Republic of the Philippines

UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN PHILIPPINES

University Town, Northern Samar
Website: uep.educ.ph; Email: [email protected]

GE 3: UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

First Semester, SY 2021 – 2022

RUTH L. SAYDE
PAULA M. CAPARIC
CAC, Part-Time Lecturer

NAME OF STUDENT:
_______________________________________________________________
COURSE & YEAR: __________________________________________________________
 UNIT 1- THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

UNIT 1: THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

Module 1 : PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

Introduction 4
Objectives 4
-Socrates, Plato, St. Augustine 4
- Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant 8
- Freud, Ryle, Churchland, Merleau-Ponty 11
-Summary 14
Learning Task Assessment 15
References 17

UNIT 1:
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THE SELF FROM VARIOUS

PERSPECTIVES

“Who Am I?”

1
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

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INTRODUCTION
We might have been overwhelmed by the new environment that we are in
today being in college. There are so many things to adjust to in a big school. The
systems sometimes are completely different from what we are used to in the
Senior High School. Intellectual discourses, academic requirements, course
demands and healthy competitions are present in all corners of the campus.
There are also institutional systems that are sometimes totally new to us. Amidst
this challenging adjustments we are often pinned with questions unfortunately
not all are answered. We want to explore the boundless horizon, we want to tell
the world about something very important but we feel so powerless to do so. All
these confusions bring about existential questions that we may want to explore.
In this module, we shall once and for all get in touch with ourselves. Let u
go back to those hanging questions that you almost wanted to forget. We will
spend time to reflect on the issue that we think are important to us. To aid us in
this endeavor we will seek the wisdom of Philosophers like Socrates, Plato,
Augustine, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Freud, Ryle, Churchland and Merleau-
Ponty. They have all braved to answer the question “Who Am I?” way ahead of
us. We learn with them as we also attempt to answer the same questions.

OBJECTIVES:
At the end of this module, you are expected to:
A. Articulate the various Philosophical views about the self;
B. Examine one’s thoughts and experiences according to the
Philosophical views of the self
C. Propose and answer to the question “Who Am I?”
Many Philosophers grappled to understand the meaning of human life.
They have attempted to answer the question “Who Am I?” and most of their
views have influenced the way we look at our lives today.

SOCRATES, PLATO, AUGUSTINE

The dictum “Know thy Self” as we hear today is an ancient greeting of the
highly civilized Greeks. It was believed that the temple Gods greet the people
with this salutation as they enter the holy sanctuary. The ancient Greek
Philosophers manifested to the people their various interpretations of the
greeting. In the onset, the greeting may seem to be epistemological. Knowing
oneself is only about measurable facts that pertain to the self such as age,
height, color, blood type or cholesterol level but the philosophers insisted that
knowing oneself is more than just the basic fact to know thy self is first an
imperative and then requirement. It is imperative to know the limits of the
self so that one knows what one is capable of doing and what one is not. The real
meaning of knowing thy self, then, is a requirement for self-moderation,
prudence, good judgement, excellence of the soul (Ortiz De Landazuri, 2014).
The original Greek expression γνῶθι σεαυτόν claimed to have a very rich
content that is almost indistinguishable in the English Language. The expression

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is almost interchangeably translated as “Know thyself” or “Self-control” this

means that the greeting is not only an imperative of self-knowledge but is also a
requirement that one has to have self -moderation. Anything that is excessive is
not good thus it is just prudent to strike the balance of things. Too much power
might lead to abuse; too many friends might decrease the quality of
relationships; too many problems may bring about depression; too much
knowledge might make one think as in the ancient ruler that there is nothing
else to know about, and so on. It is just wise then to put oneself in moderation so
that one is capable of self-control and self-judgement.
The prudence and judgement aspects of knowing thyself are already
extensions from self-knowledge to ethics. The expression is an ethical
requirement to be wise in choosing moderation, and to be able to make good
judgements in the desiring what is good and avoiding that which will only bring
harm. Moderation in the expression of love for sweethearts, for example, will
bring the best of the other in the course of their loving companionship. Once a
partner is only overpowered and subjugated by the other, then there will never
be prudence and good judgement in the relationship. The ethics in knowing
thyself is very important because such will bring the person to the excellence of
the soul. For the ancient Greeks, the soul is the essence of the person. Like any
other loving relationships, one must be able to bring about the excellence of the
soul of the other as a result of such relationship. To know thyself, therefore is to
examine whether we have achieved moderation, have prudently what is good,
and have brought about excellence of the soul.

