardian until he came of age. When Aristotle turned 17,
Proxenus sent him to Athens to pursue a higher education. At the time, Athens was considered
the academic center of the universe. In Athens, Aristotle enrolled in Plato’s Academy, Greek’s
premier learning institution, and proved an exemplary scholar. Aristotle maintained a
relationship with Greek philosopher Plato, himself a student of Socrates, and his academy for
two decades. Plato died in 347 B.C. Because Aristotle had disagreed with some of Plato’s
philosophical treatises, Aristotle did not inherit the position of director of the academy, as many
imagined he would.
After Plato died, Aristotle’s friend Hermias, king of Atarneus and Assos in Mysia, invited
Aristotle to court.
PERSPECTIVE OF “SELF”
Aristotle undeniably diverged from Plato in his view of what a human being most truly and
fundamentally is. Plato, at least in many of his dialogues, held that the true self of human beings
is the reason or the intellect that constitutes their soul and that is separable from their body.
Aristotle, for his part, insisted that the human being is a composite of body and soul and that the
soul cannot be separated from the body. Aristotle’s philosophy of self was constructed in terms
of hylomorphism in which the soul of a human being is the form or the structure of the human
body or the human matter, i.e., the functional organization in virtue of which human beings are
able to perform their characteristic activities of life, including growth, nutrition, reproduction,
perception, imagination, desire, and thinking.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.biography.com/.amp/scholar/aristotle

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle/Philosophy-of-mind

AURELIUS SAINT AUGUSTINE

Biography

Saint Augustine was born on 354 CE in Tagaste,

Africa. His given name was Aurelius Augustinus. His
father was Patricius, a pagan who was baptized
Christian before he died, and his mother was Monica,
a baptized Christian with an influential role in the life
of her son. Augustine is regarded as one of the most
intelligent Christian theologians and bishops of all
time. His works and actions have left a major imprint
on the Church and its doctrine.

As a boy, Augustine was not baptized and grew up in

the Roman Empire. He studied under the local
schoolmasters in Tagaste until he turned fifteen and
moved to continue his studies in Madaurus. From
Madaurus, he moved to Carthage for advanced studies
in rhetoric and law. It was in Carthage that he took a concubine and later had a son named
Adeodatus from her. It was in this period of his life that embraced Manichaeism, which is a
belief that one god is responsible for all good and another responsible for all evil. Augustine’s
belief in Manichaeism prompted Monica, his mother, not to allow his entrance into the family’s
house. Even with her actions, she continued praying and hoping that Augustine would find the
Lord. After he ended his studies in Carthage, he became a teacher and was constantly on the
move throughout Northern Africa.
Augustine stopped teaching and moved to Milan where he gained the position of Public Orator.
In Milan, Augustine met Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. Augustine grew to love Ambrose’s
allegorical interpretations of the Bible and this led to his appreciation and new understanding of
the Scripture. He also studied and learned to appreciate Plato’s works and started linking a lot of
his works into the meaning and messages in the Bible. Augustine’s family, including his mother,
joined him in Milan. Her constant prayers for his conversion to Christianity and the strict ethical
demands of Ambrose made Augustine’s appreciation of Plato’s work grew deeper. It made him
no choice, but to convert to Christianity. On Easter Sunday of 387 CE in Milan, Augustine along
with his son and his friend, Alypius, were baptized by Ambrose.

Perspective of “Self”

