LESSON 1: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PHILOSOPHY

 In man’s pursuit of knowledge and truth, thinkers for centuries

have searched for explanations and reasons for everything
that exists around him.
 In Athens of Ancient Greece, marked the birth of Philosophy
(literary, ‘love of wisdom’) as it influenced Western thought
and still has until today.
 Questions centered on the universe and what possible role
man may play in it.
 Greek philosophers chose to seek natural explanations to
events and phenomena around him instead of seeking
for supernatural explanations from the gods.
As these early philosophers labored to searched for
explanations into how the world works through understanding
the elements, mathematics, heavenly bodies and even atoms,
Another group of philosophers shifted their research and
focused on man.
 They sought to understand the nature of human beings,
problems of morality and life philosophies.
SOCRATES
Sophist
 People (Athenians) who were skilled in settling
 arguments by discussion and debate, and the first
teachers of the West.
 Their arguments were usually about practical things and not
with metaphysical speculations.
These debates led to the examination and critiquing of
accepted standards of behaviour within the society of Athens.
 Then came Socrates, a stonemason with a sharp mind, who
wanted to discover the essential nature of knowledge, justice,
beauty and goodness.
 However, he was not a writer.
A lot of his thoughts were only known through Plato’s writing.
It was through Plato where it was learned that Socrates was a
brilliant debater and was idolized by many Athenians.
This angered the Sophists who brought him to trial, and where
finally he was sentenced to death.
THE SOCRATIC/DIALECTIC METHOD
His method for discovering what is essential in the world and in
people.
It involves the search for the correct/proper definition of a
thing.
The result is a definition that cannot be refuted anymore by
Socratic reasoning.
In this method, he did not lecture, he instead would ask
questions and engage the person in a discussion.
He would begin by acting as if he did not know anything and
would get the other person to clarify their ideas and resolve
logical inconsistencies.
The goal is to bring the person closer to the final
understanding.
His influence was reflected in his famous statement which he
fully lived by, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
He believed that his mission in life was to seek the highest
knowledge and convince others who were willing to his
knowledge with him.
His Socratic method allowed him to question people’s beliefs
and ideas, exposing their misconceptions and get them to touch
their souls.
The touching of the soul, may mean helping the person to get
in touch with his true self.
The true self, Socrates said, is not the body but the soul.
Virtue is inner goodness, and real beauty is that of the soul.
Socrates knew the importance of the oracle (for example,
people were ignorant of what knowledge is most important:
how to live right and how to make their soul good), but was also
aware of his ignorance.
He then realized why he was the wisest (when the Delphi
Oracle named him the wisest of all men), it was because he was
the only one who knew that he did not know.
According to him, real understanding comes from within the
person.
His Socratic method forces people to use their innate reason by
reaching inside themselves to their deepest nature
There were times when this method would not give answers.
This may be expected but what is important is the process
made the person wiser than before.
The aim of the Socratic method is to make people think, seek
and ask again and again.
Some may be angered and frustrated, but what is important is
for them to realize that they do not know everything, that there
are things that they are ignorant of, to accept this and to
continue learning and searching for answers.
PLATO
Plato’s real name is Aristocles, he was nicknamed Plato because
of his physical built which means ‘wide/broad.’
When he returned to Athens, he established a school known as
‘The Academy.’
His metaphysics (philosophical study on the causes and nature
of things) is known as the ‘Theory of Forms.’
In his Theory of Forms, he explained that Forms refers to what
are real.
They are not objects that are encountered with the senses but
can only be grasped intellectually.
Plato’s Forms have the following characteristics:
 1. Forms are ageless and therefore are eternal.
 2. The Forms are unchanging and therefore permanent.
 3. The Forms are unmoving and indivisible.
He also introduced to the West the existence of two realms,
known as Plato’s Dualism:
 1. The Realm of the Shadows is composed of changing,
‘sensible’ things which are lesser entities and therefore
imperfect and flawed.
 2. The Realm of Forms is composed of eternal things
which are permanent and perfect. It is the source of all
reality and true knowledge.
PLATO’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
He considered Socrates’ dialectic method as an important tool
in discovering knowledge.
He also believed that knowledge lies within the person’s soul.
He considered human beings as microcosms of the universal
macrocosm(i.e. everything in the universe can be found in
people – earth, air, fire, water, mind and spirit.
Humans have the immortal, rational soul, which Plato believed
is created in the image of the divine.
In his Republic, he described the soul as having three
components:
 1. The Reason is rational and is the motivation for
goodness and truth. It seeks the true goal of man which
is to see things in their true nature.
 2. The Spirited is non-rational and is the will or the drive
toward action. This part of the soul is initially neutral but
can be influenced/pulled in two directions. It wants
worldly pleasures. It believed that sensual pleasures are
the source of happiness.
