Vincent Pennavaria
PHL 391
Final Paper
What defines our personality
To the average individual, the personality is something that most people would
say they are familiar with; especially if you are referring to their own personality.
Although most people may think they know their own personality and what makes it up,
upon further reflection our personalities may be more complex than we initially think.
Within this essay I will attempt to break down the personality into different parts using
the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, John Locke, and Plato, and the psychology of
Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow.
For many people, our personality is our defining attribute. It is the one thing that
separates us from others. There are two ways that our personality can be viewed. The
first way is by others. This tends to be the more subjective viewpoint of the two because
other people see things in different ways depending on their own specific personalities.
The other way that our personality can be view is by our self in self reflection. Although
this way is still subjective, it is less so than when viewed by others because our view of
our self tends to now change as frequently in comparison to our self as viewed by others.
Before I attempt to dismantle the personality into separate parts it is important to
define certain terms that I will be frequently using. The first term that I will be referring
to is base desires. My version of base desires is taken from Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs. This hierarchy is broken down into five tiers. In Maslow’s model the lower tiers
must be met before someone can move toward the ones higher on the scale. The five
tiers in Maslow’s model starting with the bottom are: biological and physiological needs,
safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, self-actualization. Within those five
hierarchies the one that I will primarily be focusing on is the lowest level: biological and
physiological needs. The things that Maslow places in biological and physiological
needs level are air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sleep. Throughout this paper, whenever
I refer to base desires, I am referring to the biological and physiological level in
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.i
The next phrase that I will be explaining is our dispositions. By dispositions I
am referring to what people commonly call personality traits. The reason that I am
phrasing it this way is because people tend to attribute personality traits to themselves in
a finite fashion, I feel that this is not entirely the case. When someone is asked name
some of your personality traits someone might say “funny” or “hard-working”. This
might make it seem that someone is funny or hard-working all of the time, but in reality
they are only these things when certain circumstances are present. Humans react to their
environment in a continuous manner and this is why our personality traits should be
considered more of dispositions. This is because there are situations in which this same
person might not be funny or hard-working, like a funeral for example. Although it
would be too wordy to use in a common colloquial sense, when someone asks you to
describe yourself, you might instead say that I am usually funny in most circumstances,
or I tend to be funny in more circumstances than the average person or something to that
effect. This is just another example to show how the human personality is created.
In regards to its origin and make up, most people take their personality for
granted. People tend to jump to conclusions about why they do certain things and never
stop to think about the actual causes of their behavior. There are two theories which I
will use in an attempt to break down the personality. This first theory is centuries old
and comes in the form of an allegory from the philosopher Plato. This allegory comes
from his writing the Phaedrus. Simply speaking, the model Plato uses is a charioteer and
two horses. They are labeled the good horse and the bad horse. The way I interpreted
this model is the bad horse represents our base desires and the good horse represents
moderation. This model is strikingly similar to one presented by Sigmund Freud.
Freud gives us a model that is very close to the good horse/bad horse model. In Freud’s
version there is the ego (ich) and the id (es). Freud calls the id our unconscious. The id
is all the things that are sort of “built into” us, they are things that we don’t usually have
to be taught. This would be comparable to the “bad horse”. The other section of
ourselves that Freud talks about is the ego. The ego is our form of moderation which
holds certain parts of the id in check depending on the circumstances. The ego is
comparable to the “good horse”. This sort of checks and balances is not only very
important to our survival, but it is important in defining a part of our personality.
Without the good horse or the ego our base desires would run rampant. For example,
our base desire might tell us to continue to eat even though it might make us sick. This
checks and balances is what most people would consider our personality. You can see
how over time the moderation of our base desires can create our many dispositions. The
things that can influence the intricacies of our personalities I will discuss later.
ii
We have discussed what most people would recognize as the final output which is
our personality, now we must backtrack to trace the roots of the formulation of our
personality. For the beginnings of our personality we must first look to genetics and
biology. Without going into too much specific detail about which genes are passed on,
we can agree that some are. This would explain at least why we look similar to our
parents and so forth. Although this may be the case, it is not necessarily the case that
genetics are the sole factor in deciding what type of personality a given person s going to
have. In terms of our personalities one can think of our genetics as sieves and our
perceptions as different sized grains of sand. Each person based on their genetics might
have a sieve with different sized holes and therefore might let in different grains of sand
(perceptions) or might have perceptions affect us in different ways.