Like most ancient philosophers, Augustine thinks that the human being is a compound of body
and soul and that, within this compound, the soul—conceived as both the life-giving element and
the center of consciousness, perception and thought—is, or ought to be, the ruling part. The
rational soul should control the sensual desires and passions; it can become wise if it turns to
God, who is at the same time the Supreme Being and the Supreme Good. In his Manichean
phase, he conceived of both God and the soul as material entities, the soul being in fact a portion
of God that had fallen into the corporeal world where it remained a foreigner, even to its own
body (De duabus animabus 1; Confessiones 8.22). After his Platonist readings in Milan had
provided him with the adequate philosophical means to think about immaterial, non-spatial
reality (Confessiones 7.1–2; 7.16), he replaced this view, which he later represents as a rather
crude dualism, with an ontological hierarchy in which the soul, which is mutable in time but
immutable in space, occupies a middle position between God, who is totally unchangeable
immaterial being (cf. MacDonald 2014), and bodies, which are subject to temporal and spatial
change (Letter 18.2). The soul is of divine origin and even god-like (De quantitate animae 2–3);
it is not divine itself but created by God (the talk about divinity of the soul in the Cassiciacum
dialogues seems to be a traditional Ciceronian element, cf. Cary 2000: 77–89; for a Plotinian
interpretation see O’Connell 1968: 112–131). In De quantitate animae, Augustine broadly
argues that the “greatness” of the soul does not refer to spatial extension but to its vivifying,
perceptive, rational and contemplative powers that enable it to move close to God and are
compatible with and even presuppose immateriality (esp. ib. 70–76; Brittain 2003). An early
definition of soul as “a rational substance fitted for rule over a body” (ib. 22) echoes Platonic
views (cf. the definition of the human being as “a rational soul with a body” in In Iohannis
evangelium tractatus 19.15; O’Daly 1987: 54–60). Later on, when the resurrection of the body
becomes more important to him, Augustine emphasizes—against Porphyry’s alleged claim that
in order to be happy, the soul must free itself from anything corporeal—that it is natural and even
desirable for a soul to govern a body (De Genesi ad litteram 12.35.68), but he nevertheless
remains convinced that soul is an incorporeal and immortal substance that can, in principle, exist
independently of a body. In the Soliloquia (2.24), following the tradition of Plato and of
Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, he proposes a proof for the immortality of the soul which he
expressly introduces as an alternative to the final proof of the Phaedo (Soliloquia 2.23,
cf. Phaedo 102d-103c). The proof is constructed from elements from Porphyry’s Isagoge and
his Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories (rather elementary texts that Augustine would have
encountered long before his Platonic readings at Milan) and seems to be original with him
(Tornau 2017). It says that since truth is both eternal and in the soul as its subject, it follows that
soul, the subject of truth, is eternal too. This is fallacious, because if truth is eternal
independently of the soul it cannot be in the soul as in its subject (i.e., as a property), and if it is a
property of the soul, it cannot ensure its eternity. In the incomplete draft of a third book of
the Soliloquia preserved under the title De immortalitate animae, Augustine therefore modifies
the proof and argues that soul is immortal because of the inalienable causal presence of God (=
Truth) in it. It turns out however that even if this version of the proof is successful, it only
demonstrates the soul’s eternal existence as a (rational) soul but not its eternal wisdom (De
immortalitate animae 19; Zum Brunn 1969: 17–41 [1988: 9–34]), in the hope of which the
interlocutors had set out to prove the immortality of the soul in the first place (Soliloquia 2.1).
After De immortalitate animae, Augustine never returned to his proof. But neither did he disown
it; as late as De trinitate (13.12), he endorses the Platonic axiom that soul is by nature immortal
and that its immortality can, in principle, be proven by philosophical means. He also sticks to his
conviction that immortality is a necessary condition of happiness but insists that it is not a
sufficient condition, given that immortality and misery are compatible (cf. De civitate dei 9.15
on the misery of the wicked demons). True happiness will only be realized in the afterlife as a
gift of God’s grace, when, thanks to the resurrection of the body, not just the soul but the human
being as a whole will live forever. Resurrection, however, is not susceptible of rational proof; it
is a promise of God that must be believed on Scriptural authority (De trinitate ib.).

