a 5-fold sense of site • gary e. davis • berkeley



	a 5-fold sense of site gary e. davis	October 2025

The five Areas below are entrances into a large-scale sense of project. But the Areas, as separate, main organizational titles, are heuristic. The site is largely about conceptuality of value (importance), through provisional topics venturing toward a cohering of living importances at large scale. Each Area is simply defined here, with a link to included discussions. The subtitle of each Area below (in grey) is more than facetious. For example, finding reason to live is sometimes elusive for persons; so, inquiring into having good reason is not trivial. Beyond sharing my enjoyment of conceptual pursuits, I’m prospecting a conception of philosophy beyond its legacy of metaphysicalist longing. The durability of philo- sophy is at least that it invites new generations to enjoy conceptual pursuits, teaching conceptual importances. Interest in ultimate cohering is an ultimately open (post-metaphysicalist) venture. Better senses of interest in ultimate cohering don’t transpose into the five heuristic Areas below. Yet, being for being well, enjoying conceptual inquiry, thinking for good, advancing community, and flourishing wholly is why philosophy matters, thus what intricate analysis can best serve.

October 2022
being well: enjoying life

Living “up” to being well is valued by everyone, at least implicitly (if not overtly idealized).

“Being well” anticipates better understanding (in conceptual terms) of whatever interest, by idealizing a wholly flourishing life that may, to my mind, be exemplified by supporting (advocating, working toward) ecologically flourishing humanity, through advancing community.

August 2025
conceptual inquiry: pursuing high fun

How may conceptuality itself best be understood? What is being a “leading mind”
in specialist literature? How may astute reading best be understood?

I find a cohering of leading thought in a “Found“ telicity of leading voices.

October 2025
good thinking: virtuously enabling

This is about what may proceed in light of conceptual inquiry, most relative to interest in interdisciplinary conceptual design. But good thinking is practical;
it serves being well, through curiosities to follow diligently, projects to sustain excellently, friends to keep close, valuable time to give....

That’s a simple point about good thinking, not a definition of it. I enjoy a proximal vagueness in the notion of “good thinking.” For example, “being well” (the site Area) implicitly expresses a comprehension of valuing good thinking while overtly attend-ing to themes about individuating capability for thinking about—or theme-ing—whatever.

September 2024
advancing community: causing excellence

Understanding this in light of good thinking.

October 2025
being in Time: adapting fruitfully

Meanwhile, life goes on (being in Time), at scales beyond capture.

For me, challenges of conceptual prospecting credibly are fun, as well as expressing fidelity to vital importances.

One always prefers some importances (values), concepts, views, etc. over others, but warranting that is likely unconvincing. Establishing comprehensive and durable standards of “higher” valuation—Value (capitalized)—is, of course, a contentious venture. Capitalizing ‘value’ intends to imply orientation by interest in large-scale, lifeworld-oriented valuation.

One appealing way to characterize my site Areas here is as entrances into altogether deepening (verb) explorations in Value relativity without ultimate relativism.

Prospects of higher conceptual insightfulness in being well (analogous with higher education) provide better opportunities for being well than “lower” insightfulness (analogously as a “high school” education is not very high).

But whose “higher” is better? Matters of conceptual heights can be as elusive as wanting the history of philosophy to have singular meaning. Ultimately, conceptuality is evolving.

But a general sense of highness in understanding can be explicated credibly. But that easily becomes a venture of conceptual inquiry relative to “your” conception of conceptuality so far (i.e., relative to an interlocutor’s stage of understanding), which educational excellence advances.

Idealizing a wholly flourishing life can credibly prospect notions of intrinsic value. Isomorphically, a conception of ecologically flourishing humanity can credibly pro-
spect a conception of being “human” which is beyond biologistic conceptions of being
a person (being person-al or showing personity). Ideally, conceptions can compre-
hend a Conversation of Humanity fruitfully enough for given interests.

So, what can be a humanism which is non-scientistically analogous with the global singularity of the scientific community?

The ultimacy of value is Valuing (integral valuing). To my mind, there is ultimacy of Value (comprehensively integral value), which is evolving enactively, by aggregates of conceptual venturing, thereby maybe evolving conceivability. Our evolving is ultimately Open, of course.

And who knows when the Great Silence will end, since our astrobiology will teach us how intelligent life can know that there is other-stellar life (via biosignitures, if not technological signs) long before such witnessed life knows how to witness.