hello everyone for today we are going to talk about the self from the various philosophical perspectives and as you know it in this subject we are going to use different lenses or different fields in understanding the cell that will be philosophical sociological psychological um physical sexual digital economic so basically we are going to take a look at the cell from different um different disciplines but we will begin by looking at the perspective of philosophy so let us start before we go to the different philosophical perspectives first let's try to answer these guide questions the first one is that what do we even mean by the self okay so i am trying to communicate with the inner philosopher in you okay so if you are given the opportunity to define the self then what would the self be is it a soul is it is it something that we see or is it something that is connected to other things or is the self not connected to others is the self unique or is the self similar to others okay and what are the components of the self is it is it made up of mind and body is the or do we even have a soul okay and there are different ways to define the self and that's how the philosophers introduce the concept of the self to us are we souls bodies or fragments of someone else's imagination okay some would say that the body is not the true self but rather the soul or the being is the true self okay and the body that we have is just a temporary self or this is just a replica of the true self other than that there are also perspectives who will not believe on the existence of the soul so they say that what you see is the reality okay there's no such thing as life after death or life before living okay what you see is the cell okay do not go further do not try to look for things that we cannot see so they only believe on the existence of the sub because the body exists or here's another thing to to question the existence of the self are we fragments of someone else's imagination so have you ever has this ever crossed your mind that you are not really alive but rather you are just alive in someone else's imagination what if this is not really life but rather this is just a dream of someone else what if we are not really in control but rather someone is telling us what's going to happen and we we just think we're in control but in fact we are not okay so those are some interesting questions to answer but i don't think that we'll be ever able to answer them okay because most of the most of of what we're talking about here cannot be verified by science okay it will be hard to prove that one perspective is more correct than the other so are we just minds or are we a combination of mind and body okay so is the mind even connected to the body or is there a conflict between the mind and the body okay is there even a mind because we cannot see it okay those are some questions that philosophers ask will i survive bodily death or is it the end of my when my bodily self die okay so basically not just philosophical but also something related to to faith so to our beliefs okay are we going to exist after our life here on earth okay or is this even our first life did we have a life before this or is our life just a continuation of someone else's life do we get reincarnated after that and do we live a new life okay so those are different beliefs about our existence here's another interesting one am i a raw but controlled by some entity so now you're asking am i really in control am i really human okay does a human being have free will and choice okay the first philosopher that we are going to talk about in this discussion is socrates and he is from greece and in comparison to other to other philosophers other philosophers focus on answering questions about the universe about science about mathematics about gravity okay those are the things that they problematize socrates was one of the first one who was concerned with the problem of the self so he asked questions about our existence and what does it mean when we say the word self so that's how it that's how he differed with other philosopher and because of his ideas there are other philosophers who also question about the meaning of the self the meaning of beingness okay and in socrates idea he believed in a dualistic um approach and understanding the self meaning he is one of the first philosophers who believe that the person is composed of a body and a soul okay and i think that most of you believe in this in this um conceptualization of the self and let's thank socrates for that contribution okay so remember just remember that when we say soul in this discussion it does not necessarily refer to the religious definition of the soul but rather for some philosophers it's not it may have or may it may or may not have anything to do with religion but some of them think of soul as something that we cannot see something that make us move okay it's an entity now thanks to him a lot of a lot of people believe today that we don't just have a body we also have a soul okay and he is also famous for this quote an unexamined life is not worth living it means that as human beings socrates believe that we should know how to question the existence of life we should know how to reflect we should know how to um how to talk about things that are beyond what we see we should question ideas okay because for him a life should be examined we should reflect on the meaning of life we should reflect for example even in the meaning of death okay and for him that makes life um worth living and another thing is that he's famous for this quote the only thing one thing only i know is that and that is i know nothing okay so we would assume that socrates would believe that he knows a lot because he's a philosopher who is very very intelligent but but socrates believes that he knows nothing okay maybe by saying that what he's trying to tell us is that the more that we know the more questions we ask and as