10/30/2021
"We participate in materialism, because the idea that diseases and therapies are purely spiritual doesn't sufficiently account for what our clients experience in reality. (Here's the beauty part: we don't have to commit to ontological naturalism--the idea that nothing exists except material physical natural reality--unless we just want to do so. To faithfully stand by our clients as they experience reality, it is sufficient for us to be methodological naturalists: to operate with our clients in the material physical natural world that they are experiencing, no matter where any of us ultimately derive our philosophical meaning for ourselves on our own time.)
We participate in systems thinking, because we can leverage the knowledge from that interconnectedness into knowledge, reasoning, and critical thinking to support clinical decision-making for the benefit of our clients.
We participate in realism, because we can't adequately stand by and be supportive of our clients if we believe and tell them that their conditions are imaginary, are merely social flaws, or are actually their fault for not thinking positively enough.
We participate in science, because neither nihilism ("we can't know anything so it doesn't matter what we say to clients") or dogmatism ("I don't care what the evidence says; I know what I believe") about the material physical natural world serves our clients' best interests. Accessing the coherent body of knowledge of the sciences, and truly integrating that into our knowledge and practice of massage, permits us to participate in the shared body of knowledge that the rest of the professional healthcare team has access to, and increases our credibility and professional respect by making us better able to care for our clients.
We participate in humanism, because we recognize that professional healthcare is not limited to trying to get the maximum amount of profit possible out of clients, that healthcare professionals have responsibilities in addition to the rights that society recognizes, and that on a pragmatic level, public health care is necessary for us to have the kind of society and economy in which people thrive."
-Mario Bunge, on the application of philosophy to 21st-century modern client-centered professional healthcare:
