In general, they each describe an approach, a method, but they do not claim to have reached the bottom. There's a big difference between claiming to be pointing the way, and claiming to have reached the end of the voyage. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly. They create a specific ‘way’( a metaphysics), and assume future philosophy will follow this path and add more clarity and detail.
In other words, they claim to have reached the bottom (the way) as far as they can tell. Obviously if they were able to detect a more originary ground than the one they present in their writing they would talk about it. When a philosopher believes they have penetrated to the most fundamental level of things, this means that going any further in that direction would lead to the dead end of nihilism, meaningless relativism, an infinite regress, the elimination of the world, incoherence, or some such catastrophic consequence. These are the accusations they typically make against the philosophers who follow and critique them for not having reached the most fundamental level of metaphysical grounding, and who proceed to burrow deeper.
What you will instead find is that a philosopher will remind us they have only sketched out a beginning framework, which will need to be completed by future generations of thinkers. In other words, while they cannot conceive of a more originary ground that would stand up to scrutiny , they tend to be quite aware of the incompleteness of their framework,that they have only pointed the way, and this ‘way’ needs to be filled in with more detail.

It's conceivable that some X becomes visible only when transcended. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Which is why historical movements are only identified in hindsight.

I don't think I've read any philosopher who believed oneself to have "reached the irreducible basis of things and has stripped thought of superstitious accretions". If I knew that this was the case, before reading it though, I'd reject it as bad philosophy, and not bother reading it. — Metaphysician Undercover

What about Descartes( certainty of the cogito) , Kant(irreducibility of the categories) , Hegel( Absolute subjectivity) , Husserl ( apodictic certainty) and Heidegger( Being as fundamental ontology). I could add Spinoza, Leibnitz and many others to the list.

How could they be when every significant scientific development in history requires a change in philosophical underpinnings?
— Joshs

Could you explain what that means? — Jackson

I’m a fan of Thomas Kuhn. His paradigm shifts are philosophical transformations.

↪Wayfarer ↪Joshs What do you mean by "worldview" in contrast to (a) metaphysics? — 180 Proof

I tend to use them interchangeably.

I have to say that every philosophical position I’ve ever read believes that it has reached the irreducible basis of things and has stripped thought of superstitious accretions. One can only recognize their position as just one more worldview once they have transcended it. — Joshs

Sounds like you haven't read very much philosophy — Metaphysician Undercover

Would you like to elaborate?

One can only recognize their position as just one more worldview once they have transcended it.
— Joshs

Fair enough, for which the awareness of there being something to be transcended would be a pre-requisite. — Wayfarer

The awareness comes from within the sciences themselves. Heidegger argued that for the most parts the sciences dont think, they construct their own regional ontology and remain constrained within it.

Philosopher of science Joseph Rouse disagrees with this limited view of science:

“Science as such could not uncover its “essence,” the metaphysics of the world as picture which made the transformation of science into a research enterprise seem appropriate and inevitable. Only philosophical reflection could hold open the possibility of an alternative understanding. This claim depended upon a contentious distinction between science and philosophy, however. In lectures contemporaneous with “Age of the World-Picture,” Heidegger acknowledged that Galileo and Newton, or Heisenberg and Bohr, were doing philosophy rather than “mere” science. The need for such gerrymandering suggests difficulties with Heidegger's claim that science inevitably closed off a more fundamental ontological understanding: the most important and influential scientific work had to count as philosophy instead, precisely because it was unquestionably insightful.”

At that point I think we start to take philosophy less seriously. It's still healthy brain food and good for clearing away the clouds. But has little effect on, for example, blood pressure. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You think the sciences are any different? How could they be when every significant scientific development in history requires a change in philosophical underpinnings?

The point is, their kind of naturalism is a worldview that doesn't realise that it's a worldview - it takes itself to be the way things truly are, once the world has been stripped of what they see as superstitious accretions. — Wayfarer

I have to say that every philosophical position I’ve ever read believes that it has reached the irreducible basis of things and has stripped thought of superstitious accretions. One can only recognize their position as just one more worldview once they have transcended it.