Together with an essentially Platonic notion of the soul, Augustine inherits the classical
problems of Platonic soul-body dualism. How can soul fulfil its task of “governing” the body
(cf. De quantitate animae 22) if it is incorporeal itself? And how are corporeal and psychic
aspects related to each other in phenomena that involve both body and soul, especially if, like
passions and desires, these are morally relevant? These problems are further complicated by the
Platonic axiom that incorporeal entities, being ontologically prior to corporeal ones, cannot be
causally affected by them. Augustine’s solution is indebted to Plotinus’ strategy of making the
relation of the soul to the bodily affections an essentially cognitive one (O’Daly 1987, 84–87;
Hölscher 1986, ch. 2.2.1; Nash 1969, 39–59; Bermon 2001: 239–281). With Plotinus, he insists
that sense perception is not an affection which the soul passively undergoes (as Stoic materialism
would have it, where sensory perception was interpreted as a kind of imprint in the soul) but its
active awareness of affections undergone by the body (De quantitate animae 41; 48; De Genesi
ad litteram 7.14.20; Plotinus, Enneads I.4.2.3–4; Brittain 2002: 274–282). In De quantitate
animae, the framework of this theory is the general argument that the relation of soul to body
must be conceived of not in terms of space but of “power” (see above). In De musica (6.11), this
is developed into the idea that sense perception is the soul’s awareness of modifications of its
own formative and vivifying activities that result from its reacting to the external impulses
undergone by the body. In addition to the usual five senses, Augustine identifies a sensory
faculty that relates the data of the senses to each other and judges them aesthetically (but not
morally; De musica 6.5; 19); in De libero arbitrio (2.8–13) he calls this the “inner sense” (on the
Aristotelian background cf. O’Daly 1987: 102–105).

In Neoplatonism it was disputed how soul, being immortal, immaterial and ontologically
superior to body, came to be incorporated nevertheless. The basic options, present already in
Plato’s dialogues, were either that the disembodied soul had “fallen” into the corporeal world
because of some error (as in the Phaedrus myth) or that it had been sent into the cosmos by God
to impart life and order to it (as in the Timaeus; for harmonizing Neoplatonic exegeses, see
Plotinus, Enneads IV.8, and Macrobius, Commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis 1.10–14).
Augustine addresses the issue in the horizon of his doctrine of creation and, in the period of the
Pelagian Controversy, of the debate about the transmission of original sin (see 9. Gender,
Women and Sexuality). In De libero arbitrio (3.56–59), he distinguishes the three options of
creationism (God creates a new soul for every newborn body), traducianism (the soul is
transmitted from the parents to the child like corporeal properties), and preexistence, which is
subdivided into the Platonic options of voluntary or god-sent descent. After 412 all these options
come to the fore again (Letters 143.5–11; 166; 190; and the treatise De anima et eius origine).
Augustine discards none of them officially except for the notion, wrongly associated with
Origenism, which was considered a heresy at the time, that incorporation was a punishment for a
sin committed by the pre-existent soul (De civitate dei 11.23). In practice, he narrows the debate
down to the alternative between creationism and traducianism, which appear to have been the
only options taken seriously by his Christian contemporaries. Augustine refused to take stand till
the end of his life, probably because neither option really suited his purposes (Rist 1994: 317–
320; O’Connell 1987; Mendelson 1998): Creationism made original sin very difficult to explain;
traducianism was functional in this respect, but it was a materialist and even biologist theory that
ran counter to Augustine’s Platonism and was further compromised because it had been brought
up by his African predecessor Tertullian (d. c. 220 CE), a Stoicizing corporealist who had ended
his life as a heretic (Rist 1994: 123).

https://www.google.com/amp/s/schoolworkhelper.net/saint-augustine-hippo-bishop-
biography/amp/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#SoulCreaBein

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

Biography:

St. Thomas Aquinas, Italian San

Tommaso d’Aquino, also called Aquinas,
by name Doctor Angelicus (Latin:
“Angelic Doctor”), (born 1224/25,
Roccasecca, near Aquino, Terra di Lavoro,
Kingdom of Sicily [Italy]—died March 7,
1274, Fossanova, near Terracina, Latium,
Papal States; canonized July 18, 1323;
feast day January 28, formerly March 7),
Italian Dominican theologian, the
foremost medieval Scholastic. He
developed his own conclusions
from Aristotelian premises, notably in
the metaphysics of personality, creation,
and Providence. As a theologian, he was
responsible in his two masterpieces,
the “Summa theologiae” and the “Summa
contra gentiles”, for the classical
systematization of Latin theology, and, as a poet, he wrote some of the most gravely beautiful
eucharistic hymns in the church’s liturgy. His doctrinal system and the explanations and
developments made by his followers are known as Thomism. Although many modern Roman
Catholic theologians do not find St. Thomas altogether congenial, he is nevertheless recognized
by the Roman Catholic Church as its foremost Western philosopher and theologian.