we grow older we have more questions than answers okay and the more we wonder the more we realize that there's a lot of things that we still don't know okay and there are a lot of unanswered questions and the only way for us to answer these questions is to continue asking more questions or examining life okay and socrates is also known for believing that a soul exists before the body and the soul exists and what he called are the realm of ideas hence he is one of those who believe that even before our life here on earth we have been already existing okay and in the realm of ideas our soul is full of wisdom it's we're very intelligent we're very smart and we can answer the most complex questions about life however when the soul comes into the material world or the earth or the world that where we exist the soul forgot everything hence by being born into this world you are no longer as us as wise as you once were in the realm of ideas and socrates believed that even though that happened to you we can still connect you to your past self the one in the realm of ideas by examining life hence that's why teachers like to ask questions to their students because we want you to to actualize your um your potentials or we want you to be wise okay because that's socrates belief okay and he is known for what we call socratic approach or socratic questioning and socratic questioning is also used in psychology okay and in psychology we define the socratic approach as teaching by asking questions okay and sometimes because that's the best way to teach to ask questions so we ask a lot of questions about life and eventually the one being asked will have a lot of realizations that he would have been able to answer this question he only need to write the he only need to answer the right questions or he only needs to ask the the right questions in order for him to be aware of of these things that he wasn't able to answer before that's why we do raise a lot of questions for you to think deeply for you to analyze because i want you to to um i want you to be wise and i want you to connect with your inner self in trying to answer the different questions of existence okay this time let's talk about the perspectives of plato and plato is a student of socrates and he founded the academy which is the prototype of today's universities okay the universities nowadays are designed after the academy funded by plato and in his theory he believes that there's a dichotomy between the ideal world and the world of materials or the material world and he believes that the world where we exist right now it's not the real world but rather this is just a replica of the real world and for him the real world is the world of forms and it only exists in the realm of ideas okay it's not something that we can see or touch but rather it's beyond our consciousness it's beyond our awareness hence who we are today in the world where we live in today is just a replica of the real world okay so i wonder how did he describe the ideal world okay i wonder how it looks like like if it cannot be seen it cannot be touched how does it feel like to be there okay those are some interesting questions to ask and he is also so basically we can see how socrates influence plato because he also believe in a dichotomy other than that plato conceptualized the self as as a divine or the soul as a divine the most divine aspect of the cell okay when he says that the soul is divine he doesn't mean it in a religious nor spiritual way but basically he's saying that the soul is the most intellectual part or aspect of the human person so he believes that there are three components of the soul the rational the spirited and the appetitive soul and the rational soul is the one that uses reason the spirited soul is the neutral one while the repetitive soul is the one who pursues desires so a healthy person somehow balances the demands of the rational soul and the appetitive soul and as early as now i can see that this has influenced the perspective of sigmund freud we're in we're going to talk about him later on okay this time let's talk about the perspective of saint augustine and according to him man is bipolated by nature okay so basically we can now see the influence of socrates even to other philosophers bifurcated means they also he also believe in a dichotomy so i guess what that since earlier we have been talking about dichotomies and in his own version he believes that the two aspects of a person would be the imperfect um or the earthly self and the one capable of reaching immortality so basically the perspective of saint augustine is also influenced by by um plato the only difference is that saint augustine also think that this world is a material world and there's a higher there's a there's a another type of world and that world is where we would like to live in because that is the world where god is again that is the ideal world and that's and we should strive to be reunited with god so that we can live in that world okay so the goal of the person is to attain the communion with the divine or to be able to be reunited with his creator or god hence in order to do that one must live a good life so that when when death comes he would be reunited with god in heaven so the world of materials is not our final home but this is only a temporary one because the real world is the world where god is okay so basically similar to the perspective of plato but saint augustine was the one who allowed us to realize that this perspective can also be integrated in religion and faith and this is basically the the philosophical perspective that i can see that has been very influential in christianity okay now let's talk about saint thomas aquinas one of the teachers doctors of the church okay and according to saint thomas aquinas the man is also dichotomous so this is the influence of socrates okay a lot of people a lot of philosophers have believed that a man is composed by a body