To be able to demonstrate this,

Socrates proposed a very emphatic
philosophy. In Plato’s Apology sec. 38-A
Socrates narrates;
…[ And if again I say that to talk
everyday about virtue and the other
things about which you hear me talking
and examining myself and others is the
greatest good to man, and that the
unexamined life is not worth living, you
will believe me still less. This is as I say,
gentlemen, but it is not easy to
convince you. Besides, I am not
accustomed to think that I deserve
anything bad. If I had money, I would
have to post a fine…

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Here Socrates insisted that, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. This
is perhaps the most satisfying philosophical assertion that Socrates claimed in
order to protect human beings from the shallowness of living their lives. An
examined life is a life that is duty bound to develop self-knowledge and a self-
dignified with values and integrity. Not only that; living a good life means having
the wisdom to distinguish what is right from wrong. Socrates further argued that
the unexamined life is no better off than animal life.
When we become readily contented with the information we received from
the social media for example, and submit to how virtual reality defines life,
develop needs and wants, classify morality, delineate universal values, and
mystify human reason, we are not better off than the dogs who become
contented by the crumbs provided by their masters.’
Insisting on the examined life, Socrates maintained that only those who
have at least achieved self-moderation and distinguished what is good from bad,
in this case- Socrates referred to the life of the Philosophers, are capable of
condemning those who are pretentious to be knowing themselves when the fact
is contrary. In his account of Socrates’ claim, Plato writes;

Only a self-controlled man, then will know

himself and will be capable of looking to see
what he actually knows and what he
doesn’t know. By the same token only a
self-controlled man will be capable on
examining others to see what a person
knows and think he knows. (Assuming that
he does have knowledge), and whether
there are things which he thinks he knows,
but doesn’t really. And no one else is
capable of doing this. (Charmides, 167 A)

Here in fact Socrates wanted to tell the law makers the community leaders
those who claimed to be learned, especially his accusers to recognize their
ignorance. What hinders these experts in seeing reality is the belief that they
already know everything. Such a belief will eliminate altogether the desire for
self-moderation and ethical prudence. Then, Socrates rightly pronounced that “I
know what I do not know.” This perhaps is what makes Socrates the wisest
among Philosophers. For Socrates, only in the recognition of one’s ignorance that
a person can truly know oneself.
Influenced by the wise pronouncements of Socrates, Plato proposed his
own philosophy of the self. He started on the examination of the self as a unique
experience. The experience will eventually better understand the core of the self
which he called the Psyche.
For Plato, the Psyche is composed of three elements. These are the
Appetitive, Spirited and the Mind.
1. The Appetitive element of the Psyche include one’s desires, pleasures,
physical satisfactions, comforts, etc.

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2. The Spirited element is part of the Psyche that is excited when given
challenges, or fights back when agitated, or fights for justice when
unjust practices are evident. In a way this is the hot-blooded part of the
Psyche.
3. The mind, however, is what Plato considers the as the most superior of
all the elements. He refers to this element as the nous which means
the conscious awareness of the self. The nous is the super power that
controls the affairs of the self. It decides analyzes, things ahead,
proposes what is best, and rationally controls both the appetitive and
spirited elements of the psyche.

We take as an example- college life- to

illustrate Plato’s Psyche. College student want
to hang out with their friends, spend time on
computer games, eat the favorite food, do
thrilling activities that will excite the whole
gang. These satisfy the appetitive element of
the psyche. However, when professors throw
challenging projects and assignments that
would require tremendous time and effort,
the spirited psyche kicks in to face the
challenges head on. All these are going on
because the mind or the nous is orchestrating
these pursuits according the quality of the
nous a person has. In other words, in order to
have a good life, one has to develop he nous
and feel it with the understanding of the
limits of the self and ethical standards.

Another concrete example of a highly self-controlled nous is the life of

St. Augustine. He hailed from Tagaste, Africa in 354 B.C. He succumbed two
vices and pleasures of the world. Augustine was unsettled and restlessly
searched for the meaning of his life until his conversion to Christianity. In his
confessions he pronounced; You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our
heart is restless until it finds rests in you.
This could be true to all religions when Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or
Hindu believers (or any other traditional or indigenous religion) struggle between
the pleasures of the body and the demands of the soul in pursuit of ultimate
happiness of the self, one must be able to recognize the love of that supreme
being or the divine and morally or ethically respond to that love. To St.
Augustine man’s end goal is happiness. Only in God can men attain true and
eternal happiness, made possible in his contemplation of the truth and the divine
wisdom. i.e. God himself. Christianity is the full and true philosophy. It is the full
revelation of the true God. Human beings alone, without God, are bound to fail.