Philosophical Concept About the Self:

Thomas Aquinas concept of the “self” was that we don’t encounter ourselves as isolated
minds or selves but rather always as agents interacting with our environment. And that our self-
knowledge is dependent on our experience of the world around us. And that the labels we apply
to ourselves are always taken from what we feel or think towards other things.

Aquinas’ Theory of Self-Knowledge:

Aquinas begins his theory of self-knowledge from the claim that all our self-knowledge is
dependent on our experience of the world around us. He rejects a view that was popular at the
time, i.e., that the mind is “always on,” never sleeping, subconsciously self-aware in the
background. Instead, Aquinas argues, our awareness of ourselves is triggered and shaped by our
experiences of objects in our environment. He pictures the mind as as a sort of undetermined
mental “putty” that takes shape when it is activated in knowing something. By itself, the mind is
dark and formless; but in the moment of acting, it is “lit up” to itself from the inside and sees
itself engaged in that act.

References:

“https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas-Aquinas”

“http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2014/01/thomas-aquinas-toward-a-deeper-sense-of-self/”

RENÉ DESCARTES

Biography:

René Descartes, (born March 31, 1596, La

Haye, Touraine, France—died February 11,
1650, Stockholm, Sweden), French mathematician,
scientist, and philosopher. Because he was one of
the first to abandon Scholastic Aristotelianism,
because he formulated the first modern version
of mind-body dualism, from which stems the mind-
body problem, and because he promoted the
development of a new science grounded in
observation and experiment, he has been called the
father of modern philosophy. Applying an original
system of methodical doubt, he dismissed apparent
knowledge derived from authority, the senses,
and reason and erected new epistemic foundations
on the basis of the intuition that, when he is thinking, he exists; this he expressed in the dictum “I
think, therefore I am” (best known in its Latin formulation, “Cogito, ergo sum,” though
originally written in French, “Je pense, donc je suis”). He developed a metaphysical dualism that
distinguishes radically between mind, the essence of which is thinking, and matter, the essence
of which is extension in three dimensions. Descartes’s metaphysics is rationalist, based on the
postulation of innate ideas of mind, matter, and God, but his physics and physiology, based on
sensory experience, are mechanistic and empiricist.

Philosophical Concept of the Self: “I think, therefore I am.”

After establishing the fact of his existence, Decartes goes on to ask himself what he is. He
eventually comes to describe himself as a thinking thing. But what is a thinking thing? The
easiest way to understand Decartes’ thoughts here is to look at his ideas regarding substance,
the essence of a substance, and the modes of a substance. A substance is defined as something
that is capable of existing independently of all things besides the sustaining power of God (which
Decartes believes is necessary for anything to exist). Let’s look at the mind in terms of these.
Clearly, the mind can be viewed as a substance, since we can see it existing independently (let’s
not worry about chemicals in the brain for the nonce). What is its essence, though? Well,
according to Decartes, the essence of mind is thought, which he describes in terms of doubting,
affirming, judging, etc. This makes sense – a mind can be seen as something that is defined by
thought. The modes of the mind, then, are the various ways of thinking I just mentioned
(doubting, affirming, and so on and so forth).

So, Decartes has established that he is a thing that thinks, and he has achieved at least a
sketchy idea of what that means. He then starts to consider material objects in an attempt to
understand his mind even better, choosing to do this by examining a piece of wax. At first, the
wax is hard and solid, smelling slightly of flowers and tasting slightly of honey. It makes a sound
when he taps it with his finger. However, when it’s brought close to a flame it starts to melt,
changing in shape and size, losing all taste and smell, and it no longer makes a noise when he
hits it (as it has softened). And yet, even though his senses are perceiving something owning
entirely different properties to those the wax had earlier, he is still conscious of it as a piece of
wax. The same piece of wax, even. His senses do not tell him this, so he reasons that the way he
really perceives the wax is through his mind. What does he perceive it as? An extended
substance that is flexible and changeable*. This tells him something important about the
relationship between his mind and the external world, and it also tells him that his senses are
only of limited value. Naturally, without his senses he would not be aware of the wax at all, but
without a judging mind he would only have a very muddled understanding of it.