and a soul and according to him our two parts are the matter and the form okay and when we say that basically that's his own version of body and soul so the matter is the common stuff that makes up everything in layman's term our bodies you your seat mates your friends your families they have their own bodies okay and we are similar to animals other creatures in a in a way that we have a material being and that's our body that's the matter well but what makes us different in comparison to other human beings or other creatures is that we have our own form or the essence of a living okay that's why even though you and other people have bodies you are different because you have you have your own souls that makes those bodies move okay so those are the two as um parts of the human being the matter and the form okay now let's talk about rennet the court's perspective and he's very famous for his quote i think therefore i am he is the father of modern philosophy and he is um known for that quote that i told you a while ago because he is the one who endorsed what we call hyperbolical doubt okay and he doubts the existence of his own physical body so for him the existence of the body is not the proof that he exists it's not it's also not the proof that you exist okay so that's the doubt that mo that that's the doubt that he exhibited in his day-to-day interactions but how can descartes prove that we exist he said that the mere fact that i can doubt is the evidence that i access even though i don't believe that i exist because of my body the mere fact that i can doubt is enough to prove that i am that i exist okay so um basically he's there is one of the reasons why um we question a lot of things about existence okay and he will tell you that your ability to question things is um the proof that you exist so basically now we are seeing perspectives that will not endorse um one of the two um one of either the body and the soul in this case the cards does not endorse believing in existence because of the body but for him it's um doubt that makes one access in the world okay now let's talk about john locke's perspective and according to john locke our identity is not luck and the mind the soul or body only but rather what makes his theory unique is that he believe in the concept of memory okay so let's talk about this identity is explained in terms of the psychological connection between life stages so according to him the reason why your identity is forming that way it's because you can remember what happened in the past okay for example the reason why you're so hard working today it's because you remember that when you were a child you were rewarded for being hard working because if we don't have memory then how are we supposed to have a continuous okay think about the movies where in the plot is a person who have memory problems it seems like they're a new person or a clueless person for every day of their life because they don't remember anything from the past so it's hard to live in that way okay and thanks to john locke we learned how to appreciate the concept of memory and also according he is also famous for what we call tabula rasa so earlier i told you that socrates believed that even before existing in this world we have already existed and we are only clueless because when we were born we got disconnected from our former self okay but according to john locke there's no such thing but rather to him the person is born like a blank slate or tabula rasa which means when the person is born he really knows nothing he is clueless about the world and just like a tabula rasa just like a notebook just like anywhere where you can write whatever you write in that in that blank slate will be encoded hence when you raise children be careful what you write or what you teach them okay because they are going to remember the things that that you write in their blank slate or their mind okay so that's the perspective of john locke the that the person is a blank slate upon birth and eventually you um you learn more and their ability to remember allows you to be who you are today here's another perspective okay david hume is known for bundle theory and he believed that all knowledge is derived from human senses okay meaning he valued what we call empiricism hence they don't believe on the empiricists are less likely to believe on things that cannot be seen but rather they value our the capabilities of the senses okay that's why our research is called an empirical study okay because we don't only assume but rather we study something and we make use of our senses we we see we hear okay we feel okay so in bundle theory he believes that the person or the self is a collection of impressions okay and what are impressions impressions are vivid products of their experience okay for example um what you feel about what you feel when you talk to your sibling perhaps that's happiness and that's your impression what you feel when you are climbing a mountain that's fear or anxiety that's your impression what you feel about watching tv okay that's your impression about watching tv so we have a lot of impressions or in layman's term feelings or sensations or perceptions okay now eventually we we get to keep our own copy of these impressions and now he calls that idea okay for example i will ask you do you have an idea how it feels like to watch tv okay you are not really watching tv right now for you to know how it feels but rather i am asking you if you have an idea okay or your imagination so how do you think it would feel to watch tv or how do you think it would feel when you are talking with with a baby okay so it's no longer an impression but rather it's an idea or a copy of an impression now let's talk about the father of psychoanalysis sigmund freud and contrary to the common misconception freud is not the father of psychology that would be wilhelm von okay um freud is one of a one of the psychoanalysts or he is a doctor