This leads me to another part that is instrumental in defining our personality.
This other part is our perceptions. For the most part, our bodies are continuously taking
in perceptions from the moment we are born till the day we die. By themselves these
perceptions have no meaning, and it is us through interpretation that gives meaning to
them. I will break down our interpretation of perceptions into 3 separate
steps/categories. Some may see these a progressive steps, while some may see each of
these as separate categories in themselves. Which ever side you choose you will see that
each of them still requires some level of sameness.
The first step/category, which for the purpose of this essay I will refer to as
instinctual is the one that we are born with and that we usually do not have to put any
meaningful effort into. Although the amount that this category affects our personality is
very minimal, I still feel that it is important to understand how our body interprets certain
perceptions. In regards to this topic, the first philosopher I will bring up is a concept
from David Hume. When you look at something, close your eyes, and then open them
again, you would assume that the objects you saw were the same ones that were there
before you closed your eyes, according to Hume this is not necessarily the case. Hume
has a hard time accepting the concept of sameness not only when it comes to perceptions,
but also when it comes to us ourselves. In regards to Hume and his objections to
sameness, we will first focus on the perceptions themselves. In regards to the opening
and closing eye example, Hume would say that they are not the same exact things.
Hume would say that they have changed, but that the changes are so small or subtle that
we do not notice them. An example would be placing a single grain of sand on a large
beach. You might not notice the difference. Although this may seem trivial it is
something that we do every single day.iii Another very similar concept comes from the
philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This is the concept of adumbration. To
understand the concept of adumbration think about a cube. Imagine taking a picture of
each side of the cube as you walk around it. Now imagine showing those pictures
individually and asking someone if they could be one-hundred percent sure that it was the
same cube in each picture. If the person you were asking was being fully honest they
might say that they could not be fully sure. Merleau-Ponty likens this to the actions that
your eyes perform every day. When you see an object from multiple sides you mind
tends to fill in the blank spots in order to understand that the object is three dimensional.
Your mind also performs a similar process as you see each side by assuming they are the
same object.iv One could say that technically this interpretation of perceptions does
indeed have an effect on our personalities, but not in the way that people commonly view
them. If we did not accept the concept of sameness as we commonly do now our lives
would of course be different, but on a more practical level we must look at how a similar
concept of sameness is used in our everyday life.
Moving a little further down the spectrum of instinctual interpretations we come
to the second step/category. On the analytical side on philosophy there is another use of
everyday sameness. This use of sameness is called inductive reasoning. As a species
humans might not have survived if it wasn’t for inductive reasoning. Inductive
reasoning is that in which we extrapolate from experience to what we have not
experienced.v An example could be, caveman 1 see caveman 2 eat a certain kind of
berry. Shortly after caveman 2 dies clutching his stomach. Caveman 1 could use
inductive reasoning and choose not to eat those same berries. Caveman 1 does not know
what kind of berries they were, but he knows that caveman 2 ate them and then he died.
Although most inductive reasoning requires more examples and with each successive
example the argument becomes stronger. An easier example might be if caveman 1
witnessed caveman 3 jump off a cliff and die. Caveman 1 would probably not need to
see ten more cavemen jump off that cliff before he was able to understand that jumping
off the cliff would cause death. Although inductive reasoning is the cause of many
superstitions and logical fallacies we still use it today in many ways. It is inductive
reasoning that tells us that the sun will rise tomorrow. It is inductive reasoning that tells
us when we step outside the ground will not turn into lava. This is again something that
happens so frequently that we tend not to even notice it. Inductive reasoning does
require us to use that same concept of sameness that Hume argues against though, but if
we did not use that sameness, just making it through the average day would become more
difficult to say the least.
