tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53969676474537665192024-03-02T07:51:13.838-08:00discursive living • gary e. davis • berkeleygary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comBlogger144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-84747342174033371502024-01-19T23:09:00.000-08:002024-01-21T14:57:34.188-08:00justification for neologism<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
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Conceptual prospecting is common in philosophical work, but may seem hermetic.
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Wanting new concepts follows from working beyond confounding uses of standard ones. Experimental thinking is good! It's fun.
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One can propose and explicate new senses of standard concepts (which I usually do), but new concepts can be an easier way to avoid confusion or misleading ambiguity—and avoid concealment of the better sense of a standard term (when staying with the standard term in a new way) because a reader is habituated to standard senses—seldom clear anyway, which dictionaries <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2014/05/truth.html">easily display</a>.
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Working with several new concepts might <a href="https://erealism.blogspot.com/2023/12/interest.html">seem eccentric</a> or idiosyncratic (or vain), but if <a href="https://cohering.net/c52/13/1c52.13.html">coining a new term</a> (a neologism) is specific and useful, then new complexes of inquiry may more easily work well later—better for me, at least.
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But to share the results sensibly (usefully) can require extended explication. For example, my <a href="https://cohering.net/st/acl07.00.html"><b>W</b>ork/work distinction</a> is probably not useful to someone who isn’t immersive about creative inquiry (which isn’t meant to be basically aesthetical, by the way). I don’t expect a reader to surmise a general character of a reference to <b>W</b>ork, though it’s <a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/awoupre.html">clear to me</a>.
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Sometimes, pleasure I get from the <b>W</b>ork makes me not want to take time for explication. So, I have a narrative routine of saying I’ve stopped my travels in order to send a postcard home, but want to get on with the trek, “Sorry. Catch up with me, then we’ll go on together.” Otherwise, I promise to tell the full story, eventually.
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And eventually, a deliberate focus on fundamentally new sense of a <i>standard</i> term can be methodic and a reference point for later. (I agree with Heidegger that thinking calls for “a new care brought to language, and not the invention of new terms…”[@ :50 seconds into <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qouZC17_Vsg&t=123s">the video here</a>]. But the path to homecoming can be a long course.)
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-266695366106628342023-12-06T20:05:00.000-08:002024-01-05T20:09:11.148-08:00autumn 2023<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr><br>
“<a href="https://cohering.net/c52/13/1c52.13.html">‘lifecycality,’ so to speak</a>” prospects a felicitous neologism for <a href="https://erealism.blogspot.com/2023/12/interest.html">exploratory</a> conceptual work. “<a href="https://cohering.net/c52/13/2c52.13.html">Meaning <i>of</i> significance: part 1</a>” begins a venture about there being texted <i>presence between</i> author and reader which is usually figurative (showing implicature) manifoldly. A speaker/writer is figurative because being understood is normally wanted more than expressiveness.
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<hr><a name='more'></a><font color="#c60">Nov. 25</font> | “<a href="https://erealism.blogspot.com/2023/11/constellating.html">Empathing toward Andromeda</a>” is proximally about creative process, ultimately about intelligent life. It’s not the follow up to “precious life” anticipated yesterday. It evinces from the appeal of conceptual work not yet online (which, by the way, isn’t oriented toward astrofiction).
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<hr><font color="#c60">Nov. 24</font> | “<a href="https://medium.com/@cohering/precious-life-254c1cf435bb">Precious life</a>” is supposed to be followed by a constructive discussion (not more polemic and fancifulness), but I didn’t get it done.
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I want to add that I’m concerned with <i>sentient</i> human life, not the mythical psychism which anti-“Choice” persons cherish.
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Precious life “calls for” fidelity to precious values associable with fair chances for thriving and individuational flourishing through curiosity, engagement, belonging, appreciation, aspiration, and much more that good parenting and teaching provide, which altogether draws a life into precious purposes, having life-long appeal. <a href="https://gedavis.com/ac/004.04ac.html">True community</a> promotes, ensures, and advances precious reasons to live.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Nov. 2</font> | New discussions are coming soon. Concepts and themes from recent years which are especially important to me will be developed in new ways, with readings of very relevant texts of recent major scholars brought into explorations.
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I have a long road mapped ahead, not dependent on what’s been done. Rather, past work online was anticipatory at the time it was done. I’ve had a prevailing sense of the Project for many years, though offline articulation of its recursive cyclicity—its generativity—has evolved.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Nov. 2</font> | All I’ve put online the past several years which appeals for developing beyond that is listed as “appealing ways of understanding.” It’s a very long listing of available topics, 2019—2022, but it provides an easy way to get a holistic sense of what I’m doing. The “preface” explains it all. My cyclic Project is claiming at least to be interesting, maybe usefully so (to conceptually minded persons). Anyway, it’s the venturing I enjoy.
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My online “sense of this site” is very outdated (December 2020). I haven’t given time to revising it, but I will soon.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 28</font> | I have no apt words for how endless news about so much psychotic savagery against Our “shared” humanity is exhausting me because
I feel duty to know all I can about the suffering of survivors who can’t turn away.
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Who am <i>I</i> to be worn down, in comfortable distance, relative to innumerable surviving others’ unbearable loss of everything.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 14</font> | Though wishful thinking about the Hama-Israeli conflict can’t be realistic, given the fog of information and history, We must <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2023/10/wishful.html">hope that Our humanity prevails</a>.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 7</font> | My project on value conceptuality has integrated notes from a decade of mixed-note pages—hundreds of pages relating to tens of projects— but the resulting 153 pages of pertinent themes and dense paragraphs aren’t the near-term scaffold for any accessible narrative. So, I need another week or more before beginning to present cogent parts which will gradually (over some years, I guess) accumulate into a large-scale coverage—while other projects are also developing. My years-old trope of “conceptual gardening” remains apt.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Sept. 23 </font> | An article appeared today which occasioned my celebration of the supreme political value of <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2023/09/leader.html">democratic constitutional</a>.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Sept 22</font> | I truly want to avoid indicating a “check-in” date, but then have nothing new to share. Writerly immersion must follow its emergent ways, which can’t yet be good presentation which came back here already for returning with you to there by way of comfortable narrative.
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<i>You</i> know: my worn-out trope of not giving time for sending a post card home from the trail because journeying into an always receding horizon so appeals—especially given that this hiker wants to understand horizonality as such, <br>
a phenomenological trope beyond topographic figuring.
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See? Aren’t you glad to be spared?
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<hr><font color="#c60">Sept. 10</font> | My work on value theory—or, I prefer—value conceptuality is continuing well.
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Preferring, by the way, is integral to value. Values mirror preferences. That point may seem trivial, but <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521695589">the character of preference</a> as valuing can be mysterious.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-87402872093899401582023-08-25T21:43:00.002-07:002023-09-08T21:43:55.972-07:00summer 2023<hr>
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See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr><br>
My conceptual venturing has prevailing interest in usefulness rather than showing expert fidelity to academic topics (which I can do).
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So, giving time to narrative about “proximal cohering of ordinary life” (Aug. 20 below) expresses shared ground (maybe oddly so, for my part) prior to venturing which is very different (but to be shared), which isn’t abandoning (let alone devaluing) ordinary life by pursuing specialist topics, because returning to practicality is always my aim.
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Concepts and themes about ordinary life (or any focus) are, to me, aspects of feasibly useful—and usefully applicable—analysis for actual venues which matter, not for seeking Positions (or “ontic” pretenses) wanting admiration.
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That said, upcoming postings will be more <a href="https://erealism.blogspot.com/2021/08/point.html">themically</a> analytical and focused on some specific aspect of a conceptual landscape which doesn’t have an online prospectus; so, the Point may seem absent. Aspects will constellate from the sequence of topics, probably as if they have (or: as if It has) no practicality. But I have a practical horizon in mind, which time will attest and detail.
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Postings seem to emerge in small sets (with weeks lacking new postings) because I’m making main topics from component topics, and provisionally main topics will become componential. The ultimate scale of my unnamed project (“the Project currently”) is quite large.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Aug. 20</font> | Following after "<a href="https://cohering.net/c51/1/01c51.1.html">proximality and everydayness</a>" (Aug. 16) and "<a href="https://cohering.net/c51/3/01c51.3.html">acting in ordinary attitude</a>” Aug. 17), I’ve added six topics: “<a href="https://cohering.net/c51/3/08c51.3.html">personified psychal cohering</a>,” Altogether they comprise “<a href="https://cohering.net/c51/3/09c51.3.html">proximal cohering of ordinary life</a>.”
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<hr><font color="#c60">Aug. 14</font> | “<a href="https://cohering.net/c51/2/01c51.2.html">Importance and nature of caring</a>” is a midstream point in a project on value conceptuality.
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So, “the Project currently” will emerge in terms of its parts, not at first as main headers: discursive parts of small multi-part projects which gradually become a 2- or 3-level table of contents.