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Augustine returned to his

homeland and embrace an ascetic life.
He dedicated his Christian life to the
pursuit of contemplative ideals. He
practiced extreme self-denial and self-
mortification. Later he was elected as
bishop of Hippo. He fought bravely the
errors of his time through his sermons
and many writings, he died in 430 B.C.
and later was declined doctor of the
church. The development of the self for
St. Augustine is achieved through self-
presentation and self-realization. He was
not afraid to accept to himself and tell
the people about his sinfulness.
However, the realization of the wasted
self is achieved through his conversation
to the faith. Thus his journey toward the
understanding of the self was centered
on his religious convictions and beliefs.

DESCARTES, LOCKE, HUME AND KANT

Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, deviated from
theocentric philosophies on the years before him. He was in fact able to redress
the question concerning the self in a very different rational method. He started
his quest of discovering the self by his methodic doubt.
In his Mediations on First Philosophy, Descartes, claimed that we cannot
really rely on our senses because our sense perceptions can often deceive us.
There are many times when we hear something when in fact there is nothing,
and that we are deceived by our sense of hearing. There are also times when we
see someone or something in the peripheries of our eyes when in fact there is
nothing that resembles with what we thought we saw. This will be true to our
sense of smell, touch, hearing and so on. Therefore Descartes refused to believe
in the certainty of his sense perceptions and started to doubt everything
Everything must be subjected to doubt. Our existence, our religion, our world,
our God, our special someone, even our instructor or professor. There will never
be certain in this world as long as it passes our senses. Further Descartes,
cannot even distinguish between the events in his dream and in reality. He
claimed that when dreaming, it felt so real that even our heartbeat, breathing,
and feelings are just so comparable to the real events. When we dream about
our crush, we feel the intensity of the dream that we would wake up frustrated
realizing that it was only a dream. Likewise when the dream about our most
dreaded experience in life, we would wake up happy after realizing that it was
only a dream.

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Here, Descartes stated that to doubt whether the events he experiences

at the moment are only products of his dreams and therefore illusions. He
started to doubt about every realities that he had been accepting as true and
only illusionary creations of an evil genius who designed all these false
impressions in the world. Eventually Descartes is left nothing but his doubt.
Nonetheless, this same doubt redeemed him from slumber. He claimed
that since he could no longer doubt that he is doubting, therefore there should
be a level of certitude that there must be someone who is doubting-that is him.
Then he said “Cogito, ergo Sum.” This is translated as “I think therefore I
am” or “I doubt therefore I exist.” Only after the certitude of the “doubting
I” can all the other existence (e.g. God, the universe, things, events, etc.)
become certain.
Descartes’ discovery of the cogito revolutionizes the way we view
ourselves and the world around us. It has also dramatically changed the way we
evaluate ourselves. The primary condition, therefore of the existence of the self,
at least according to Descartes, is human rationality. Simply put, we need
reason in order to evaluate our thoughts and actions. We need reason to live
fully the demands, challenges and call for our religion. We need reason in order
to establish firm foundations for universal truth and morals. We need reason in
order to exist and to continue to survive the generations to come by protecting
our environment. We need reason in order to protect ourselves from being
savage to one another. We need reason in order to build and live out our peace.
Contrary to the primary reason as proposed by Descartes, one British
philosopher and politician, John Locke, suggested another way of looking at the
self. Locke opposed the idea that only reason is the source of knowledge of the
self. His proposition is that the self is comparable to an empty space where
every day experiences contribute to the pile of knowledge that is put forth on
that empty space. Experience, therefore is an important requirement in order to
have sense data which, through the process of reflection and analysis, eventually
becomes sense perception.
These sense data are further categorized by Locke according to primary
qualities such as numbers, solidity, figure, motion, among others and also
secondary qualities such as color, odor, temperature and all other elements that

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are distinguishable by the subjective individual. Sense perception becomes

possible when all these qualities are put together in the faculty of the mind.
It has to be noted that the validity of sense perception is very subjective.
Perception is changing from one individual to another. For example, when one
reads a text message: “Congratulations! You won 1M pesos in an online lottery.”
from an unknown number, one text receiver may hastily reply in excitement and
elation while the other text receiver may just totally ignore it as a hoax or even
treat it as a virus! Perception therefore, is very subjective to Locke.
This provides the most lenient leeway for every individual to be
independent in self- examination, self-management and self-control. The
individual person, for Locke is not only capable of learning from experience but
also skillful enough to process different perceptions from various experiences to
form a more complex idea. These ideas then will become keys to understand
complex realities about the self and the world.