One of the conclusions that Descartes draws from his examination of the wax is that he
can never know anything better than his own mind. This is because, whenever he comes to
understand something about a material thing, such as its size or shape, he is also becoming aware
of the ability of his mind to perceive and understand that property. Whenever he learns about
material objects, then, he learns about his mind. But he can learn things about his mind without
learning anything new about the material world. Therefore, his mind is more readily known to
him than anything else. There is, however, one problem with this. What he learns about his mind
when examining the properties of an object – his ability to perceive said properties – is in fact a
property of his mind. However, Descartes himself regards properties as being immaterial – it is
the essence of a thing that truly matters. So, it would seem that his conclusion here is not entirely
solid.

References:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes

https://poignantboy.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/descartes-concept-of-self/
DAVID HUME

Biography:

Generally regarded as one of the most

important philosophers to write in English, David
Hume (1711–1776) was also well known in his own
time as an historian and essayist. A master stylist in
any genre, his major philosophical works—A Treatise
of Human Nature (1739–1740), the Enquiries
concerning Human Understanding (1748)
and concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as
well as his posthumously published Dialogues
concerning Natural Religion (1779)—remain widely
and deeply influential.

Philosophical Concept of the Self: The Bundle

Theory

- "the mind itself, far from being an independent power, is simply 'a bundle of perceptions'
without unity or cohesive quality"
Hume asks us to consider what impression gives us our concept of self. We tend to think
of ourselves as selves—stable entities that exist over time. But no matter how closely we
examine our own experiences, we never observe anything beyond a series of transient
feelings, sensations, and impressions. We cannot observe ourselves, or what we are, in a
unified way. There is no impression of the “self” that ties our particular impressions together.
In other words, we can never be directly aware of ourselves, only of what we are
experiencing at any given moment. Although the relations between our ideas, feelings, and so
on, may be traced through time by memory, there is no real evidence of any core that
connects them. This argument also applies to the concept of the soul. Hume suggests that the
self is just a bundle of perceptions, like links in a chain. To look for a unifying self beyond
those perceptions is like looking for a chain apart from the links that constitute it. Hume
argues that our concept of the self is a result of our natural habit of attributing unified
existence to any collection of associated parts. This belief is natural, but there is no logical
support for it.

References:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hume/themes/
JOHN LOCKE (1632 – 1704)

Biography

John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an

English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the
most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known
as the "Father of Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the
British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon,
he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly
affected the development of epistemology and political
philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the
American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical
republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States
Declaration of Independence.

Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of

modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such
as David Hume, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity
of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to
Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas,
and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. This is now
known as empiricism. An example of Locke's belief in empiricism can be seen in his quote, "whatever I
write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." This
shows the ideology of science in his observations in that something must be capable of being tested
repeatedly and that nothing is exempt from being disproven. Challenging the work of others, Locke is
said to have established the method of introspection, or observing the emotions and behaviours of one's
self.

Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

Philosophical Perspective of Self

John Locke considered personal identity (or the self) to be founded

on consciousness (viz. memory), and not on the substance of either the soul or the body. Book II Chapter
XXVII entitled "On Identity and Diversity" in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) has
been said to be one of the first modern conceptualizations of consciousness as the repeated self-
identification of oneself. Through this identification, moral responsibility could be attributed to
the subject and punishment and guilt could be justified, as critics such as Nietzsche would point out.
According to Locke, personal identity (the self) "depends on consciousness, not on substance" nor on the
soul. We are the same person to the extent that we are conscious of the past and future thoughts and
actions in the same way as we are conscious of present thoughts and actions. If consciousness is this
"thought" which "goes along with the substance [...] which makes the same person", then personal
identity is only founded on the repeated act of consciousness: "This may show us wherein personal
identity consists: not in the identity of substance, but [...] in the identity of consciousness". For example,
one may claim to be a reincarnation of Plato, therefore having the same soul substance. However, one
would be the same person as Plato only if one had the same consciousness of Plato's thoughts and actions
that he himself did. Therefore, self-identity is not based on the soul. One soul may have various
personalities.
Neither is self-identity founded on the body substance, argues Locke, as the body may change while the
person remains the same. Even the identity of animals is not founded on their body: "animal identity is
preserved in identity of life, and not of substance", as the body of the animal grows and changes during its
life. On the other hand, identity of humans is based on their consciousness.
But this interesting border-case leads to this problematic thought that since personal identity is based on
consciousness, and that only oneself can be aware of his consciousness, exterior human judges may never
know if they really are judging—and punishing—the same person, or simply the same body. In other
words, Locke argues that may be judged only for the acts of the body, as this is what is apparent to all but
God; however, are in truth only responsible for the acts for which are conscious. This forms the basis of
the insanity defense: one cannot be held accountable for acts from which one was unconscious—and
therefore leads to interesting philosophical questions:
personal identity consists [not in the identity of substance] but in the identity of consciousness, wherein if
Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates
waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the
same person. And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates
was never conscious of, would be no more right, than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did,
whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like, that they could not be distinguished; for
such twins have been seen.
Lockean Memory Theory

