good day everyone again welcome to malayan college's laguna and also welcome to ss031 again this is ss031 understanding the self and today we will be starting off with our first lecture now again the one was i think you know one course orientation i hope that you've already had an idea and a glimpse of what we are supposed to discuss in this course and is part of our first module and today our discussion will be focusing on the philosophical journey to discovering the self again welcome to our first lecture again this is ss31 understanding the self and again today our discussion will be concentrating on a philosophical journey of discovering the self dada bhaga bhagwan one said who am i not knowing this is the greatest death to the soul or to one's own self why is it that this person was saying that not being able to answer the question who am i is like a death or the greatest death to the soul now we know that when we talk about philosophy at least if you have studied this back in your senior high school we realize that the subject of philosophy deals with the ultimate questions of life and part of that question that philosophy deals to and strives to answer is the question of who am i and in our journey for today's discussion we will try to answer the question who am i from a philosophical perspective again welcome to our first lecture in this course this is a philosophical journey to discovering the self and today will be our uh lecture outcome so part of our uh outcomes that we want to reach is number one we hope to understand the importance of knowing the self also we will try to recognize the different perspectives regarding the nature of man also we will try to assess the philosophical perspective of the self by criticizing the arguments of different philosophers okay as to how they understand self to be and lastly we will try to develop our own answer to the question who am i now philosophy has always sought to answer life's difficult questions and it has relentlessly pursued answers to these no matter how seemingly futile the quest might be because when you talk about the question who am i for a lot of people they would say that this is a very simple question to answer but then again in philosophy you have to dig deeper into the concept of the self for you to understand who you really are when we talk about the concept of who we are so these are just some of the questions that we want to give and answer of the first one is this just what exactly are we are we creations of the mind are we just phatoms or are we creations of an omnipotent being also we have the question what do we even mean by the self are we souls organic bodies or merely a figment of another's imagination say if i see someone in front of me and i ask that person are you really who i see right now perhaps that person might just laugh at that question but then again there is a possibility perhaps that the person that we are seeing in front of us is not really that person in its entirety perhaps that person is just what is just what okay that person is just what an incomplete ida or an imperfect fraction okay of the real person and also we try to understand of the self by answering the question are we just minds or a combination of body and mind the next question is this will we survive bodily death because we are more than a body or anub is that really the end of the self or are we actually robots controlled by some entity somewhere out there now this unit will discuss selected philosopher's answer to the question who am i now that question may be one of the most difficult to answer and has garnered attention right from the start of man's self reflection but no matter how difficult it is we cannot just ignore the question and leave it unanswered that's the reason why we try to answer the question who am i at least from the philosophical perspective at this time what do we do and our reaction to the world has a lot to do with how we see ourselves in an age when the pursuit of one's happiness and celebrating one's identity seems to be at the forefront now the question who am i still has no easy answer and so as we try to answer the question who am i at least from the philosophical perspective now we look at this from these perspectives okay we look at the self here on your screen and we talk about the self as what the philosophical quest is aimed at what unraveling trying to understand who man is and his nature by looking not only on the everyday goals of man what do we intend to accomplish daily but to determine what ultimately man is the ultimate reason why man exists his goals his essence and that is what we are trying to understand when we try to understand man from the philosophical perspective and so in philosophy what do we mean by the self now the self is composed of subperception as defined by what their self concept their self esteem their self knowledge and their social self so if you're going to look at your screen right now you will see here the different ideas of how philosophy actually understands the self so when you talk about the cell from the philosophical perspective this includes our self-concept our self-esteem our self-knowledge and our social self and these are what we are going to study as we try to navigate and understand what we are and who we really are now some of the great minds from our history approach the question who am i so you're in your screen right now you will see the philosophical great giants of the time so you have the likes of of socrates of plato and of saint augustine and also you have the likes of renee descartes john locke david yum also we will try to understand the self from the perspective of immanuel kant of sigmund freud of gilbert ryle of paul churchland and of maurice murli myrtle ponti now i don't want for you to uh have a difficult time to understand their philosophies and so um as much as possible i would try my best to help you understand the self from the philosophical perspective madeleine so we are now going to proceed with the first concept of the self from the philosophical perspective at least according to socrates a little bit of achieving about socrates now socrates never really wrote a book and most of the things that we know about him came from xenophon and his prized student plato now we know of plato as one of the philosophical giants also of this time but there would never be a plato without a socrates okay so this is also the reason why it is very difficult to somehow differentiate the philosophies and the ideas of socrates from plato because socrates never really wrote a book whatever we know about his philosophies were because of what because of the writings of xenophon and plato now he was born in athens