4UNDERSELF CHAP 1

• Socrates


  No historical document if he really existed<|>469-399 B.C.E.<|>No known writings<|>Plato highly regarded him
• Gnothi seauton


  Ancient Greek aphorism meaning "know yourself"
• Socrates


  • Pointed out that if an individual knows who he or she is, all the basic issues and difficulties in life will vanish and everything will be clearer
  • Technique in asking questions: Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? What am I doing here? What is justice?
• Self-knowledge


  Knowing one's degree of understanding about the world and knowing one's capabilities and potentials<|>Self is achieved and something to work on
• Possession of knowledge is virtue and ignorance is vice


  One must first have the humility to acknowledge his or her ignorance so as to acquire knowledge
• Socrates


  • Dualist: Man has soul, which is divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, and ever self-consistent and invariable
  • Soul pre-existed the body, and soul is what makes the body alive
  • Body is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, dissoluble and inconsistent
  • Death is the release of the soul from the body
  • Soul controls emotions and actions through proper judgement and reason
• Plato's Idealism


  Empirical reality is fundamentally unreal and is only a shadow or a mere appearance<|>Ultimate reality is real as it is eternal and constitutes abstract universal essences of things<|>Concrete objects in this world are mere copies of these abstract universal essences<|>Ideas are objects of the intellect known by reason alone and are objective realities that exist in a world of their own<|>Soul is eternal and constitutes the enduring self
• St. Augustine


  Existence of past and future is only possible through memory and expectations<|>Introspection became one of the important ideas in psychology which pertains to the inquiry of the soul then of the mind, consciousness and thought<|>Consciousness can be extended backward to any past action or forward to actions to come, it determines the identity of the person
• Rene Descartes


  Cogito, ergo sum - "I think, therefore I am"<|>Existence of anything that you register from your senses can be doubted, but the very fact that one doubts is something that cannot be doubted<|>Self is a thinking thing or a substance whose whole essence or nature is merely thinking<|>Self is real and not just an illusion, and is different from the body<|>Self is a feature of the mind and thus a mental substance rather than a physical substance<|>Mind (thought) always precedes action (body)
• Paul and Patricia Churchland


  Eliminative Materialism: Ordinary, common sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and some or all of the mental states posited by common sense do not actually exist<|>Folk Psychology or Common Sense is something that is FALSE<|>Self is nothing else but the BRAIN, or simply, the self is contained entirely within the physical brain
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty


  • Subjective Body (as lived and experienced) and Objective Body (as observed and scientifically investigated) are not different bodies
  • Self as Embodied Subjectivity: Human beings are living creatures whose subjectivity (consciousness) is actualized in the forms of their physical involvement with the world
  • Subject (a self) Essentially Requires a Body: Consciousness cannot simply be immaterial but must be embodied
  • "I am my body": Accepts the idea of mental states but suggests that the use of the mind is inseparable from our bodily, situated, physical nature
• George Mead's Social Self


  Self is not biological but social, and is developed through social interaction<|>Self has two parts: Self-Awareness (conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives and desires) and Self-image (the idea one has of one's abilities, appearance and personality)<|>Self develops through social interaction, which involves the exchange of symbols (such as language) and understanding of symbols by taking the role of another<|>Role Playing: Process in which one takes on the role of another by putting oneself in the position of the person with whom he or she interacts<|>3 Stages of Development: Imitation or Preparatory Stage, Play Stage, Game Stage<|>"I" and "Me" Self: Humans experience internal conversation involving the I and Me
• Role playing


  The process in which one takes on the role of another by putting oneself in the position of the person with whom he or she interacts
• Role playing

  1. Develops a concept of self

  2. By putting oneself in the position of others, one is able to reflect upon oneself
• 3 Stages of Development

  • Imitation or Preparatory Stage
  • Play Stage
  • Game Stage
• I


  The phase of the self that is unsocialized and spontaneous. It is the acting part of the self, an immediate response to other people. It represents the self that is free and unique. It is the subjective part of the self.
• Me


  The self that results from the progressive stages of role playing or role-taking and the perspective one assumes to view and analyze one's own behaviors. It is the organization of the internalized attitude of others. It represents the conventional and objective part of the self.
• Generalized others


  An organized community or social group which gives to the individual his or her unity of self. The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the entire community.
• Looking-glass self


  A social psychological concept where the self is developed as a result of one's perceptions of other people's opinions. People are the way they were at least partly because of other people's reactions to them and to what they do.
• Looking-glass self


  1. People imagine how they must appear to others

  2. They imagine the judgement on that appearance

  3. They develop themselves through the judgement of others
• Looking-glass self is made up of feelings about other people's judgement of one's behavior
• Postmodernism


  Not a philosophy but more of a report on the mindset of western culture in the latter half of the 20th century
• 4 Basic Postmodernist Ideas about the Self

  • Multiphrenia - many different voices speaking about "who we are and what we are"
  • Protean - a self capable of changing constantly to fit the present conditions
  • De-centered - a belief that there is no self at all since the self is constantly being redefined or constantly undergoing change
  • Self-in-relation - humans do not live their lives in isolation but in relation to people and to certain cultural contexts
• For Mead, the self is shaped by outside forces, that is why for him there is no "I" self
• For postmodernists, people have no fixed identities which are separable from their surroundings and which remain the same even though certain characteristics and conditions may change
• Shift in identity in different societies

  • In traditional society: a person's status is determined by his or her role
  • In modern society: by his or her achievement
  • In postmodern society: by fashion or style since it changes and people adapts to these changes or is left with identity in question
• For Foucault, the self is a text written from moment to moment according to the demands of a multitude of social contexts
• Two realities dominating the postmodern social condition

  • The rise of new media technologies
  • The dominance of consumerism
• The self is "digitalized" in cyberspace
• Every little piece of information that you post on the Internet can be used to piece together an identity, a virtual version of who you are
• Culture


  Derived from the Latin word cultura or cultus meaning care or cultivation
• Personal identity


  The way they see themselves as an individual
• Collective identity


  The way they see themselves as a member of a certain group
• Identity


  Refers to "who the person is," or the qualities and traits of an individual that make him or her different from others
• Ways to distinguish people

  • By geographical context or based on where they come from
  • People from the West are different from the people from the East
• Cultural identity


  The identity or feeling of belongingness to a certain culture group. It is an individual's perception about himself or herself anchored on cultural factors.
• Cultural identity theory


  Explains why a person acts and behaves the way he or she does. A single person can possess multiple identities, simultaneously making him or her part of many cultural groups.
• Nation


  A group of people built on the premise of shared customs, traditions, religion, language, art, history and more
• National identity


  The identity or feeling of belongingness to one state or nation. It is socially constructed and influenced by material and non-material cultures.
• Material culture representing national identity


  • National Flag
  • Emblem
  • Seal