Arquivo para a ‘Information ethics’ Categoria
Vaccines under test and an economic dispute
30
Nov
Even recognizing flaws in the theses, Pfizer’s vaccines against 
covid-19 should be approved within a few days, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, so the United Kingdom becomes the first country in the west to have a vaccine, and vaccination can begin. on December 7, in Brazil, the race is for Coronavac, no matter which one is safer, behind the vaccines there are economic deals and investments made in the manner of betting and not really scientific criteria.
In Brazil the authorization is made by Anvisa, in Europe by the European Medicines Agency and the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, a final Brexit transition is for December 31, but the Regulatory Agency for Medicines and Health Products in the United Kingdom has the power to temporarily authorize the products, and there is an obvious interest in the UK even though it is in partnership with German BioNTech.
The process could be applied to the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford (Brazil participates in FioCruz), on Sunday, Friday (27) the government asked the regulator to review the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, thus showing the real interest .
Current data on the efficiency of Coronavac, a medical vaccine by the Chinese company Sinovac and which has a partnership with the Butantan Institute, should be announced in early December, and an approval in record time would be for January, however the effectiveness is different from the tests that verify side effects, contraindications and long-term efficiency, also a Pfizer was questioned recently due to the tests.
The long-term effects studies indicated that perhaps a single vaccine would not solve the pandemic problem, an article was published in October in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, which lit up a warning sign about vaccines, and said that he did not know until that time. data if vaccines were candidates were effective in severe forms of the disease, the warning sign remains on.
Eschatology and being-to-death
24
Nov
Where we came from and where we are going, each culture has its
own eschatology, modernity and especially idealism is characterized by disregarding the idea of the infinite, of mystery and consequently of death, seen as fatality or simple finitude of life.
From the philosophy of Lévinas (Totality and Infinite) to the poetry of Goethe (Faust), from the novel by Tolstoy (The death of Ivan Ilitch) to the ontology of Heidegger (Being and Time) death is more than a concept or a theme, it is the own questioning of being, in Lévinas the infinite is proper to the transcendent being as transcendent, the infinite is the absolutely other, so one cannot think of the infinite, the transcendent, the Foreigner (in Lévinas) as being an object, but as an Other that does not it is something other than Being.
Idealism, in wanting to always live above the real, wants to ignore or “transcend” death (in the false sense of an object) and for this reason is quibble about it, but in the face of the tragedies of a pandemic, of a crisis that can become civilizing, he is immobilized or part of psychology, in this field there is also an adequate phenomenological treatment, after all Franz Brentano father of social psychology reopened phenomenology in modern times, the psychiatrist Kübler-Ross (About death and dying, Martins Fontes, 2002) studied that stage of the disease in which the patient asks “Why me” and deepened the theme.
The analysis in Heidegger, in order not to be superficial, must address three related themes: Care, Impersonality and silence, otherwise it is the analysis that we call epistemology or incomplete eschatology, since they face only pessimism in the face of death, nor the good psychology sees it that way.
Before a clarification, the term ontological refers to questioning the fact of existing, Dasein (being-there) is not only, but has a perception that it is, for phenomenology, it is not thought of itself first and then in the world, because the two things are inseparable, and so is an ontological epistemology.
To help what this being-there is, we need to deepen what Heidegger calls overcoming the factual world, and as for the super the world of impersonality, he manages to free himself from a structured reason endowed with meaning, in a way already given the to exist and to be.
Safranski, an authorized biographer of Heidegger, interprets it this way: “Anguish does not tolerate another god besides itself, and isolates in two ways. It breaks the relationship with the other, and makes the isolated individual fall out of relations of familiarity with the world ”, she is felt by the“ fall ”, by the dark horizon.
Thus, in impersonality, the idea of “everyone dies” is abandoned, which in life evades being-for-death, for its thinking about its solitary death, falls into that anguish described in Ivan Ilitch de Tolstoi.
Regarding Care, Heidegger appropriates the Greek fable in which Jupiter and Care that is shaping clay fight over the name that will be given to the created figure, and called Saturn as a judge he says that Jupiter will belong to the spirit because it was he who gave it the form, while Care will have the land, since it formed it, the German philosopher will use this sense, very ingenious, to say the being-for-death to find something beyond the finitude of the form.
Finally, the aspect of silence nad loneliness are invoked to discover the self, and then to return to the world already master of itself, and open to the relationship with others, which is no longer utilitarian ( so characteristic of idealists) or even by means of fixed guidelines (characteristic of incomplete eschatologies), there is thus a Being beyond the finite and open to the infinite, there is no pessimism, which says it is bad reading
How to account for our faults
04
Nov
We all commit faults, if it is true that we cannot deceive life with
death, said the poet Goethe, we cannot fail to recognize the fatality of life that is its final decline. There is no contest to be made, nobody stayed for seed, says a popular Brazilian saying, and we don’t know what is wrong with the other, except for those who believe.