and he was married with several children and he's also known as a market philosopher because of his pension for engaging the youth in philosophies philosophizing in public markets one of the most uh one of the most famous um adages coming from socrates is this when he said an unexamined life is not worth living let me repeat that he said an unexamined life is not worth living and so you see here that he tried to answer the question of life by examining life itself and at a time when people were looking at science and and uh trying to understand the world out there during his time he tried to back his philosophy and its attention from the universe to an examination of our existence in the universe now what are the ideas of socrates at least about the self according to him there is soul first before man's body which means man first existed in the realm of ideas now wherever that realm of ideas ear is socrates did not really give a concrete answer but at least for him before man was born there was there was already man meaning there was already the soul itself before even it became a body man first existed in the realm of ideas it exists as a soul or a pure mind now for him there was soul first before man's body now this soul according to him has already knowledge by direct intuition and all these are stored in his mind however once he came into the material world or the world of senses or say the world that we are living in right now he forgot the ideas that he knew thus he became ignorant and the reason why we are not able to understand who we are right now is because of our ignorance and that ignorance was the result of us being born into the material world why because at least according to socrates we knew everything in the realm of ideas when we first existed a souls or a pure mind however we became ignorant when we were born into this world this resulted in lack of our knowledge or ignorance and however for socrates there is a solution to this ignorance because for him knowledge can be restored through the process of dialectic method or what we call as the socratic method what is the socratic method by the way now when we talk about the socratic method this is an exchange of question and answer that ultimately aims to make the person remember all the knowledge that he has forgotten including his former omniscient self now when we talk about the character of being omniscient that means you know everything meaning at least according to socrates man before he was born when he was first a soul or a pure mind existing in the realm of ideas he was an omniscient being meaning he knew everything but he lost all his knowledge when he was born into this world and so the way that he will be able to gain or to regain that knowledge back to regain that omniscient self is by asking and asking and asking and asking and asking questions now this is an exchange of question and answer that ultimately aims to make again the person remember all the knowledge that he has forgotten including his former omniscient self again just to summarize what socrates believes about the self he believed that the self existed even before we were born into in the material world and that self is an omniscient self an all knowing self existing in the realm of ideas as a soul or a pure mind now a while ago we talked about socrates having a student by the name of plato and now we will be proceeding with plato and his view of the self now plato was born into an aristocratic athenian family he was involved in the role of the 30 tyrants and he also later in life founded the academy now considered as the prototype of modern university according to plato if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul itself now an important part of the philosophy of plato is the dichotomy or pancake ideal world or the world of forms and the material world okay so parallel philosophies philosophies the socrates however there are certain statements ideas okay now at least according to plato if we want to have a pure knowledge of everything then we have to get rid of the body why is he saying that we have to get rid of the body okay let's proceed with these ideas about the self okay now when we talk about the idea of plato about the self according to him human beings are composed of two things human beings are composed of um two things okay the body and the soul for him the soul is the true self when we say that the soul is the true self meaning it is the permanent unchanging self found in the world of ideas now donkey plato it's in the realm of ideas okay realm of ideas but for plato the true self can be found where it can be found in the world of ideas okay now for him the body is what we see in the material world but the body that we have here in the material world is just a replica of the true self that is the reason why it is changing young now for him the soul was already existing even before bodily death and thus will survive even after the body dies at least according to plato the self will continue to exist even after we die thus for him the body becomes a prison to the soul now for him in order for us to release ourselves from this prison we have to contemplate and contemplation is all about the union of the mind with universal and eternal ideas now for plato the world of forms is the permanent and changing reality as opposed to the world of materials which keeps on changing the material world at least according to plato is where we live but this is just again a replica of the world found in the world of forms now this differentiation is reflected in his idea of the nature of man he believed that human beings are composed again of what of body and of soul the changing body or what we see in the material world is not the real self okay so for him the self the real self cannot be found found in the material world because the true self is in the world of ideas now the body is seen as some sort of a prison like what i said a while ago and so according to plato we continue to exist even in the absence of our bodies because again we are souls only and that is what it is at least according to plato let us now continue with our discussion and now here we will be proceeding with the concept of the self at least according to saint augustine now um sid augustine is one of the most popular christian philosophers not only during his time but even up to this point now saint augustine was born from a christian family however he abandoned his early christian faith because he found it difficult to reconcile a loving and all-knowing and an all-powerful god with the evils in the world he was saying that if god is really an all-knowing and a loving and an all-powerful god then why is he allowing evil to exist