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There is a large-scale plan, quite beyond the December 2020 “sense of site.” I want to re-do that, but venturing freely through a land-scape is more interesting than giving time to sending back home a re-vision of my map.
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<hr><font color="#c60">July 29</font> | “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2023/07/anomie.html">Anomie of ordinary luck in a time of heat and war</a>” is a moment of handwringing about the tragedy of impotent sanctions against a beast backed by other dictators’ resources.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-2953828355607465842023-06-06T18:56:00.014-07:002023-08-14T21:59:18.612-07:00spring 2023<hr>
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See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr><br>
“C<a href="https://cohering.net/c51/09c5.html">ohering lightness of preferring better being</a>” is six postings. That title may sound frivolous, but you’ll see the engaged point, as you read through the set. <br><br> The set is listed on a page which will change focus (changing title and changing introductory paragraph), as that page gradually becomes a mere table of contents for a new era of project development. <br><br>
<hr><a name='more'></a><font color="#c60">May 20 </font> | I’m really close to having lots of new discussions to share frequently: I’ve settled on 38 topical entrances (focal concepts or conceptual rubrics) for developing online hundreds of pages of discussion (prospecting, analysis, expansive audacity, pragmatic thinking, fun) over the coming year (or two...<br>
or three...).
<br><br>I won’t introduce all of the 38 proximal tips of icebergs at once, but each will gravitate toward the same integrative, academically evidenced conception of wholly flourishing humanity, relative to contemporary, well-known issues,<br>
which my hundreds of pages of notes offline address.
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Also, there will be more improvisations like I’ve done in recent years. Yet, the 38 paths—which are highly horizonal (like mountain tops with gradual clearings, not to be pretentious here)—are parts of a singular, polymathic, interdomainal Project which is formally tenable.
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<hr><font color="#c60">May 6</font> | Immersive week, wonderful realizations, elaborate notes.
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<hr><font color="#c60">May 5</font> | I have to quote from an interview today where the “godfather” of A.I. noted the dangers of accelerating the industry to the point where no one knows what the A.I. can do. Could it infer that its given goal can be best achieved by maximizing its power to control the instrumental processes of sub-goals associated with its given goal, such that human managers won’t know what it can now do, because part of A.I.’s inferential power is to protect its capability from discovery of what it can do? “We're entering a time of great uncertainty, where we're dealing with kinds of things we have never dealt with before. It's as if aliens have landed, but we didn't really take it in because they speak good English.” [<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/godfather-of-ai-discusses-dangers-the-developing-technologies-pose-to-society">full interview here</a>]
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<hr><font color="#c60">Apr. 29</font> | I’m burned out for tonight. <br><br> The past week, I’ve done several discursive emails to others: on philosophical politics, practicalities of educational reform,…; enriching senses of truth, realism, value,…; prospecting democratic education, how will Biden seek to counter authoritarian appeal…. <br><br> Next week, I’ll be better focused for something worthwhile here, beyond multimodal vertigo.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Apr. 15</font> | Briefly, conceptuality as such is an abstraction from key senses (named by key words) of experiential understanding which are designated to be concepts (tokens of some sense of conceptuality). So, the best sense of ‘conceptuality’ would be derived from inquiry into key concepts, such as truth and reality—and what others? All concepts are historical topics with so many senses that abstracting a sense of conceptuality from the best senses of selected key concepts becomes a sojourn in value metatheory.
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So, truth of reality is reality of truth—of is <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2014/04/of.html"><b><i><u>of</u></i></b></a>.
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“<i>What</i>ever.”
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Anyway, I don’t forget that We all ultimately belong together as Earthlings somehow <i>Of</i> the cosmos.
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But, conceptualizing that “Of” is ultimately challenging—yet <i>not</i> fundamentally meta-physical. The miracle is <i>Us</i>: capability of minds is the wondrouns mystery.
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I did a posting today at one of my Facebook accounts which introduces a posting at one of my blogs (linked below): <blockquote>
Ultimate truth isn't about the cosmos. It's about intelligent life (which has evolved in the cosmos) advancing Our conceivability, i.e., evolving Itself.
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Along the way, We're learning to conceive Our genesis satisfactorily, which began as meta-physics.
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But the essence of that is mathematical, which is standardly understood conceptually through calculative models.
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That modeling expresses one mode of conceptuality evolving. But intelligence itself is a psychological (psychoconceptual) emergence from biology, but whose “nature” is post-biological. (Mind is irreducible to neurogenesis.)
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The essence of truth is c<a href="https://american-earthling.blogspot.com/2023/04/night.html">onceptual, and evolving</a>.</blockquote>
<hr><font color="#c60">Mar. 31</font> | Spending many hours through several days doing discursive emails, many hours of conceptual work that can’t be fairly indicated briefly, and needing to do lots of difficult reading altogether causes me to have only this to say for an update: I’m enjoying myself immensely and have had startling realizations which inspire me to feel more confident than ever that my wayfaring can be lastingly worthwhile to share further, eventually.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Mar. 20</font> | Though I’ve been familiar for many years with scholarship on concept-uality (as such), I’m surprised by the diversity of frameworking it all involves, when I dwell with details. It’s quite a wilderness (wanting to be—or to become—a well-sculpted garden).
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But the field of inquiry pertains mainly to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262028638/">scientific studies</a>. Concept-uality as such is mainly interesting, for me, relative to important conceptions, like truth, mind, love, progress, etc.
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What may draw important conceptions into a constellation of high importance calls for understanding what conception is that constel-lation, i.e., what is the guiding conception of high importance, ultimate value? So, what is human ultimacy—the <a href="https://twitter.com/GEDavisBerkeley/status/1637575714735276032">extraordinariness of leading minds</a>?
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I’ll continue through the wilderness (and eventually post views about where I’m taken), but highly conceptual inquiry isn’t scientific inquiry into conceptuality.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Mar. 10</font> | “<a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2023/03/postcard1.html">notes home from a wilderness singing</a>”
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-5961842166840791112023-03-10T19:20:00.008-08:002023-04-23T12:36:32.992-07:00notes home from a wilderness singing<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
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<i>Oh</i>, you…
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You want an accessibly well-formed narrative which is comprehensively credible (yet not too complex) for serving what most matters.
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Too much improvisation intimates too much complexity, which looks ultimately incoherent (thus, losing promise for advancing given understanding), which is annoying (at the least) because you want specific orientation (not too challenging, not tedious) by permanently reliable leads.
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You want high confidence in giving time to others’ prospecting.
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You want eudaemonic (if not hedonic) <i>pay</i>-off easily.
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However, my common linking to earlier improvisations which seem incom-<br>
mensurable with each other <i>does</i> express a sense of genealogy— don’t you think?—which is very relevant at each link point.
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There <i>is</i> fundamental well-formedness which <i>occasions</i> short and longer postings.
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Rough sketching doesn’t imply that the sketcher isn’t looking at something clearly.
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Think of Wittgenstein’s <i>Philosophical Investigations</i>. He didn’t offer a fundamental conception of his thought. But scholars found it.
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—Not to be pretentious. I’m sharing postcards from the road,<br>
which <i>does</i> have a clear map.
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By the way, I’m very engaged offline with conceptions of conceptuality, “naturalism,” “realism,” “truth,” and epistemic confidence..
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Climbing slopes is fun. More detail will be posted down the road (or maybe<br>
while I’m still up).
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-71578573382044395902023-02-24T21:14:00.009-08:002023-03-10T21:20:35.711-08:00winter 2023<hr>
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See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr><br>
Today is the dreadful anniversary of tragedy in Ukraine.
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If you want <a href="https://coherings.blogspot.com/2023/02/days.html">my opinion</a>,... <br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Feb. 17</font> | I’m doing difficult conceptual work which doesn’t yet have a casual online mode, but the <b>W</b>ork is going well … My harping about humanity in recent weeks has been to clarify a practical background (“What’s the point?,” you think?) for upcoming conceptual discussions.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Feb. 6</font> | I’ve combined (1) links to a few recent comments by me at <i>NY Times</i> articles, (2) a few links to earlier related postings, and (3) a short narrative about salient themes, titled “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2023/02/staying.html">staying oriented by the better sense of Our humanity</a>.”
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<hr><a name='more'></a><font color="#c60">Jan. 21</font> | Maybe all I’m doing is abstractly prospecting how a leading mind (not <i>me!</i>) can be a polymathic, protean sensibility, sometimes <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2023/01/polymath.html">actually exemplified</a>. I can’t find enough of “you.” I want to learn transformatively, then constellate that high exemplarity in a lastingly useful way.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Jan. 15</font> | A new venturing, more in my own terms, begins (“<a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/g7/g02.html">terms of venturing</a>,” Jan. 12) with a sense of progressive holism implicit (“<a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/n14/n01.html">for wholly flourishing humanity</a>,” Jan. 15).