During years of life we walk inattentive with small and large faults, most of them we push under the carpet, other times we justify not always in a fair and coexistent way the faults we had, attributing the blame to the Other, but what to do before a moment that we must recognize what we did not do well and that we may have harmed many people.
Leon Tolstoy describes in “The death of Ivan Ilitch” a man in the face of death, who sees relatives more concerned with inheritance than with his own life, describes in the book: “He cried like a child. He wept because of his enormous weakness, and the terrible abandonment in which the family left him and for the cruelty and absence of God.”
Of course, not everyone will remember the absence of God, it is a kind of sacrament of ignorance, but there are also those who, even having “practiced” a religion, will find it difficult to perceive their faults and thus will have difficulties to account for them.
Even the joys of life seem distant at a time and that we will all be very fragile, Tolstoy describes in his tale: “The further away from childhood and closer to the present, the more insignificant, the more doubtful were the joys.”
It would be good if, due to a supernatural event, we could have clarity about our weaknesses and time to redeem them, but not everyone will, maybe something can happen.
It would be a great proof of existence and God and the idea that it is possible for humanity to have salvation, the pandemic crisis is greater because there is a civilizing crisis.
Death and life
03
Nov
Pablo Picasso is right in saying that “death is not the greatest loss
of life. The biggest loss of life is what dies inside us while we live ”, but in the face of a pandemic that threatens everyone, in the face of a second wave that promises to be even worse, Makron and other governments in Europe have already said, we must face the theme.
Where was All Souls’ Day, remembering more parents and some people who are no longer here always made me a lull in the face of life and death, what we came here to do in this short passage, should be the question of these days.
The pandemic could have taught us more, at least it managed to stop the frantic life of the Society of Tiredness, but the vast majority of people behave as if there were not many people dying and that they too may be suddenly at a crossroads, which I think so , it will not only be personal, but the whole planet.
I read in one of Edgar Morin’s last books: “instead of being nobody’s land, we could be everyone’s land”, it is not what still happens, today is election day in the USA, without polarizing it can be said whether he won his life or death, I do not speak of government policies either, but the threats of war that always hang over humanity in times of war.
All of us will one day abandon our dreams, promises and the good things we have done, it will be time to give an account if not to God, to those who believe, future generations about the legacy we have left.
Living life and being happy should always have the happiness of others as a complement, if I am not a cause of happiness around me, my own may be compromised, and at the end of the journey only what we have done will be left and that those who stay will be happy to remember.
The relationship with the Other and with Nature, which is also another, must be modified so that we have hope for a promising future for those who are born.
Second wave or is it another Cov-2
02
Nov
In a recent article “Emergence and spread of a SARS-CoV-2 variant
through Europe in the summer of 2020” published on October 28 on the medRxiv website, they reported the spread, presumably from Spain, of a variant of the Covid virus -19, which would already be 80% of recent infections, the article will still have peer review, but the scientific community has already raised the alarm, the article will still have peer review.
Since the beginning of September, Europe had already seen an increase in cases of infection and resumed the distance measures, it was the end of the summer, now in October the measures have become irreversible, and the President of France even declared: “the virus circulates at a speed not foreseen even by the most pessimistic forecasts… we are all in the same position: invaded by a second wave that will undoubtedly be more difficult and more deadly than the first ”, England has already decreed lock-down and we are still in the fall, the reverse this year promises to be strict.
Germany, Prime Minister Angela Merkel made an agreement with the local governors to make a “lockdown light”, but by the end of November bars, restaurants, theaters and gyms will have to close, it will be a domestic Christmas and with many restrictions in Europe.
In Italy, the government of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has determined that at the beginning of November bars and restaurants across the country will only be open until 6 pm, gyms, swimming pools, theaters and cinemas cannot be opened.
The measures impacted the stock exchanges that had a sharp drop, from 2% to 4% in Europe, and more than 4% in Brazil, today holidays here, the stock exchanges abroad recover, but the apprehension now turns to the scheduled American elections for tomorrow, however many votes have already been anticipated and there will be a record of votes.
The companies that develop the vaccines promise to speed up, but experts point out that this is not possible and for this variant it should also be tested.