in the world and to plague humanity and so it was his encounter with the with what we call as the uh platonists or the neo-platonist and the idea of the world of forms which gave him a philosophical strong point for the idea that god exists and paved the way for his return to christianity he also goes on to say that the moral law exists and is imposed on the mind for him there is an eternal law which should be universally followed because this is coming from the eternal reason or god himself now this eternal law is the law of conscience saint augustine now there was a time in his journey in understanding himself and life in general when he was quoted as saying but my sin was this that i looked for pleasure for beauty and truth not in him capital h i am but in myself and in his creatures and the search led me instead to pain confusion and error this is found in one of his uh most popular books the confessions now what does or what did said augustine said about the cell now we have to understand that saint augustine was highly influenced by plato he talked about the permanent world however he somehow christianized the philosophies of plato although he was influenced by plato we have to understand that plato did not categorically say that the world of forms or the world of ideas is where god is but here we see saint augustine trying to christianize the idea of the the ideas of plato when he said that the permanent world is where god is and the material world is our world at the moment and for him man or the self is created out of god's love and also created in his image or in his imago day when we talk about the imago day we talk about the image of god in man now for him he also has an man also as an immortal soul whose goal is to be with god eternally so for him the idea of the self is to be with his creator eternally and so the pursuit of happiness at least according to saint augustine can only be achieved in god alone now again taking his cue from the two worlds of plato he differentiated what the real world is and what the temporary world looks like for him the real world is the permanent world where god is and the temporary world is the material world where which we are living at the moment so we will now proceed with the next philosopher and this is renee descartes i believe that most of you if not all of you already knew who renee descartes is now a little bit of a tribute about rene descartes we know him as the father of modern philosophy he was a frenchman who was also a brilliant mathematician and we know of the cartesian geometry for this one now rene descartes was hired to tutor queen christina of sweden however he died of pneumonia pneumonia soon after because his health could not take the 5 a.m start of lesson required by the queenie so that is just a sort of a trivia about rene descartes now we also uh know um rene descartes for his famous saying i think therefore i am kogito ergo now this is very much important in our understanding of rene descari's idea of the self for him the essence of man is in being that's the reason why he said i think therefore i am okay now since the mind and body are separate but at the same time conjoined with one another that they costly act upon each other that's the reason why at least according to rene descartes you cannot really move without the body but for him the self is mine more than the body now since there is no boxing the mind we also have different ways of using language and responding to circumstances in unpredictable way because these two are products of the mind now for him the essence of the self is in its being a thinking being the self being the mind more than the body i think therefore i am his very popular uh say or his very popular very popular words emphasizes the consciousness of his mind which leads to an evidence of his existence despite the fact that he's doubting the existence of everything physical including his own body again for him man's essence lay in being a purely thinking being because even if he can doubt whether whether he has real body or it's just a trick of his senses one thing he cannot doubt is that he is thinking so when he says i think therefore i am when man starts thinking then he stops becoming okay that's the reason why he said i think therefore i am okay so that is what rene descartes philosophy is all about and so we will now be proceeding with swan which is john locke now he's known as the father of classical liberalism because of his contribution to the formation of human rights he is the first of the great british empiricist philosopher now when you talk about empiricism what we mean by that is that a person only believes what he senses tells him to okay okay so he does not believe in the concept of whatever is not seen or whatever is not sensed by the self you have the sense of touch sense of sight sense of smell sense of hearing and so on so for him again in this sense then that's not part of reality okay that's the reason why he is considered as an empiricist now according to john locke what worries you masters you which is true okay and you uh try to think too much about your worries then you have to understand that most of our worries are not true now for him the self is not locked in the mind however it's only in the body and uh body and soul only because for him the memory and this is a key word in uh john locke's understanding of the self the memory is part of the definition of the self and this is what he was famous for the memory theory where he said that we are the same person as we were in the past for as long as we can remember something from that past that way our memory renders us self-conscious that we are that one and the same person okay so um before now that's part of who you are but then say for example you were called out by your teacher and then you don't remember so that's not who you are anymore at least according to the perspective of john locke because for him the memory is part of the definition of the self and whatever you still remember about yourself is part of who you are at least according to john law okay and keyword we will now proceed with now born in scotland he was a lawyer but is known more for the history book that he wrote the history of england just like log he is an empiricist okay and regarded as senses as our key source of knowledge so whatever cannot be sensed is not true now in 1738 oh um for for um david yule he does believe in the existence of the mind and what's inside the mind is divided into two you have the impressions and then you have the ideas okay okay the mind is divided into two the impressions and the ideas how do we define impressions the impressions okay are things directly perceived by the