In the history of discourse on the subject of the self and personal identity, conflicting viewpoints
have arisen. Some suggest that the self is simply the mind which thinks; others posit that the self is
identifiable with one’s body; still others claim that to even conjure an idea of the self is an impossibility.
In his Essay, Locke suggests that the self is “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection,
and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” and continues to
define personal identity simply as “the sameness of a rational being” (Locke). So long as one is the same
self, the same rational being, one has the same personal identity.

Given this assertion, any change in the self reflects a change in personal identity, and any change
in personal identity therefore implies that the self has changed. Locke goes on to suggest that one’s
personal identity extends only so far as ones consciousness. He offers the argument that because in order
to be a self, one must be a thinking thing, and that because “consciousness always accompanies thinking”
(Locke), the self with which one personally identifies extends and persists only so far as ones
consciousness. The consciousness Locke refers to can be equated with memory.

This assumption is supported by Locke’s assertion that, “as far as [a] consciousness can be
extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same
self now as it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that
action was done” (Locke). More explicitly stated, if one can remember some experience, Locke’s says
that one in fact had that experience. It is by this reasoning that Locke arrives at the most controversial
portion of his theory which suggests that the converse of the previous argument is true: if one cannot
remember some experience, then one did not have that experience.

Memory is therefore, according to Locke, a necessary condition of personal identity. Referring to

states of interrupted consciousness or forgetfulness, Locke claims that, “in all these cases, our
consciousness being interrupted, and we losing sight of our past selves, doubts are raised whether we are
the same thinking thing” (Locke). An abridged version of Locke’s memory theory of personal identity
would therefore conclude that memory is both a necessary and sufficient condition of self, and, therein,
personal identity.
 Retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1683/the-lockean-memory-theory-of-
personal-identity-definition-objection-response

MAURICE MERLEAU – PONTY (1908 – 1961)

Biography

Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (14 March 1908 –

3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher,
strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main
interest and he wrote on perception, art, and politics. He was on
the editorial board of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine
established by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1945.

At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained

argument for the foundational role perception plays in
understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like
the other major phenomenologists, Merleau-Ponty expressed his
philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, linguistics,
and politics. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first
half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and especially with descriptive
psychology. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of
naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive
science.

Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the
long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the
body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the
primacy of embodiment led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call “indirect
ontology” or the ontology of “the flesh of the world” (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete
work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.

In his earlier work, Merleau-Ponty supported Soviet communism while remaining critical of
Soviet policies and Marxism in general, adopting a skeptical stance which he termed Western Marxism.
His endorsement of the Soviet show trials and prison camps was published as Humanism and Terror in
1947, though he would later denounce Soviet terror as being counter to the purportedly humanist aims of
the revolution.

Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty

Philosophical Perspective of Self

Merleau-Ponty took phenomenology in a new direction, pointing out the centrality of the body in
our experience. According to him, I experience myself as living in my body, as acting through my body.
It is through my body that I can move in space, touch objects, and interact with others. My experiences
are not private representations in a private mind, but primarily action in the world.

