The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

Names It signifies / designates a person but is not the person itself

Greeks The early thinkers in the history of philosophy
Socrates and Plato
Pre-Socratics Greek thinkers prior Socrates
Arché The primary substratum that explains the multiplicity of things
Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, They (5) are concerned with explaining what the world is really made up of, why the world is so, and what explains the
Heraclitus and Empedocles changes that they observed around them
Socrates Unlike other thinkers his time, he was more concerned on the problem of self
Socrates He was the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the self
To know oneself To Socrates, this the true task of the philosopher
The unexamined life is not worth
A famous dictum uttered by Socrates at his trial
living
Impiety and corrupting (the minds of)
Crimes charged against Socrates for which he was tried and subsequently sentenced to death
youth
Socrates served as a ______ that disturbed Athenian men from their slumber and shook them off in order to reach the
Gadfly
truth and wisdom
To live but die inside Socrates thought that this is the worst that can happen to anyone
Body and soul For Socrates, every man is composed of _____ and ______
Dualistic For Socrates, every human person is _____
Body - Imperfect Impermanent
aspect and Soul - Perfect Two aspects of personhood according to Socrates
Permanent aspect
Plato Socrates' student
Plato He supported Socrates' idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul
Rational soul, spirited soul ad
Three components of soul according to Plato
appetitive soul
Magnum opus Latin phrase which refers to the greatest achievement of an artist or writer
The Republic Plato's magnum opus
Plato emphasizes in The Republic that this can only be attained if the three parts of rge soul are working harmoniously
Justice in the human person
with one another
Rational soul The component of soul forged by reason and intellect
Spirited soul The component of soul that is in charge of emotions
Appetitive soul The component of soul in charge of base desires like eating, drinkingm sleeping and having sex
Rational soul Component of soul that should govern the affairs of the human person
Spirited soul Component of soul that should be kept at bay
Appetitive soul Component of soul that should be controlled
Just and virtuous For Plato, what becomes of the human person's soul when the ideal state is attained
Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
Augustine His view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world when it comes to man
Christianity Augustine followed the ancient view of Plato and infused it with the newfound doctrine of _________
Bifurcated Agustine agreed with Plato and Socrates that man is of a _____ nature
Body For Augustine, this aspect of man is bound to die on earth
Soul For Augustine, this aspect of man is to anticipate living eternally in a realm of bliss in communion with God
For Augustine, the aspect of man that dwells in the world and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the
Body
Divine
Soul For Augustine, the aspect of man that is capable of reaching immortality
Body The aspect that can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality that is the world
Soul The aspect that can stay after death in an eternal realm with the all-transcendent God
Communion and bliss with the Divine For Augustine, this is the goal of every human person
By living his life on Earth in virtue For Augustine, how does one attain the goal of every human person
Thomas Aquinas The most eminent 13th century scholar and stalwart of the medieval philosophy
Matter and Form Two parts that comprises man according to Aquinas
Hyle Greek word for matter
Morphe Greek word for form
Matter Refers to the common stuff that makes up everything in the universe
Matter Man's body is part of this _____
Form Refers to the essence of a substance or thing that makes it what it is
Soul This makes a human person a human person and not a dog
Soul To Aquinas, this is what animates the body; it is what it makes us humans
Descartes
Rene Descartes Father of modern Philosphy
Rene Descartes He conceived of the human person as having a body and a mind
The Meditations of First Philosophy Rene Descartes' famous treatise
Rene Descartes He claims that there is so much that we should doubt
Test of Doubt According to Descartes, one should only believe that which can pass the _____
Existence of the self Descartes thought this as the only thing that one cannot doubt
Cogito, ergo sum Latin philosophical proposition of Descartes which translates to "I think, therefore I am"
Mind and body / Cogito and Extenza For Descartes, the two distinct entities that comprises the self
Mind The thing that thinks according to Descartes
Body The extension of the mind according to Descartes
Body For Descartes, this is nothing else but a machine attached to the mind
Mind For Descartes, this is what makes a man a man
Hume
David Hume Scottish philosopher who believes that one can only know what comes form the senses and experiences
Self According to Hume, the ___ is not an entity over and beyond the physical body
Empiricism The school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be possible if it sensed and experienced
Experiencing For Hume, men can only attain knowledge by ____
Impressions To Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of ____
Impressions and Ideas Two categories of experiences according to Hume
Impressions The basic objects of our experience or sensation
Thoughts Impressions form the core of our ______
Vivid Impressions are _____ because they are products of our direct experience with the world
Ideas Copies of impressions
According to Hume, this is simply a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an
Self
inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement
Kant
He thinks that the things that men perceive around them are not just randomly infused into the human person without
Immanuel Kant
an organizing principle that regulates the relationships of all these impressions
Mind To Kant, this organizes the impressions that men get from the external world
Apparatuses of the mind These are not derived from experience or from the world but is built in our minds
Time and Space The mind's two pure forms of intuition
Self Without this, one cannot organize the different impressions that one gets in relation to his own existence
Actively engaged intelligence Accordiing to Kant, this is what sythesizes all knowledge and experience
Ryle
Concept of an internal, non-physical
Gilbert Ryle solved the mind-body dichotomy by blatantly denying this concept
self
He suggested that the self is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply the comvenient name that people
Gilbert Ryle
use to refer to all the behaviors that people make
Merleau-Ponty
Behavior This is what truly matters for Ryle
Maurice Merleau-Ponty Phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-body bifurcation is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem
Maurice Merleau-Ponty He says that mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another
Embodied For Merleau-Ponty, one cannot find an experience that is not an ____ exprerience
Body For Merleau-Ponty, this is one's opening toward his existence to the world
The Self, Society and Culture
Separate, self-contained,
independent, consistent, unitary and Six characteristics that commonly define the self in contemporary literature and even common sense
private
Separate Characteristic which refers to self being distinct from the other selves, always unique and having its own identity
Self-contained and independent Characteristics which refer to self esisting in itself
Distinctness It allows self to be self-contained with its own thoughts, characteristics and volition
Characteristic which refers to self having a personality that is enduring and therefore can be expected to persist for
Consistent
quite some time
Consistent Characteristic which allows self to be studied, described and measured
Consistency This means that a particular self's traits , characteristics, tendencies and potentialities are more or less the same