 3. The Appetites are irrational and lean towards the
desire for pleasures of the body. It wants worldly
pleasures. It believed that sensual pleasures are the
source of happiness.
PLATO’S THEORY OF LOVE AND BECOMING
He further illustrated his philosophy of the search for
knowledge using the ‘Allegory of the Cave.’
What people in the cave see are only shadows of reality which
they believe are real things and represents knowledge.
What these people fail to realize is that the shadows are not
real for according to Plato, “only the Forms are real.”
Once these people get out of the cave and into the light, what
they will see are the Forms which is what real knowledge is.
In knowing the truth, the person must become the truth.
This is his Theory of Being. To know for Plato is to be.
The more the person knows, the more he is and the better he
is.
Each individual has in his immortal soul a perfect set of Forms
that he can recall which constitutes true knowledge.
In Plato’s Symposium(another Dialogue), he postulated that
love is the way by which a person can move from a state of
imperfect knowledge and ignorance to a state of perfection and
true knowledge.
Love is the force that paves the way for all beings to ascend to
higher stages of self-realization and perfection.
For Plato, love is the way of knowing and realizing the truth.
It is a process of seeking higher stages of being.
The greater the love, the more intellectual component it will
contain.
To love the highest according to him is to become the best.
ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Christianity’s influence dominated Western thought after the
fall of the Hellenistic-Roman eras.
Christian philosophers of the medieval era were also
theologians.
Their concern was with God and man’s relationship with God.
These Christian philosophers did not believe that self-
knowledge and happiness were the ultimate goals of man but
instead man should rely on God’s commands and his judgment
of what constitutes good and evil.
Plato and the other Greek philosophers see man as basically
good and becomes evil through ignorance of what is good.
Christianity, on the other hand, sees man as sinners who
reject/go against a loving God’s commands.
St. Augustine initially rejected Christianity for it seemed to him
then that Christianity could not provide him answers to
questions that interested him.
He wanted to know about moral evil and why it existed in
people, his personal desire for sensual pleasures and questions
about all the sufferings in the world.
ST. AUGUSTINE’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
After all his internal and worldly personal battles, Augustine
became a priest and a bishop of Hippo. His thoughts focused
on two realms.
1. God as the source of all reality and truth.
 According to him without God as the source of all truth,
man could never understand eternal truths.
2. The sinfulness of man.
 According to St. Augustine, the cause of sin or evil is an
act of man’s freewill.
THE ROLE OF LOVE
Augustine stated that real happiness can only be found in God.
For God is love and he created humans for them to also love.
Problems arise because the objects humans choose to love.
Disordered love results when man loves the wrong things
which he believes will give him happiness. He explains:
 1. love of physical objects leads to the sin of greed.
 2. love for other people is not lasting and excessive love
for them is the sin of jealousy.
 Love for the self leads to the sin of pride.
 Love of God is the supreme virtue and only through
loving God can man find real happiness.
RENE DESCARTES

Descartes is known as the “father of Modern Philosophy.”

He was considered as one of the Rationalist Philosophers of
Europe.
This group of philosophers considered truth as a universal
concept and reason is superior to and independent of sensory
experience.
He introduced what is known as the Cartesian method and
invented analytic geometry.
In his method, he asked himself “is there anything I can know
with certainty?”
DESCARTES’ SYSTEM
Through math, he discovered that the human mind has two
powers:
 1. intuition or the ability to apprehend direction of
certain truths and
 2. deduction or the power to discover what is known by
progressing in an orderly way from what is already
known. Truths are arrived at using a step by step
process.
 With what he discovered, he believed that reasoning could
produce absolute truth about nature, existence, morality and
God.
 The truths that can be discovered are a priori.
 Ideas discovered this way do not rely on some experiences
because they are innate in the human mind.
DESCARTES’ VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
‘I think, therefore I am.’ This phrase is Descartes’ legacy.
This is also the first principle of his philosophy.
He believes that to doubt is to think.
What is a thing that thinks?
He deduced that a thinker is a thing that doubts, understands,
affirms, denies, wills, refuses and that also imagines and feels.
The cognitive aspect of human nature is his basis for existence
of the self.
THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
Descartes considered the soul/mind (also the self) as a
substance that is separate from the body.
Based on this, he believed that all bodily processes are
mechanical.
The body, according to him, is like a machine that is controlled
by the will and aided by the mind.
JOHN LOCKE
John Locke’s interest is on the workings of the mind,
particularly the acquisition of knowledge.
Contrary to what Descartes proposed, Locke believed that
knowledge results from ideas produced a posteriori or by
objects that were experienced.
He contended that ideas are not innate but rather the mind at
birth is a ‘tabula rasa’(i.e. blank slate).
He further stated that, “nothing exists in the mind that was not
first in the senses.”