Retrieved from https://www.philopractice.org/web/self

 In a radical break from traditional theories of the mind, the German thinker Edmund
Husserl* introduced a very different approach that came to be known as phenomenology. Phenomenology
refers to the conviction that all knowledge of our selves and our world is based on the “phenomena” of
experience. From Husserl’s standpoint, the division between the “mind” and the “body” is a product of
confused thinking. The simple fact is, we experience our self as a unity in which the mental and physical
are seamlessly woven together. This idea of the self as a unity thus fully rejects the dualist ideas of Plato
and Descartes.

A generation after Husserl, the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty* articulated the

phenomenologist position in a simple declaration: “I live in my body.” By the “lived body,” Merleau-
Ponty means an entity that can never be objectified or known in a completely objective sort of way, as
opposed to the “body as object” of the dualists. For example, when you first wake up in the morning and
experience your gradually expanding awareness of where you are and how you feel, what are your first
thoughts of the day? Perhaps something along the lines of “Oh no, it’s time to get up, but I’m still sleepy,
but I have an important appointment that I can’t be late for” and so on. Note that at no point do you doubt
that the “I” you refer to is a single integrated entity, a blending of mental, physical, and emotional
structured around a core identity: your self. It’s only later, when you’re reading Descartes or discussing
the possibility of reincarnation with a friend that you begin creating ideas such as independent “minds,”
“bodies,” “souls,” or, in the case of Freud, an “unconscious.”

According to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, if we honestly and accurately examine our direct and
immediate experience of our selves, these mind-body “problems” fall away. As Merleau-Ponty explains,
“There is not a duality of substances but only the dialectic of living being in its biological milieu.” In
other words, our “living body” is a natural synthesis of mind and biology, and any attempts to divide
them into separate entities are artificial and nonsensical.

The underlying question is “What aspect of our experience is the most ‘real’?” From Husserl’s
and Merleau-Ponty’s vantage point, it’s the moments of immediate, prereflective experience that are the
most real. It is the Lebenswelt or “lived world,” which is the fundamental ground of our being and
consciousness. To take another example, consider your experience when you are in the midst of activities
such as dancing, playing a sport, or performing musically—what is your experience of your self? Most
likely, you’re completely absorbed in the moment, your mind and body functioning as one integrated
entity. For Merleau-Ponty, this unified experience of your self is the paradigm or model you should use to
understand your nature.

PAUL CHURCHLAND

Biography

Paul Montgomery Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is

a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in
neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. After
earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh under
Wilfrid Sellars (1969), Churchland rose to the rank of full
professor at the University of Manitoba before accepting
the Valtz Family Endowed Chair in Philosophy at the
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a joint
appointments in that institution's Institute for Neural
Computation and on its Cognitive Science Faculty.

As of February 2017, Churchland is recognised as

Professor Emeritus at the UCSD, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Center for
Consciousness Studies of Moscow State University. Churchland is the husband of philosopher Patricia
Churchland, with whom he collaborates, and The New Yorker has reported the similarity of their views,
e.g., on the mind-body problem, are such that the two are often discussed as if they are one person.

Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Churchland

Philosophical Perspective of Self

Dualism
For much of history, many western philosophers have held to the theory of dualism. When it
comes to discussing human life, dualism is the idea that the mind and the body are separate.
In other words, we all have a physical brain, but we also have a separate mind. Adding to this
distinction, dualists have historically asserted the mind is the seat of our consciousness. On the contrary,
the brain is really just an organ similar to the heart or lungs.
Because the mind is the seat of our consciousness, it's what gives us our identity. No, we can't see
it, taste it, or touch it, but it does exist. Not only does it exist, but it is what makes self, self.

Materialism
To this assertion, Paul Churchland has come along and pretty much said, 'I don't think so!'
Tossing aside the concept of dualism and the brain, Churchland adheres to materialism, the belief that
nothing but matter exists. In other words, if it can't somehow be recognized by the senses then it's akin to
a fairy tale.
Applying this argument to the mind, Churchland asserts that since the mind can't be experienced
by our senses, then the mind doesn't really exist. Based on this assertion, Churchland holds to eliminative
materialism. Stated simply, eliminative materialism argues that the ordinary folk psychology of the mind
is wrong. It is the physical brain and not the imaginary mind that gives us our sense of self.
Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-self-as-the-brain-according-to-paul-
churchland.html