Aristotle, Causality, and The Definition of Health
After considering Plato’s Theory of Forms as one type of essentialist definition, (as I discussed in my recent posts Definitions and Essentialism: Plato and Is There a Platonic Form of Health?) let’s see what Aristotle has to offer. Let’s consider his concept of a...
The First Time I Changed My Ikigai
I’ve changed my ikigai once before, when I was 28 years old. I was working as an engineer and program manager in the defense industry. It was a high-pressure job, with real money at stake, filled with tense meetings with corporate vice-presidents and “customers”. I...
A Podcast Review About Language in the Digital Age
I enjoyed listening to the Aspen Initiative UK Podcast on The Future of Language, especially the thoughts by Tony Thorne @tonythorne007, which reminded me of my recent post: Emojis: Intellectual Crutch or An Expansive New Language? He bought up the point that language...
Is There a Platonic Form of Health?
As pointed out by A. C. Grayling in The History of Philosophy,1 Plato believed his Forms were real things: In Plato’s philosophy, the Forms in the Realm of Being are real things: they are not mental objects only. They are Beauty, Truth, Goodness; but they are also...
Definitions and Essentialism: Plato
The ordinary language philosopher Raiziel Abelson divides schools of thought about what a definition is into three groups1: essentialism, prescriptivism, and linguistic theories. Roughly an essentialist will be looking for the essence of a word, a prescriptivist will...
My Project’s Why: What Makes a Good Definition?
As I recently mentioned in my blog post Definitions: Healthcare’s Rabbit Hole, one of my deep projects is to understand the ethics of AI in healthcare. However, to do this well I feel I need to first understand what health means, or at least have a good definition of...
Creating Joy Bubbles
During CoVid, I'm doing my best to create “joy bubbles.” (Here I am not talking about Deep Joy. That's the purpose of life stuff. I don't think you create that type of joy—a joy which is more of a way of living every day, nearly a discipline.) I am talking about the...
My Best Post in March
At the end of each month, I enjoy reviewing my last month’s blog posts to see if there was at least one rough diamond, one insightful idea. (This falls under the principle that even a broken clock is right twice a day, or if you shoot enough arrows you are bound to...
In Twitter Veritas?
We are all familiar with the saying in vino veritas: In wine, there is truth. Ignorant people become more ignorant after a glass of wine.Means-spirited people become more mean-spirited after a glass of wine.Kind people become kinder after a glass of wine. Does...
Kintsugi, Kintsukuroi, and Our Soul
Most people are familiar with the Japanese term kintsugi ( "golden joinery"), also known as kintsukuroi ( "golden repair"). At the top level, it’s considered a form of repair of a broken object which results in the object subsequently...