Luis de Miranda

Drawing on a genealogical analysis of the distinction between zoē (biological life as organic functioning) and bios (a distinctively human way of life shaped by meaning, orientation, and evaluative practice), the article reconceives bioethics as bios ethikos: ethical reflection on the conditions under which forms of life become meaningful and inhabitable. It introduces the notion of the existential remainder to describe the ethically significant dimensions that persist when institutional deliberation leaves aspects of lived existence under-articulated. The article proposes a renewed structural orientation grounded in the heuristic formula T = PEWS + C. Ethical thinking (T) is distributed across four interrelated domains of lived existence: Person, Earth, Work, and Society (PEWS), while the addition of C designates the creative openness that resists full institutional codification. PEWS-oriented evaluation may be operationalised through more integrative assessment tools, while maintaining vigilance toward the irreducible horizon of existential creativity. Bioethics, thus reconceived, becomes not only the regulation of life, but reflection on whether the governance of life sustains the conditions under which life can remain meaningfully lived.

Drawing on a genealogical analysis of the distinction between zoē (biological life as organic functioning) and bios (a distinctively human way of life shaped by meaning, orientation, and evaluative practice), the article reconceives bioethics as bios ethikos: ethical reflection on the conditions under which forms of life become meaningful and inhabitable. It introduces the notion of the existential remainder to describe the ethically significant dimensions that persist when institutional deliberation leaves aspects of lived existence under-articulated. The article proposes a renewed structural orientation grounded in the heuristic formula T = PEWS + C. Ethical thinking (T) is distributed across four interrelated domains of lived existence: Person, Earth, Work, and Society (PEWS), while the addition of C designates the creative openness that resists full institutional codification. PEWS-oriented evaluation may be operationalised through more integrative assessment tools, while maintaining vigilance toward the irreducible horizon of existential creativity. Bioethics, thus reconceived, becomes not only the regulation of life, but reflection on whether the governance of life sustains the conditions under which life can remain meaningfully lived.

While physical and mental health are widely recognized dimensions of human well-being, this article introduces philosophical health as a crucial third dimension that addresses our fundamental orientation in life and our deeper sense of purpose. As we face unprecedented global challenges, from environmental and political crises to technological disruption, philosophical health offers practical wisdom for creating what Leibniz called ‘the best of all possible worlds’: one where individual fulfilment and collective flourishing become complementary, offering ‘compossible’ rather than competing goals. The article concludes by suggesting how philosophical health can be cultivated through regular practice, suggesting that this development is essential for addressing our most pressing contemporary challenges.

While physical and mental health are widely recognized dimensions of human well-being, this article introduces philosophical health as a crucial third dimension that addresses our fundamental orientation in life and our deeper sense of purpose. As we face unprecedented global challenges, from environmental and political crises to technological disruption, philosophical health offers practical wisdom for creating what Leibniz called ‘the best of all possible worlds’: one where individual fulfilment and collective flourishing become complementary, offering ‘compossible’ rather than competing goals. The article concludes by suggesting how philosophical health can be cultivated through regular practice, suggesting that this development is essential for addressing our most pressing contemporary challenges.

The present article is a primary introduction to the semi-structured interviewing method SMILE_PH, an acronym for Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health. Beyond grounding this new methodology theoretically (a work that is started here but will in the future necessitate several developments), the main motivation here is pragmatic: to provide the recent philosophical health movement with a testable method and show that philosophically-oriented interviews are possible in a manner that can be reproduced, compared, tested and used systematically with a population that has received no training in philosophy. The SMILE_PH approach was conceived by the author during an ethically approved pilot study focused on the philosophy of life of persons living with spinal cord injury (SCI), with the intention of rectifying the epistemic obstacles generated by rationalist, Socratic or unstructured ways of in-depth interviewing. The six-step structure of the method is also inspired by hundreds of individual dialogue sessions with philosophical counselees, led by the author between 2018 and 2022: the SMILE_PH method progressively gathers phenomenological data about 1 – our bodily sense, 2 – our sense of self, 3 – our sense of belonging, 4 – our sense of the possible, 5 – our sense of purpose and 6 – our philosophical sense.