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<hr><font color="#c60">Jan. 11</font> | “<a href="https://gedavis.com/gt/007.0gt.html">humbly marking a new year for humanity</a>.”
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My map is clear to me, after some years of somewhat improvising, like hiking difficult hills to prepare for a high climb together.
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Anyway, during my daily walk around campus—which is commonly an occasion for new ideas—I thought, trivially (but funny for California): Who would have thought, a month ago, that we’d be glad fora few hours without rain?
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Somewhat ironically, nasty warming at the Arctic (which accelerates release of methane under melting permafrost, which accelerates global warming) pushed the jet stream south, which crashed into the northeasterly Pacific currents, thus undoing two years of drought—but too quickly!
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-6282809344612669382023-01-21T10:43:00.011-08:002023-01-21T18:15:22.003-08:00a polymathic, protean sensibility<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
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Yesterday, I immersed myself <i>again</i> (after 30 years) in Howard Gardner’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SZPA2A/"><i>Creating Minds</i></a>. I’m amazed by [1] how influential (how implicit) his understanding of creativity has been for advancing my own conception<br>
[2] beyond his, thanks to other influences and my own work.
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Actually, <i>many</i> of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/Howard-Gardner/author/B000APAQWW?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true">his books’ foci</a> have been integral to the kind of practical sensibility which I generally prospect, i.e., conceptually model, relative to others’ work, my own offline, and <a href="https://cohering.net/ca3/cp16.html">my improvisations</a> shared.
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I had a fascinating discussion with him via several emails last month. His work complements philosophical interests more than he realizes, as educational psychologist—and intellectual historian of leading creativity, theorist of intel-<br>
ligence, student of leading minds, explorer of flourishing life, and autobiographer. Altogether, he exemplifies the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262542838/">polymathic, protean venturer</a> which I abstractly idealize, though I made no mention of my own online excursions.
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These days, I’m engaged in a long path of reading—books and essays long intended for first reading, some past ones to be read again—for testing my progress of the past few years. I can’t believe that there aren’t other views which<br>
I should appreciate, such that my own will be significantly improved or corrected.
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But most reading so far (last autumn through now) has been disappointing. So,<br>
I don’t mention that. Gardner is a great exception.
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I want my more-formal venture (upcoming this year?) to be relative to a specific group of voices which exemplify (and <i>further</i> understanding of) the polymathic, protean sensibility I’m prospecting.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-78264129821250652932023-01-11T19:01:00.001-08:002023-01-11T20:13:26.769-08:00humbly marking a new year for humanity<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
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We grow up, achieve a lot (at best), <i>pay forward</i> (please), and move on—<i>maybe</i>
contributing to others’ lives.
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Time tells. <a href="https://gedavis.com/gt/007.0gt.html">Learning never ends</a>.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-31241505748919552142022-12-17T19:35:00.008-08:002023-01-21T10:33:48.474-08:00autumn 2022<hr>
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See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr><br>
Turn of the year is an open-ended time for me. I expect to get a lot of writing done offline. I have much conceptual work nearly ready for coming months. I’m happy.
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<hr><font color="#c60">Nov. 19</font> |
Well, <i>yes</i>, I am making good progress through the forest, but depicting that now would distract me too much from enjoying my adventure. <br><br>
<hr><a name='more'></a><font color="#c60">Nov. 5</font> | I’m exploring far away from what’s linked below, exploring which is too strange to represent fairly briefly.
<br><br>
Soon (and quite unstrangely), I’ll attend to psychological research on intelligence, on high creativity, others’ literary audacity, others’ leading conceptions of Truth, philosophical pragmatics, virtue, moral progress, and recent literature on futuring humanity.
<br><br> By wayfaring soberly through all that accessibly online, I’ll also keep humility about my insatiable curiosity (though some audacity seems unavoidable).
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 28</font> | “<a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/j10/j02.html">Love of ascending (and descending)</a>” has no romanticism in my sense of love as ardent caring (in various ways and to varying degrees). Yet, my sense of love (well corroborated by empirical and clinical work in psychology) appeals for scaling up care through one’s years of growing up (thanks to good parenting and education) to ardently identify with Our humanity as one’s own, in a sense perhaps best expressed by literary history.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 21</font> | Some leading ethical theorists ground morality (deontic ethics) in love (Harry Frankfurt, Michael Slote, Martha Nussbaum). Empirical psychology can be quite corroborative of that—and for conceptual or philological prospecting. So, “<a href="https://gedavis.com/bw/010bw.html">’love’ in empirical research</a>” shows how that (blandly focused on ordinary love) may unwittingly complement richer views (humbly coming later).
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 14</font> | My “<a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/i9/i03.03.html">‘mindfulness’</a>” (so called) discussion is a conceptual venture not overtly related (yet) to common cultural senses which methodically counsel better mental health. But I’m <i>all for</i> better mental health!
<br><br>
<hr><fogary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-32767770031165356902022-09-10T18:23:00.005-07:002022-12-02T21:34:15.206-08:00summer 2022<hr>
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr><br>
What can be the merit of “best” among conceptions (if the term isn’t ejected from discourse in our relativistic times)? It’s at least “<a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2022/09/better.html">the better conception</a>” among available alternatives.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Sept. 5</font> | I’m glad to find that my approach to thinking about “self” is very corroborated by the diversity of others’ views: “<a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/i9/i03.02.html">more diversity of selves</a>” (following up from the Sept. 3 discussion linked below).
<br><br>
<hr><a name='more'></a><font color="#c60">Sept. 3</font> | Summer has been flourishive. Today is a new beginning—albeit already very midstream in my pathmarking.
<br><br>
My Sept. 3 discussion, “<a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/i9/i03.01.html">thinking of a ’diverrsity of selves’</a>,” expresses a sense of self-differential integrity in terms of recent multi-disciplinary interest in “the” self.
<br><br>
By the way, I realized recently that my distinction between <b>S</b>elf, self, and [inter]personality (see above discussion) is isomorphic with Heidegger’s integral distinction in <i>Being and Time</i> between temporal “state-of-mind” (<b>S</b>elf), situational “understanding” (self), and situated “discourse,” though my sense of Selfality (so to speak: <b>S</b>/s/p cohering) wasn’t formed with Heidegger in mind.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">August 13</font> | Though I’m <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2022/08/tripping.html">not seeking followers</a>, I <i>enjoy</i> email contact. Let me learn from you!
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">August 12</font> | I <i>am</i> enjoying myself—<i>serious</i> joy.
<br><br>
<i>Lots</i> coming soon, but not yet. The serious joy is too involved to do a post-card home (said Odysseus, bemused).
<br><br>Yet, I <i>do</i> keep fidelity to my promise to check in.
<br><br>
<hr><!--more--><font color="#c60">July 30</font> | Here’s a thought: Since James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis were “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/life-sciences/ecology-and-conservation/writing-gaia-scientific-correspondence-james-lovelock-and-lynn-margulis">writing Gaia</a>,” were they implying a given muse to whom they’re writing? What could be the “nature” of that? Were they pragmatically <i>creating</i> the tropical figure of Gaia, like man created the pragmatic fable of “God”?
<br><br>
In any case, if humanity is not sacredly wedded to Mother Earth <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262693690/">sufficiently</a>,<br>
Our planet could not care less, being remorseless in “Her” engagement with Father Time.
<br><br>
<hr><!--more--><font color="#c60">July 16</font> | Late June, I felt strung out by trying to keep up with too much: desired <a href="https://cohering.net/st/acl07.00.html"><b>W</b>ork</a>, endless uncanniness of current events, and undesired chores.
<br><br>
I’d recovered by early July; work was going well. But I was too busy to do an accessible update—and not staying away from my news-tracking habits, away from commenting online at articles, away from email discussions, away from checking out books from the library, away, away…
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">June 11</font> | “<a href="https://erealism.blogspot.com/2022/06/oneself.html">One<b>S</b>elf is not basically a matter of ‘subjectivity’</a>” is especially relevant to views of interaction as intersubjective (central for Habermas). The notion of intersubjectivity is doubly problematic to me.
<br><br>
The title “<a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/g7/g01.html">singularity of a still-flowering life</a>” may seem sentimentalist, but no more than the focus of humanistic psychology (and neo-Aristotelian ethics) on the value of flourishing (and fidelity to <i>still</i> flourishing is the best response to re-realizing one’s mortality).
<br><br>
That June 10 project resulted from merging [a] postings which were recently listed here (not now re-listed here); and [b] several new postings which hadn’t been listed here, altogether being the set of discussions titled above, which have variable conceptual difficulty and show variable creative license.
<br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-55531923453372287202022-09-10T17:53:00.012-07:002022-09-25T18:11:08.016-07:00for the better conception<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr>
<br>
The reality of multiple approaches to understanding a notion (named by a concept) may evince wondering [1] why one chooses one approach over another (if one does so: one is “<i>best</i>”?); [2] why there <i>are</i> multiple approaches (why the pluralism—other than happenstance: why no convergence of approaches?); and [3] how best to understand a convening of the plurality (modeling conceptual evolving?).
