mindfulness • gary e. davis • berkeley


	Area	more flourishing

	“mindfulness” gary e. davis	October 14, 2022

So called—but I’m pursuing a conceptual interest. Just-so assertions below share themes which, I’m claiming, can be usefully validated in formal detail. I would argue that these stances are better than contrary alternatives by others (not yet addressed here). So, this isn’t yet argumentation. It’s a set of themes which I would be glad to further detail.

minding

Commonly in philosophy, one worries about the “nature” of mind in a nomin-
ative sense: “Mind is….” “A mind has….” Philosophers readily echo a history
of metaphysicalist longing.

But persons’ use of ‘mind’ is more likely actional: “I mind that…” “We are mind-
ing the children.” In a standard dictionary, the meaning of the noun is integrally about activity of oneself considered mentally or psychally.

Thinking about mind commonly aims for some comprehensive sense of men-
tality, yet always of we whose interest is always actional, including thinking about actionality (so to speak) or capability to act.

Endless ways to approach minding are available, especially (given the actional interest of minding) as inquiry into selfness—we interested beings—engaged in whatever, including self-reflectivity. A mind is always a person minding.

Mind, as conceptual topic of interest by attention (attentionality: “conscious-
ness”) belongs to we who want to understand or care to understand oneSelf conceptually as a mind; but that’s retrospective of doing things, minding (always expressing a mentality of interest), which is retrospective of being minded (being a minding); or, as I’ve prospected, being mindal.

internalist and externalist interest belonging together as oneSelf

An easy, practical, felicitous entrance into this is through the psychal differ-
ence between internality of attention and externality of attention. This differ-
ence is representable as my recent differentiation of Self (wholly felt), self (sense of selfidentity: ¶5 here), and presence with/to others (¶10 here). One’s attention may lean toward being introversional or being extraversional.

For persons ordinarily, feeling one’s whole Selfness is probably not well differ-
entiated (S/s differentiability), thus an internalist sense of identity as oneSelf is diffuse; but the difference is real: difference between [a] implicit feeling of lifeworldliness (Selfworldliness with futural, life Purposive orientation; and sense of developmental background); and [b] readily representable sense of identity of oneself or selfidentity.

A diffuseness of selfidentity is also relative to the various relationships with others (which is more than role differences within a relationship): a comple-
mentarity of autonomy (independence) and belonging (interdependence).

Representable selfidentity implicitly coheres Self (S/s-differentiable efficacy) and [inter]personal life (s/p-differentiable efficacy). Articulable sense of oneSelf (selfidentity) tropes (or renders) one’s enactional feeling for being in the world singularly, which is also a singular world of oneSelf (as no one else has a similar sense of lifeworld-oriented futurity and autobiographical sense of Our times).

The better sense of selfidentity feels a holistic cohering of life-oriented Self (internality “of” worldly appeals), engaged self, and external belonging with others and the world. A flourishing Janus-faced mirrorplay of S/s/p differ-
entiability is generative for making a life—and integral to creativity.

oneself as feeling identity

For convenience, I’ll refer to S/s-differentiable psychality as psychal feeling (affectional valuing of being of-and-in one’s world); and s/p-differentiable psychality as psychal identity (sense of oneself as being many interpersonal relationships).

Feeling is integrally valuational, as well as somatic. Value and emotion both express the ontogenic (individuated) Time of one’s life, which has enriched valuing; and which has reliably oriented affectivity by what matters. Feeling for what matters orients action, as if what matters owns that appellant, orienting value (though mattering mirrors one’s temporality of preference: one’s life-
generated feeling for preferred identity).

The phenomenal integrity of what matters reflects the temporal background
of oneSelf. One’s selfidentical feeling “of” the world represents oneself as feeling for the world: one’s appreciability.

minding is intelligent

Commonly, selfidentity is oriented by feelings of self efficacy or competence, rather than more wholly as an orientation of one’s life by prevailing values and loves because felt identity is partly composed by one’s sense of efficacy which is expressed by shown competence. This is the normal focus of interest in “intelligence”: capability for competently enacting, which is individuation of “fluid” capacity into “crystallized” capability through recursive learning. In a sense, intrinsic intelligence is crystallizable learnability.

Overt interests of enactive efficacy (deliberate goal orientation) are disting-
uishable from implicit interests of oneSelf (long-termed or far horizoned purposiveness: Purpose) which orient want of goal-oriented purposes.

Yet effective intelligence as such remains non-attentioonal (self-concealing focus of individuated Selfality)—maybe as confidence of feeling—in Its showing as overt self-efficacy.

Our showing differential representability/articulability of experential phenom-
ena (relative to individuated capacities) is what is modeled by theorists of intelligence. The leading approach of Robert J. Sternberg has influenced me for many years.

High intelligence shows as flexibility of framing and flexibility of interpretive perspective.

minding as conceptually beyond scientific modeling

Wholly minding one’s life is certainly more than being a mind—or rather, being a mind (a conceptual focus) is a derived mode of wholly minding one’s life..

I would argue that “the” mind is an individuated mental organism which—as I’ve rendered—shows as being oneSelf. We grow to appropriate somatic givens of childhood for the sake of what matters to our increasingly singular life. Increasingly—for the highly individuating person—one’s non-prefrontal brain is appropriated by prefrontal self-enhanciveness for the sake of one’s love of living (finding fulfilling enjoyment).

Brain damage ruins one’s life, of course; but thriving health subjects one’s lower mentability to flourishing mindality which is thereby served for the sake of fulfilling enjoyment of one’s life. The psychalogical correlate of Michael Gaz-
zaniga’s cognitive-neuroscientific question “Who’s in Charge?” (which argues scientifically for “mind” over brain) is “How may oneself (and identity) best appropriate feeling (value over emotion)?”

how fully minding can one be?

That’s always an open question—or should be, because learning never ends—
or should never end, because one’s potential is never exhausted—or can be, because fulfilling enjoyment can be as endless as life continuing, then contin-
ued (by one’s possible legacy, one’s Mark on Earth) and advanced across generations.

So, how idealistic can one credibly be? How aspiring can be one’s sense of life span? “The best within us” might seek a high scale of holism whose appellant cohering draws one into horizons of high telic potential—high scalarity of credibly and feasibly grand horizonality, such as prospecting the future of humanity (which many writers do, e.g., theoretical physicist Michio Kaku
and James Lovelock).

minding aptly

In any case, minding appropriately balances minding effusively. Aspiring holism is balanced by focal attentiveness in relation with all that’s relevant irt
a given interest.

Fully minding is wholly caring. Action-oriental value is of appreciating “all things considered,” with “all due diligence,” etc., such that a preference is truly better than other options (and readily justifiable). Knowledge-based decision is directly relative to good authority (or/and conscientious epistemic process or epistemogeny).

The better conception of pragmatic thinking is wholly mindful. This is an important theme for me, which can be systematically elaborated far more comprehensively than I’ve shown so far via Habermas, Heidegger and episodic conceptual prospecting.

All in all, we want to see better humanity for our heirs, mindfully bonding neighborliness with democratic hope and engagement relative to Our shared planet.

mindfulness as a way of being

At best, creativity is ecogenic of its SelfWorldliness (or holism of lifeworldli-
ness). Wholly flourishing can be manifoldly aspirational, protean. Fully minding loves that (which, by the way, is beyond useful empiricism about that).