We explore the potential and limitations of using artificial intelligence to quantify philosophical health. Philosophical health is an approach to well-being defined as the dynamic coherence between thoughts, values, and actions in harmony with the world. As both AI and philosophical practice gain prominence in contemporary life, their intersection raises fundamental questions about measurement, meaning, and human flourishing. To substantiate our analysis, we present the Philosophical Health Compass (PHC), a quantitative instrument designed to assess six dimensions of philosophical wellbeing: bodily sense, sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of the possible, sense of purpose, and philosophical sense. Through analysis of this instrument, we investigate whether philosophical health – traditionally approached through qualitative exploration and dialogue – could meaningfully benefit from AI-assisted quantification. We introduce the C.I.P.H.E.R. Model (Crealectic Intelligence and Philosophical Health for Enriched Realities) as a human-in-the-loop framework for responsible integration of AI in philosophical practice. The article argues that while quantification offers valuable research opportunities, philosophical health assessment must preserve human sovereignty and philosophical pluralism. We conclude that AI can conditionally enhance philosophical health evaluation if implemented within boundaries that maintain the essentially human character of philosophical reflection, suggesting a complementary rather than substitutive relationship between quantitative tools and qualitative dialogue.

This paper introduces the Philosophical Health Compass (PHC), a quantitative assessment tool designed to complement qualitative research methods in investigating philosophical aspects of human wellbeing. The PHC evaluates six dimensions of philosophical health identified through previous research: bodily sense, sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of the possible, sense of purpose, and philosophical sense. While qualitative approaches in philosophical health excel at capturing rich individual narratives, their limitations in standardization and scalability constrain systematic research across populations. The PHC addresses this methodological gap by translating comprehensive philosophical concepts into measurable variables, enabling researchers to conduct comparative analyses, and integrate philosophical dimensions into an established wellbeing framework. This instrument is grounded in the SMILE_PH interview methodology introduced in 2023 by Luis de Miranda in the present journal, which has indicated through extensive field application that philosophical and existential health can be systematically explored through these six interrelated dimensions. We present the compass, its theoretical foundations, methodology, and potential research applications. By offering a standardized approach to evaluating philosophical wellbeing, the PHC creates new possibilities for interdisciplinary research while acknowledging that this questionnaire is not meant to replace the depth of the qualitative SMILE_PH dialogue, but rather to facilitate it.

This open access book introduces crealectics, a new creative methodology that bridges philosophical depth with practical innovation. Drawing on Leibniz's concept of compossibility – the idea that not everything possible can coexist in the same world –the author develops a five-phase approach to holistic innovation: resetting, crealing, profusing, compossibilizing, and realizing. Tested through real-world applications including case studies with Vattenfall R&D, the crealectic method offers an alternative to purely analytical or dialectical approaches to innovation, what the author calls “inner-novation." The book presents the C.I.P.H.E.R. model (Crealectic Intelligence and Philosophical Health for Enriched Realities), demonstrating how individual transformation and collective innovation can work together to create "the best of compossible worlds." This interdisciplinary work contributes to possibility studies, sustainability thinking, and innovation methodology, offering practical tools for academics, practitioners, and students seeking approaches to creative problem-solving that honor both diversity and coherence.

This open access book introduces crealectics, a new creative methodology that bridges philosophical depth with practical innovation. Drawing on Leibniz's concept of compossibility – the idea that not everything possible can coexist in the same world –the author develops a five-phase approach to holistic innovation: resetting, crealing, profusing, compossibilizing, and realizing. Tested through real-world applications including case studies with Vattenfall R&D, the crealectic method offers an alternative to purely analytical or dialectical approaches to innovation, what the author calls “inner-novation." The book presents the C.I.P.H.E.R. model (Crealectic Intelligence and Philosophical Health for Enriched Realities), demonstrating how individual transformation and collective innovation can work together to create "the best of compossible worlds." This interdisciplinary work contributes to possibility studies, sustainability thinking, and innovation methodology, offering practical tools for academics, practitioners, and students seeking approaches to creative problem-solving that honor both diversity and coherence.