who was able to theorize about the unconscious okay and he's the father of this field of psychoanalysis and a lot of people either followed him or criticized him and he is known for his theory about the unconscious as well as the ego and superego and he believes that the ego is not the master in its own house but first before we go to that let me tell you what freud uh what are the basic assumptions of freud he believes that we have two drives the aeros and the thanatos meaning everything that you do can either be classified as under arrows or under thanatos in layman's term he means what he means by eros is sex or pleasure what he means betanatos is pain or death okay or aggression so in layman's term freud's um freud believes that there are two drives sex and aggression and you might question why did he use the word sex instead of pleasure it's because he live in the victorian era wherein it's a taboo to talk about sexual stuff so he believed that perhaps because it's not allowed to talk about sexual stuff perhaps it's the it's one of the things that motivate us okay and a brief history about thanatos originally he did not believe that we are capable of aggression he only added thanatos after the death of his daughter sophie after the war so he believed that so that people have the capability to hurt others hence people are just motivated by two things either pleasure or aggression okay pleasure is the reason why you want food where you want water you want to relax okay you want things that make you happy well tanatos is the reason why we hurt each other okay and according to him um suicide is one example of behavior coming from the thanatos however since the society doesn't allow us to take our own life what we do is that we displace or we channel that that um that tribe to others that's why you harm people or you hurt people maybe physically or psychologically okay and these drives are unconscious meaning we are not aware that we are driven by these two okay but they continue to motivate us in our daily life so you either look for something that will make you happy or you try to avoid anything that brings pain as a healthy individual okay and he is known for his theory that there are three provinces of the mind the e the ego and the super ego do you remember our discussion about plato i told you that he was inspired okay i'm just um hypothesizing here that perhaps he wasn't he was inspired by plato okay but anyway let's take a look at this the it is the pleasure principle okay so the it is the reason why you want to take long sleeps why you want to nap during a discussion why you want to eat or why you want basically the it is the reason why you do a lot of pleasurable stuff for example it would tell you to party on a friday night or to drink or to eat sweets okay the ego is the rational one okay it's the one in contact with reality and unlike the eid the ego is more rational hence it will not tell you to do things that are only for pleasure but it allows you to think about it or delay it okay here's the proof that the ego exists if you don't have an e if you don't have an ego in your body then you might eat even though in situations where you are not allowed to eat for example you might eat in a theater because the eat is telling you to eat in a theater but we know that in the theater there should be no foods and no drinks okay so if you are an eat-dominated person you will do things that are not allowed because you are doing it for pleasure however because of the ego you can delay your wants and your needs until it's appropriate to pursue them that's why you can only that's why you know that you should only um be in the restroom okay that's why you know how to delay your needs you know that you should not eat if it's not yet lunch time okay and that's the role of the ego it's the one that delays the the fulfillment of these needs in a healthy way however if there's too much delayed uh there's too much um inhibition there's too much delay there's too much control that won't be healthy and that is the and that is basically the role of the super ego the superego is like the angel that's telling you what to do and what are the things that you should follow it reminds you of the rules okay for example it's on a friday night you are deciding what am i going to do your kid is telling you to go to a party while your super ego will tell you to study now it's the ego's role to know which of the two will prevail is it the super ego or the id so there's a heavy burden okay the ego does a lot okay and and look at this freud believes that the ego is not the master hence he believes that the ego is weaker compared to the very strong eid okay so it's understandable why is why we are driven by a lot of pleasurable desires okay and we are basically in every day of our lives we try our best not to be controlled by our own desires but we do our best to control the desires and not to be controlled by them okay so to um to end this first slide about floyd let me ask you a healthy person would be dominated by what they eat the egos or the super ego it should be the ego not the id because if you're it dominated then you're impulsive you're someone who likes pleasure all the time you cannot wait basically you're like a baby who wants pleasure right here right now okay that's the um that's an it dominated person on the other hand a super ego dominated person is someone who doesn't know how to enjoy life because maybe this person only studies or this person doesn't know how to party or this person is the one who will for example a very conservative individual someone who always follow the rules even though even though he or she can break the rules from time to time okay so you don't want to to live a very careful life but rather you want to live a balanced one that's why you should be ego dominated not id or super ego dominated so other than the ego super ego he believes that we have three levels of mental