senses okay uh or so that's um so that's an impression however when you talk about ideas these are things created in the mind or it can be a combination of impressions say i saw an apple it's green it's kind of round at least okay or it could be red and it's sweet so those are ideas because these are already combinations of impressions according to yum when he looks in the mind there is no impression that corresponds to the self because the self constantly changes himself according to him the self is merely the perception we have at the moment it is being perceived therefore for him the enduring self is just a fiction because we cannot observe a permanent self because the concept of the self is ever changing thus for his conclusion he said that there is no self the reason is because he argues that when he looks again into the mind okay he finds a stream of impressions and ideas however the self keeps changing and that's the reason why he says okay that there is no permanent and unchanging self and by that he believed that there is no self because we all change now how do we then respond when someone tells us please don't change when at least according to david um the self changes every time is and the odd only to be the slave of passion and can never pretend to any other office other than to serve and obey them and now we will be continuing on with another philosopher emmanuel kant now according to him all our knowledge all our knowledge begins with the senses proceeds to understanding and ends with reason he gives so much importance to reason that's why he said that there is nothing higher than reasoning everything begins with our senses and when we sensed it already we try to understand what we sense and without understanding it gives us the reasonability or the rationality of our knowledge now immanuel kant was considered as one of the giants in philosophy and he was spurred into philosophical activism when he encountered your skepticism in david young and he took it upon himself to repute it okay because for him he argued that it is possible to discover universal truth about the world using our reason and for him he also argued that it is possible to find the essence of the self something that is going against the concept of david young because at least for david hume again there is no self because what you know about the self at the moment is always changing that is what immanuel kant is actually trying to refute okay now what does he believe okay according to hume he argued yum by saying that it is possible to find the essence of itself by using our son now for his idea of the self kant believes that man is a free agent man is gifted with reason and free will that's the reason why man can organize the different data gathered by the senses from this we can now have a good idea of yourself because we can sense we can understand that's the reason why we can reason out now kant's philosophy centers around the inherent dignity of the human being that man has inherent dignity and should be treated with respect as an end and not as a means now the necessity of his being free is tested in his decision to be moral at least this is what is according to emmanuel kent because for him an individual can be or has the free will to be moral or not but for kant he believes that man is a moral being thus for us to know what is our duty as human beings the duty of the self we have to rationally okay or to carefully reason out on it okay because for him he believes again that it is possible to find the essence of the self because we are rational beings okay we can sense that's the reason why we can understand and that's the reason why we can be rational in the few things you in refuting him's idea that there is no self he said that man again is gifted with reason and free will and he can gather data by the census and with this data we will have an idea of the man or we can have a good idea of the sub and so we will be proceeding with sigmund freud of course sigmund freud is not a philosopher but we will include him here because he has a very good idea of his concept of the self just the same now we know sigmund freud as the father of psychoanalysis in his work centers around the mind and its development he devised a structure that defines man according to his biological structure and in the influence of a social culture environment now a little bit of achieving about sigmund freud it was claimed that one of the proofs for the unconscious is what we call slip of the tongue you know like you know sleep of the tongue it is when instead of saying sean we blurted out paulo meaning what we are thinking is the person that we said rather than the person that we studied to okay now according to sigmund freud the ego is not master of its own house the ego is not master of its own house concept the e the ego and the super ego at least from uh sigmund freud now for him the self or man is a combination of his biological structures and the influence of the social cultural environment meaning it's not only our biology which is important but you bring in your biology okay and the influences that you get from your environment from your social cultural environment and you bring this together and that's when you will have a good perception of the self now he devised a pipe type division of man when you say a trip type meaning so you have the eid the ego and the super ego now when we talk about the id this represents the biological structure of man the superego represents the social cultural environment and when the eid and the super ego are at battle against each other and whoever wins between them is manifested in the ego and the ego being the self sigmund freud because if that is the case then the ego is not the master in its own house because it only manifests whoever wins against the eid the super ego now for us to better understand we have to make sure that we understand that the super ego represents the ethical component of the personality and it provides the moral standards by which the ego operates okay now in a man's advanced stages of development the eid and the superego will find themselves clear against each other with the superego trying to control the impulses of the eid and the in trying to satisfy its urges because again the id represents the biological structures now say for example you saw a chocolate your your your eid okay wants to be satisfied because it's urging you to eat the chocolate however your super ego because of the social cultural environment okay and the impulses being controlled okay by the cultural environment so you all eat at your own super ego okay now the winner again of this battle between the eid and the super ego will be manifested in the ego