Challenging the position of John Locke, David Hume, a Scottish

philosopher and historian put forward his skeptical take on the ideas forming the
identity of the self. Hume claimed that there cannot be a persisting idea of the
self. While Hume agreed that all ideas are derived from impressions,
problematically, it follows that the idea of the self is also derived from
impressions. However impressions are subjective, temporary, provisional,
prejudicial and even skewed –and therefore cannot be persisting.
In as much as we wanted to be persistent, constant and stable with our
knowledge about ourselves, Hume asserted that this is just impossible. As long
as we derive our knowledge from impressions, there will never be the “self.” This
means that for Hume, all we know about ourselves are just bundles of
temporary impressions. Perhaps this supports the difficulty of answering the
question “Who am I?” because what we can readily answer are impressions such
as name, height, color of hair, affiliations, skills, achievements and the like. All
these are temporary and non-persisting. In fact, Hume harshly claimed that
there is no self.
Hume could have made us all agnostic about our knowledge of the self
and be content with whatever fragmented idea at least we have about ourselves
had it not by the rescue efforts of Immanuel Kant. Kant is a Prussian
metaphysicist who synthesized the rationalist view of Descartes and the
empiricist views of Locke and Hume. His new proposition maintained that the

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self is always transcendental. In fact he calls his philosophy the

Transcendental Unity of Apperception.

His theory explains that being the

self is not in the body, it is outside the
body and even outside the qualities of
the body-meaning transcendent. For
Kant, ideas are perceived by the self, and
they are connecting the self and the
world. The similarity of ideas between
individuals is made possible because, for
Kant, we all have sensory apparatus by
which we derive our ideas. This means
that we need not reject our ideas, unlike
Hume, no matter how temporary and
non-persistent they are because there is
Kant further argues that even if we eliminate
unity in ideas.
everything, or in the case of Descartes, doubt everything,
there will still be space and time that will remain in us. These
are categories that cannot be outside of the self and they
help provide perception of the self, Perception here does not
belong to the world; it belongs to the self through its
temporal-spatial faculty. Rightly, Kant is able to claim that all
things in the world are in themselves and part of it belongs to
the self. This is possible because the mind possesses the
order and the unity of all raw sensations. In other words the
thing-in-itself cannot provide the idea but it is only the
spatial-temporal faculty of the self that makes the idea

In short, Kant is only saying that our rationality unifies and makes
sense the perceptions we have in our experiences and make sensible
ideas about ourselves and the world. This ingenious synthesis saved the
empirical theories of the sciences and the rational justification innate ideas. Kant
also solved the problem of the ability of the self to perceive the world.

FREUD, RYLE, CHURCHLAND and MERLEAU-PONTY

Just as the philosophers celebrate the “unity” of the self as achieved by
Kant, the Psychologist Sigmund Freud lamented the victory and insisted on the
complexity of the self, Freud, refusing to take the self or subject as technical
terms , regarded the self as the “I” that ordinarily constitute both the
mental and physical actions. So we can say “I run”, “I eat”, “I decide”, “I feel
the tingling sensation” or “I refuse to cheat because it is wrong.” Admittedly, the
question “Who am I” will not provide a victorious unified answer but a
complicated diverse features of moral judgements, inner sensations, bodily
movements and perceptions. The “I” will never be the same and it will continue
to change overtime. In other words, Freud sees the “I” as a product of
multiple interacting processes, systems and schemes. To demonstrate
this, Freud proposed two models: The Topographical and structural models
(Watson, 2014).

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Topographical Model. According to Freud’s concept of hysteria, the

individual person may both know and do not know certain things at the same
time. We may say, for example, that we know the disadvantage and perils of
missing classes without any reason, but we are not really sure why we still do it
anyway. We are certain about the many wrongs that may be brought about by
premarital sex, i.e. early pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, ruined
relationships and depression, but we never understand why there is this
something somewhere inside us that makes many of us do what we know is
wrong.

