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“Ressentiment” describes feelings of resentment towards the perceived source of one’s powerlessness. Friedrich Nietzsche used “ressentiment” to lay the groundwork for his concept of “slave morality” as a psychological defense against the implication of one’s inferiority. Specifically, Nietzsche argued that those without power resent those who do have power, and they react by creating a system of…
Hedonism is a philosophy that places pleasure as the highest goal of life. Psychological hedonism is a descriptive theory that posits humans are driven by the desire to maximize pleasure while minimizing pain, similar to Freud’s idea of the pleasure principle. Ethical hedonism is a prescriptive theory that people should place pleasure as their highest goal in life and that pleasure is inherently…
Metascience can be described simply science of science. Contrary to the expectations that science is inherently an objective pursuit of the truth in contrast to religion and spirituality as intuitive or anecdotal approaches, there are lots of subjective elements in the design of experiments, interpretation of their results, and inclusion of evidence in the development of scientific theories.
In Ancient Greek, entheos is formed out of en (within) and theos (god), forming the phrase “the god within.” It was used to describe people who appeared so passionate or talented that they seemed possessed by some kind of divinity. The word “enthusiasm” comes out of “entheos” and originally referred to operating with something that seems like a divine inner spark.
In philosophical and psychological contexts, “ego” doesn’t have the connotation of a negative byproduct of arrogance or narcissism; instead, it refers to an aspect of our identity that we construct as the “I.” Unconscious or subconscious feelings are generally considered outside of the ego’s scope. In casual usage, we might say something like “you have such a huge ego, you’re impossible to talk…
In Freudian psychology, the death drive is the concept that all living things have an intrinsic desire to achieve a permanent state of peace by reverting to a state of non-living inanimacy. Freud’s early psychological theories proposed that humans are wired to seek pleasurable experiences while avoiding painful ones, which he termed the pleasure principle. Dreams were proposed as unconscious…
Nelson Goodman proposed the Grue Paradox, also called the Grue Problem or the New Riddle of Induction, to discuss a problem within the philosophy of science where categories constructed from present evidence can fail to predict future cases. Simply put, let’s say we can observe that objects in a bucket are either green or blue today. However, after 10 years, we observe that some green objects…
“Anatta” is a Buddhist concept of “non-self” that eschews Western tendencies toward an “authentic” or “core” self, instead building a formulation of identity along the principles of impermanence, interconnectedness, and dependent origination.
“Determinism” are ideas
A “cosmology” is a study or body of work exploring the origin and structure of the universe as reality. Recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Recovery Dharma are inspired by religious systems while those like SMART Recovery are rooted in the guidelines of scientific institutions, but each group has its own cosmological foundations. I would argue that a strong portion of one’s…
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“A priori” refers to knowledge or justifications that exist prior to experience or empirical evidence, generally achieved through deductive reasoning. Those who argue that some knowledge is a priori point to mathematics and logic. If two people were raised in completely empty rooms, incapable of any experience outside of their mind’s wonderings, both could arrive at the same logical conclusions.…
Absurdism is a tradition of existential philosophy popularized by Albert Camus that argues people should live passionately in defiance of an ultimate meaningless universe. Rather than becoming a nihilist who stops living life because they see no meaning it or creating your own meaning as a substitute, Camus argued you should accept the meaninglessness and live your life without seeking a grand…
Agape is a Greek word that refers to an ultimate form of love that’s unconditional and self-sacrificial. Within Christian scriptures and philosophical literature, agape is used to describe God’s unconditional love for humanity that humans should aspire to practice for each other. Ancient Greek had several different words for “love” depending on the context and relation. “Eros” refers to romantic…
Ahimsa comes from Sanskrit and means “non-harming” and is commonly translated as “nonviolence,” though it refers to forms of harm beyond just physical violence. The Early Vedic religious practices were developed around 1500-800 BCE, and many included animal sacrifices, or “yajna.” This didn’t mean violence in general was permissible, but rather that the permissiveness was extremely…
“Amor fati” translates from Latin to “love of fate,” reflecting an attitude of embracing everything that happens in life whether it involves pleasure or pain. It’s a phrase that invokes a lifestyle of radical acceptance of the world in order to empower oneself into action every moment. A popular misconception is that “amor fati” is ancient Stoic motto, but the major Stoic philosophers like Marcus…
“Anatta” is a Buddhist concept of “non-self” that eschews Western tendencies toward an “authentic” or “core” self, instead building a formulation of identity along the principles of impermanence, interconnectedness, and dependent origination.
