Final Word
Live better by asking who your choices help or harm. Humanism invites you to widen your care beyond impulse, tribe, and convenience so your life supports more flourishing, not less.
Philosophy
Natural philosophy includes dividing ideas into empirical, rational, and irrational as well as understanding their philosophical context. Philosophical context includes understanding the timing of discoveries and rediscoveries as well as the philosophers behind them and their publications.
Leap of Faith
30 Phil, Chapter 31: In this new look at Kierkegaard’s notion of the “leap of faith” I transform it from a religious leap to a secular leap. While his leap is about belief in God, and more broadly a commitment to a set of values, with an OVM new look, I define a generic “leap
Authentic Recipe: Nietzsche’s Five-step Approach
30 Phil, Chapter 30: In this telling of Nietzsche ideas, we take a new look at it and forge it into a five-step authentic recipe. Step one is the Übermensch. It is often translated as the “Overman” or “Superman.” It is a call to individual empowerment and liberation from societal norms and traditional values. Step two
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Ethical Roadmap
Group ethics guides. Personal morality chooses. Act with good intent. Weigh the result. Adjust.
Fear-Based Ethics
Understanding the reasons why punishment is justified allows you to transition at a fundamental level from fear-based ethics to understanding the intrinsic value of morality.
Modern Innate Knowledge
30 Phil, Chapter 27: In this new look at Hume’s idea of impressions and its relation to innate knowledge, I position instincts as innate knowledge with three types: basic, developmental, and situational.
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Open Viewpoint Method (OVM)
Live well by letting others be themselves without giving up your own clarity. When someone says something you feel the need to correct, stop, switch to asking a question.
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Grand Rational Framework
Good common knowledge is the Grand Rational Framework. It is our common-floor public belief, and it evolves knowledge anchored to the material world, where only evidence-grounded reasoning reshapes what we collectively treat as true.
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Descartes Thought Experiment
30 Phil, Chapter 22: In this new look at Descartes thought experiment, we first take a look at his hyperbolic doubt, and then run his thought experiment a second time using rational doubt transforming his thought experiment from the irrational to the rational.
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Idea Theory Framework
30 Phil, Chapter 18: Part of the Idea of Ideas, the Idea Theory Framework allows you to follow an idea, a thought, from speculative through the scientific process all the way to established theory with the formulas and their associated logically true statements automatically being elevated to scientific law. While it’s unlikely this new look
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The Problem of Universals
30 Phil, Chapter 18: In this new look at universals and the problem of universals, we use the traditional framing of realism, nominalism and Abelard’s middle ground of conceptualism. The role is science is used to update this exploration and introduce the idea that things like color don’t actually exist at all.
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Time Trail Game: Mindful Time Travel
30 Phil, Chapter 17: The Time Trail game is a way to engage in spacetime reflection of your life. Time Trail is a new look at chronoception. It explores spacetime, your inner voice, and prelinguistic thoughts and challenges your intellect, senses, perception, and the very nature of reality. There are two versions: one that focuses on
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The Floating Man Thought Experiment
Our five part new look at his thought experiment explores non-dualism and dualism including self-awareness and consciousness as inherent to the self. Some use this experiment as proof you have a soul, but that’s not necessarily what Avicenna intended. For those that use it that way, they usually have a predetermined conclusion that we do
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Holistic Eudaimonia
To live well, embrace holistic eudaimonia and cultivate flourishing beyond yourself. Measure your actions by how they help flourishing for all and ripple into society, nature, and the future.
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The “Dark” Middle Ages
30 Phil, Chapter 14: At the start of part 2 titled “The Rise of Belief Systems,” we take a new look at the old debate of whether it was a “dark” time or not. The position we take is that the Middle Ages were “intellectually dark” due to the adoption of a single story. Philosophically
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Stoic Virtue Framework: A 4-Step Structure
Build character by practicing virtue and fostering good intent in your decision making. Start by mastering the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.
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Marcus Aurelius: An Explorative Agnostic
Marcus Aurelius reminds us that you can explore the cosmos without claiming to own it — and still live with strength, fairness, and honor inside it.
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Epicurean Happiness Toolkit: A 4-Step Structure
Build happiness by choosing the long-term over the short-term. Epicureanism was one of the first traditions to foster simple pleasures like friendship.
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Plato and Aristotle’s Relationship
30 Phil, Chapter 9: Contrary to the traditional view that casts Plato and Aristotle as proponents of differing philosophies, this fresh perspective suggests they were actually quite close.
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Discovery: The Sumerian Flood Story
Discovered in 1853 by British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, the Epic of Gilgamesh’s flood story had been lost for millennia. Layard uncovered a library of clay tablets in the ruins of Nineveh, in modern-day Iraq. This story predates the earliest written version of the biblical flood story by at least 400 years and likely by
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