Does that mean we can’t critique materialism
— Joshs

The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the validity of a materialist viewpoint. — Clarky

Is that because you are an advocate of a materialist viewpoint?(Just curious)

The basic drift of all this is that the advent of modernity, whilst conferring immense power and comfort, is also deeply irrational. Man pictures himself, as Bertrand Russell put it, as the outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms, 'chemical scum', in Stephen Hawkings words, on a minute speck of dust in an infinite universe. That's the setting in which metaphysics is ridiculed, mainly because the culture has forgotten what it means — Wayfarer

Russell and Hawking may have ridiculed what they understood to be metaphysics, but this hardly means their own view of the world was lacking a metaphysical basis. Post-Einsteinian physics fits Kant's definition of empirical idealism: “Idealism is the opinion that we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things (which inference from effect to cause is in fact uncertain)” (Kant 2005: 294).

the discussion will take place from a materialist/physicalist/realist point of view. — Clarky

Does that mean we can’t critique materialism, or just that we have to wait till we’ve agreed on the metaphysical assumptions of classical physics?

If something exists, so does nothing exist. — Jackson

EX-ist: passage , transition, difference. No-thing and something together form an Existing. There is no nothing or something by itself , as itself. Without the movement between the poles, the poles cannot be. The be-ing is in the ex-isting, which is the differentiation.

I really think we could come together on our reading of Derrida. There's enough between us that we could find agreement here.

No? — Moliere

Lets give it a try. Here’s Husserl’s take on Humean skepticism:

“Unremittingly, skepticism insists on the validity of the factually experienced world, that of actual experience,
and finds in it nothing of reason or its ideas.”( Crisis of European Sciences)

Derrida is not a skeptic in this sense, because he doesn’t locate truth in correctness or adequation with what is represented.

Derrida's aesthetics are the sublime, like Kant. A vast unknowable which we know is there. — Jackson

For him what we know we always know differently. This is not the same as ‘unknowable’. There is nothing for Derrida which is simply vast or unknowable. I dont know where its ‘vastness’ would come from when it is always this context right now, which has no depth , vast or otherwise, and is known to us precisely as the structure of context.

What totality does Derrida posit? — Joshs

The text. — Jackson

When Derrida uses the word ‘text’, he means context. Context for him is not a totality, it is an articulated hinge , a movement, a repetition which alters what it repeats.

[

Yes, and I do not agree. — Jackson

You said skeptics posit a totality that cannot be had. What totality does Derrida posit? He defines idealism as the identical repetition of the same ( what he calls an idea in the Kantian sense) , and argues that deconstruction shows that when we intend the repetition of meaning , this repetition must incorporate the contaminating and altering effect of context, so we end up saying something other than what we meant to say. I suppose this transforming repetition of an ideality could be considered a ‘totality that cannot be had’.
How do you think Derrida is defining the concept of skepticism?

Skeptics posit a totality which cannot be had. Platonism. The real object cannot be conceived.

I am not a skepic. — Jackson

In that sense I'd say that I agree with you -- Derrida is a skeptic — Moliere

Derrida insisted that he is not a skeptic:

“…it is impossible here to single out and to analyze in detail all of the distorting and malicious presentations of my work (or similar work, because were it merely a question of myself alone, none of this would have unfolded in such spectacular fashion), presentations by colleagues whose every sentence proves clearly that they either haven't read or haven't understood one line of the texts they wish to denounce. Likewise it is impossible to refute in a few words their accusations of nihilism, skepticism, or relativism.”( Points)

“This way of thinking context does not, as such, amount to a relativism, with everything that is sometimes associated with it (skepticism, empiricism, even nihilism). First of all because, as Husserl has shown better than anyone else, relativism, like all its derivatives, remains a philosophical position in contradiction with itself. Second, because this "deconstructive" way of thinking context is neither a philosophical position nor a critique of finite contexts, which it analyzes without claiming any absolute overview. Nevertheless, to the extent to which it-by virtue of its discourse, its socio-institutional situation, its language, the historical inscription of its gestures, etc.-is itself rooted in a given context (but, as always, in one that is differentiated and mobile), it does not renounce (it neither can nor ought do so) the "values" that are dominant in this context (for example, that of truth, etc.).”

