W3_02

• Immanuel Kant


  The self, in the form of consciousness, utilizes conceptual categories (or "transcendental rules") such as substance, cause and effect, unity, plurality, possibility, necessity, and reality to construct an orderly and "objective" world that is stable and can be investigated scientifically. Through perception or sense experience, understanding the reasoning we can grasps least idea about the transcendental self. These faculty of human mind/self-there brought an awareness on the existence of the self.
• Sigmund Freud


  Freud`s philosophy about the self became a theory in psychology. To him the self is divided into three points of responses namely: Id – the instinct that seeks pleasure and avoids a pain, Ego – the mediator between the self oriented pleasure self and the Super Ego, Super Ego – is the one who learned and recognizes moral principles.
• Gilbert Ryle


  Gilbert Ryle`s statement "I act therefore I exist" describes that a human person`s identity is seen through his action, in other words, a person`s action is his/her identity. As a materialist, he also concludes that the death of the body is also the end of the self.
• Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland


  These neurologists believe that all immaterial things e.g. mental states do not exist. They considered that the brain is the true identity of a person. To understand the self-according to them we need to study the brain of a person
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty


  Ponty believed that the mind and body are not disembodied things. It means in order to grasp ideas and knowledge mind needed the body. Same as the body in order to call it a human person needed a mind. The self can be understood through looking at the lived subjective life and experiences of the self.
• There are a lot of thinkers and philosophers provided assumption on the existence of human person or self. But these sets of thinkers contribute influence to those who followed the path of inquiry in knowing the true nature of a human person
• David Hume - As an empiricist, he considers that the concept about the self came from the collection or bundle of perceptions or apprehension. Once the body that contains the five senses disintegrated the concept about the self will vanish. So him there is no stable self.
• Immanuel Kant - He believes that the self has two aspects; the phenomenal self which is the physical aspect and the noumenal self which is the spiritual aspect. In this way, the self is both physical and spiritual.
• John Locke - According to John Locke, the self is made up of thoughts and memories. These thoughts and memories make us unique individuals. Our personality is formed based on our past experiences.
• Rene Descartes - His famous quote “Cogito ergo sum” meaning “I think therefore I am”. This shows that the self exists because of thinking. Thinking is the only thing that cannot be doubted by anyone so it proves that the self exists.
• Rene Descartes - He concluded that the self is dualistic because he found out that the self is composed of two substances namely the res cogitans (thinking substance) and the res extensa (extended substance). This thinking substance is what makes us different from animals while the extended substance is our physical being.