which is again the self hence the code the ego is not master in its own house now if ego misbehaves then the eid wants this battle is all taking place in the subconscious now the realm of the ego is found in the conscious now let's proceed with the next one this is gilbert ryle and at least according to him minds are things minds are things but different sorts of things from the body okay different sorts of things from the body now rail claims that the problem of philosophy is a philosophy because these were only brought about by our confusion because of misinterpretation misunderstanding and others now for him the goal of philosophy should only be to clear this confusion through linguistic analysis now what does gilbert reil say about the self now for him the debate on the definition of the self is only a problem of language say a talk of the mind is only a talk of the behavior the mind is not distinct from the body but for him it is part of a certain aspect of our body now for him the mind is not like a specific separate entity but is certainly part of our body ideally the separation of mind and soul and body could be possible but in practice for him is not the case the only way by which we can know how the mind is working is through the behavior of the person and we will be able to know that through what okay now criticize descartes and said descartes made a category mistake in a discourse separation of mind body and soul is only possible but not in practice why do we have a dichotomy or a trichotomy of man when we have to understand that this is only a problem of language now for him we can see how the mind is working through his behavior because for him the self can be known by the behavior okay in fact again as we continue on here we have another uh philosophy who has his own concept of the self and this is called church land for him we do not have an organ for understanding and recognizing moral facts okay we do have an organ for understanding and recognizing moral fat and we call this the brain okay so okay now is that when we talk about um paul churchland this is already a combination okay of um biology of neuroscience and for us to understand the self now paul trichland is known for his eliminated materialism which is the idea that the mind is unreal and the brain is real so here he tries to distinguish the concept of the mind and the brain when we talk about the brain okay and brain but when we talk about the mind do we say that when we see the mind do we say that the brain and the mind are one and the same because again we talk about this that's the reason why at least according to paul churchill and when we talk about the mind the mind is not true however the brain is real for full church learn the self is the brain because for him the brain is the essence of the self the essence or the brain is the essence of the cell what does that mean when you talk about the self it's all about it's all about what it's about the term mind moods emotions actions and consciousness are deeply affected by the state of the brain mood emotions actions are deeply affected by our this by the state of our brain so [Music] existentialism okay he believes that um a person is defined by a virtue of movement or his expression for him a person is the sum of all that he does with his body including his interpretation of his past and his decisions now for him the definition of self is all about one's perceptions of one's experiences and the interpretation of those experiences so for him the self is grounded on the experiences from the past the possibilities of the future for the future and our present cognition or our present understanding of our self okay that's the reason why according to him okay we know not through our intellect but through our experience okay so for him our experiences are very important okay so i import your [Applause] and for us to be able to summarize all this according to socrates he said that man is essentially a soul and this was seconded by plato okay for augustine he extended plato's idea and he said that man is an image is created in the image and the likeness of god you talk about the image and is essentially a soul whose goal is to be with god for rene descartes he emphasized the non-physical form of man said that in essence man is mind a thinking being okay and thinking being separate from his body however it doesn't mean that we don't need the body because for him the body is a necessity for mind in order for it to perform on act for john locke okay okay the self is a consciousness and that for as long as we have memories the memory theory about who we are and our identity then that tells us that we are that same person that same self that we are conscious of now now according to david you may declare that there is no self there is no permanent self because the self is only a bundle of senses that keeps on changing however this was refuted by emmanuel kent who said that it's possible for us to construct ourselves because we can think we can sense we can organize the data that's the reason why we can be can have a rational idea of the self however for sigmund freud he asserts that man is made up of two things the conscious and the unconscious and the man has learned many layers he talked about the e the ego and the super ego now for gilbert ryle he believes that how one behaves is a big factor factor in showing who man is because the self is reflected in his behavior or her behavior now for a whole church land he declared that the brain is the essence of the self and lastly for maurice merlo ponti he rejected entirely the idea of mind and body dichotomy because for him man is all about how he sees himself and it is a very subjective it's all about our experiences that matters according to marilu ponti okay so i think summary vita for socrates for plato and saint augustine the self is an immortal soul that exists over time they are not empiricist because they believe that there is a life here after for the card the self is a thinking being distinct from the body for john locke okay our personal identity is made possible by our self-consciousness okay for david young there is no self for immanuel kant there is a self okay for sigmund freud it's very multi-layered ferrari it's all about our behavior for church that it's all about the concept of the brain for merlou ponte it's very subjective because our experiences differ from each other okay and that wraps up our discussion on the philosophical view of the south again this is sir e and again thank you for joining me today i'll see you again next time again this is ss31 understanding the self and today we discussed the philosophical view of the south again this is siri now signing off