“Ataraxia” is an ancient Greek term that translates roughly to “lack of disturbance,” so “tranquility” and “equanimity” are often used as the translations. Different Greek philosophies interpreted ataraxia differently, with Stoic philosophers like Seneca often using it interchangeably with “apathaeia” though Epicurean philosophers would challenge that.
Atman is a Sanskrit word referring to a true inner core of a living being upon which temporary aspects of existence like body, mind, and ego are constructed. Within most Hindu theology and cosmology, the atman is immortal and is reborn into cycles of living, usually until the realization of one’s true nature liberates oneself into unity with Brahman, or the ultimate reality. This is also one of…
An axiom is a proposition that serves as a starting premise for a line of reasoning or argumentation. Kurt Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is thrown around a lot in lay debate contexts, which I myself am guilty of, and I don’t have strong foundations in the philosophy of math to comment too heavily on it, but the high-level consequences of it are very relevant to the limitations of logical…
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“Bodhi” is a Sanskrit term that roughly means “enlightenment.” Buddhist traditions generally conceive of bodhi as a state free of suffering and endless cycles of rebirth through achieving an enlightened understanding of an impermanent reality and one’s self, or not-self, within it. The Buddha is said to have attained bodhi when meditating and contemplating reality under a fig tree. It is also…
Bodhicitta is a Sanskrit word composed of bodhi, meaning “enlightenment,” and citta, roughly referring to “heart-mind” or “consciousness,” so combined, it means “the heart-mind of enlightenment.” While attaining bodhi as an awakening to the reality of non-duality is the goal of many Buddhist traditions, bodhicitta is the mindset to cultivate in the process which breeds compassion for the…
A Bodhisattva is a Buddhist practitioner who has taken a commitment to delay their own liberation through enlightenment into Nirvana until every other living being has also been able to achieve this liberation. This generally involves taking a vow to demonstrate that one has cultivated bodhicitta, or the heart-mind of an enlightened being. Mahayana and Zen Buddhism put forward four vows for…
“Brahman” is a Sanskrit term which has many meanings in Vedic, Hindu, and other belief systems with South Asian roots, but generally can be seen as referring to an ultimate reality that’s at the source of the existence of all things. In the Vedas, the oldest religious texts from the South Asian subcontinent, Brahman was an evolving and fluid concept that invoked the idea of a truth underneath…
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Catharsis in common usage refers to a feeling of intense satisfaction, usually in reference to some kind of repressed emotion, thought, or fantasy being expressed. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek term katharsis which was used in the context of spiritual purification. Aristotle used it in Poetics in reference to the way audiences react to tragedies in theaters. By drawing out unpleasant…
Conscientization is the process through which individuals develop the critical consciousness required to participate in shaping the social, political, economic systems that power dynamics exist in. The modern usage of the term was popularized by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) which discussed the ways that individuals facing oppressive systems that marginalize them moved from…
A “cosmology” is a study or body of work exploring the origin and structure of the universe as reality. Recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Recovery Dharma are inspired by religious systems while those like SMART Recovery are rooted in the guidelines of scientific institutions, but each group has its own cosmological foundations. I would argue that a strong portion of one’s…
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In Freudian psychology, the death drive is the concept that all living things have an intrinsic desire to achieve a permanent state of peace by reverting to a state of non-living inanimacy. Freud’s early psychological theories proposed that humans are wired to seek pleasurable experiences while avoiding painful ones, which he termed the pleasure principle. Dreams were proposed as unconscious…
“Determinism” are ideas
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In philosophical and psychological contexts, “ego” doesn’t have the connotation of a negative byproduct of arrogance or narcissism; instead, it refers to an aspect of our identity that we construct as the “I.” Unconscious or subconscious feelings are generally considered outside of the ego’s scope. In casual usage, we might say something like “you have such a huge ego, you’re impossible to talk…
Empiricism refers to the beliefs and practices that emphasize the value of data that can be observed in forming models of the world. This contrasts with rationalists or idealists who argue that logical principles should come first as a lens to interpret empirical data. For instance, if we conduct some experiment that suggests 2 + 2 = 5, an empiricist might argue that we have to revise the logical…
In Ancient Greek, entheos is formed out of en (within) and theos (god), forming the phrase “the god within.” It was used to describe people who appeared so passionate or talented that they seemed possessed by some kind of divinity. The word “enthusiasm” comes out of “entheos” and originally referred to operating with something that seems like a divine inner spark.
