want of psychal cohering • gary e. davis • berkeley


	Project	personified psychal cohering

	ordinary attitude’s prevailing want of psychal cohering gary e. davis	August 18, 2023

Though ordinariness usually has no overt sense of attitude (let alone psychality—but surely “self,” maybe “soul”), one certainly wants to feel cohering— commonly called “peace of mind”—about one’s life. Every aspect of Self and World (Selfworldliness: last paragraph here) “should” cohere, though no two persons would likely agree much on what taxonomy of aspects is best. (Bring in the philosophers.)

Any good sense of lifeworldly (or SelfWorldly) cohering should involve prevailing interests of action (durable importances, orienting purposes), recognized integrity of intending, ideals, and clear futurity.

“Bottom line” (an accounting life avows), we want reliable orientation of activity, premised on an ordinary “realism” (in a folk pragmatic sense).

But constellating a character of best life can be as variable as wanting better humanity. Situational relevance calls into play appropriate selectivity of aspects. Categorial prospecting should want to be useful.

Earlier, I mentioned (merely so) a continuum of understanding which is personal (psychal), cultural, conceptual, social, and political, a “pCsp” continuum (capitalizing C to symbolize an important ambiguity of what’s overtly cultural and what’s implicitly conceptual in understanding; capitalizing ‘p’ might be useful).

Ordinarily, persons have a nebulous sense of such differentiations, if any at all. “Intersectionality” is vague: What’s cultural in individuation, distinct from what’s social? What’s observationally psychal (personal), distinct from what’s privately selfidentical? What’s a good sense of each, such that differentiation makes fruitful sense?

(Inquirers normally don’t distinguish interpersonal relations from “social” relations, thereby undermining the character of near-and-dear ethical life by collapsing the difference into nebulous sociality, associated with deontic norms. Also, inquirers equate selfness [potentially autonomous] with subjectivity and regard sociality as intersubjective, such that a potential flexibility of s/p differentiality is unavailable.)

Ordinary life usually has a nebulous appreciation of such differences, and individuations are very variable. But the differences are always discernibly “there,” implicitly at least. Articulate appreciation is useful—important.

next—> from primal personification to individuational appreciation