JOHN LOCKE

John Locke FRS 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of
the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism".Considered one of the
first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract
theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. Locke's father, also called
John, was an attorney who served as clerk to the Justices of the Peace in Chew Magna; he had served as a captain of
cavalry for the Parliamentarian forces during the early part of the English Civil War. His mother was Agnes Keene. Both
parents were Puritans. Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in a small thatched cottage by the church in Wrington,
Somerset, about 12 miles from Bristol. He was baptised the same day. Soon after Locke's birth, the family moved to the
market town of Pensford, about seven miles south of Bristol, where Locke grew up in a rural Tudor house in Belluton.

CONTRIBUTION

Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in
the work of later philosophers such as David Hume, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self
through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to
Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that
knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.[10] This is now known as
empiricism. An example of Locke's belief in empiricism can be seen in his quote, "whatever I write, as soon as I discover
it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." This shows the ideology of science in his
observations in that something must be capable of being tested repeatedly and that nothing is exempt from being
disproven. Challenging the work of others, Locke is said to have established the method of introspection, or observing
the emotions and behaviours of one’s self

ST.AUGUSTINE

Saint Augustine of Hippo (/ɔːˈɡʌstɪn/; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430)[1] was a Roman African, early Christian
theologian and philosopher from Numidia whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and
Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in north Africa and is viewed as one of the most important
Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City
of God, On Christian Doctrine and Confessions.

Augustine also posed the problem of other minds throughout different works, most famously perhaps in On the Trinity
(VIII.6.9), and developed what has come to be a standard solution: the argument from analogy to other minds.[133] In
contrast to Plato and other earlier philosophers, Augustine recognized the centrality of testimony to human knowledge
and argued that what others tell us can provide knowledge even if we don't have independent reasons to believe their
testimonial reports.Augustine is a fourth century philosopher whose groundbreaking philosophy infused Christian
doctrine with Neoplatonism. He is famous for being an inimitable Catholic theologian and for his agnostic contributions
to Western philosophy. He argues that skeptics have no basis for claiming to know that there is no knowledge. In a proof
for existence similar to one later made famous by René Descartes, Augustine says, “[Even] If I am mistaken, I am.” He is
the first Western philosopher to promote what has come to be called "the argument by analogy" against solipsism: there
are bodies external to mine that behave as I behave and that appear to be nourished as mine is nourished; so, by
analogy, I am justified in believing that these bodies have a similar mental life to mine. Augustine believes reason to be a
uniquely human cognitive capacity that comprehends deductive truths and logical necessity. Additionally, Augustine
adopts a subjective view of time and says that time is nothing in reality but exists only in the human mind’s apprehension
of reality. He believes that time is not infinite because God “created” it.

Augustine tries to reconcile his beliefs about freewill, especially the belief that humans are morally responsible for their
actions, with his belief that one’s life is predestined. Though initially optimistic about the ability of humans to behave
morally, at the end he is pessimistic, and thinks that original sin makes human moral behavior nearly impossible: if it
were not for the rare appearance of an accidental and undeserved Grace of God, humans could not be moral.
Augustine’s theological discussion of freewill is relevant to a non-religious discussion regardless of the religious-specific
language he uses; one can switch Augustine’s “omnipotent being” and “original sin” explanation of predestination for the
present day “biology” explanation of predestination; the latter tendency is apparent in modern slogans such as “biology
is destiny.”

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

Saint Thomas Aquinas OP (/əˈkwaɪnəs/; Italian: Tommaso d'Aquino, lit. 'Thomas of Aquino'; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an
Italian[8][9] Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. He was an immensely influential philosopher,
theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, within which he is also known as the Doctor Angelicus and the
Doctor Communis.[10] The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio.