Freud’s solution to this

predicament is to divide the “I”
into conscious and the
unconscious. The unconscious keeps
what it knows by what Freud calls
“censorship” so that the conscious
will be left on its own. Clearly, the self
for Freud will never be arbitrarily
taken as a unified whole. There will
always be fragments and
discontinuity and struggle inside the
same “I”.

Structural Model. Similar to the disintegration of the self in

Topographical Model, Freud’s Structural Model will also represent the self in
three different agencies:
1. The Id is known as the primitive or instinctive component.
2. Ego is described by Freud as that part of the id which has been
modified by the direct influence of the external world.
3. The superego synthesizes the morals, values and systems in society in
order to function as the control outpost of the instinctive desires of the id
(McLeod 2007.)
We often equate the ego as the self, the subject or the “I.” However, Freud
does not readily approve this equation because while the three agencies are
distinct from one another, oftentimes, the ego is not able to control the instincts
of the id, and cannot even manipulate the thoughts of the superego. This even
leaves the ego as only a marginal and impotent agency of the mind- not the
ideal philosophical self or soul that we want to figure out, Freud remarked that it
is even the id- this devil, instinctual, unthoughtful, fearless and primitive agency
of the mind-that is the core of our being (Freud, 2011).
The sensationalization of the self as unifying agent and a powerful
command center of the other agencies simply do not exist in Freud’s Structural
Model. Although the ego initiates the command, it simply lacks the power to
control and put limits to the rage of the id. Moreover, the ego will only content
itself with the very limited information revealed by the vast databank of

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information in the unconscious. The ego owns a scanty knowledge about the
unconscious which oftentimes are incomplete and inaccurate.
Let us take the hypothetical example of a child who is born in a happy, loving
and affluent family. He is well provided by his well-mannered parents who are
respected professionals in their fields. The family never misses the Sunday ritual
of going to mass. He is raised with plenty of time to work and play and study. He
is sent to an expensive private school until he found himself kicked out by the
school because of drug addiction and cutting classes. He steals the family
fortune to afford his vices. He destroyed the many lives of his friends. He
disrespects his parents and siblings and accuse them of not loving him. He
ended up broke, wasted, imprisoned and a menace to the society. Now we ask:
where is the self? How can we understand the “I” in this example? What is in the
self that was not able to control the piles of self-destructive activities of the
child? What is in the experiences of the child that made him deviant of the
otherwise ideal upbringing? How can we know? Freud claims that there is
nothing else above the “I” that will consolidate the three agencies. There is only
the plurality of these antagonistic and independent agencies.
In an attempt to offer an explanation to some behaviors that are difficult
to justify by reason, Gilbert Ryle, a British philosopher, proposed that his
positive view in his “Concept of the mind.” It started as a stem critique of
Descartes’ dualism of the mind and body. Ryle said that the thinking “I” will
never be found because it is just “a ghost in the machine.” It means he finds
the philosophy of Descartes totally absurd. The mind is never separate from
the body. He proposed that physical actions or behaviors are dispositions of the
self. These dispositions are derived from our inner private experiences. In other
words, we will only be able to understand the self-based from the external
manifestation-behaviors, expressions, language, desire and the like. The mind
therefore is nothing but a disposition of the self.
Ryle continued that the mind will depend on how words are being told and
expressed and delivered. In a way, he demystified the operations of the mind
because the operations of the mind are simply manifested by the dispositions of
knowing and believing. To illustrate this position, we take the visitor on a tour
around the city. We bring him to the city hall, to the park, to the known schools,
to big malls, to beautiful gardens, to night life venues, to the known landmarks
and to your house. After the tour, your visitor will ask: Where is the City? All
those parks and malls and places consist the city. This same observation is true
to the disposition of the mind. All the manifestations in physical activities or
behavior are the dispositions of the self, the basis of the statement;

“I act therefore I am”

or
“You are what you do”.
Bringing the argument a little further, couple Paul and Patricia
Churchland promoted the position they called the “eliminative materialism”
which brings forth neuroscience into the fore of understanding the self. For
centuries, the main concern of philosophy and even psychology is the