“For of course there is a "right track", a better way, and let it be said in passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say," how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, precision, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread. Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”

(Limited, Inc)

I really don't want to get into a discussion about what "metaphysics" is. I'm already in one in another thread. As I see it, metaphysics is the set of underlying assumptions, Collingwood called them "absolute presuppositions," people use when they try to understand the world. — Clarky

Good definition. So as these presuppositions evolve , so does scientific theory. There would be no scientific progress otherwise.

Science progresses because it is based primarily (but not completely) on technological progress. Technology grows exponentially on top of all previous cultural gains in both science and technology. Also, unlike philosophers, scientists get gradually smarter via increasingly advanced math and science education, allowing them to group-think once settled in their specialties

Philosophy imitated this approach quite successfully in the 20th Century after advances in simple logic and linguistics. — magritte

Only analytic philosophy imitated this approach.
Technology does not represent the leading edge of thought. On the contrary, it is the last step in the process of dissemination of ideas though the culture, which begins with a small handful of philosophers. For example, the most advanced digital technologies available today are the final products of philosophical underpinnings contributed by Leibnitz , Hume and others in the 1700’s. These insights were then ‘applied’ by figures like Frege, Turing and Weiner. By the time inventors like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates turned them into popular products, the leading edge of philosophy had long since moved on.

This cycle is now repeating itself.
The underpinnings for the next great revolution in technology were set in motion more than 100 years ago with the work of philosophers like Nietzsche. More recently, they have been ‘applied’ by philosophers of mind like Dan Dennett. Eventually , you will see the final instantiation of these ideas in a new generation of technological products that you can claim to be the cutting edge of ideas.

In science,metaphysics is an archaic word replaced by speculation in science. — jgill

In postmodern philosophy , scientific speculation is recognized as being beholden to hidden metaphysical presuppositions.

A scientific paradigm is nothing but a conventionalized instantiation of a metaphysical worldview. — Joshs

I see it the other way around. Metaphysics is a tool, a set of tools, people use when they want to figure stuff out. — Clarky

You mean, like a scientific theory?( except less
conventionalized)

Science describes physical particles. Philosophy is not limited by physicality. — Jackson

In another 100 years natural science may no longer be in the business of describing physical particles. That is , it may no longer believe in the notion of the physical
particle. There is no clear definitional distinction between philosophy and science. One is simply a more or less applied and conventionalized version of the other.

Do you think there is progress in science?
— Joshs

Yes. But philosophy is not science. — Jackson

No, it is not science. A philosophical worldview is the basis of a science. If science progresses , then philosophy progresses. Newton=Descartes , Einstein=Kant , Freud=Nietzsche, enactive cogntive science=phenomenology. For every major innovation in science there is a parallel change in metaphysics. A scientific paradigm is nothing but a
conventionalized instantiation of a metaphysical worldview.

Contemporary philosophers debate whether there is progress in philosophy. My first answer is no, because there does not need to be progress. Qualified, sometimes there are vigorous debates and people accept a consensus view, which might be called progress. — Jackson

Do you think there is progress in science?

Misery loves company - the loneliness of suffering is obvious/evident, oui? — Agent Smith

Except in depression, which is epitomized by a sense of isolation from others. Physical pain and grief can also isolate.

Matthew Ratcliffe has written extensively about experiences of depression:

“Even more troubling is the loss of emotional connectedness to other people that features in almost every account. The loneliness that sufferers describe is not a contingent form of isolation that might be remedied by a change in social circumstances; one feels irrevocably estranged from the rest of humanity. Elizabeth Wurtzel describes herself as “a stranger in town and on earth” (1996, p.142), and Tracy Thompson writes, “I wanted a connection I couldn't have. [. . . .] The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it was hell, a life lived behind glass” (1995, pp.199–200). Absolutely central to depression is the need for a kind of interpersonal relatedness that at the same time presents itself as impossible.”

How does one deal with addictions in the light of this? Surely the need to gamble or use substances - even if just for psychological reasons - should be temporary? — Tom Storm

This article may help give a sense of how a ‘groundless’, embodied self forms addictions.

