 I want to talk to you about philosophical health. My name is Louis de Miranda and I'm a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the University of Turku. And I work in this field called philosophical health, which cares about the unity in your life between action, the decisions you take, and your thoughts, your values, your deepest orientation, and if possible, what your higher purpose is. What I do is that I help people find their philosophical sense, their sense of purpose, and I have developed a method that I call SmilePH. As you notice, I don't smile very often in videos or pictures, but Smile actually stands for an acronym. It's the acronym of sense-making interviews looking at elements of philosophical health. And the Smile method helps people, without being intimidated by the idea of philosophy, slowly unfold and develop and co-create their philosophical sense and their sense of purpose. The first step of the Smile method is to talk about the bodily sense. Because we are all embodied and anyone can feel and express something about the experience of having a body. So welcome, and today I'd like to talk with you about something that is very familiar to us, which is our body. And in particular, your bodily sense. How do you feel about your body today, but also how it has evolved compared to the past? What does it suggest to you? Maybe the first thing that comes to my mind when I'm thinking about my bodily sense is dancing. It's very important to me, and it has been for a long time. And it is nowadays also, like a counterbalance for the work, when because when you dance, you can be very aware of your body, like this hand where it goes and when and all those moves, but then you can also improvise and let the body take the lead. So there are like many, many aspects, and it's very different from all that thinking and reading and writing that I do for work. Right. It's very interesting how you contrast the experience of dancing and the experience of working. And you did mention that you have quite intellectual work. How do you relate to this separation? Does it feel like it's more a balance, a harmony, two moments of your life? Or do you sometimes think that it should be more integrated? That's a very interesting question, because first thing, it's like giving my thinking mind a break when I can dance, but it would be nice if they wouldn't be so two different things, maybe one day, maybe I can, it would be cool if I could like combine them in some way, but I don't think that now that's the case. We then move to the second step, and the second step, second element of philosophical health is the sense of self. How do we feel about our self? How does that sense of self have evolved over time? And perhaps do we feel that our self is integrated, that there is a unity in all aspects of our life? We're going to talk now about your sense of self, right? And I'd like to know how do you feel about yourself today, compared to the past? What is the first emotion feeling or even notion idea that comes to you when you imagine yourself? This is a bit tricky one. I feel that it's, maybe it's in change in some way, because I just graduated. I got my master's thesis like last spring, so I'm not a student anymore, but I'm trying to figure out what I want to be next. But then there are things that haven't changed, like the hobby, the dancing, and people that are close to me, and places that I love, they are the same, and they are part of me too. So you define yourself as a student, do you feel like these sort of labels that are institutional, do they have a strong influence on how you see yourself? Maybe in some way, yeah, but it's also about belonging to something like a community, one of students, and that kind of thing. So it's not just a label that's given from up to down, but it's something that we can all be part of, like, who have the same, are in the same situation. So it's a sharing of experience, so it's sort of an identity in relationship with other. Sometimes in philosophy we say intersubjective. The third element of philosophical health is the sense of belonging. We might feel that we don't belong. We might feel that we actually are very well surrounded. We can belong to family, friends, but we can also belong to ideas and notions and values or virtues that make us feel that we are part of a group of interests, for example. It's very interesting that you spoke about belonging because we're going to come now to your sense of belonging, and people might feel that they belong or not. What's your perception of belonging? I think that there are many, in many ways, that I can belong to something like I'm part of my family and friends. Also in my hobby there are people who are doing the same thing, and they love it. So it's very important to be part of those groups. So sense of belonging, it's very important to me, too. Have there been moments in your life where you felt that there was a lack in that sense of belonging? Maybe, yeah, in previous years, maybe in teenage years when things were changing and maybe some friends moved to another place or something, the class wasn't the same anymore as it was. But I feel that, like my family, they have always been there for me, so the people that have been most close to me, I've always felt that belonging with them. Right, so you wouldn't say that you feel estranged, like you feel that this world is your world. Yeah, you're good to say that, yeah. The fourth element of philosophical health is the sense of the possible. This is how I define health. We all have a sense of the possible that can be either depleted when we wake up in the morning and we feel that doors are closed or that we do not feel supported, or we might have a sense of the possible that is very high and perhaps overwhelming with choices that we do not know how to integrate or perhaps prune, because philosophical health is also about pruning our life into a sense of meaningful integrity. This is an interesting transition with the next element of philosophical health, which is the sense of the possible. So we all wake up in the morning with a different kind of energy. Sometimes we might feel that doors are open and there's much that we can achieve, or sometimes we might have a depleted sense of the possible. So I'm curious to know how do you relate to that sense today and how it has evolved over time for you? Maybe today I have a quite strong sense of the possible, at least I feel so. Now that I've graduated, I can try to figure out what to do next and maybe I feel that there are different kinds of paths that I can take now and in the future and maybe I feel that new opportunities are also opening up or I just come to see them now. So maybe there is more sense of the possible than there have been in previous years, I feel so. So I hear in your answer a notion of choice, like you spoke about several paths. Some people might be actually a little bit scared or perplexed when they see too many choices. Do you associate the possible with these paths that seem to be multiple? Yeah, yeah. Some are maybe more suitable for me or easier to achieve than others. But I see that they are there and maybe sometime when I'm tired they can see them frightening, but in general I find that it is a good thing. Which leads us to the fifth element of philosophical health, which