This article introduces the Tetractys of Philosophical Health, a structured visual exercise inspired by the Pythagorean tetractys that facilitates alignment between an individual’s cosmological worldview, sense of purpose, and practical engagement with the world. This heuristic exercise is methodologically grounded through multi-layered convergent indications from cognitive load theory, affective neuroscience, neuroplasticity research, ancient wisdom traditions, and sustained philosophical counselling practice. Employed as a core component within the SMILE_PH method (Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health), the exercise serves as both exploratory tool and intervention, bridging abstract philosophical reflection and concrete action while training compossibility thinking—the capacity to create mutually reinforcing relationships between different dimensions of possibility. The article presents this four-layer theoretical foundation, describes implementations within philosophical counselling sessions with case examples, and discusses theoretical and practical implications for educational, organizational, and personal development contexts. The Tetractys, a tested innovation presented here for the first time in print, contributes to philosophical practice and possibility studies by offering a consolidating—compossibilizing—approach that helps individuals create integration between personal cosmology, cognitive coherence and practical mission while developing systemic thinking.

Philosophical practice is guided by an ideal of autonomous intelligence: to think for oneself. But is a fully autonomous form of intelligence possible? Autonomy in thinking may be thought to be relative or absolute. First, one may imagine an asymptotic social process of self-ruling; in this case, to become philosophically healthy would then mean to become more virtuous and more autonomous cognitively, relative to others or to a previous version of ourselves. But there seems to be a contradiction here, as autonomy seems to imply, by definition, completeness rather than comparison or relativity, the latter being seen as a form of dependence. Hence, a second stance, absolute rather than relative: the idea that some humans can achieve a perfect state of philosophical health, implying full autonomous intelligence. This hypothesis was historically thought to imply a state of autarkia, self-divinization, or autotheosis: being divine by one’s own effort. Many have forgotten that most ancient philosophers, chief among them Epicurus, Plato, and Aristotle, thought this likeness to a god (homoiosis theoi) to be the reward of theoria, a theoretical life. I argue that we can reconcile relative and absolute cognition by understanding autonomous intelligence to be a cosmotheosis: a becoming divine not as an act of singular separation, but by welcoming the multiversal reality that we already are, and partaking in the universal creative worlding process referred to here as “Creal”. In this sense, philosophical practice calls for a pantheistic form of religiosity; a shared cosmology that compossibilizes all intercreative entities.

Can we fruitfully apply creative ecology practices in the world of industrial production? Enter the crealectic method for innovation and self-innovation, aiming at fostering creative long-term thinking and acting. The crealectic method proposes five steps: Step 1—Resetting (doing tabula rasa); Step 2—Crealing (reconnecting with the “Creal”); Step 3—Profusing (letting ideas pour out without censorship); Step 4—Compossibilizing (connecting compatible ideas); Step 5—Realizing (understanding and making real). I describe a pilot test of the method within the Research and Development unit of Vattenfall, a Swedish power company dedicated to fossil-free energy production.

Automation of the judicial process has been a subject of debate among researchers and policymakers for a considerable period. Partial automation of the judicial process always involves interaction between humans (judges, jurors, and other parties involved in court proceedings) and machines (software programs). These human-machine collaborations can be considered ‘anthrobotic systems’ and we argue they should be designed with an understanding of the specific groups they are intended to serve. This article proposes a philosophical-conceptual framework that could contribute to a socially and ethically sound automation of court procedures. The automation of court procedures should be to a certain extent optimized for the legal tradition or group ethos in which it is developed and implemented. The concept of esprit de corps can be a useful tool for introducing more pluralism in the design of anthrobotic systems.

This article explores the reciprocal relationship between artificial intelligence and philosophical health – defined as eudynamic adequation between thoughts and actions. Rather than simply examining how AI might enhance philosophical practice, we investigate how philosophical health can enhance AI applications while preserving the human character of philosophical reflection. We introduce the C.I.P.H.E.R. model (Crealectic Intelligence and Philosophical Health for Eudynamic Realities), a novel framework allowing for AI and human philosophical capacity to collaborate through a “human-in-the-loop” approach. Drawing on original data from a survey of 288 participants conducted between July 2023 and March 2025, we examine contemporary philosophical perspectives across six dimensions: bodily sense, sense of self, belonging, possibility, purpose, and philosophical worldview. Key findings reveal significant patterns including widespread loneliness despite connection (30.6%), evolving self-perception (75.3%), and gaps between purpose recognition and implementation. These empirical insights are evaluated against our theoretical framework for mutual enhancement between philosophical health and AI applications. We address fundamental challenges of technological mediation in philosophical inquiry, particularly regarding embodied understanding and authentic meaning-making.