Who am I?” If Google’s autocomplete is any indication, it’s not one of the questions we commonly ask online (unlike
other existential questions like “What is the meaning of life?” or “What is a human?”). But philosophers have long held
that “Who am I?” is in some way the central question of human life. “Know yourself” was the inscription that the ancient
Greeks inscribed over the threshold to the Delphic temple of Apollo, the god of wisdom. In fact, self-knowledge is the
gateway to wisdom, as Socrates quipped: “The wise person is the one who knows what he doesn’t know.”The reality is,
we all lack self-knowledge to some degree, and the pursuit of self-knowledge is a lifelong quest—often a painful one. For
instance, a common phenomenon studied in psychology is the “loss of a sense of self” that occurs when a familiar way of
thinking about oneself (for example, as “a healthy person,” “someone who earns a good wage,” “a parent”) is suddenly
stripped away by a major life change or tragedy. Forced to face oneself for the first time without these protective labels,
one can feel as though the ground has been suddenly cut out from under one’s feet: Who am I, really?

But the reality of self-ignorance is something of a philosophical puzzle. Why do we need to work at gaining knowledge
about ourselves? In other cases, ignorance results from a lack of experience. No surprise that I confuse kangaroos with
wallabies: I’ve never seen either in real life. Of course I don’t know what number you’re thinking about: I can’t see inside
your mind. But what excuse do I have for being ignorant of anything having to do with myself? I already am myself! I,
and I alone, can experience my own mind from the inside. This insider knowledge makes me—as communications
specialists are constantly reminding us—the unchallenged authority on “what I feel” or “what I think.” So why is it a
lifelong project for me to gain insight into my own thoughts, habits, impulses, reasons for acting, or the nature of the
mind itself?

This is called the “problem of self-opacity,” and we’re not the only ones to puzzle over it: It was also of great interest to
the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), whose theory of self-knowledge is documented in my new book
Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge. It’s a common scholarly myth that early modern philosophers (starting with
Descartes) invented the idea of the human being as a “self” or “subject.” My book tries to dispel that myth, showing that
like philosophers and neuroscientists today, medieval thinkers were just as curious about why the mind is so intimately
familiar, and yet so inaccessible, to itself. (In fact, long before Freud, medieval Latin and Islamic thinkers were
speculating about a subconscious, inaccessible realm in the mind.) The more we study the medieval period, the clearer
it becomes that inquiry into the self does not start with Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” Rather, Descartes was taking
sides in a debate about self-knowledge that had already begun in the thirteenth century and earlier.
For Aquinas, we don’t encounter ourselves as isolated minds or selves, but rather always as agents interacting with our
environment.Aquinas begins his theory of self-knowledge from the claim that all our self-knowledge is dependent on our
experience of the world around us. He rejects a view that was popular at the time, i.e., that the mind is “always on,”
never sleeping, subconsciously self-aware in the background. Instead, Aquinas argues, our awareness of ourselves is
triggered and shaped by our experiences of objects in our environment. He pictures the mind as as a sort of
undetermined mental “putty” that takes shape when it is activated in knowing something. By itself, the mind is dark and
formless; but in the moment of acting, it is “lit up” to itself from the inside and sees itself engaged in that act. In other
words, when I long for a cup of mid-afternoon coffee, I’m not just aware of the coffee, but of myself as the one wanting
it. So for Aquinas, we don’t encounter ourselves as isolated minds or selves, but rather always as agents interacting with
our environment. That’s why the labels we apply to ourselves—“a gardener,” “a patient person,” or “a coffee-lover”—are
always taken from what we do or feel or think toward other things.

But if we “see” ourselves from the inside at the moment of acting, what about the “problem of self-opacity” mentioned
above? Instead of lacking self-knowledge, shouldn’t we be able to “see” everything about ourselves clearly? Aquinas’s
answer is that just because we experience something doesn’t mean we instantly understand everything about it—or to
use his terminology: experiencing that something exists doesn’t tell us what it is. (By comparison: If someday I encounter
a wallaby, that won’t make me an expert about wallabies.) Learning about a thing’s nature requires a long process of
gathering evidence and drawing conclusions, and even then we may never fully understand it. The same applies to the
mind. I am absolutely certain, with an insider’s perspective that no one else can have, of the reality of my experience of
wanting another cup of coffee. But the significance of those experiences—what they are, what they tell me about myself
and the nature of the mind—requires further experience and reasoning. Am I hooked on caffeine? What is a “desire”
and why do we have desires? These questions can only be answered by reasoning about the evidence taken from many
experiences.