Ideas can also be the result of reflection which demonstrates
the power of thinking and volition or will.
LOCKE’S VIEW
ON HUMAN NATURE
Moral good depends on conformity or non-conformity of a
person’s behavior towards some law. There are three laws
according to Locke:
 1. Law of Opinion – where actions that are praiseworthy
are called virtues and those that are not are called vice.
 2. Civil law – where right actions are enforced by people
in authority.
 3. Divine law – set by God on the actions of man. This is
deemed to be the true law for human behavior. The
divine law is eternally true and the one law that man
should always follow.
DAVID HUME
Hume was credited from giving empiricism its clearest
formulation.
At the beginning of his philosophy, he relied on the scientific
method, believing that it could analyze human nature and
explain the workings of the mind.
As he examined the process of how ideas are formed, he
discovered the limitations of the mind and his optimism turned
into skepticism.
THE HUMAN MIND
Hume’s analysis proceeded this way: the mind receives
materials from the senses and calls it perceptions.
According to him, there are two types of perceptions:
 1. Impressions are immediate sensations of external
reality. These are more vivid than the ideas it produces.
 2. Ideas are recollections of these impressions.
 These two together make up the content of the human mind.
 In examining the patterns of thinking, he formulated three
principles on how ideas relate to one another:
 1. The Principle of Resemblance
 2. The Principle of Contiguity
 3. The Principle of Cause and Effect
This principle of cause and effect was what Hume studied more
closely.
His observations changed what he an others believed about the
cause an effect relationship.
According to him, the idea of cause and effect arise only when
people experience certain relations between objects thus it
cannot be a basis for knowledge.
HUME’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
The part of human nature is what other philosophers called the
soul; he termed it ‘the self.’
He concluded that man does really have an idea of the so-
called self because ideas rely on sense impressions and people
have no sense impression of a self.
In looking for the self, he only discovered sense impressions.
He believed that just like causality, the self is also a product of
the imagination.
He also stated that there is no such thing as ‘personal identity’
behind perceptions and feelings that come and go.
So, for Hume, there is no permanent/unchanging self.
IMMANUEL KANT
French philosopher Rousseau made him realized and enabled
him to formulate his philosophical ideas.
Though initially content with teaching, Kant stated that it was
the philosophy of David Hume that ‘awakened’ and motivated
him to be the founder of German Idealism.
He came up with the most remarkable philosophical system of
the modern times.
KANT’S VIEWS OF THE MIND
Contrary to what the empiricists believed, Kant argued that the
mind is not just a passive receiver of sense experience but
rather actively participates in knowing the objects it
experiences.
In addition, he stated that instead of the mind conforming to
the world, it is the external world that conforms to the mind.
Instead of disregarding the philosophies of Rationalism and
Empiricism(seeing that both are valid but lacking) he combined
them an defined knowledge as a result of human understanding
applied to sense experience.
KANT’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE AND THE SELF
Kant held that those bundles of sensory impressions (as seen
by Hume) imply a unity of the self which there would be no
knowledge of experience.
When the self sees an object, it tends to remember its
characteristics and applies on it, the forms of time and space.
Therefore, a self must exist, according to him or there could be
no memory or knowledge.
The term he used for this experience of the self and its unity
with objects is ‘transcendental apperception.’
He explained that transcendental is used because people do
not experience the self directly but as a unity of all impressions
that are organized by the mind through perceptions.
He concluded that all objects of knowledge, which includes the
self, are phenomenal.
That the true nature of things is altogether unknown and
unknowable.
In the matter of God, he stated that the kingdom of God is
within man.
God is manifested in people’s lives therefore it is man’s duty to
move towards perfection.
He emphasized that people should always see duty as a divine
command.
SIGMUND FREUD
Although Freud was a neurologist, his psychodynamic theory
has characteristics of philosophical thought.
Freud’s then revolutionary ideas of the probable factors that
determine human behavior pave the way for science to look
into the workings of the unconscious mind.
Repressed thoughts and memories have, according to him,
enough psychic energy to impose its control on the person’s
consciousness.
Kept hidden and unexpressed, these repressed memories
resurface and are manifested as some form of psychopathology.
During his time, this manifestation is given the term ‘hysteria.’
In his clinical practice, therapy involves several techniques that
would help the person recognized these repress thoughts and
thus bring him back to emotional stability.
He made use of methods like free association and dream
analysis.
STRUCTURES OF THE MIND
Psychodynamic theory would tell that the workings of the mind
or one’s mental life impacts strongly on the body resulting in
either emotional stability or psychological dysfunctions.
To further clarify how this may be possible, Freud presented
the topography of the mind.
In his illustration, he made use of a typical iceberg to show how
the mind works based on his theorizing.
The tip of the iceberg represents conscious awareness which
characterizes the person as he deals with his external world.