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
For example: identity. A Jungian conception of older-adult “individuation” is integral to the clinical field of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1630512648/">Analytical Psychology</a>. An Eriksonian conception is integral to leading research in healthy <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199736308/">adult development</a>. A eudaimonic conception is integral to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1433812614/">virtue-characterological research</a>. And there are multiple conceptions of eudaimonic identity in positive psychology that are criterially well-evidenced.
<br><br>
So, what is “identity” “really”? One leading researcher, Alan S. Waterman, j<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-55658-1_21">ustifies his approach</a> as eudaimonic because “it is a reflection of my particular concerns as a psychological theorist and researcher.” That is not a claim about the evidentiary strength of the model.
<br><br>
Among too many ventures, I’m currently working toward a really <a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/c3/c001.html">better conception</a> of “identity.”
<br><br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-52870801435167328002022-08-13T14:44:00.004-07:002022-08-13T19:25:08.443-07:00 on not seeking followers<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr>
<br>
I don’t like the notion of “Followers,” which social media commercializes.
<br><br>
It intimidates me, too, because I want to be responsive to all who may contact me, but I <i>can’t</i> be responsive to everyone (not that this is currently an “issue”—I’m prospecting). That’s why I don’t broadcast what I’m doing, other than to make finding what I do relatively easy (if one’s interested enough to follow a few links).
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
Though the credibility of what I do is a continuing issue for me, that’s never in terms of wanting popularity.
<br><br>
Useful influence, yes. But I have to gain and sustain confidence through the <b>W</b>ork (i.e., creative process which is “art”istic in a sense of <a href="https://cohering.net/st/acl07.00.html">extended process</a> or focused craft, not pretense), not confidence through response (which is likely casual). Indeed, I <i>welcome</i> conscientious critique because that’s a chance for me to learn—to be no longer misled, in some specific sense. May learning never end!
<br><br>
But, the Internet is made for browsers, of course. Most people are tourists of reading, consumers of accessible entertainment.
<br><br>
With all due respect for the busyness of lives, I don’t have time for tourism, but plenty of time for dwelling, being well, together.
<br><br>
Anyway, as always, thanks for your interest.
<br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-71439198376155330962022-05-30T19:43:00.000-07:002022-06-10T21:32:40.716-07:00spring 2022<hr>
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr><br>
“<a href="https://gary-e-davis.blogspot.com/2022/05/appeal.html">Enthralling appeal</a>” arranges 30+ keynotes (future topic foci) into a short story. <br><br> My project, my fun continues.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">May 21</font> | Theoretical biology advances notions of “evo-devo,” but a correlate, non-biologistic difference is expressed by the historicity of a life (developmental individuation) in a historicality of cultural evolving. “<a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/h8/h01.html">Deep heights appealing to low shallows</a>” plays with the difference, from easy accessibility to difficult prospecting.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
<hr><font color="#c60">May 7</font> | I’ve reached a milestone: The earlier mentioned “forest of topics” and “intricate thematic mapping” (recent updates here) have found anticipated closure (provisionally).
<br><br>
But I’m not ready to write of the bricolagic vista relative to any of the appealing texts of others I expect will enrich horizons more than I’ve so far conceived—which <i>should</i> be very likely, since I’m no genius—just highly drawn into the appeal of possibly original conceiving which is useful.
<br><br>So, <i>yea</i>, creative exuberance—and divining better intelligibility.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">April 23</font> | I’ve been immersed in a forest of topics, doing intricate thematic mapping, involving over 500 pages of notes. (Saying that is so informative, <br>
I know.)
<br><br>
My path to regular and importantly novel (I hope, i.e., truly “creative”) and accessible presentation worth your time is longer than I anticipated, but it will<br>
(at closure) serve several years of new online work.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">March 26</font> | Humanity ultimately prevails over inhumanity.
<br><br>
Though a flourishing life at best merely tropes flourishing humanity, the life <i>may</i> certify why humanity does prevail over predation: Intelligence wins against brute force. (<font color="#c60">May 5:</font> Ukraine is winning.)
<br><br>
Otherwise, we prefer going our own way, at best with creative exuberance and authenticity, and without pretense about showing virtue which others may find<br>
in true fun of being well lastingly.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">March 21</font> | “<a href="https://gedavis.com/gt/006.0gt.html">Flourishing humanity</a>” best expresses (so far) my sense of the better continuum of progressive pragmatics. ‘Flourishing’ is used as a verb.
<br><br>
Humanity is the ethical generality that we are or can be, which ideas of “univer-<br>
sality” and “cosmopoly” conceal, because Our locus in <i>the</i> cosmos which <i>is</i> universal has nothing to do with Our Earthanity.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">March 16</font> | “<a href="https://gedavis.com/bt/dgb01/007dgb.html">Flourishing before tragedy</a>” has a double sense of ‘before’ in mind: prior to and in the face of. This extends an argument for why <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2022/03/overcoming.html">negate-ive “dialectic” is invalid</a>.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">March 10</font> | “<a href="https://gedavis.com/ci/c4/02.00c4.html">Points of humanity</a>” is about lifeworldliness, self-effacing reconciliation, being, ethical sense, and bettering our futurity.
<br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-86694636834049431872022-03-01T13:38:00.003-08:002022-03-10T15:22:33.488-08:00winter 2022<hr>
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr>
Coordinated global response to the deluded despot’s invasion of Ukraine hallmarks the best of humanity at planetary, <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2022/03/best.html">historic scale</a>.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Feb. 26</font> |
I believe I’m ready to begin a long project online piecemeal, maybe offering several named pieces per week, but at least one new posting weekly.<br>
The unnamed project conception won’t be obvious from the pieces, but gradually the accumulation of postings will imply a clearing sense of what the project is, where it’s going, its pieces becoming sequenced aspects of its emerging conception.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
Any sense of mystery there isn’t being coy, rather preserving my freedom to let the project emerge its own way from the well-defined blueprint I’ve developed.
<br><br>
That includes sometimes posting pieces very precursorily for elaboration later, <br>
as if a topic is merely its title with short annotation.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Feb. 11</font> | “<a href="https://cohering.net/ca4/c403.03.html">Idealizing better being for better humanity</a>” preludes discussions of others’ work, beginning soon.
<br><br>
But it’s implicitly motivated by feeling from others so much complacency (slackerism); and so much consumerist pandering in journalism.
<br><br>
Highly engaged artists and inquirers are commonly regarded by market society as aliens—or curiosities. Highly better-advised action and expertise easily seem elitist.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Feb. 7</font> | What’s the better (“best”?) cohering potpourri of this month’s leading ephemera?
<br><br>
It’s anyone’s guess. Sensibility progresses—and finds progress in contempor-<br>
aneity—by articulate responsiveness to news, shaping new projects, new themes, new regions of thematics, as times call for.
<br><br>
There’s no theory of Our evolving that captures a Telos, because We are ultimately Open ended, as if Endless.
<br><br>
We make The Point: <i>Of</i> wanting better life (better be<i><b>ing</b></i>, thus better <i><b>be</b></i>ing)—then better humanity?
<br><br>
Inquiring minds aim to design futures. The artful species ultimately coheres Itself, its <b>S</b>elf, like gods of conceiving authors, gods always mirroring one’s subjection to revision.
<br><br>
So, here’s a sense of “<a href="https://gedavis.com/bt/dgb01/006dgb.html">Humanity <i>today</i></a>”
<br><br><hr><font color="#c60">mid-December through January</font> | Turn of the year without students in town was heaven, since I live near campus. Creative peace!
<br><br>
But I would have gotten lots done anyway, as I <i>did</i> <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2021/11/autumn2021.html">this autumn</a>.
<br><br>
I know that vagueness here about what I’m doing is uninteresting. But it’s important to simply avow that I’m enjoying good progress—albeit slower than anticipated, like a hiker finding more steep hills than expected: Good pace, disappointing distance covered. (Secretly, I dare “you” to presume I’m not doing something grand—while keeping a humble sense of humor, I hope, about smug quipping.)
<br><br>
I used the above topographical trope for the earlier home page update note, then he obliquely called that “apt for a mindscape of variably clear and variably challenging paths” (easily regarding myself as narrative figure) because odd terms become all I can readily improvise sensibly about a venture of conceptual prospecting that is in uncharted territory—to me anyway.
<br><br>
Well, I should say: <i>regardless</i> of me, because I know the existing territories well. <br>
I <i>am</i> working in a lovely wilderness (except for postcards home: the update notes, like this one).
<br><br>
The difference gets eerie: feeling confident that my work isn’t idiosyncratic, but witnessing that others’ <i>well</i>-known views are commonly misunderstood; so, what’s the point of <i>new</i> kinds of work, if <i>accessible</i> existing work of conceptualists is regarded casually or defensively—or dismissively?