“The enactive account of addiction is a nonreductive, naturalistic model that views addictive processes (e.g
craving, mental obsessions, abnormal reactions) as “dynamic and embed­ded interactions” (McGann et al. 2013, 203) between IWEA ( individuals who experience addiction)and their en­vironment.1 Addiction is not seen as residing in IWEA, but “as emerging, existing dynamically in the relationship between [IWEA] and their sur­roundings, including other agents” (203). Such a model of addiction “groups central concepts (such as action, sense, and agency) in the autonomous or­ganization of [IWEA] and their value-laden, meaningful engagements with their environment” (203).
Two analogies, borrowed from McGann et al. (2013), may be useful. For example, a handshake does not exist except during its enaction. With the enactive approach, the same is true of addiction—it is “intrinsically relational and dynamic in nature” (McGann et al. 2013)
A dance en­dures “only while the dancers continue to act, and is defined by the coor­dination, the mutual sensitivity, and reciprocal influence between the dancers and the music” (203). With enaction, addiction “is a dynamically constituted process and, like a dance, or a handshake, should be studied and understood in dynamic, contextualized terms”

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicholas-Zautra/publication/285747009_Embodiment_Interaction_and_Experience_Toward_a_Comprehensive_Model_in_Addiction_Science/links/5820c24608aea429b29bc06f/Embodiment-Interaction-and-Experience-Toward-a-Comprehensive-Model-in-Addiction-Science.pdf?origin=publication_detail

As I noted, I think selfhood has sufficient definition, clarity, evidence, logic, and consistency to be considered real, existent. — Clarky

Does the self have a core that remains self-identical
over time , or is it always a slightly new and different self that come back to itself minute to minute , day to day? Have you read Varela and Thompson’s ‘The Embodoed Mind’? There , they use neuropsychological evidence to make the argument that there is only a contingent center of agency, and that the organism is a community of temporary selves.

Are you familiar with Heidegger’s writing on authentic anxiety and guilt, or Nietzsche’s views on the primacy of suffering?

Levinas writes:

“Suffering qua suffering is but a concrete and quasi-sensible manifestation of the non-integratable, the non-justifiable. The `quality' of evil is this very non-integratability...In the appearing of evil, in its original phenomenality, in its quality, is announced a modality, a manner: not finding a place, the refusal of all accomodation with..., a counter-nature, a monstrosity, what is disturbing and foreign of itself. And in this sense transcendence!"(TE180)

Heidegger writes of Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra:

“Zarathustra invokes his ultimate recesses and so conducts himself to himself. He becomes what he is and confesses himself to be the one who he is: "the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle." Living, suffering, and circling are not three distinct matters. They belong together and form one: being as a whole, to which suffering, the abyss, belongs and which is inasmuch as, circling it recurs”

Critical theory is a neo-marxist approach in philosophy, a form of structuralism and dialectic. . Derridean deconstruction places into the dialectical and structuralist basis of marxism and neo-marxism.
— Joshs

Derrida was a critic of structuralism. — Jackson

I meant to write he places into question structuralism
and dialectic.

It seems to me that, in the context of philosophy, not just humanity, however we define the self, we are in the Catch 22 situation: if the self is something clear, then we are like machines with some kind of particular phenomenon that we can call “self”, that, as such, can be referred even to computers properly made; in this case we have the challenge of agreeing that a machine can suffer and, as such, can deserve empathy, fighting for its rights, even making laws to punish those who make violence against computers. In the opposite case, if the self is unclear, then there is not anywhere anybody suffering, so there is no philosophical need to defend the rights of oppressed people. — Angelo Cannata

There are two ways to dismiss Chalmer’s hard problem. The first is to solve it by making materiality primary and declaring humans to be complex machines. Dan Dennett holds to this view. I think that even though for him a conscious self is just an artifact , a convenient function, he would still argue that humans operate on the basis of complex motivational systems that computers currently lack, but that eventually we will be able to construct machines with such systems , and those machines es will indeed be capable of ‘suffering’.

The second way to do away with the hard problem is to dissolve it. This is the approach of phenomenology and postmodern theories. For them bodily and social
systems of differential drives , values and affects, what e than materiality, are fundamental and irreducible a prioris. This makes suffering intrinsic to reality, even without a constituting ‘self’.