Existentialism refers to branches of philosophy that question the nature, value, and modalities of existence. Within Western philosophy, existentialism is often broken down into a few schools: Humanism: those like Sartre argue that human experience is the center of reality and that we are free to construct our own meanings rather than pursue an objective answer from outside of us Nihilism: those…
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Falsifiable refers to the ability for a proposition to be tested and shown to be false. For instance, page 58 of the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book states “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path,” which is also part of the conventional preamble before meetings. This is unfalsifiable: if someone has remained sober while working the program, it’s proof of the success,…
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Nelson Goodman proposed the Grue Paradox, also called the Grue Problem or the New Riddle of Induction, to discuss a problem within the philosophy of science where categories constructed from present evidence can fail to predict future cases. Simply put, let’s say we can observe that objects in a bucket are either green or blue today. However, after 10 years, we observe that some green objects…
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Hedonism is a philosophy that places pleasure as the highest goal of life. Psychological hedonism is a descriptive theory that posits humans are driven by the desire to maximize pleasure while minimizing pain, similar to Freud’s idea of the pleasure principle. Ethical hedonism is a prescriptive theory that people should place pleasure as their highest goal in life and that pleasure is inherently…
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Impermanence is a central organizing principle of many non-Western religions that posit that everything in the universe is in a constant state of change. Western religions are heavily based around Abrahamic moral-psychology that posits definite good and evil, and often an objective arbiter to judge that good and evil (i.e. God). Hindu cosmology generally holds that time is cyclical, so even…
My degree says I have a specialization in Intelligent Systems, but I don’t really know how to define intelligence. The closest I can figure is that we use it to refer to some kind of system that is capable of updating its model of the world after receiving feedback from it. That means any observation of basic Bayesian inference is sufficient to label something as intelligent, but with a…
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Metascience can be described simply science of science. Contrary to the expectations that science is inherently an objective pursuit of the truth in contrast to religion and spirituality as intuitive or anecdotal approaches, there are lots of subjective elements in the design of experiments, interpretation of their results, and inclusion of evidence in the development of scientific theories.
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“Ressentiment” describes feelings of resentment towards the perceived source of one’s powerlessness. Friedrich Nietzsche used “ressentiment” to lay the groundwork for his concept of “slave morality” as a psychological defense against the implication of one’s inferiority. Specifically, Nietzsche argued that those without power resent those who do have power, and they react by creating a system of…
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Strange loops are circular paths found in hierarchies where moving in any direction eventually leads back to the same starting point. These hierarchies are then referred to as “tangled hierarchies.” I find that it’s easiest to explain the concept through examples: Say you enter a store to return an item at the front-desk. The clerk says he can’t initiate a review for the item’s return without…
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Tabula Rasa translates to blank slate, and it suggests the mind is blank slate on birth that is shaped entirely by the stimuli given from the outside world, and thus the individual self is the product of external conditioning. We as humans tend to take consistently common elements of our lives for granted. Do you deliberate about the sun failing to come up tomorrow? Do you ever worry gravity…