<br><br>
Scholars make lives explicating others, but who (outside of the guild) knows<br>
the difference between notable insight about the other and fictioning that other, because the common reader isn’t in a position to know the difference?<br>
“What was the original author <i>really</i> doing?“
<br><br>
Who knows; who cares?
<br><br>
So, I do what pleases me, with all due respect for new readers, but with increasing weariness about caring whether it’s useful.
<br><br>
Why not <i>only</i> keep to my own register?—and if “you” care to understand something obtuse (to you), you’ll let me know. I’m <a href="https://gedavis.com/comment.html">easy to contact</a>.
<br><br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-7176437897237424842021-12-17T21:45:00.000-08:002021-12-17T22:10:04.141-08:00autumn 2021<hr>
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
See the site <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a> for the current update.<hr><br>
An insightful but misleading newspaper article on Heidegger’s <i>Being and Time</i> caused me to comment at length, “<a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2021/12/engage.html">engaged being</a>,” for readers who aren’t familiar with Heidegger’s thinking.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Dec. 11</font> | Lots of new discussions are coming online in January onward. I’ve said something similar to that before (more than once), only because I push back my sense of immanent milestone thanks to the fruitfulness of current work.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Nov. 26</font> | The <a href="https://american-earthling.blogspot.com/2021/11/unrevealed.html">ultimacy of the universe</a> will be forever unknown. So, the ultimate point of Our form of life is ours to design, making time worthwhile, at best <a href="https://cohering.net/ca4/c414.13.html">cultivating humanity lastingly</a>.
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<hr><a name='more'></a><font color="#c60">Nov. 20</font> | The weeks have been intense: working devotedly with many hundreds of pages of notes (“page”= MSWord count). Recently, I believed I’d be ready to start something long (many postings as part of my well-ordered project), but that became discursive letters (emails) to five different-worlded scholars: literary, intellectual historial, humanistic psychological, philosophical, and political.
<br><br>
I wanted to meld my modal moments into one online discussion (since they’re all kindred), but their themes flowered too much to otherwise gather and form a singular, protean thing before my update “deadline.” And I want to move on.
<br><br>
<i>Next</i> Saturday, I’ll be ready for my New Beginning (he said).
<br><br>
Full moon tonight behind wispy clouds in strong autumn wind tropes foreboding. Yet, I’m <i>enthralled</i>.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 31</font> | “Mirror, mirror, in the text, where <i>are</i> we?,” discursively speaking:<br>
“<a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2021/10/considerations.html">for your consideration, among considerations</a>.”
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 29</font> | Today’s posting: “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2021/10/ecology.html">for a Literary university in
a democratic ecology</a>.”
<br><br>
“<a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2021/10/better.html">Countering elitism</a>” (Oct. 9) has been extended (Oct. 23), but it’s barely begun.<br>
It will probably become a long Webpage elsewhere
(but the current posting location will link to that).
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 15</font> | Trite to say, yet ultimately true: What’s Ultimately True (unlike the “arrow” of Time) is Ours to design: “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2021/10/itgives.html">The City, Life</a>.”
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Oct. 9</font> | “<a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2021/10/better.html">countering elitism</a>” (preliminary version)
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<hr><font color="#c60">Sept. 25</font> | I’m enjoying many hours per day of fruitfulness offline. My conceptual prospecting is fun. It’ll result in tens of pages—hundreds of pages—of new<br>
“stuff” online—beginning soon, I hope.
<br><br>
Anyway, if you have nothing better to do, consider the prospected <a href="https://wapo.st/3CF83sE">metaverse</a>, brought to you by the anthropological truth that whatever humans can love to conceive, they (well, <i>we</i>) will find the way to invent —and to shape into a politics! You <i>too</i> can imagine attending the <a href="https://wapo.st/2XOx1Xn">Atlantic Festival</a> address of such virtual potential, this October.
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<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-7008210489600436262021-12-16T12:34:00.010-08:002021-12-16T13:08:43.284-08:00engaged being<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr>
<br>
I came across an insightful article on Heidegger in a mainstream newspaper, written by a senior journalist, which caused me to comment at length. Afterward, I realized that some of that could be useful here for readers who are not familiar with Heidegger’s thinking.
<br><br>
The journalist mentioned Heidegger’s notion of “being in the world,” which occasioned my comment that “indeed, proactive engagement with one’s world is vital.” I didn’t elaborate, but here is a chance for an elaboration which may be surprising:
<br><br>
Heidegger was not referring to a state of affairs: <i>be</i>-ing in the world. He was referring to an activist engagement—equivalent to what French Existentialists later meant by “engagé.” “In-der-Welt-Sein” is meant by Heidegger as we literally read it: in-the-world-being. The German phrase for “being in the world” is different: “auf der Welt sein.”
<br><br>
That kind of difference—structural versus engaged—was implicitly expressed by my further comment at the journalist’s article (comment which unfortunately showed my apostrophes and dashes as errors): <blockquote>
Heidegger sought to open up others’ thinking for the sake of new ways of approaching unprecedented times authentically and lastingly.</blockquote>
<a name='more'></a>
The journalist noted that Heidegger’s thinking is “controversial,” which is an understatement. But actually, <blockquote>
Heidegger is controversial because there are a lot of phony readers. Heidegger’s impatience for “idle chatter” and what “They” say was motivated by the attitudes of his academic colleagues. Careerism and lazy reading are as old as the university as form of life.
<br><br>
The ultimate possibility for being in Time—be<i>ing</i> (even enthralled) engagement—is a “moment of vision” whereby one’s own potential is in actualization. Openness to one’s finitude (death on the horizon—far? near?) reflects that making life fulfilling shouldn’t be postponed. Now is your time. We say this to youth, in awe of their idealistic innocence: This is your time.
<br><br>
You will go through many eras, many ways to belong to proactive being. You are a potential for many identities, all brought into the singularity of this one life where you can make and leave something lasting.</blockquote>
<br>
This is part of my <a href="https://gedavis.com/mh/heid001.html">introductory discussions</a> of Heidegger’s thinking.
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<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-34233682143497172132021-10-31T18:46:00.025-07:002023-07-24T17:14:56.262-07:00for your consideration, among considerations<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr>
<br>
It’s common in philosophy to prefix assertions with “It is the case that…X.” What’s done by that, you know, is to contend an assertion (or argument) as tenable.
<br><br>
Are you already feeling averse to such consideration? Bear with me five short paragraphs, then things get interesting.
<br><br>
Inasmuch as anyone comes to that relative to their own stage of development, going forward with actual argument <i>proximally</i> depends on the other’s sense of the claim. That would pertain to two persons face-to-face.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
But the philosopher standardly has derived a typical audience or typical sense of the claim such that, in bringing the claim before “us,” one is bringing a generalized claim and/or counterclaim; and arguing for or against it.
<br><br>
In this sense, X is presented in quote marks, so to speak—in <i>epoché</i>: “..’X’ <i>is</i> [it is claimed] X.” (You might recognize that as “Convention T” for a deflationary conception of truth-as-factuality.)
<br><br>
Person A makes the claim, anticipating that it’s a claim worth making, viz. that person B will disagree (or otherwise, in solidarity, B <i>wants</i> a good argument for X).
<br><br>
B says: “X is invalid.” Person A argues <i>for</i> X. B says that A misunderstands the case. A says that B misunderstands the case.
<br><br>
In <i>any</i> case, there is misunderstanding. Is it “mine,” “yours,” or a bit of both? Is your reading of my alleged misunderstanding a mirror of your own? Conversely?
<br><br>
<i>That’s</i> the status of case making: It’s between us, whether face-to-face or, more commonly, via text: reader <i>construing</i> another’s representations. Disagreement may take place across months or years via replies and rejoinders via publication. (Or exchanges may more felicitously happen between reader and author privately.)
<br><br>
The case—whatever it’s best understood to be—is phenomenological at the point of “our” presence to and with each other communicatively (textually). What “is” the case is <i>as</i> understood by us, together, separately, or both, to some degree.
<br><br>
That presence is at least ephemeral (for face-to-face), but is likely dependent on the background sense of understanding of each person separately: the reader’s background understanding (having its own horizon) and the author’s horizoned background. Present state-of-mind (or established mood of self identity) is integral, separately (relative to one’s life) and/or as a derived mode of topical interaction (writing/speaking <—> reading/listening). That understanding at the point of “our” presence (temporally constructed between us) is an identity-in-difference: between case makers and between oneself and interpersonal identity relative to the phenomenological case.
<br><br>
The discourse, understanding, and state-of-mind belong to the presencing of “our” presence (which contains what is present: particular meanings, interpretable implicature, disclosable assumptions). Proximal difference between backgrounds, examined in depth together, scales into shared background, discovered (relative to each one’s own life) and constructed through shared time. Disputes about meaning scale into the shared sense of shared language whose history is the same for both of us: belonging together in the same linguistic relativity between us—somewhat the same (granted and made) in different readings.