The person’s observable behaviour, however, is further
controlled by the workings of his unconscious/subconscious
mind.
 The preconscious mind which is below the tip of the iceberg
represents memories of which we are not presently aware but
which can with effort be brought into conscious awareness.
The unconscious mind which is located at the bottom of the
iceberg represents the drives and experiences of which we are
not directly aware.
The three levels of the mind are structured by the following
components:
 1. Id. The structure that is primarily based on the
pleasure principle. It demands immediate satisfaction
and is not hindered by societal expectations.
 Operates at unconscious level
 2. Ego. The structure that is based on reality principle.
This structure mediates between the impulses of the id
and the restraints of the superego.
 Conscious thinking part of personality.
 3. Superego. The last structure to develop and is
primarily dependent on learning the difference between
right and wrong. Morality of actions is largely dependent
on childhood upbringing particularly on rewards and
punishments.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle he presented two kinds of
instinct that drive individual behaviour:
 1. Eros or the life instinct. The energy of eros is called
libido and includes urges necessary for individual and
species survival like thirst, hunger and sex.
 2. Thanatos or the death instinct. There are cases,
however, wherein man’s behaviour is directed towards
destruction in the form of aggression and violence. Such
according to Freud are manifestations of thanatos.
FREUD’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
Freud’s psychoanalysis sees man as a product of his past lodged
within his subconscious.
Man’s behaviour by his pleasure seeking life instinct and his
destructive death instinct is said to be born with his ego already
in conflict.
Man then lives his life balancing the forces of life and death-
opposing forces that make mere existence a challenge.
GILBERT RYLE
•In his book entitled, The Concept of the Mind, Ryle argues that
dualism ‘involves category mistakes and is a philosophical
nonsense’.
•The category mistake involved in the mind-body problem is how
a non-material mental substance known as the ‘mind’ can
influence a physical, material body.
•Ryle also stated that many of the philosophical problems (e.g.
mind-body problem) were caused by the wrong use of
language.
•The category mistake in Cartesian and grammatically
appropriate only for a category of material things.
•With this, Ryle stigmatized the mind as the ‘Ghost in the
Machine.’
RYLE’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE AND KNOWLEDGE
•Philosophical thought also mentioned that man is endowed with
freewill.
•But Ryle thought that freewill was invented to answer the question
of whether an action deserves praise or blame.
•He also touched on two types of knowledge.
•He distinguished between ‘knowing-that and knowing-how.’
• ‘Knowing-that’ refers to knowing facts/information and the
‘knowing-how’ to using facts in the performance of some
skill or technical abilities.
• Just ‘knowing-that’ according to him is considered as empty
intellectualism.
• What is more important is how to make of these facts.
• Ryle’s point of view is that knowing involves an ability and not just
an intellect.
PATRICIA AND PAUL CHURCHLAND
•Modern scientific inquiry looks into the application of
neurology to age-old problems in philosophy one of which is the
mind-body problem.
•This brought about the study of what is now known as
neurophilosophy.
•The term was coined by Patricia Churchland who, together with
husband Paul, was dissatisfied with the particular approach of
philosophers and instead sought to guide scientific theorizing
with philosophy and guide philosophy with scientific inquiry.
•The philosophy of neuroscience is the study of the philosophy
of the mind, the philosophy of science, neuroscience and
psychology.
•It aims to explore the relevance of neuroscientific
experiments/studies to the philosophy of the mind.
•The issue of the brain-mind is central to this study.
•Even if neuroscience found that there is no causal relationship
between the brain and the mind, the mind would still be
associated with the brain.
CHURCHLAND’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
•Human nature is complicated.
•Man is endowed with more than just physical or neurological
characteristics.
•Despite research findings, neurophilosophy states that the self
is real, that it is a tool that helps the person tune-in to the
realities of the brain and the extant reality.
•It can malfunction but can also allow human beings to do
amazing things.
•It was also mentioned, that man is a work of art, constantly
evolving and at the same being molded by experiences of the
world.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY: VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE AND THE SELF
•Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of body-subject and
contented that perceptions occur existentially.
•Thus, the consciousness, the world and the human body are all
interconnected as they mutually perceive the world.
•This is tantamount to saying that all knowledge is perceived
through the body with all its sensory functions which take place
in the here and now.
•According to him, the world and the sense of the self are
emergent phenomena in the ongoing process of man’s
becoming.
•In one of his written works, The Phenomenology of Perception,
he described the nature of man’s perceptual contact with the
world.
•Phenomenology provides a direct description of the human
experience while perception forms the background of the
experience which serves to guide man’s conscious actions.
•He stated that perception is not purely the result of sensations
nor is it purely interpretation.
•Rather consciousness is a process that includes sensing as well
as interpreting/reasoning.