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
it’s our self that makes experiencing an intelligible world possible, because it’s the self that is responsible for synthesizing the discreet data of sense experience into a meaningful whole. Metaphorically, our self is the weaver who, using the loom of the mind, weaves together the fabric of experience into a unified whole so that it becomes my experience, my world, my universe. Without our self to perform this synthesizing function, our experience would be unknowable, a chaotic collection of sensations without coherence or significance.
Immanuel Kant
The Conscious and Unconscious Selves
Sigmund Freud
he is not, strictly speaking, a philosopher, but his views on the nature of the self have had a far-reaching impact on philosophical thinking, as well as virtually every other discipline in the humanities and social sciences. Naturally, his most dominant influence has been in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis.
Sigmund Freud
Essential to an understanding of Freud’s conception of the unconscious is the psychoanalytic model of “___” human functioning.
Split Level
Freud’s view of the self was multitiered, divided among the ___,____,___
Conscious, Preconscious, and unconscious
contains basic instinctual drives including sexuality, aggressiveness, and self-destruction; traumatic memories; unfulfilled wishes and childhood fantasies; thoughts and feelings that would be considered socially taboo.
Unconscious
level is characterized by the most primitive level of human motivation and human functioning. At this level, the most basic instinctual drives seek immediate gratification or discharge. Unheedful of the demands and restrictions of reality, the naked impulses at this level are governed solely by the “pleasure principle.”
Unconscious
is the impulsive part of your personality that is driven by pleasure and repulsed by pain
Id
is governed by the “reality principle” (rather than the “pleasure principle”), and at this level of functioning, behavior and experience are organized in ways that are rational, practical, and appropriate to the social environment
Conscious Self
is the conscious part of your personality that mediates between the id and the superego and makes decisions.
Ego
is the judgmental and morally correct part of your personality
Superego