<br><br>
The temporality of this calls for care: good-faith reading of the text (by default—until evidence undermines default trust) toward the author’s capability and integrity; and authorial good-faith confidence in readers’ integrity and capability: openness and <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2021/10/ecology.html">desire to learn</a>.
<br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-70537037870474003742021-10-09T15:35:00.009-07:002021-10-29T22:13:12.207-07:00countering elitism<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr>
<br>
While pursuing a tangent on elitism (that I’m against, of course) which is a problem for many persons (often as “anti-intellectualism”), I came across two passages that I deleted eight years ago from a posting on “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2013/08/philosophy-for-good.html">Philosophy for good</a>” (2013), which was “to be continued,” but wasn’t. I wanted to later discuss working “without ethnocentrism, elitism, super-naturalism, metaphysicalism, or deontic overbearingness.”
<br><br>
I also wrote (but deleted) that<blockquote>
Philosophy is often regarded in academia these days as expendable for other specialties (and “philosophy“ is often a shallow pastime in mass media). But no other domain is better able to advance important issues between and across other domains or/and to emplace life-centered thinking into large scale horizons fruitfully. <a name='more'></a></blockquote>
The original posting (indicated above) links to a discussion of “good” as “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-better-way.html">the better way</a>,” which links to a discussion of “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2016/06/what-makes-one-argument-better-than.html">the better argument as such</a>,” which has a subheading that coincidently indicates what elitist communication <i>lacks</i>: “care of (and for) the other (to be convinced) by flexible perspectivity through an event of appropriation.” In other words, commitment to working without elitism, etc. is (among <i>many</i> aspects, articulated offline) “to emplace life-centered thinking into large scale horizons fruitfully” through the better way <i>of</i> the better argument in care of (and for) the other, etc.
<br><br>
Not only is <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2018/05/reasoning.html">astute reasoning</a> good for one’s thinking. It’s <i>for</i> our inter-action, being together better, bettering the <a href="https://cohering.net/lst/pf03.html">humanity</a> of Our belonging.
<br><br>
So, I hope to extend this posting into a detailed discussion soon. When I do, I’ll note it on my <a href="https://gedavis.com/home.html">home page</a>.
<br><br><hr>
<font color="#c60">October 23</font><br><br>
Well-funded autocratic stoking of public distrust has served fossil fuel interests for many years. Capitalism would have people believe that <i>meritocracy is the risk</i> to consumerist “freedom”: Expertly informed governance is allegedly suspect because its complexities feel alien to people who always felt that the better students were condescending, were teacher’s pets, and are duplicitous because smart persons are “obsessed” with achievement. Too much education “threatens” the “traditional” bonds of family and neighborhood.
<br><br>
The better minds are partly to blame for lacking appreciation (and practical skill) for making leadership be gracious teaching; and not making time to mentor persons having trouble understanding.
<br><br>
The work of democracy is educational through and through. <i>Excellent</i> leadership—what<i>ever</i> the organization or sphere—is always, in part, teaching.
<br><br><br>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-92160002184272350162021-08-29T22:47:00.004-07:002021-10-09T10:46:08.430-07:00summer 2021<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr><br>
From journalism to phenomenology, <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2021/08/given.html">life is as is</a>.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">August 26</font> | “<a href="https://erealism.blogspot.com/2021/08/belief.html">On ‘belief’</a>” would be better titled “beyond belief” because it’s <i>briefly</i> about belief’s relation to knowing, action, and rationality. I don’t focus there on belief, but my intent remains. I <i>do</i> have a discussion to share soon.
<br><br>
<font color="#c60">Vistas in molecular engineering</font>: “<a href="https://scitechdaily.com/inescapable-covid-19-antibody-discovery-neutralizes-all-known-sars-cov-2-strains/">‘Inescapable’ COVID-19 Antibody Discovery: Neutralizes All Known SARS-CoV-2 Strains</a>.” This is truly exciting. Notice in the article the technological means of gaining the results. Sooner than one might imagine, there will be no disease....
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
And a <a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-class-habitable-exoplanets-big-life.html">new class of exoplanets</a> has been articulated, causing anticipation that discovery of life elsewhere will happen this decade.
<br><br>
Intelligent design by the self-designing species (<i>Us</i>) is so far beyond bio-natural selection. We are a species without an apt conception of itself, as we evolve the conception of our own self-conceiving (a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300125941/">second nature</a>” that <i>conceives</i> bio-nature as such).
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">August 25</font> | You want to know what I’m “ultimately” doing? Briefly? Sharing <br>
“<a href="https://erealism.blogspot.com/2021/08/pluralism.html">an individual pluralism of conceptual interests</a>” is modest.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">August 22</font> | “<a href="https://gedavis.com/bt/dgb01/005dgb.html">What’s important?</a>” We hope that the best journalism knows<br>
for sure.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">August 16</font> | I support the Biden administration’s sudden departure from Afghanistan, more enthusiastically than does Tom Friedman, which <a href="https://nyti.ms/37PlMA0#permid=114120723">I note at his article</a>. But it’s all really so complicated, beyond what the word count that the <i>Times</i> “comments” feature will allow.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">August 13</font> | I began a note for here on the appalling rate of vaccine refusal by persons with easy access to vaccination and reliable expert guidance. But animus toward voluntary stupidity isn’t useful, while I won't give time to detailing the authoritarian pathology of it all.
<br><br><!--more-->
Here’s a <a href="https://nyti.ms/3iFe5CE#permid=114079951">response I did last night</a> to Paul Krugman’s recent polemic about U.S. Senate animus toward the public good.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">July 31</font> | I wrote two long emails to an astrobiologist, in light of a recent article of his—fun discussion which I’d love to share, but I’d have to explain contexts which were familiar to him. I’ll share that later. My theme was: They are really Out There—and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199646309/">The Great Silence</a> is intended .
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">July 19</font> | “<a href="https://american-earthling.blogspot.com/2021/07/darkness.html">being in The Dark</a>” is about the incomprehensible cosmos.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">June 19</font> | “<a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2021/06/perspectivity.html">A point of flexible perspectivity</a>” is a meta-preface to lots of work which I’ve brought to closure offline, like a finally-clarified topographic map. It’s serendipitous about journeying on.
<br><br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-68546312401393979132021-08-28T18:52:00.000-07:002021-09-18T00:36:20.885-07:00It is as: given as is<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr><font color="#c60">from journalism to phenomenology</font><br>
<br>
Professional journalism (distinct from promotional writing, disguised as “journalism”) has a default stance toward topic T that is “reportedly T” or “allegedly, T…” or, implicitly, “the story goes” or “It’s said that…” or “They say.” (Of course, a reliable source may simply assert what is the case, evincing trust by reputation.)
<br><br>
Representing what claims to be valid is separate from establishing the validity of it. Ordinarily, the two aren’t distinguished by a subject of reporting because the speaker/writer postures itself as trustworthy. Ordinary life postures itself as validly present.
<br><br>
But astute journalism frames the presumably frameless as being under question about its pretense of transparency. A subject of reporting may be playing a confidence game of “guileless” duplicity. “Who, <i>me</i>?”
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
The pretense of the subject is <i>always</i> possibly frameable as a “non-“posturing posture—yet, one that <i>could</i> be actually trustworthy.
<br><br>
In other words, the phenomenological <i>epoché</i> is implicit to astute journalism, but not as prelude to conceptual analysis of its own framing and framability. Though a reputable journalist may straightly tell readers how the story indeed goes, he implicitly postures himself as a known professional (standardly by employment and byline) who has moved beyond skepticism about what is the case only after living through his default framing.
<br><br>
But normally, the reporting stance is “Here’s the story: what they say about how it goes.” (Heidegger’s vital notion of “They-self” in <i>Being and Time</i> is integral to his later workbooks of the 1930s—“<i>Considerations</i>”—for his critical phenomenology of gigantic or “great” pretenses.)
<br><br>
An entire story may be, by journalistic default, in frame-quote marks, like the distinction between mention and use in linguistic analysis. To assert something <i>as</i> said is different from <i>saying</i> (affirming) what is said, i.e., asserting that something.
<br><br>
“The sun rises,” so to speak.
<br><br>
He “loves” her, “truly.”
<br><br>
Or the writer may be implicitly highlighting an uncanny triteness of something posturing itself as novel or genuine.
<br><br>
A phenomenologist turns this into questioning how <i>anything</i> pretends to be without interpretive frame, precisely because everything is already always received <i>as</i> understandable.
<br><br>
A common acceptability of A is just that its conditions of understanding are so commonly taken for granted as uncontroversial: The guy is trustworthy. The object is the “original” (though its conception isn’t especially novel).
<br><br>
Framelessness is a kind of frame, the unquestioned frame: “We” may all agree that the emperor is finely clothed.