We have come to the last step/category of interpreting our perceptions. This part
is not explicitly born into us, although it can be affected by certain biological differences.
I will refer to this step/category as social interaction. Just like all the aforementioned
categories I will break this one down into two sections as well. The first section of
social interaction I would say has some instinctual roots built into it. The reason I say
this is because animals and even plants display forms of this behavior although the
behaviors are not they are not explicitly the same. Referring back to base desires, we
can see many similarities to plants and animals as well. We see that certain trees grow
toward sunlight and may even grow around plants or other obstructions. This is their
way of interacting with their surroundings by means of their perceptions in order to meet
their base desires. Although plants do not have eyes in the way we do, they have
comparable functions that allow them to grow toward sunlight. Regardless of the
differences, animals, plants, and humans all exist through interactions with their
environment. The mere concepts of adaptation and evolution are both founded on the
necessity of an interaction with an environment. Although traits accumulated through
the processes of adaptation and evolution are not something that happens in an instant we
can say without a doubt that a creature with an evolutionary/adaptive feature and the
same creature without would have a different personality even if that difference is
trivially small.
Now that we have talked about adaptation and evolution we can come to the
evolutionary trait which separates humans the most from any other species, and that trait
is reason. While some animals have claws to help them kill, or wings to help them fly,
humans have reason to help them survive. What I see reason as, is the body’s way of
determining the best option for fulfilling base desires. Which base desire it is may be
different each time. While animals may be considered to have a rudimentary sense of
reason, it is not on the same level as humans. Some might argue that this is not always
the case and might argue that certain acts of reason might be directed toward higher tiers
in Maslow’s scale such esteem needs. When someone thinks of meeting an esteem need
an example might be; someone who is depressed attempting to get out of depression.
Without going into too much psychological or biological detail, depression usually occurs
when a certain desire is not met such as losing one’s job. The sadness may be directed at
losing one’s job, but there are underlying issues that are compounded into the loss of a
job. Types of issues could be loss of money which might jeopardize food, drink, shelter,
safety, warmth, and sex; losing one’s job could cause shame which is a form of
ostracizing which deals with struggles of power, power and dominance are sometimes
measures of safety (we can see this in gorillas who beat their chest and threaten
individuals in their territory, scaring them away protects the gorilla and other gorillas in
that group), so having an absence or lack of power in conjunction with being ostracized
can jeopardize implied safety. These types of observations can go on and on, but the
point is that different people react different to different scenarios, and this has to do with
our interpretation of perceptions. There is a famous experiment in classic conditioning
performed by John Watson and Rosalie Rayner involving a patient named “Albert” .
This patient was introduced to certain objects; a rat, a dog, a rabbit, and other things, at
this point the showed no fear. After a point in time Albert was only shown the rat and it
ran around him and he would reach for it and still showed no fear. Eventually whenever
he touched the rat Watson would produce a loud noise which would startle Albert.
Eventually Albert would show fear when only the rat was introduced with no sound.
After that he even showed fear to many things with fur.vi This is an excellent example of
how the mind begins to associate certain things with certain responses. One could even
say that this is an act of inductive reasoning and of interpreting sameness. This is the
exact same process that each of us is going through from the moment we are born until
the day we die. Although there is debate that some fears are inherited through genetics
one still cannot deny that some many fears are developed through a reasoning process.
Some people may fear spiders, not because they have had a particular experience where a
spider caused them harm, but because what the think the spider is going to do to them
(some people aren’t even sure why they are afraid of the spider). Not being exclusive to
just fears, this is a big factor in how our personality is created. Many of our experiences
in life are strong factors in defining our personality. It is not the experiences alone
though that are the cause, it is how we interpret them. Experience-wise, the list of things
that can determine our personality is endless. This could bring to mind “the butterfly
effect” which more or less hypothesizes that a butterfly flapping its wings could trigger a
series of events that causes it to rain across the world. An easier example could be “john
wakes up and gets up on the right side of his bed. He steps on a lego, falls and hurts his
leg. After hurting his leg, john had a slight limp and walked slower than usual.