Aquinas, then, would surely approve that we’re not drawn to search online for answers to the question, “Who am I?”
That question can only be answered “from the inside” by me, the one asking the question. At the same time, answering
this question isn’t a matter of withdrawing from the world and turning in on ourselves. It’s a matter of becoming more
aware of ourselves at the moment of engaging with reality, and drawing conclusions about what our activities towards
other things “say” about us. There’s Aquinas’s “prescription” for a deeper sense of self.

SIGMUND FREUD

Sigmund Freud (/frɔɪd/ FROYD;[3] German: [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt]; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23
September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating
psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in
the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of
Vienna.[5][6] Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an
affiliated professor in 1902.[7] Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938
Freud left Austria to escape the Nazis. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that human behavior is the result of the interactions among
three component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego. This theory, known as Freud’s structural theory of
personality, places great emphasis on the role of unconscious psychological conflicts in shaping behavior and personality.
Dynamic interactions among these fundamental parts of the mind are thought to progress through five distinct
psychosexual stages of development. Over the last century, however, Freud’s ideas have since been met with criticism, in
part because of his singular focus on sexuality as the main driver of human personality development.
Freud’s Structure of the Human Mind

According to Freud, our personality develops from the interactions among what he proposed as the three fundamental
structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego. Conflicts among these three structures, and our efforts to find
balance among what each of them “desires,” determines how we behave and approach the world. What balance we
strike in any given situation determines how we will resolve the conflict between two overarching behavioral tendencies:
our biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives vs. our socialized internal control over those drives.

Conflict within the mind: According to Freud, the job of the ego is to balance the aggressive/pleasure-seeking drives of
the id with the moral control of the superego.

The Id

The id, the most primitive of the three structures, is concerned with instant gratification of basic physical needs and
urges. It operates entirely unconsciously (outside of conscious thought). For example, if your id walked past a stranger
eating ice cream, it would most likely take the ice cream for itself. It doesn’t know, or care, that it is rude to take
something belonging to someone else; it would care only that you wanted the ice cream.

The Superego

The superego is concerned with social rules and morals—similar to what many people call their ” conscience ” or their
“moral compass.” It develops as a child learns what their culture considers right and wrong. If your superego walked past
the same stranger, it would not take their ice cream because it would know that that would be rude. However, if both
your id and your superego were involved, and your id was strong enough to override your superego’s concern, you would
still take the ice cream, but afterward you would most likely feel guilt and shame over your actions.

The Ego

In contrast to the instinctual id and the moral superego, the ego is the rational, pragmatic part of our personality. It is less
primitive than the id and is partly conscious and partly unconscious. It’s what Freud considered to be the “self,” and its
job is to balance the demands of the id and superego in the practical context of reality. So, if you walked past the
stranger with ice cream one more time, your ego would mediate the conflict between your id (“I want that ice cream
right now”) and superego (“It’s wrong to take someone else’s ice cream”) and decide to go buy your own ice cream.
While this may mean you have to wait 10 more minutes, which would frustrate your id, your ego decides to make that
sacrifice as part of the compromise– satisfying your desire for ice cream while also avoiding an unpleasant social
situation and potential feelings of shame.

Freud believed that the id, ego, and superego are in constant conflict and that adult personality and behavior are rooted
in the results of these internal struggles throughout childhood. He believed that a person who has a strong ego has a
healthy personality and that imbalances in this system can lead to neurosis (what we now think of as anxiety and
depression) and unhealthy behaviors.