UTS CHAPTER 1 Flashcards
stated Our bodies belong to the physical realm, they change, their imperfect and they die. Our souls however belong to the ideal realm, they are unchanging and immortal, surviving the death of the body
Socrates
Modern conception of the self is the notion that the thinking, reasoning self and the physical body are radically distinct entities that have a complicated and problematic relationship with one another.
Socrates
his concept of the soul (the Greek word is psyche) in his later dialogues such as the monumental Republic and the Phaedrus.
Plato
our divine essence that enables us to think deeply, make wise choices, and achieve a true understanding of eternal truths.
Reason
our basic biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.
Physical Appetite
our basic emotions such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, empathy.
Spirit or Passion
Widely considered the “founder of modern philosophy.”
Rene Descartes
he wanted to penetrate the nature of our reasoning process and understand its relation to the human self. He was convinced that to develop the most informed and well-grounded beliefs about human existence, we need to be clear about the thinking instrument we are employing. For if our thinking instrument is flawed, then it is likely that our conclusions will be flawed as well.
Rene Descartes
He explains, “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
Rene Descartes
A Modern Perspective
on the Self
Rene Descartes
The Self is Consciousness
John Locke
“When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself that which he calls self….”
John Locke
he denies that the individual self necessarily exists in a single soul or substance. For him, the essence of the self is its conscious awareness of itself as a thinking, reasoning, reflecting identity. But this in no way means that this self is necessarily imbedded in a single substance or soul—it might very well take up residence in any number of substances or souls.
John Locke
In his mind, conscious awareness and memory of previous experiences are the keys to understanding the self. In other words, you have a coherent concept of your self as a personal identity because you are aware of your self when you are thinking, feeling, and willing and, you have memories of times when you were aware of your self in the past.
John Locke
There is No Self
David Hume
believing that the source of all genuine knowledge is our direct sense experience.
David Hume
if we carefully examine the contents of our experience, we find that there are only two distinct entities, “impressions” and “ideas”:
David Hume
are the basic sensations of our experience, the elemental data of our minds: pain, pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, and so on. These are “lively” and “vivid.”
Impressions
are copies of impressions, and as a result, they are less “lively” and “vivid.” this includes thoughts and images that are built up from our primary impressions through a variety of relationships, but because they are derivative copies of impressions, they are once removed from reality.
Ideas
“I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.” Even when we actively look for the self, he contends, we simply can’t find it!
David Hume
our mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations
David Hume
For him Hume’s devastating conclusions served as a Socratic “gadfly” to his spirit of inquiry, awakening him from his intellectual sleep and galvanizing him to action.
Immanuel Kant
The sensations of experience are necessary for knowledge, but they are in reality the “grist” for our mental “mills.” Our minds actively synthesize and relate these sensations in the process of creating an intelligible world. As a result, the sensations of immediate experience conform to our minds, rather than the reverse. We construct our world through these conceptual operations, and as a result, this is a world in which we can gain insight and knowledge.
Immanuel Kant
We Construct the Self
Immanuel Kant