Walking slower than usual caused John to miss the train. Missing the train caused John
to be late from work. Being late to work caused John to get fired. Perhaps from this
day forward John hates legos, or dirty floors, or now he only gets up on the left side of
the bed. Although this may seem ridiculous, and over exaggerated it is an example
about how small acts can determine our lives. It would be a logical fallacy to say that
the lego caused John to lose his job, but we can still see that it played a role in the
sequence. Even though this might be the case certain people may jump to conclusions
about certain events without taking the time to fully investigate them. If we think back
to poor old caveman 2 who ate the berries and died shortly after. Perhaps caveman 2
had some fatal stomach ailment and it was just a coincidence that he ate the berries before
he died. Caveman 1 might be missing out on some tasty berries and he might not even
know it. Again this is an exaggerated example, but one can see the process that our
minds uses when making certain decisions and that the reinforcement of those decisions
makes the conviction toward them even stronger.
Society and social interaction play such a large role in shaping our personalities.
If you reflect upon any belief that you may have you will find that not only does your
cause for having that belief have social roots, but the belief itself comes from social roots.
Referencing an idea of Jean-Paul Sartre from his book Being in Nothingness, there is no
true meaning in life, we are the ones that prescribe meaning to it.
Well someone might
say for example, “killing is inherently wrong”. A counter to this statement could be that
no one wants to be murdered. If someone could hypothetically be raised from birth
without any social interaction and was fed only after they killed, they would most likely
grow up not only thinking that killing was ok, but actually that it was good. Things like
empathy and sympathy comes from people imagining themselves in certain scenarios.
There is no way for someone else to feel your actual pain or sadness. In a way this is
another form of inductive reasoning. You see someone getting hurt and think “If that
were to happen to me I would probably be in pain”. Without going too much into detail
on morality we can sum most of it up by saying moral “don’ts” are things that most
people would not want to be done to them.vii
Having our mind work in this sense is not always a disadvantage or the work of a
fallacy. Our mind working in this sense has brought us to where we are today. As we
see in some animals today there is competition. The competition could be over potential
mates, food, shelter, etc. It is this very competition that strives us to out-do others.
Although humans may have stopped evolving in a noticeable physical sense, we are
continuing to evolve in terms of society and technology. Immanuel Kant has a term
called unsocial sociability to describe this type of behavior. A quick definition of this
term is man wants to live with others, but doesn’t want to. Ways of interpreting this are
that man enjoys the safety in groups but does not want to have any rules or laws enforced
on himself. Again we can see this type of behavior as a process of reasoning toward
meeting base desires.viii
After all of this we have come full circle back to the theories given by Plato (good
horse/bad horse) and Freud (id/ego). Our instincts drive us toward fulfilling our base
desires but our reason is there to moderate these desires to whatever standard our life has
created through experience. We have seen that our personalities are the output of the
combination of base desires and reason. Our personality as view by others may be
different than what we see it as. We have seen that our experiences mold our
personalities. We talked about how society plays a role in shaping our values and
influencing our decisions. We have seen that all of this depends on some concept of
sameness. We have seen that the logic behind sameness can be flawed, but that our
minds still instinctually use it. To make a long story short, our personalities are so
complex and can be influenced by an infinite number of possibilities, the result of this is
a wonderfully diverse planet. So the next time you think of criticizing someone for a
lifestyle choice or a way of thinking, try and imagine if you were put in the exact same
scenario with the exact same genes, maybe you would turn out the same.
i
http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
ii
Sigmund Freud and Adam Phillips. The Penguin Freud reader. London: Penguin, 2006.
iii
A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume, section VI of Personal Identity
iv
Ponty, Maurice and Thomas Baldwin. Maurice Merleau-Ponty basic writings. London: Routledge,
2004
v
Govier, Trudy. A practical study of argument. 6th ed. Australia: Thomson/Wadswroth, 2005
vi
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm
vii
Sartre, Jean-Paul and Robert Denoon Cummings. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. New York
Random House 1965
viii
Kant, Immanuel, and Hans Siegbert Reiss. Kant’s political writings. Cambridge University Press.
1970