Unitary Characteristic which refers to self being the center of all experiences and thoughts that run through a certain person

Characteristic which refers to self being the chief command post in an individual where all processes, emotions and
Unitary
thoughts converge
Private Characteristic which suggests that the self is isolated from the exernal world
Characteristic which refers to a each person sorting out information, feelings and emotions, and thoughts within the
Private
sellf, and the whole process being inaccessible to anyone but the self
Potential clash between the self and
The reason for the self to have a clear understanding of what it might be, what it can be and what it will be
the external reality

Social constructionist perspective Perspective which sees that the self is always at the mercy of external circumstances that bump and collide with it

Social constructionist perspective describes self as _______ and _______, allowing external influences to take part in
Ever-changing and dynamic
its shaping
 They argue for a merged view of the person and their social context where the boundaries of one cannot easily be
Social constructionists
separated from the boundaries of the other (Stevens 1996)
Social constructivists They argue that the self should not be seen as a static entity that stays constant through and through
Perspective which says that self has to be seen as something that is in unceasing flux, in a constant struggle with
Social constructivist perspective
external reality aand is malleable in tis dealings with society
The Self and Culture (Anthropology)
Marcel Mauss French anthropologist who believes that every self has two faces
Personne and Moi Two faces of self according to Mauss

Moi The face of self that refers to a person's sense of who he is, his body and his basic identity, his biological givenness