is a sense of purpose. We might say that most living beings have some kind of bodily sense, some sense of self, cats have a sense of self for example, some sense of belonging of course, which we share with not only animals but plants and the sense of the possible because if you prevent a plant from growing it will find its way around the obstacles, which is a kind of sense of the possible. But the sense of purpose we might say is something that is not only specifically human but actually developed in few of us because we do not take time to interrogate what could our higher purpose be and how a deep orientation could help us have a life that is more unified, a life that reflects a sense of integrity. In the next element of philosophical health, which is the sense of purpose, there is this idea that we might feel that we have a direction in life or not, and I'm curious to know about your sense of purpose today. Today, that's very interesting because purpose makes me think about something great like one have to achieve something with their work or make a difference or something like that and that would be crazy one day I could do that maybe that something that I do could change the ways that people think or some attitudes or practices in our society. But maybe today the sense of purpose in like this everyday context, maybe it's about that I can be myself and do my work and meet the people that I love. So it's interesting because your sense of purpose seems to go back to the previous senses that we talked about right, the self and the belonging. You speak about being myself. This is a complex idea right, but maybe not for you, so do you define yourself as with clarity and as a person that knows who she is? In some ways yes, and I also think that we have multiple roles like the one that I am when I'm in a workplace and with my colleagues and the one that I am when I'm with my family and really the people that are close to me but I think that I at least for now I know who I am but that can also change and maybe in some ways it's changing all the time. I'm intrigued by the fact that you say that there are several roles and at the same time that you know who you are perhaps I would expect that we are the same person ideally in different protocols different situations context of course there might be intimate things that we might not say in a specific context but as an idea of a person why would it be necessary according to you to play roles which is the word that you used? Maybe maybe it's not about playing roles it sounds a bit maybe it sounds too intentional that way but I think that I am what I think that I am but there are also other people who see me and there are some aspects of me that are maybe more familiar to some people and some aspects that are more familiar to others and it's not about that I'm playing a role intentionally but that some aspects of me they are easier to show to other people and some are easier to show to others and show like yeah maybe maybe one could say that. Do you feel like you would like to show more sometimes about yourself? Maybe not and sometimes I'm thinking that oh did I show too much that's also interesting. The last element of philosophical health is the philosophical sense and this is how we view the world our worldview what beginning of explanation we give for the fact that life exists that society is in such or such way and it takes many years perhaps to develop an explicit sense of the reason why we think things are as they are and going from the implicit thoughts that we might have that might be contradictory for example we might see ourselves as someone that is very social and caring and yet we might actually have as an implicit philosophy that the world is about competition and to kill or be killed so philosophical health is about the coherence between all these six elements and such that there are less contradictions in our lives between our thoughts and our actions this is a field of study today because we do know for example that people with a high sense of purpose have longer lives they have less diseases they have a better immune system and they have a sense of well-being in their lives that can be contagious this is also important on a societal level because I think we need to move from a paradigm of the possible which has been extremely strong in the last three centuries where we make the impossible possible locally with extremely fascinating inventions or or or creations but that do not take into consideration the whole equilibrium of the system earth in which we live today we need to care for this whole of being earthlings together humans non-humans and this is what culminates in the idea of the impossible we're reaching the last part of our conversation which is about the philosophical sense so what is meant by philosophical sense is how you view the world what's your beginning of an explanation for how things are and perhaps to help you or unless you have already an idea of an answer but I wonder if there is an echo there with what you spoke about in regards to your bodily sense which is dense so is it the fact that we live in the universe where everything is dancing even even if we don't see it or am I extrapolating or maybe it's some other aspect of life that you would like to point in this case maybe dance it's it's interesting starting point because like when I'm dancing one can also think that I'm part of continuity people have danced before me although they have been different kinds of dances than nowadays and hopefully people will dance when I'm gone and after after my time and I find it that idea of continuity I find it quite comforting like there are trees that are older than me and rocks that will be here after I'm gone so world it's like a big continuity right this idea of duration between the metamorphosis of life and different forms of life the great chain of life sometimes people say and I do feel as a conclusion for today's session that there seems to be also a continuity between the different elements of philosophical health in your life a continuity between your body and and who you are a continuity between who you are and the people that you relate to and the idea perhaps that developing a sense of purpose in the future might perhaps not as this grandiose view that might not necessarily be appealing to you but at least as as something that might allow you to make choices rather than arrive at a certain age where people might be puzzled by too many choices or when the bifurcations between as a result of the choice choices right might generate too much complex complexity in their life so as a conclusion I would encourage you to reflect a bit on what kind of continuity of purpose might give more coherence to the exciting choices that you seem to have ahead of you thank you thank you very much philosophical health helps us become a person that is compostable that means a person in which all the qualities all the elements the tendencies the physical the spiritual the psychological the professional all this works in harmony but also taking into perspective our collective being the fact that we do not exist in isolation how do we and this is philosophies preoccupation since Plato how do we create paradise on earth not after we die but here in a world that is the best of all compostable worlds