life the conscious the subconscious and the unconscious level so basically um we are here right now in the conscious okay and the conscious is just a very small part of the cell okay and the largest part of the self is the unconscious however you are not aware it's because it's what it's unconscious okay and how does the unconscious differ with subconscious or the pre-conscious okay the the things that are in the pre-conscious are are can be um they can be recalled sometimes easily but sometimes with effort they can be memories or stored knowledge for example i ask you what um when is your birthday you're not it's not conscious because you're not thinking about it right now okay it was in the in the pre-conscious okay because it can be recalled when i asked you now that you recalled it from pre-conscious it transferred to the consciousness okay so basically what makes up consciousness it's what what you feel right now what i'm saying right now but when i ask you what did plato say again then you have to get that from the subconscious now what are the what are the things that are in the unconscious freud believes that there are a lot of things that are in the unconscious and the things that we put in the unconscious are the things that we cannot accept the things that we try to deny hence we put them in the unconscious perhaps you are ashamed by them or you don't want to recall it anymore for example your fears okay sometimes you're just afraid if you're in a certain place and you can't explain it because it's in the unconscious your violent motives what if you hated your grade one advisor or your grade one teacher and you really wanted to hurt him or her back then but of course your parents will scold you that's why you did not do it however freud would say that it doesn't go away that hatred is still deep inside you and other things that are in the unconscious include sexual desires irrational wishes immoral urges shameful experiences selfish needs basically the things that you don't openly talk about in public things that you are hiding about yourself things that are best kept secret okay and according to freud the things in the unconscious even though you don't know them they motivate you in your day-to-day behavior okay for example you your anger towards your parent for example may transfer to your teacher you you cannot figure it out why am i angry towards my teacher then you realize that my teacher's characteristic or personality is similar to the characteristic of my parents now i understand why am i always angry in front of um when i am talking to this teacher okay so that's how would that's how freud would explain our day-to-day behaviors most of the cell a large part of the self is not conscious but rather it's in the unconscious okay and it and those unconscious ideas will try its best to be conscious and it may be conscious in a good way but most of the time it becomes conscious in a bad way okay okay now let's talk about perspectives that do not agree with the dichotomous um with the dichotomous views of the earlier philosophers that we talk about the first is the perspective of gilbert trial so he denies the existence of internal non-physical self meaning he only believes in the body but not in the existence of the soul and the self is not an entity that one can locate okay so don't try to look for the self because you cannot locate it it's not in a in one location but rather according to him the self is just a convenient name that you use to describe all your behaviors okay so if you want to understand yourself do not look for a soul or do not try to um look for a location where you can find the soul but rather look at your day-to-day behaviors okay and that's the cell there's no such thing as a cell that cannot be seen okay and that's how we answered the dichotomous questions raised by the earlier philosophers he is also known for his um story or his metaphor about the university so in his metaphor about the university he says that one day there are there is a group of people who went to a university and you're the one who gave them who gave them a tour and then you showed them the library the canteen the clinic the classrooms the office of the of the dean etc but these clueless um this group of people who don't have a clue they ask you you have showed us the library you have showed us the canteen you have showed us the classroom but where is the university according to ryle they asked the question where is the university but they did not know that they are in the university so that's like how we search for the self sometimes we ask questions like who am i or or who what's what is really my i want to know more about my personality okay who am i meant to be but according to ryle in order for you to understand yourself just look at what you're doing in your in your day-to-day behavior because that's the self okay and here's another perspective that denies dualism okay and according to merlio ponti he denies the dualistic ideas by saying that the mind and the body cannot be separated so according to him let us not believe in the perspectives that try to separate the mind and the body because we cannot um it will it will not lead to anything productive it will be futile so let us not try to separate the mind and the body let's not think of of the self as the body and the soul but rather the mind and the body cannot be separated and they're always connected with each other so basically what is experienced by the mon by the body enters the mind that's why they are connected to each other and they cannot be separated so basically that is it for our discussion on the philosophical perspectives about the self and in the next discussions we are going to take a look at other um perspectives such as sociology psychology sexual and physical self and many more okay and i hope that you learned a lot from this discussion and continue asking questions about the self that's it and thank you