The face of self that is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be who he is; has much to do with what it
Personne
means to live in a particular group and how to behave given expectations and influences from others
Moi Face of self that is stable and static all through out
Personne Face of self that shifts from time to time to adapt to his social situation
An interesting aspect of scoial constructivism that is a salient part of culture and has a tremendous effect in our
Language
crafting of the self
Gender-neutrality Interesting facet of the Filipino language where there is no specification of gender
The Self and the Development of the Social World (Psychology)
Language This mediates the undending terrain of metamorphosis of the self
____ as both a publicly shared and privately utilized symbol system is the site where the individual and the social
Language
make and remake each other (Schwartz, White and Lutz 1993)
Lev Vygotsky and George Herbert For these two psychologists, the way that humans develop is with the use of language acquisition and interaction with
Mead others
Internal dialogue in our head According to Mead and Vygotsky, the way that we process information is normally a form of what
Cognitive and Emotional These two aspects of development of a child is always a mimicry of how it is done in the social world, in the external
development reality where he is in
Both Mead and Vygotsky treat this as something that is made, constituted through language as experience in the
Human mind
external world and as encountered in dialogs with others
By assuming the "other" through
For Mead, how does a chid conceptualize his notion of self?
language and role-play
By internalizing real-life dialogs that
For Vygotsky, how does a child conceptualize his notion of self?
he has had with others
Self in Families (Social)
Family The most prominent institution/power at play in scoiety according to sociologists
Learning This is critical in our capacity to actualize our potential of becoming humans
Helpless Human beings are born virtually ____
Dependency ____ period of a human baby to its parent for nurtuting is relatively longer than most other animals
In trying to achieve the goal of becoming a fully utilized human, a child enters this system, most important of which is
System of relationships
the family
Family One is who he is because of his ____ for the most part
Gender and the Self
Gender Aspect of self that is subject to alteration, change and development
Gender identities One maneuvers into society and identifies himself as who he is by taking note of what?
Sonia Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy's wife
Patriarchy System of society in which the eldest man in a family is expected head the family and hold it in
Feminist who argues that because mothers take the role of taking care of children, there is a tendency for girls to
Nancy Chodorow
imitate the same and reproduce the same kind of mentality of women as care providers in the family.
The Self as Cognitive Construct
Self The sense of personal identity and of who we are as individuals (Jhangiani and Tarry 2014)
William James (1890) One of the eraliest psychologists to study the self and conceptualized the self having to two aspects
I and Me Two aspects of self according to James
I The aspect of self which is the thinking, acting and feeling self

Me The aspect of self which is the physical characteristics and the psychological capabilities that makes you who you are

His theory of personality also used the same terms, I as the one who acts and decides while me is what you think or
Carl Rogers (1959)
felel about yourslef as an object

Identity It is composed of personal characteristics, social roles and responsibilities as well as affiliations that define who one is