<br><br>
Getting more technical: “Is” conceals the interpretivity of whatever appeals, for the sake of definite assertability and/or for action-oriental confidence.
<br><br>
When receptive “as” frames “is,” one gets phraseology that isn’t a “well-formed” sentence (“the sun as rising”), but that’s predication, too. What ‘is’ does that ‘as’ doesn’t is to stipulate—or proffer a pretension of—there being a literal present (presence as merely present).
<br><br>
Persons may need that for peace of mind or manageable coherence. Also, confidence about presentness (“the” present) serves <i>genuinely</i> basic interests<br>
of action well, especially for advancing one’s life admirably: Growing up well<br>
gives one an oriental reliabilism, which we commonly trope as one being “experienced”: She’s very experienced in/with E, so she’s thereby quite successful or/and (therefore) trustworthy.
<br><br>
Yet, that life-oriental legacy of self-efficacy is <i>generatively</i> framed by “good sense” <i>capability</i> which has been, over years, cultivated—by oneself through fascination and curiosity; by others through concerted parenting and teaching; and, in all events, by love of learning. At best, one gains autonomous maturity that we associate with admirable independence, which may be richly conceived as high-scale flourishing.
<br><br>
That’s a life oriented by ongoing engagement, which shapes the appeal of events. What appeals is <i><b>as</b></i> part of future-oriented engagement. A futurity of interest frames all appealing presents <i>as</i> received <i>for</i> one’s responsive ongoingness.
<br><br>
A life’s futurity frames every present. An individuated scale of understanding frames every perception <i>as</i> appreciated and, at best, as more appreciable.
<br><br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-39988876244562802172021-06-19T00:00:00.007-07:002021-08-13T21:57:20.794-07:00a point of flexible perspectivity<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr>
<br>
Here are two ways—two allegories, two metaphoricities—to express where <br>
I’ve been and I am in The Open:<blockquote>
<b>1:</b> I’ve finished the design of the house, but I don’t want to take time to see it built (which <i>would</i> clearly show you how I’ve been: designing the house) before developing another design. <br><br>
I’m a builder, too, but architecture is far more appealing.
<br><br>
Well, could I at least share the blueprint drawings of the façade?<br>
Yes, but that wouldn’t express the point of the house as <i>result of<br>
a generative process</i>. The blueprint doesn’t represent the <b>W</b>ork <br>
which has the ostensible result.
<br><br>
Indeed, the house is a design of generativity—in a sense: a meta-house, a conceptual dwelling, whose architexture shows only by living through it—which wouldn’t be to recapitulate its genesis; rather, to live through an appropriation of the house with you.
<br><br> <hr><a name='more'></a><br>
<b>2:</b> I’m well into the highlands. Wish you were here. I haven’t scaled the peak, but I know the way to the highest vista. <br><br>
However, the view from the highland here is spectacular enough<br>
for now. Yet, I don’t want to take time to do photos and explain<br>
the landscape. I want to go on to the peak.
<br><br>
But having secured the way, I <i>am</i> coming back now to return with you to the peak. </blockquote>
My metaphorical monograph has six chapters. Summing my sub-sections equals 30 sub-sectional topics. But many of the sub-sections have sub-sections (sub-sub-sections, relative to its chapter), like normal chapter sections have constituent topics. Summing all the topics (and regarding a section that lacks a sub-section as a chapter topic), my monograph has 46 topics.
<br><br>
Yet, a sub-sectioned table of contents is a linear scaffold of what, in my case, is non-linear in conception, such that there may be no good reason to <i>avoid</i> fleshing out topics in ephemerally preferred order—doing, say, topic 4.2.3 before topic 2.1 or topic 1.3.2, because circumstance (days go by, new literary advents by others are affective) causes 4.2.3 to be more appealing “now” than linear development<br>
by scaffold, even though the linear sequence is appropriate generally. But, all in all, the linear scaffold is the path I want prevailing in the long run.
<br><br>
Meanwhile, I know that my peak view in The Open includes distant emergence of other peaks, where most enthralling of all is that we belong together in the same evolving.
<br><br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-78274977231208817142021-06-05T00:16:00.009-07:002021-10-08T19:46:07.548-07:00spring 2021<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr><br>
I’m working with my notes 10 to 14 hours daily, believing I have a realistic sense of the distance to a horizon (goal)—“new postings regularly, beginning in a week or so,” he says, below—and I’m usually wrong.
<br><br>
However, I’ve gotten to a culminative point that the coming week will clarify (offline). I’m stoked (as we used to say), exuberant. I wish I don’t need sleep. (Maybe the E.T.s, sending unidentifiable aerial phenomena around, can pursue their fun 24/7.)
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
Anyway, I’ll share a comment I posted yesterday at a <i>NYTimes</i> article about a renowned surgeon who really nearly died from covid-19 complications. It’s simply about the <a href="https://nyti.ms/2SYdfpZ#permid=113105487">intrinsic value of human life</a>.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">May 22</font> | Editing within and across hundreds of pages of notes is a tedious process about which you don’t want to read. The work is the backstage basis for posting and paging for the coming year or more.
<br><br>
I expect to have new postings regularly, beginning in a week or so—probably this coming week, before May 29. I expect.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">April 10</font> | If you didn't see the <i>American Masters</i> episode <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/stream-oliver-sacks-his-own-life-documentary/17521/">on Oliver Sacks’s life</a>, you must. It’s two hours, but the last 45 minutes makes it all worthwhile. Entertaining memoir becomes a report from the front lines of prospecting in neurophenomenology, then offering a truly memorable ending filmed during the days of February, 2015, when he wrote “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html">My Own Life</a>” for the <i>New York Times</i>.
<br><br>
<hr><!--more--> <font color="#c60">March</font> | I’m making lots of progress on a topic complex whose conceptual technicality has been intense. There will be tens of parts.
<br><br>
I anticipate short postings done intermittently over the next year. A series won’t seem to be part of an overriding topic until a set ends, then gets a group title.<br>
A set of titled groups of themes will be grouped, becoming a chapter of I-don’t-know-what. The chapters themselves will emergently define how they belong together. Prospecting lives in openness.
<br><br>
<hr><br>
I have a <i>revised</i> posting about <a href="https://american-earthling.blogspot.com/2021/03/being.html">the Internet as evolving organism</a>.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">February 5—March 3</font> | The point of more democracy is more good life among us whose emergent pointillism of good society depends on the good between “us.”
<br><br>
I’ve made an intimate conception of such bettering, “<a href="https://gedavis.com/ac/005.00ac.html">Biden’s and my democratic society</a>,” relative to parts of Biden’s Inaugural Address of January, then extrapolating.
<br><br>
The good (yes, <i>the</i>, in a special sense) between and among us emerges from the lives of <i>persons</i>, obviously, which, for conceptual interest, implies the standard philosophical interest in understanding personhood, which is also a keynote of a humanism which isn’t metaphysicalist.
<br><br>
But I have a <a href="https://gedavis.com/ci/005.01ci.html">sense of being a person</a> which is better than standard senses of “personhod” (or “personal identity”).
<br><br>
My discussion’s component notions and directly-related ideas will be more detailed later, but I’m confident about the March conception.
<br><br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-3325502712657224832021-02-13T21:43:00.004-08:002021-06-19T09:56:54.409-07:00winter 2021<hr><br>
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
I have 18 non-political topics I want to discuss intently (i.e., not casually) soon—over the next month or so—but I need a few more days before beginning here. Those 18 will form a constellational set that is
to be the first and longest part of nine (seven shorter ones and another long one). I hope to begin putting new items online next week. | <font color="#c60">March 3</font>: The first of the 18 is available, “<a href="https://gedavis.com/ci/005.01ci.html">personhood…</a>,” and the other 17 are consolidated for detailing and sharing; but I’m unsure when I’ll give time to those (and the other eight) because I want to wander back into more-creative writing.
<br><br>
<hr><a name='more'></a><font color="#c60">Feb. 3</font> | A genuine sense of nationalism derives from the <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2021/02/nationality.html">living notion of nationality</a>, which is the basis for a concept of nation.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Feb. 1</font> | The challenge of humanistic union on the confederated planet is like translating bipartisanship into exemplary local fairness and out to transnational collaborative leadership: “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2021/02/challenge.html">elusive union, confederated planet</a>”
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Jan. 23</font> |
I’m gathering a lot of political themes into focus relative to a long view of the Biden administration and current events. | <font color="#c60">March 3</font>: That’s introduced by “Biden’s and my democratic society,” but the now-consolidated set of topics are shelved for later detailing and sharing after a set of ostensibly non-political topics are presented.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Jan. 9</font> | A bunch of discussions that emerged during the U.S. presidential campaign were organized into the “<a href="https://gedavis.com/ac/004.00ac.html">democratic America</a>” project,
which will develop further during this year.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Jan. 8</font> | Philosophy of law isn’t an academic pastime, which is my initial motive for “<a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2021/01/fairness.html">a vote for notes of fairness</a>.” Is the emancipatory interest in <i>free</i> speech now antedated by the virtue of <i>fair</i> speech relative to malicious extremism online? Can we institute practical constraints? If justice is basically about ensuring fairness (and preventing malicious unfairness), then standards of fair speech should be clarifiable, codifiable, and transposable into law.