We explore the potential and limitations of using artificial intelligence to quantify philosophical health. Philosophical health is an approach to well-being defined as the dynamic coherence between thoughts, values, and actions in harmony with the world. As both AI and philosophical practice gain prominence in contemporary life, their intersection raises fundamental questions about measurement, meaning, and human flourishing. To substantiate our analysis, we present the Philosophical Health Compass (PHC), a quantitative instrument designed to assess six dimensions of philosophical wellbeing: bodily sense, sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of the possible, sense of purpose, and philosophical sense. Through analysis of this instrument, we investigate whether philosophical health – traditionally approached through qualitative exploration and dialogue – could meaningfully benefit from AI-assisted quantification. We introduce the C.I.P.H.E.R. Model (Crealectic Intelligence and Philosophical Health for Enriched Realities) as a human-in-the-loop framework for responsible integration of AI in philosophical practice. The article argues that while quantification offers valuable research opportunities, philosophical health assessment must preserve human sovereignty and philosophical pluralism. We conclude that AI can conditionally enhance philosophical health evaluation if implemented within boundaries that maintain the essentially human character of philosophical reflection, suggesting a complementary rather than substitutive relationship between quantitative tools and qualitative dialogue.

Are you philosophically healthy? Do your actions reflect your thoughts, do your words mirror your values, or do you live in contradiction? This first introduction to the new field of philosophical health, written by its forerunner, Luis de Miranda, explores the 6 elements of the discipline, including the senses of body, self, belonging, possibility, purpose, and the philosophical sense. Each chapter will be placed in conversation with a modern philosopher: Bergson for embodied intuition, Descartes for self-honesty, Spinoza for well-belonging, in order to make existential stances explicit, thus more relevant and actionable in practice.

Can we fruitfully apply creative ecology practices in the world of industrial production? Enter the crealectic method for innovation and self-innovation, aiming at fostering creative long-term thinking and acting. The crealectic method proposes five steps: Step 1—Resetting (doing tabula rasa); Step 2—Crealing (reconnecting with the “Creal”); Step 3—Profusing (letting ideas pour out without censorship); Step 4—Compossibilizing (connecting compatible ideas); Step 5—Realizing (understanding and making real). I describe a pilot test of the method within the Research and Development unit of Vattenfall, a Swedish power company dedicated to fossil-free energy production.

Background We investigated the personal philosophies of eight persons with a tetraplegic condition (four male, four female), all living in Sweden with a chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) and all reporting a good life. Our purpose was to discover if there is a philosophical mindset that may play a role in living a good life with a traumatic SCI. Methods Two rounds of in-depth qualitative interviews were performed by the same interviewer, a philosophical practitioner by training (de Miranda). The second round systematically covered the following elements: bodily sense, sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of the possible, sense of purpose and philosophical sense. This six-step method developed by de Miranda is called SMILE_PH, an acronym for Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health. Results All the interviewees, as a consequence of their trauma, reported having gone through a reinvention of themselves which implied questioning the meaning and purpose of their life in particular and life in general. A philosophical rather than realistic sense of the possible was abstracted toward teleological growth. All interviewees developed a sense of purpose based on self-interested altruism and solidarity with disabled peers. Conclusions To reinvent a good life with SCI, in addition to physical training and willpower, one needs to consider philosophical questions about the self and life, what Kant called the cosmic interests of reason: What may I hope? What must I do? What can I know? Our results indicate that we should, in the future, explore what the philosophical health approach may bring to rehabilitation processes in the months or years that follow the trauma.