Self-concept It is what comes to your mind when you are asked about who you are
Self-schema Organized system or collection of knowledge about who we are
Carl Rogers He conceptualized self-schema
Mental constructs Theories generally see the self as _____, created and recreated in memory
Frontal lobe The specific are in the brain associated with the processes concerning the self
Sigmund Freud Most influential psychologist who studied and theorized about person's personality
Theory of Symbolic Interactionism Under this theory, Mead argued that the self is created and developed through human interaction
We do not create ourselves out of Three reasons why self and identity are social products
nothing
We need others to affirm and
reinforce who we think we are
What we think is important is
influenced by what is important in our
social and historical context
Social interaction and group
Two vital factorsin creating our self-concept in the aspect of providing as with our social identity
affiliation
Self-awareness Being aware of our self-concepts
Private self and Public self Two types of self that we can be aware of
Private self Your internal standards and private thoughts and feelings
Public self Your public image
Actual, ideal and ought self Three self-schema presented by self-awareness
Actual self Who you are at the moment
Ideal self Who you like to be
Ought self Who you think you should be
Deindividuation Loss of individual self-awareness and individual accountability in groups
Self-consciousness Too much self-awareness
Self-esteem Defined as our own positive or negative perception or evaluation of ourselves
Social comparison One of the ways in which social relationship affects our self-esteem
According to this theory, we learn about oursleves, the appropriateness of our behaviors, as well as our social status
Social Comparison Theory
by comparing aspects of ourselves with other people
Downward social comparison We create a positive self-concept by comparing ourselves with those who are worse off than us
Upward social comparison We compare ourselves with those who are better off than us
Self evaluation maintenance We feel threatened when someone outperforms us especially when that person is close to us
Distance ourselves or redefine
relationship
3 ways to react based on self evaluation maintenance
Reconsider importance of skill
Strengthen resolve to improve skill
Narcissism The trait characterized by overly high self-estteem, self-admiration and self-centeredness
Rosenberg scale Example of measurement for self-esteem
Baumeister, Smart and Boden In their research on self-esteem, they concluded that programs, activities, and parenting styles to boost self-esteem
(1996) should only be for rewarding good behavior and other achievements
The Self in Western and Eastern Thoughts
Confucianism Code of ethical conduct, of how one should properly act according to their relationship with oter people
Harmonious social life Confucianism is focused on ____
Self-cultivation Ultimate purpose of life
Chun-tzu A man of virtue or noble character
Subdued self Cultivated self in confucianism
Cultivated self Personal needs are repressed for the good of many
Taoism Living in the way of the Tao or the universe
Selflessness Ideal self in Taoism
Buddhism Belief where self is seen as an illusion; born out of ignorance and human centered needs
Forget about the self and attain state
Quest in Buddhism
of Nirvana
Individualistic culture Western culture
Collective culture Asian culture
The Physical and Sexual Self
Gonads Reproductive glands that produce gametes
8th Gonads begin to form until the ___ week of embryonic development
During the early stages of human development when the embryonic reproductive structures of males and females are
Indifferent stage
alike
Testosterone Formation of male or female structures depends on the presence of ____
Pseudohermaphrodites Individuals who have accessory reproductive structures that do not match their gonads
Hermaphrodites Individuals who possess both ovarian and testicular tissues
Cryptorchidism A condition in which one or both of the testes fail to descend from the abdomen into the scrotum
A condition which is due to a narrowing of the foreskin of the male reproductive structure and misplaced urethral
Phimosis
openings
This the period of life, generally between the ages of 10 and 15 years old, when the reproductive organs grow to their
Puberty
adult size and become functional.
Testosterone Male gonadal hormones
Estrogen Female gonadal hormones
Escherichia coli Cause of infections that spread through the digestive tract
Pelvic inflammatory disease and
Resulting conditions if vaginal infections were left untreated
sterility
Orhiditis Inflammation of testes
Late 20's Highest point of a female's reproductive abilities is observed in what age
Menopause Event which occurs when females no longer experience menstruation
Erogenous zones Body parts that are receptive and increase sexual aroused when toched in a sexual manner
According to P.H. Gebhard, this is any activity – solitary, between two persons or in a group – that induces sexual
Human sexual behavior
arousal.
Inherited sexual response patterns
Degree of restraint exerted by Two factors that determine sexual behavior
society
Solitary and sociosexual Two types of behavior
Heterosexual Male with female sexual behavior
Homosexual Male with male or female with female sexual behavior
Coitus Insertion of male reproductive organ into female reproductive organ
Excitement, plateau, sexual climax,
Phases of sexual response
resolution
Efferent cerebrospinal nerves Nerves that trasmit the sensory messages to the brain
Autonomic system System that is involved in controlling the involuntary responses
Hypothalamus and limbic system Parts of the brain believed to be responsible for regulating sexual response
Physiological, psychological and
Classifications of sexual problems
social
Ejaculatory impotence Results from inability to ejaculate in coitus
Vaginismus Strong spasm of pelvic musculature constricting female reproductive organ so that penetration is painful