This distinction divorces human aggression from animal aggression, in opposition to the widely accepted myth that 'malignant' human aggression has its roots in an animal past — ZzzoneiroCosm

I don’t think ‘innate programming’ is a helpful way to understand aggression in humans , and frankly, I think it covers over complex cognitive attributions taking place in animals as well. We become hostile and angry when a standard or expectation has been violated and we perceive there is a way to modify the others behavior. This is a cognitive assessment , not an instinct. Cruelty and destructiveness is not an inherent feature of anger and hostility. First of all, it is in the r eyes of the beholder , and secondly, the central goal of hostility is the amelioration of the perceived violation , not destruction or cruelty. If the others motives are perceived as deliberately cruel and destructive in their aim , that is generally a function of our own hostility toward them.
We dont see how they can justify their actions to themselves , so we assume their motives are gratuitous.

Text was also literal, a physical text. — Jackson

Yes, it included written text, spoken word , thinking to oneself , perception, and any and all forms of what would be called the ‘real’ or the objective. He would, however , question distinctions like literal vs figurative and physical vs mental.

I thought deconstruction was a technique of Critical Theory. The article acts as if deconstruction has been widely abandoned, but Critical Theory, as in Critical Race Theory, is clearly going strong. — Clarky

Critical theory is a neo-marxist approach in philosophy, a form of structuralism and dialectic. . Derridean deconstruction places into question the dialectical and structuralist basis of marxism and neo-marxism.

Deconstruction was not Critical Theory. It was a way to read and interpret texts — Jackson

This is true of the literary theorists who adopted practices of deconstruction, but the idea of deconstruction that Derrida produced was much
pre try a. a way of interpreting written texts. It was a way to understand the basis of all experience.
Text’ for Derrida referred to the way time structures experience.

Another evaluation of deconstruction. Thought others might find it worth discussing. I liked reading Derrida, but after a while, it just seemed like skepticism. — Jackson

I think the following sums it up.

“To this day, deconstruction remains a style of thought more complained about than understood.”

The author of the article would like to believe this ignorance is the fault of deconstructive writers like Derrida, but I would suggest it is the difficulty of his ideas that is the source of incomprehension rather than a matter of vacuity , inconsistency or vagueness in his thinking. I would also separate Derrida’s work from the host of authors who called themselves deconstructionists. I never found the work of these followers to have much in common with Derridean deconstruction.

I don't find Feyerabend and Haack significantly incompatible or necessarily inconsistent with either enactivism and autopoiesis (neither of which I find "anti-realist") — 180 Proof

From my reading , the following are the core figures in enactivism. Most contribute to the same journals, attend the same conferences, co-author books on enactive cognition and phenomenology, and comprise a tight -knit community of scholars. I believe that I can extract quotes from every one of these writers indicating that they are anti-realists.

I think that Varela speaks for this group when he writes:

“…despite other differences, the varieties of cognitive realism share the conviction that cognition is grounded in the representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven subject.”( The Embodied Mind)

Shaun Gallagher, Jan Slaby, Matthew Ratcliffe , Thomas Fuchs, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Hanne De Jaegher, Kym MacClaren, Michel Bitbol, Rick Furtak, Joel Krueger, John Protevi, Joseph Rouse, Dan Zahavi.

Other contributors to enactivism , like Anthony Chemero, have waffles on the issue:

“ Situated, embodied cognitive science is all the rage these days. Some (including the present author) have argued that situated, embodied cognitive science is incompatible with realism (metaphysical and scientific). In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake: there is no reason one cannot be both a proponent of situated, embodied cognitive science and a realist.” (Chemero)

My intellectual bias against "anti-realism" & "epistemic relativism" was no doubt reinforced by my undergrad studies in engineering and physics so I didn't take Rorty et al philosophically serious, and I still don't. At least an anti-foundationalist (IMO, "epistemic pluralist") like Feyerabend was philosophically as well as scientifically & culturally interesting and occasionally hilarious. Btw, Ms. Haack got it right (I'm a big fan!) — 180 Proof

Your stance against anti-realism forces you into a choice between two thriving movements within cognitive science. The first is inspired by Peirceian semiotics and Friston’s free energy neurological model. The second is anti-realist and embraces enactivist and autopoietic systems approaches inspired by phenomenology and pragmatists like James and Dewey. Haack is bound to the first group obviously ( I doubt very much she would be a fan of Feyerabend),and Rorty to the second. One of the founders of enactivism and among its most prolific and talented theorists is Shaun Gallagher, who has contributed to important work on autism, schizophrenia , empathy and perceptual body schemas. It is revealing that he has critiqued Rorty for not being relativist enough.

