 Hello, this is Luis de Miranda and I will today present a short introduction to this methodology of philosophical health interviewing that I have developed, I should say I'm still developing because this is work in progress. I call it the smile pH method sense making interviews looking at the six elements of philosophical health. And I will explain it here through the case of persons living with a spinal cord injury. So I have conducted a pilot study in which I've interviewed people who have been living with such injury, which means they are tetraplegic in this case and they are incapacitated in their movement in many aspects but not in their thinking. So, as I said this is a work in progress. It was done in the case of spinal cord injury I was contacted by Professor Richard Levy at Link shopping University hospital and I have a dialogue with them where I test my ideas. And I'm also a nasty Steve I know glue. And I start with this quote of fine man who actually is about the generosity of presenting work in progress. And, and not only the genealogy that leads to what our results are but also the questions, rather than fetishizing the work as finished because it's a process work in process should be perhaps a better expression. In terms of genealogy, some of you are aware that I am advocating the idea of philosophical health as something distinct from physical health and psychological health published about this. I have practiced myself philosophical counseling in individual or group contexts. Since 2018. I presented at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The idea of philosophical health. I've been now through this specific pilot study with people living with spinal cord injury developed this six step methodology that I will talk about today, which is about philosophical health and sense making. So what is philosophical health. There is this idea very simple idea that there should be a form of coherence between our ways of thinking and speaking and our ways of acting. In some cases we might even infer as the Chinese philosopher Wang in the 15th century that an ideal state would be that our actions and our knowledge and our reflection are one. So there is this definition I proposed earlier, philosophical health is a state of fruitful coherence between a person's ways of thinking and speaking and their ways of acting such that the possibilities for a good life and healing growth are increased and the needs for self inter subjective and bio diverse flourishing satisfied. And then there are some principles of philosophical health that I will not enter into today such as mental heroism deep orientation critical creativity deep listening. Because dialogue is an important dimension of philosophical health. And ultimate possibility which I call the creole the real as creative process unfolding. So, interestingly, there is idea of explication that in Latin as the same etymology then unfolding so it's both a cognitive dialogic process, but also I believe a process at work. And that's in what constitutes the, we could say the extasiation of the real this constant production of reality from the ground of ultimate possibility that I call the crew. So, that's it for the metaphysics. You can find more details elsewhere. Lee on the protocol. I interviewed for this pilot study for men and for women. Who have been living with spinal cord injury for more than 20 years. And I conducted two sets of interviews. The first very open. The sense of deep listening but still focused on the philosophical meaning the worldview, what in the foundational stances of the interview is had help them overcome this. What is sometimes called the trauma which is probably a good term. And in the second round of interviews, I wanted to be more and I came up with this idea of sense making interviews based on six elements. And that's because I've been thinking for a while about the sense of belonging in my book in semblance about his critical. A lot about the sense of the possible. And for me, this original ground that I call the Creel is about possible is Asian and in this, many other authors have before me stated analogous ideas. And I'm a great digger and Bergson are whitehead. And in phenomenology and phenomenological psychology, this idea of the possible is extremely important for Jerome Bruno also in the US. states are, and I take them in that order, which of course can be discussed, but the bodily sense, how do you sense your body? You have a little video about this, so I won't enter into these details. The sense of self, the sense of belonging, the sense of possible, the sense of purpose and the philosophical sense. And the interview remains open, so it's really about the interpretation that the person might give to this senses. And it may tap into topics such as the bodily activity, aesthetics, the looks, but also the sensations, autonomy, care, control, enjoyment, feeling, frustration, pain, hardship, normality, what is a normal body, what is a normal sensation, peace, perception, reality, shame, sorrow, skill, trust, unity that the list is, could go on. One example of quotation about enjoyment is about the fact that, well, even when we are living on a wheelchair, we may find ourselves capable of doing things that are very agile, and the surprise of the others and in their expectations can be a source of enjoyment. After this, the bodily sense comes the sense of self. And by the way here, I must say that I have also applied this sense-making interviewing methodology to people who do not have a spinal cord injury. And, for example, with employees of managers of big corporation or simply individuals, young people who are trying to make sense of their lives. So in the sense of self, we might bring up topics such as autonomy, blame, the brains, the brain, the self, change, evolution, competition, curiosity, decisiveness, depression, emulation, again, enjoyment, but from the perspective of the self, goals, the good life, what is the good life for me, my way, what is my way, honesty, hope, the influences that we get, intention, learning, self-absorption, self-awareness, self-belief, self-confidence, self-creation. These are the kind of topics that can come up when we talk about the sense of self. And curiosity, for example, is a trait that in my interviewing was associated with the capacity to positify and also with the ability not to be too self-absorbed. The sense of belonging, which is the third step, the third topic that I address in this interviewing sessions, which, by the way, you can have a session of, say, 45 minutes, one hour, that goes through these six elements. But then, and this is something that I have tried, I believe, successfully outside of this pilot study, is that then you can spend one session in each of these senses, so one session of 45 minutes with the bodily sense, a second with the sense of self, etc. So sense of belonging, we can touch upon topics like alienation, assistance, care, collaboration, community, divinity, I belong perhaps to a higher power, to a sense of a higher power, what was sometimes called gefüll in German theology in the 19th century. Emulation, how the others pushed me to overcome myself. Expectation, by being models, for example, expectations, family, friends, humanity. Do I belong to humanity? It's not so obvious. Do I feel like I belong to humanity? Of course, it's making sense is about how people perceive things, not necessarily about how things are objectively. If it can be the case that they are completely