Understanding Human Flourishing

Human Flourishing

• Happiness in psychology represents a mental and emotional state of well-being, encompassing positive emotions from contentment to joy.
• Behaviorists view happiness as a mix of positive emotions from doing good while neurologists see it as a hormonal reward in the brain for survival-aiding behavior.
• The hedonistic view equates happiness with minimizing suffering, aiming to maximize happiness and reduce misery, while Eudaimonia defines happiness as pursuing self-improvement.
• Nicomachean Ethics identifies Phronesis, Friendship, Wealth, and Power as components for human flourishing noting elements have changed, with modern people expected to be global citizens.

Eastern vs. Western Conceptions of Flourishing

• Eastern: Community-centric, individuals sacrifice for the group, Chinese Confucianism and encourages literature, science and art studies.
• Western: Individual-focused, pursuit of human flourishing as an end like Aristotle and aims for eudaimonia as ultimate good.

Science, Technology, and Flourishing

• Each discovery enriches human knowledge, as humans seek world placement and technologies are excelling via science, with good linked to truth (Heidegger).
• Science is rooted in objectivity and rigid methods, claims reason and empiricism and pseudoscience have a more muddled division.

Verification Theory

• Science is confirmed when an alternative hypothesis is accepted and gives importance to measurable, repeatable results but has difficulty weeding coincidental arguments.
• Vienna Circle scholars believe acceptable observations should is meaningful while rejecting inaccessible ones.

Falsification Theory

• Ideologies are accepted if not false and explain phenomena better than alternatives and it encourages research by Karl Popper that tests and revises theories.
• Up-and-coming theories (Marx's Social History, Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalysis) aren't testable/falsifiable, questioning their scientific status.

Technology as a Way of Revealing

• Pre-Common Era humans used brains to utilize materials and create tools and Homo erectus used fire, while the Stone Age marked tool creation & Homo sapiens sharpening and metallurgy led to jewelry.
• Religion contends with science, tribes use rituals for needs, and comparing then/now show medical care aiding infant survival, increased lifespans via science, boosted literacy & GDP measures.
• Humanity advanced from primitive means, using nature to progress and Martin Heidegger contrasts technology's purpose for man's end with it being the constitution of human activity.
• Over-reliance endangers humans by losing valuable items, reducing surroundings to economic value.
• Early tech promises initially ringed true, humans are improving comfort levels, and people are still trying to find life's meaning while tech increases pace, but morality must keep up.

The Good Life

• Aristotle, the scientific philosopher, approached reality and questioned life's end goal (happiness).
• Plato thought the world was copies of real forms but Aristotle grounds everything that observation is reality.
• In the world of matter, things change while actions from people aim at end goals.
• Aristotle states that human aims for happiness where the goal is human flourishing, one is using their potentials.

Happiness as the Goal

• In the 18th century, John Stuart Mill declared the greatest happiness principle to maximize happiness for all, to prioritize individual happiness and a set of actions should be endorsed.
• Actions are ethical and lead to a good, happy life when benefitting the most.

Schools of Thought: Aim for Good Life

• Materialism: Democritus/Leucippus thought the world is controlled by indivisible units (atomos), with no need for immaterial entities that see wealth in obtaining happiness.
• Hedonism: Believed in acquiring pleasure. Life is limited with the famous mantra “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die" and not thinking of the afterlife.
• Stoicism: Stoics espoused distancing oneself (Apatheia) in order to be attain peace.
• Theism: Finds meaning in God and the Philippines bases life on beliefs toward supernatural reality.
• Humanism: Inspired by the Enlightenment, humanists control their own destinies, see themselves as stewards and scientists improve inhabitants' lives in the world so they try to attain the good life.

Technology & Humanity

• "Technology" comes from Greek technē/logos meaning art and word, now includes machines/tools where one is is affected.
• Technology has fame and glory that brings convenience, pleasure, happiness, and communication noting that too much is bad and the misuse of devices.
• Kantar Media writes that 92% of urban/70% of rural PH homes has a TV which reached 15.135M households in 2012.
• Paul Gottlieb Nipkow sent images, called the "electric telescope", though wires, while Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton/Boris Rosing made the mechanical/electronic cathode ray.

Mobile Phones

• Martin Cooper (Engineer): He weighed 1.1 kilograms and measured 228.6 x 127 x 44.4 mm where it charged for 10 hours, providing 30 minutes of talk time.
• Motorola DynaTAC 8000x: The first commercial mobile phone in 1983.
• Not all Filipino families have computers or laptops but most profits computer manufacturer are from businesses.
• Charle Babbage's Analytical Engine is used as the base framework of the computer still.