The present article is a primary introduction to the semi-structured interviewing method SMILE_PH, an acronym for Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health. Beyond grounding this new methodology theoretically (a work that is started here but will in the future necessitate several developments), the main motivation here is pragmatic: to provide the recent philosophical health movement with a testable method and show that philosophically-oriented interviews are possible in a manner that can be reproduced, compared, tested and used systematically with a population that has received no training in philosophy. The SMILE_PH approach was conceived by the author during an ethically approved pilot study focused on the philosophy of life of persons living with spinal cord injury (SCI), with the intention of rectifying the epistemic obstacles generated by rationalist, Socratic or unstructured ways of in-depth interviewing. The six-step structure of the method is also inspired by hundreds of individual dialogue sessions with philosophical counselees, led by the author between 2018 and 2022: the SMILE_PH method progressively gathers phenomenological data about 1 – our bodily sense, 2 – our sense of self, 3 – our sense of belonging, 4 – our sense of the possible, 5 – our sense of purpose and 6 – our philosophical sense.

The multiple-choice video game Life is Strange was described by its French developers as a metaphor for the inner conflicts experienced by a teenager in trying to become an adult. In psychological work with adolescents, there is a stark similarity between what they experience and some concepts of existentialist philosophy. Sartre’s script for the movie Les Jeux Sont Faits (literally “games are made”) uses the same narrative strategy as Life is Strange—the capacity for the main characters to travel back in time to change their own existence—in order to stimulate philosophical, ethical, and political thinking and also to effectively simulate existential “limit situations.” This article is a dialogue between Sartre’s views and Life is Strange in order to examine to what extent questions such as what is freedom? what is choice? what is autonomy and responsibility? can be interpreted anew in hybrid digital–human—“anthrobotic”—environments.

The present article introduces eight empirically-tested concepts that guide the crealectic practice of philosophical counseling: philosophical health, deep listening, the Creal, the possible, imparadisation, deep orientation, eudynamia, and mental heroism. The crealectic framework is grounded on a process-philosophy axiom of absolute possibility and continuous cosmological and cosmopolitical creation, termed "Creal". The approach also posits that there are three complementary modes of intelligence, namely analytic, dialectic, and crealectic, the balance of which is necessary to live a healthy human life. Beyond what is physically possible and psychologically possible, an underestimated force of social and personal deployment is the philosophical possible. In a context of personal counseling and philosophical care, the crealectic approach endeavors to slowly connect the patient to a field of harmonious and generative potentiality termed eudynamia.

Grounded in ideas about sense-making and whole-person care with a long intellectual heritage, the movement for Philosophical Health—with its specific conceptions of philosophical care and counselling—is a relatively recent addition to the ongoing debate about understanding better the perspectives of patients to improve health practice. This article locates the development of this movement within the context of broader discussions of person-centred care (PCC), arguing that the approach advocated by defenders of philosophical health can provide a straightforward method for implementing PCC in actual cases. This claim is explained and defended with reference to the SMILE_PH method created by Luis de Miranda (Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health), an approach recently trialled convincingly with people living with traumatic spinal cord injury.

The present article introduces eight empirically-tested concepts that guide the crealectic practice of philosophical counseling: philosophical health, deep listening, the Creal, the possible, imparadisation, deep orientation, eudynamia, and mental heroism. The crealectic framework is grounded on a process-philosophy axiom of absolute possibility and continuous cosmological and cosmopolitical creation, termed "Creal". The approach also posits that there are three complementary modes of intelligence, namely analytic, dialectic, and crealectic, the balance of which is necessary to live a healthy human life. Beyond what is physically possible and psychologically possible, an underestimated force of social and personal deployment is the philosophical possible. In a context of personal counseling and philosophical care, the crealectic approach endeavors to slowly connect the patient to a field of harmonious and generative potentiality termed eudynamia.

In a world described or experienced as unfair, what can philosophical practitioners propose in order to help individuals and communities strive for a meaningful life? One answer, empirically informed by the author’s practice as philosophical counselor in therapeutic, self-care and organizational contexts, is five principles for the cultivation of philosophical health, namely mental heroism, deep orientation, critical creativity, deep listening, and the “Creal” (the creative Real as ultimate possibility). In the light of Hadot’s rediscovery of philosophy as a way of life and in dialogue with his reading of ancient philosophy, it is asserted that the embodied and socially embedded mind can, through these five principles or modalities, be prepared to maintain a pragmatic elevation of view and creative resilience in everyday events, especially in critical situations. This meta-analytic and meta-dialectic practice of philosophical health, termed “crealectics,” presupposes that we are of the same creative cosmological flesh (the Creal), and therefore we are bound to comprehend and care for each other philosophically.