This shows that Haack and Peirce are a fair distance away from what I consider to be the most promising work in psychology today.

Did you ever read Susan Haack's takedown of Rorty? There's the essay Pining Away in the Midst of Plenty. The Irony of Rorty’s Either/Or Philosophy. It's pretty funny.
— Tom Storm
Oh yes! :clap: :smirk: — 180 Proof

Not much of a takedown. Haack wants to hold onto the ‘reality’ of the natural , so of course she will be opposed to Rorty’s anti-realism.

. Personally I would never use the word faith to describe reasonable actions taken in the world. When I catch a plane or go travelling I don't base the decision on faith but a 'reasonable confidence' that the plans will work out and the plane won't crash. This is a rational position based on the fact that travel and planes generally work safely. Faith, on the other hand, is an excuse for believing something when there is no good reason. — Tom Storm

Let’s take a closer look at how faith and reason are intertwined with each other. At one extreme you put the knowledge that the plane won’t fall out of the air, which you associate with reason and rationality. At the other end is faith on God, which is without good reason. But what is it that imparts reasonableness to the ordinary activities of our lives , our expectation that when we push a button, the computer will turn on , or when we turn our head the visual scene will change, but the objects in that scene will not change their location? We know that in perception we create expectations and those expectations are met , more or less, by what appears and the way it appears. But what we experience never precisely duplicates our expectations, so there is a kind of perceptual faith involved. We dont appreciate that this is a faith until we take lsd or suffer a stroke and suddenly our expectations become wildly mismatched with what appears.

But we still may want to argue that in normal circumstances, our understanding of our world and our expectation of how our technologies will work for us is ‘rational’, that is, there is a right match between what we anticipate or predict and what happens. Faith in god would seem not to provide us with such evidence to confirm our predictions. But what makes our sciences and technologies work the way they do and predict the world the way they do? The applied end is where we find the most dependability and predictability , but the higher we go in the abstract theoretical and meta theoretical direction , the more we find ourselves in the vicinity of faith, that is , of paradigms that do not yet have access to clearer evidence. At an even higher level
of abstraction lies the philosophical underpinnings of a science and its associated technology. At this level things are even more tentative and ‘unreasonable’.

So here’s a question , how can matters be so dependably rational at the lower applied level of our everyday dealings with machines, but have the ground be so unstable at the highest meta-theoretical level? After all, the former is just a subordinate component of the latter.

My answer is that this reasonableness is mostly a trick of language. We say the plane will stay up in the air and the train will arrive regardless of the shifting grounds of the sciences that makes these devices possible.
But what we fail to pay attention to is that we never expereince such facts as hermetically sealed entities. We experience ce the plane or train in the context of our attitudes and goals , of how these facts are relevant to us.
The subject-predicate language we use masks the facts that our ‘reasonable’ interactions with the world is shifting its ground in subtle ways all the time. The meaning of our everyday world isn’t just what happens but how it happens , how it is significant to us. Our moods don’t just color our experience, they provide us with our faith in the dependability of our world.
In severe depression everyday experience loses its salience and we lose faith i. ourselves and our competence to interact with the world. In anger we lose faith in others. In grief and mourning we lose faith in the coherence of the routines that were attached to meaningful persons in our lives who are now gone.

So a shifting faith in the world , in the sense of the relative significance, salience and coherence to us of the things and situations we are involved with, is a daily part of our lives. It defines how ‘reasonable’ our experiences really are for us, not just based on sterile logic, but in relation to the shifting coherence and relevance of our engagements with things and people. In this way, daily life and faith in god have much in common.