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understanding the state of the self, and still they failed to provide satisfactory
position in the understanding of the self. For Churchlands, these philosophical
and psychological directions will eventually be abandoned only to be replaced by
a more acceptable trend in neuroscience that provides explanation on how the
brain works.
This position is a direct attack against the folk psychology. Eliminative
Materialism sees the failure of folk psychology in explaining basic concepts
such as sleep, learning, mental illness and the like. Given the length of time that
these sciences have investigated these concepts and yet there is no definitive
explanation offered to understand the mind that is tantamount to “explanatory
poverty” (Weed, 2018). It is not remotely impossible that folk psychology will be
replaced by neurobiology. As the Churchlands wanted to predict when people
wanted to ask what is going on with themselves, they might as well go for MRI
scan or CT scan to understand the present condition of the brain and how it
currently works.
Interestingly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French philosopher, seemed to
support the emerging trends in understanding the self. His philosophy, the
Phenomenology of Perception draws heavily from the contemporary research
Gestalt Psychology and neurology. He developed a kind of
phenomenological rhythm that will explain the perception of the self. The rhythm
involves the three dimensions. First is the empiricist take on perception,
followed by the idealist-intellectual alternative, and lastly, the synthesis of
both positions.
On the onset, Merleau-Ponty rejected classical empiricism because it
eliminates the indeterminate complexities of experience that may have an effect
on perception. In the same way, he also rejected the idealist-intellectual position
because it will only falsify perception based on one’s biases and prejudices. What
Merleau-Ponty proposes is treating perception as a causal process. It
simply means that our perceptions are caused by the intricate experiences of the
self, and processed intellectually while distinguishing truthful perceptions from
illusory. Therefore the self is taken as a phenomenon of the whole-a Gestalt
understanding of perceptual analysis.

SUMMARY
In closing, this section discussed the philosophical perspective of
understanding the self through historical approach. In the ancient medieval
times, we have identified the self as the perfection of the soul. To achieve this
requires self-examination and self-control. In the modern period, understanding
the self is recognized in the dialectic synthesis between rationalism and
empiricism. Contemporary philosophy takes a wide variety of theories in
understanding the self.

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LEARNING TASK ASSESSMENT:

1. Textual analysis. Choose ONLY two (2) of the following passages and explain
the passge.
“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is, that I know
nothing.”
- (Socrates) Plato, The Republic

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding
and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“And what more am I? I look for aid to the imagination. [But how mistakenly!] I
am not the assemblage of limbs we call the human body; I am not subtle
penetrating air distributed throughout all these members; I am not a wind, a fire,
a vapor, a breath or anything at all that I can imagine. I am supposing all these
things to be nothing. Yet I find, while so doing, that I am still assured that I am
still something.”
- Rene Descartes, Mediations on First Philosophy

“Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you
will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you, perhaps you will
thenceforth avoid falling ill.”

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- Sigmund Freud, Character and Culture

“I discover that there are other minds in misunderstanding what other

people say and do.”
- Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of the Mind

“Whether it’s a question of my body, the natural world, the past, birth or death,
the question is always to know how I can be open to phenomena that transcend
me and that, nevertheless, only exist to the extent that I take them up and live
them.”
- Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

2. Discussion. Answer each of the following questions.

a. Compare and contrast the elements of the mind according to Plato and
the life of St. Augustine.
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________.

b. Differentiate the concepts of the self according to Descartes and that of

Locke.

_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________ .

c. For Hume, what is it that make “your” perceptions inaccessible to “me”

and vice versa?

_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________ .

d. What are some of the criticisms that have been brought against Freud
and psychoanalysis?

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____________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________.

3. Key terms. List some terminologies associated with each philosopher.

Briefly define or describe each term.

Philosopher Key Terms Definition

SOCRATES

AUGUSTINE

DESCARTES

HUME

KANT

FREUD

MERLEAU-PONTY

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better understanding of sexual orientation and homosexuality. Washington, DC:

Atkinson, R. (2000). Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology. Harcourt Brace College

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A. P. A. (2005)Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

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Baumeister, R., & Bushman, B. (2011). "The Self." Social Psychology and Human
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Crocker, J., & Park, L.E. (2004). The costly pursuit of self-esteem, Psychological
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Feist,J., Feist, G., & Roberts, T., (2013). Theories of Personality, Eight Edition.
McGraw-Hill Education, New York.

Feldman, Robert S. Understanding Psychology, 6/e. University of Massachusetts,

Amherst (Course textbook)

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Huffaker, David. (2004). Gender Similarities and Differences in Online Identity

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Hurlock, E. 2001. Developmental Psychology. A Life Span Approach. Mc Graw

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Teh, Lota and Ma. Elizabeth J. Macapagal. (2007).General Psychology for Filipino
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CREDITS TO: Ma’am Josephine Tan and others ♥

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