independently objective, which can be debated, identification, inspiration, lifestyle, we might belong, we might feel that we belong to certain groups, nature belonging to nature, peers, self belonging also, the sense that we are in harmony with ourselves, with ourselves, place belonging to a place, solidarity, where my belonging is supposed to be, is where I choose to live and how I choose to live it. All right, so then there's this dialectic, of course, between the sense of self and the sense of belonging. Which one comes first? This can be discussed for some philosophers, sociologists, the belonging comes first, and then the self emerges from the group or others. It's the opposite. It's, of course, a, I would say, a creolectic process. But for the purpose of my methodology, I've chosen to speak of the self before I speak of the belonging, because this is the epoch we live in. We've been trained to perceive ourselves as individuals. Whether we are right to do so or not, it is more, feels more natural to us today. The sense of the possible is a sort of the articulation between the first steps, which can be shared with animals and other beings, because I believe that other beings can, of course, have a bodily sense and some sense of self and of belonging, of course, and of sense of the possible. But the sense of the possible is perhaps where we as a human species started to make a difference in the terms of what we can do. Topics such as ability, belief, choice, control, courage, creativity, doing, drive education, effectuation with the capacity to use the resources that we have, rather than try to find resources elsewhere. Energy, faith, flexibility, here again the good life, but from the perspective of the possible. Identification, sense of the possible, of course, which like all these other sentences can be more or less depleted, implies a certain idea of the impossible. Opportunities, again the idea of normality, very important for this sense to society, vision, peers, possibilities. And here we have a quote from a woman 43 tetraplegic since 1997. And I've always looked at possibilities and try to ignore those things that are kind of negative. If you focus on possibilities and things that are good, those things grow. Then we enter a realm that might be considered properly, the human realm. At least this is what Aristotelian ethics proposed. And we might discuss if other beings have purpose, but the sense of purpose is a level where we start to focus on ideas and motivations that go beyond the self. Like what kind of contribution we bring to the world. Again, the idea of divinity, but also egotism, which is not egoism, egotism, the idea of expressing a personal style, which might carry itself ideas and values. Generosity, the good life again, but in a more political sense now. What's the greater purpose? A lot of people feel that they do not have a greater purpose. Inspiration, love, meaning, having models, role models, posterity, solidarity, work. And here I have a long quote, I won't go into it, but there's this idea that this person donated after the spinal cord injury accident, donated the insurance money to an orphanage in Thailand, which is still active 20 years later. And I think this is a very interesting case of self-transcendence. My accident became something bigger just by love and being, having an open ear to something that could change people's lives. I could find purpose in my bad situation, becoming a good situation through that donation, that money that was donated. And here is an interesting case also, I think, of articulation between the self-development and self-transcendence. The egotism that we talked about, because of course it's gratifying to feel that we have given, but also the capacity to place ourselves in a grounder context, in the context of interdependence and growth, collective growth. Last, but not least, the philosophical sense which we arrive at after having reflected on the five other elements. And this makes it smoother as opposed to asking people immediately about their philosophical sense, which is something that might be intimidating. So I find that going through this process and starting with the bodily sense and slowly perhaps climbing the cognitive levels makes it smoother to arrive at something that is significantly articulated at the stage of the philosophical sense. And so the philosophical sense is, how do I see the world? How do I explain it? What's my grander vision, cosmology, system or draft of a system to explain why the world it is like it is? And ideas like autonomy, creation, curiosity, destiny, freedom, gratefulness, human rights, mechanism in the sense, are we living in a machine or some sort of simulation or is there freedom? Mindfulness is a topic, of course, in all its different definitions. Posterity, what will remain of my actions once I am dead? Religion, respect, what is right or wrong? Solidarity, what's spiritual? What is life? Thinking, trust, thinking because this is also, of course, a process we do not expect necessarily people's philosophical sense to be once and for all written on stone. Understanding, uniqueness, trust in a grander sense. So another and last quote from a man who is 64 and made a diagram about the perception of, in his life of good and bad moments and he's saying that it looks like an electrocardiogram, which is quite a beautiful metaphor, a heart rhythm. This reminds me of one day I consider a picture of an island with trees and the island was reflected on the water and it seemed to me that this was a quite interesting metaphor of life in terms of sound, when you have these sound waves go up and down. In any case, a process that unfolds and that may need different moments to gain his unity. Here we are almost in the realm of what Hegel called the negative in his phenomenology of spirit, for example, the idea that we do need to be confronted with the ordeal of the negative, whether it's negative experience or simply the obstacles and the resistance of the real. But what proceeds, what unfolds, what becomes is something more than the real. It's a creative real. It's a creel and therefore Hegel thought that this unfolding was a dialectic process. I prefer to call it a Creolelectic process because it's not only about binary oppositions, but I think Hegel meant something quite similar. Of course, this methodology, which is meant to be used as a sort of a philosophical health scanning or check up, can be applied in care, person-centered care in particular. There is today this two conflicting ideas of person-centered care on the one hand and personalized medicine on the other. Personalized medicine, although it uses the term person, focus on statistics, genetics, big data, nothing really attached to the singularity of you as a person really. Some specialists of person-centered care like Michael Loughlin, professor in applied philosophy and co-director of the University of West London's European Institute for Person-Centered Health, think that philosophical health is the natural development of person-centered care where in which we do not ask people only what's the matter with you, but also what matters to you. So this was a very short introduction to the methodology that I called SmilePH, Sense-Making Interviews, looking at the six elements of philosophical health. And I'll be talking more about this in the near future. Thank you. Don't forget to check the site, philosophical.health, and other interviews about philosophical health that I have in this channel.