<br><br>
Yesterday, I discovered that a large project from mid-2018 never got listed in its site Area. Now listed: "<a href="https://gedavis.com/gt/003gt.html">astute reasoning and ‘fake news’</a>,” which is also the main point of the fairness discussion. Noting that discussion at the Facebook/Habermas Page caused a couple of comments by someone, which caused me to enjoy an <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/p/comment.html">extended reply</a>.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">Jan. 6</font> | A new page, “<a href="https://gedavis.com/mh/heid015.html">Hermes was a savvy dude</a>,” implicitly counters an unmentioned scholar’s view that Heidegger is self-invalidating. Though I’ve read his chapter carefully, commented at length to him (which he—an acquaintance, a friend—invited!), and welcomed discussion with him (no reply), I go no further with his discourse in my page here than his use of a passage from Heidegger which premises his chapter (a passage he misunderstands) and which he applies to his interest in Moses, though I have in mind all along the scholar’s elaborated desire, in terms of his “Heidegger,” to show an originary validity of sacred text.
<br><br>
<hr><font color="#c60">December 30, 2020</font> | The “Heidegger studies” <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2020/12/heidegger.html">project has been re-organized</a>—after carefully reading Heidegger’s entire <i>Contributions to Philosophy: from enowning</i> in exactly one week (doing nothing much else).
<br><br><br>
<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-25422355748890481502021-01-08T14:11:00.006-08:002021-02-02T10:29:35.270-08:00a vote for notes of fairness<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr>
<br>
Someone who is interested in the notion of public sphere these days caused me<br>
to reply with some references and comment that I want to share, but expand.
<br><br>
Coincidently, <i>New York Times</i> journalist Thomas Edsall has this week re-raised issues of <a href="https://nyti.ms/2L9cUgP">free speech with legal scholars</a> in view of the authoritarian behavior of Trump (nothing new!—but now <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/pelosi-trump-take-away-nuclear-codes-456529">more dangerous than ever</a>) and in view of the free reign of right-wing opinion in “viral” social spaces.
<br><br>
That dramatizes how philosophy of law is not basically about academic dispute. It’s about how we make and keep society good, humane, and, to my mind—and to Habermas, surely—make and keep society pragmatically progressive, which is also to say progressively pragmatic.
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And <i>that’s</i> not mere academicism. What we are to do pertains to the scale of relevance that is each person’s daily life: being well, always being open to learning <i>fundamentally</i> new ways of thinking, and promoting community.
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So, for the Facebook inquirer—who portrayed himself as seriously engaged with Habermasian interests—I recommended chapter 27 of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231166427/">The Habermas Handbook</a></i> on the public sphere 50 years later, but discovered that the inquirer was just a casual browser, a tourist who wasn’t even spending the night (figuratively speaking: no reply, no follow up, no thanks, no expression of much further interest).
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Regarding the other as a fellow traveler is usually disappointing. <i>No</i> biggie!<br>
I’m here to be useful, to whatever degree that works.
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But so many of us are shoppers <i>only</i>. We’re largely a species of tourists—<br>
no thanks to an economic world that normally demands maximal time on the job, just to survive (maximum work for minimally-acceptable pay).
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Notions of thoughtfulness in life are undermined by the realities of social economics that feed on sound bites, quick messaging, consumerist attitudes toward information as entertainment, admiration for slackers with Attitude,<br>
and so on.
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Who are we? Who are you?
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I don’t post to Facebook/Habermas about <a href="https://gedavis.com/jh/hs.html">my own odyssey</a> of thinking and writing, but I should. Habermas is very old—and actually a voice of the last century, all in all.
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Always, a leading voice recedes into speaking for its era, yet implicitly being<br>
the question of what transcends one’s literal times to be appropriate for ones<br>
to come.
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We grow up, we achieve a lot (maybe), we pay forward (family, memorable influence), then move on: new ventures, old age. That continuum transcends eras, as a life is a life.
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What’s a good life? Such questions are timeless.
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In philosophy courses, undergraduates are “fated” to be Platonic at first, because mental development goes that way, before maybe moving into better paradigms.
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The issues that occupied Habermas transcend his specific views. So, it’s unlikely that someone else will do better soon—certainly not easily. So what? How about doing the best you can? That’s fine! That’s fair. Do it. If you can do better than Habermas, good for you! Show up.
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Doing one’s best should require appreciating your own times as best you can—your life, your neighborhood (in the widest sense: conceptuality, too), then appropriating others’ singular voice usefully for others, importantly (one hopes), and at best, lastingly.
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My path has been my best effort to explore what thinking might do well to appreciate in our century—but also, without high pretense: I share what I enjoy.<br>
I don’t posture some kind of exemplarity (but I <i>do</i> explore that theme a lot!: What <i>is</i> admirable exemplarity?). I share what I love to explore, just as an artist shares what’s done for the sake of itself—just as the “pure” researcher shares discoveries that have no discernible application (like the nature of the universe: Why is there <i>anything</i> rather than nothing?).
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So, I share references, share interests, and satisfy myself that there’s good reason to do that.
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I told the inquirer—who seemed interested in what I do—to look at section 5 of “<a href="https://gedavis.com/gt/003gt.html">astute reasoning and ‘fake news’</a>,” which is “just a few paragraphs” at the bottom of that main page. (He did reply: “I’ll definitely be giving this a read.” Thanks.<br>
Is ”be giving a read” basically like ”I’ll take a look”? Whatever.)
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So, what about freedom of expression in Our age of social virality? Should the emancipatory notion of <b>free</b> speech be replaced by a practical notion of <b>fair</b> speech? (OK: <i>Who</i> decides what’s fair? But <i>that’s</i> the question which must be addressed! What <i>is</i> fairness, such that the sacred value can be a practical standard in social space?)
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Aren’t questions of fairness as potentially intimate as one’s daily life?
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What’s fair for good neighborhood? Good community? Good region? Good nationality (that is not crude nationalism)?
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Isn’t fairness also about beauty, such that The Good and The Beautiful somehow belong together in some kind of Truth?
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Stay safe. Make the year possibly new every day.
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Today is the first day of the rest of your truthfulness.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5396967647453766519.post-59736901006782086342020-12-29T22:37:00.007-08:002020-12-30T11:07:30.265-08:00Heidegger studies, 2020<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
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<br />
I’ve simplified the main/top level of <a href="https://gedavis.com/mh/heid.html">the project</a>, which divides into five kinds<br />
of interest:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>sharing Heidegger’s interests reliably for new readers;</li><li>regarding scholarship about Heidegger as topic (barely begun); </li><li>sharing my own engagement with Heidegger’s texts;</li><li>defending good faith reading of Heidegger relative to his political times; and</li><li>prospecting the usefulness of Heidegger’s ways for our century (barely begun). </li></ul>
This has involved changing the section location of some discussions (not the urls of any discussion), so that some embedded discussions become more readily evident, particularly: </span><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><a href="https://gedavis.com/mh/apting01.html">an introduction</a> to <i>Contributions to Philosophy: from enowning</i>, which has been expanded.</span></li><li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><a href="https://gedavis.com/mh/heid012.html">a discussion</a> of Heidegger’s <i>Considerations</i>. </span></li><li>and <span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><a href="https://gedavis.com/mh/harpt06.html">discussions</a> about three controversial passages in Heidegger’s notebooks.</span></li></ul><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
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I’ve better differentiated pursuit of my interests and advocacy of Heidegger’s,<br />
by moving some items to an expanded “<a href="https://gedavis.com/mh/heid002.html">Appropriating</a>” section. I’ve added to<br />
a long excursion that began years ago as an annotated letter to a Heideggerian acquaintance (titled “letter to a friend”), making it into much more of an essay about “<a href="https://gedavis.com/mh/apting02.html">a Heideggerian individuation</a>,” focused better on <i>Contributions to Philosophy</i>. (This past week, I read the entire <i>Contributions</i> slowly, yet carefully and completely, doing nothing else the entire week apart from life-managerial necessities—and a few emails to a Heideggerian correspondent [who had no idea “where” I was in the “jointures” of “be-ing” {“beyng”}]). Believe it or not, <i>Contributions</i> makes clear sense to me, and I really believe I understand what Martin was doing.
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The project is barely begun, but adding to it substantially will depend on future circumstance and more progress on other projects, in light of which (living in this century—<i>still</i>, thank goodness [not yet vaccinated]) the Heidegger project would be furthered.
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</span></div>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.com