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Meaningful Life
In positive psychology, a meaningful life is a construct having to do with the purpose, significance, fulfillment, and satisfaction of life. While specific theories vary, there are two common aspects: a global schema to understand one's life and the belief that life itself is meaningful. Meaning can be defined as the connection linking two presumably independent entities together; a meaningful life links the biological reality of life to a symbolic interpretation or meaning. Those possessing a sense of meaning are generally found to be happier, to have lower levels of negative emotions, and to have lower risk of mental illness. While there are benefits to making meaning out of life, there is still not one definitive way in which one can establish such a meaning. In psychological studies, those who were successful in creating a meaningful life enjoyed benefits such as higher levels of positive affect, life satisfaction, etc. When faced with a stressful life situation, finding ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Positive Psychology
Positive psychology is the scientific study of conditions and processes that contribute to positive psychological states (e.g., contentment, joy), well-being, Positive psychology of relationships, positive relationships, and positive institutions. Positive psychology began as a new domain of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association. It is a reaction against past practices that tended to focus on mental illness and emphasized maladaptive behavior and negative thinking. It builds on the Humanistic psychology, humanistic movement of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, which encourages an emphasis on happiness, well-being, and Meaningful life, purpose. Positive psychology largely relies on concepts from the Western philosophy, Western philosophical tradition, such as the Aristotle, Aristotelian concept of , which is typically rendered in English with the terms "flourishing", "the good life," or "h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eudaimonia
Eudaimonia (; ) is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of ''good spirit'', and which is commonly translated as ''happiness'' or ''Well-being, welfare''. In the works of Aristotle, ''eudaimonia'' was the term for the highest human good in older Greek tradition. It is the aim of practical philosophy-prudence, including ethics and political philosophy, to consider and experience what this state really is and how it can be achieved. It is thus a central concept in Aristotelian ethics and subsequent Hellenistic philosophy, along with the terms Arete (moral virtue), ''aretē'' (most often translated as ''virtue'' or ''excellence'') and ''phronesis'' ('practical or ethical wisdom'). Discussion of the links between ''ēthikē aretē'' (virtue of character) and ''eudaimonia'' (happiness) is one of the central concerns of ancient ethics, and a subject of disagreement. As a result, there are many varieties of eudaimonism. Definition and etymology In terms of its e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Existentialism
Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and value, existentialist thought often includes concepts such as existential crises, angst, courage, and freedom. Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought. Among the 19th-century figures now associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning. The word ''existentialism'', however, was not coined until the mid 20th century, during which it became most associated with contemporaneous philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desire
Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of affairs. They aim to change the world by representing how the world should be, unlike beliefs, which aim to represent how the world actually is. Desires are closely related to Action (philosophy), agency: they motivation, motivate the agent to realize them. For this to be possible, a desire has to be combined with a belief about which action would realize it. Desires present their objects in a favorable light, as something that appears to be good. Their fulfillment is normally experienced as pleasure, pleasurable in contrast to the negative experience of failing to do so. Conscious desires are usually accompanied by some form of emotional response. While many researchers roughly agree on these general features, there is significant disagreement ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Existential Crisis
Existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning and confusion about one's personal identity. They are accompanied by anxiety and stress, often to such a degree that they disturb one's normal functioning in everyday life and lead to depression. Their negative attitude towards meaning reflects characteristics of the philosophical movement of existentialism. The components of existential crises can be divided into emotional, cognitive, and behavioral aspects. Emotional components refer to the feelings, such as emotional pain, despair, helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or loneliness. Cognitive components encompass the problem of meaninglessness, the loss of personal values or spiritual faith, and thinking about death. Behavioral components include addictions, and anti-social and compulsive behavior. Existential crises may occur at different stages in life: the teenage crisis, the quarter-life crisis, the mid-life crisis, and the la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Order
The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order is contrasted to social chaos or disorder and refers to a stable state of society in which the existing social structure is accepted and maintained by its members. The problem of order or Hobbesian problem, which is central to much of sociology, political science and political philosophy, is the question of how and why it is that social orders exist at all. Sociology Thomas Hobbes is recognized as the first to clearly formulate the problem, to answer which he conceived the notion of a social contract. Social theorists (such as Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Jürgen Habermas) have proposed different explanations for what a social order consists of, and what its real basis is. For Marx, it is the relations of pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Butterfly Effect
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The term is closely associated with the work of the mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. He noted that the butterfly effect is derived from the example of the details of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier. Lorenz originally used a seagull causing a storm but was persuaded to make it more poetic with the use of a butterfly and tornado by 1972. He discovered the effect when he observed runs of his weather model with initial condition data that were rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner. He noted that the weather model would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very sma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intention
An intention is a mental state in which a person commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''attitude'' towards this content. Other mental states can have action plans as their content, as when one admires a plan, but differ from intentions since they do not involve a practical commitment to realizing this plan. Successful intentions bring about the intended course of action while unsuccessful intentions fail to do so. Intentions, like many other mental states, have intentionality: they represent possible states of affairs. Theories of intention try to capture the characteristic features of intentions. The ''belief-desire theory'' is the traditionally dominant approach. According to a simple version of it, having an intention is nothing but having a desire to perform a certain action and a belief that one will perform this act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Well-being
Well-being is what is Intrinsic value (ethics), ultimately good for a person. Also called "welfare" and "quality of life", it is a measure of how well life is going for someone. It is a central goal of many individual and societal endeavors. Subjective well-being refers to how a person feels about and evaluates their life. Objective well-being encompasses factors that can be assessed from an external perspective, such as health, income, and security. Individual well-being concerns the quality of life of a particular person, whereas community well-being measures how well a group of people functions and thrives. Various types of well-being are categorized based on the domain of life to which they belong, such as physical, psychological, emotional, social, and economic well-being. Theories of well-being aim to identify the Essence, essential features of well-being. Hedonism argues that the balance of pleasure over pain is the only factor. Desire theories assert that the satisfact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value (ethics)
In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics), or to describe the significance of different actions. Value systems are proscriptive and prescriptive beliefs; they affect the ethical behavior of a person or are the basis of their intentional activities. Often primary values are strong and secondary values are suitable for changes. What makes an action valuable may in turn depend on the ethical values of the objects it increases, decreases, or alters. An object with "ethic value" may be termed an "ethic or philosophic good" (noun sense). Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person's sense of right and wrong or what "ought" to be. "Equal rights for all", "Excellence deserves admiration", and "People should be treated with respect and dignity" are r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causality
Causality is an influence by which one Event (philosophy), event, process, state, or Object (philosophy), object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cause is at least partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is at least partly dependent on the cause. The cause of something may also be described as the reason for the event or process. In general, a process can have multiple causes,Compare: which are also said to be ''causal factors'' for it, and all lie in its past. An effect can in turn be a cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future. Some writers have held that causality is metaphysics , metaphysically prior to notions of time and space. Causality is an abstraction that indicates how the world progresses. As such it is a basic concept; it is more apt to be an explanation of other concepts of progression than something to be explained by other more fun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Importance
Importance is a Property (philosophy), property of entities that matter or make a difference. For example, World War II was an important event and Albert Einstein was an important person because of how they affected the world. There are disagreements in the academic literature about what type of difference is required. According to the causal impact view, something is important if it has a big Causality, causal impact on the world. This view is rejected by various theorists, who insist that an additional aspect is required: that the impact in question makes a Value (ethics), value difference. This is often understood in terms of how the important thing affects the well-being of people. So in this view, World War II was important, not just because it brought about many wide-ranging changes but because these changes had severe negative impacts on the well-being of the people involved. The difference in question is usually understood counterfactually as the contrast between how the wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