Happiness in Thomas Aquinas
28
Oct
To analyze beatitude, which we have already explained that is
also an ancient Greek theme for happiness, Thomas Aquinas learned from the Greek philosopher to distinguish between two different forms of happiness: the natural riches that are those by which man is helped to compensate for natural deficiencies such as food, drink, clothing, housing, etc., and artificial ones that do not help nature but subject it, like money, but human art invented to facilitate exchanges, so that they were like measures for venial things, and influenced by Boethius will question whether wealth is in fact the one that gives all goods:
“Bliss is the perfect state where all goods come together.” Now, it seems that through money you can acquire all things, because the Philosopher, in book V of Ethics, money was invented to be the guarantee of everything that man wanted to possess. Therefore, bliss consists of riches ”(Thomas Aquinas, theological suma. Part III).
Even with the possession of a broader idea of wealth, the natural wealth that Aristotle predicted, and artificial wealth as well, in none of them will Aquinate recognize it as a source of happiness, because it has no end in itself, and people who own them make it the ultimate end, it becomes a bond for something.
And what value this bond can have in itself, Tomás de Aquino examines honor, and says in this sense: “it is impossible for the beatitude to consist of honor. The honor is rendered to someone due to some excellence: and thus, it is a sign and testimony of that excellence that is in the honored one ”, it can also be the fame or glory, the power, and the goods of the body, but all these goods in themselves they also do not translate into happiness, but only false knowledge.
That is how bliss is itself, she says verbatim:” bliss is the most stable of goods “, so the lack of stability of fame occurs due to the fact that it derives exclusively from human knowledge, which, in turn, instead, it is limited, and it is often even false.
Similarly, Boethius argued: “human power cannot avoid the torment of worries, nor the sting of fear”.
As for the body, argues the Christian philosopher: “, the beatitude of man is superior in every way to that of animals, although many animals surpass men in the goods of the body”, so if beatitude comes from there, man would be equaling to animals, and how often this is true.
But what then is happiness for Doctor Angelico, who asks the same question as Boethius: “‘ Is it necessary to confess that God is the beatitude itself? ” and he will conclude that “the beatitude is the last end, towards which the human will naturally tends” and “for nothing else must the will tend as for the last end, except for God, for it must be the object of I enjoy, as Agostinho says ”(AQUINO, 2003, p. 62).
Here you can have a synthesis of what happiness is for the three great Christian thinkers of the medieval period.
For some authors, like Luiz Alberto De Boni, the philosophy of Tomás de Aquino along these lines: “the good and the end are identified”, thus has an eschatology, and if we understand that the end is just this earthly life limited to a temporal period his argument is not valid, but if we admit eternity, happiness as the ultimate good is that which we have already achieved here but which must extend beyond temporal life, outside of this, of course, only temporal pleasures.
In Picture above, by an anonymous author, The rich man and Lazarus, (around 1610, Amsterdam).
AQUINO, Tomás (2003). Theological summula. V. III. Brazil, São Paulo: Loyola.
Vaccines are in the testing phase
26
Oct
All vaccines are in the testing phase, only the Russian vaccine with
its mega emperor Putin has approved vaccines, but no one trusts it.
The American group of Modern biotechnology, one of those conducting tests in phase 3 in the United States promising results for December, was asked in September to give more transparency in its reports, almost always delivered to the government in a “confidential” character, reveals the pressures on the FDA (American Medicines Agency) because the election is close and could favor the government, but the company itself does not believe in short deadlines.
Another laboratory at Pfizer, one of the most promising vaccines, sparked controversy this week due to the infection and death of one of the people recruited for testing, a Brazilian volunteer who died, but according to the Bloomberg website the boy was in the group of test placebos and did not receive the active dose of the vaccine.
Clarifying the tests are called double blind, that is, neither doctors nor patients know which version was applied, in some a placebo is applied and in others the vaccine itself, this being one of the most reliable forms of testing, only in cases such as this from the death of a volunteer the dose is revealed.
The controversy of the Chinese vaccine, still without approval and with a deadline for October 2021, is one of the consequences of the politicization of the vaccine that we already warned in last week’s post, social polarization makes any issue, even those that should be everyone’s concern. regardless of ideology.
The problem of mandatory vaccination must be dealt with democratically, and the controversy does not help the public consensus, which in this case is already unlikely, the politicization of the issue is regrettable, judicialization is even more regrettable, I remember the case of drug addicts whose involuntary hospitalization has not been approved.
The testing phase, according to experts and the WHO itself, should continue for 2021, any premature anticipation of the vaccine will be as serious as the pandemic itself, and the result can be disastrous and subject to lawsuits.
We hope that the vaccine will come, that there will be a worldwide consensus on its validity, that the politicization of the theme will decrease and that we can emerge less polarized from the pandemic, is an altruistic theme, but we need to hope for a better humanity, if not so much suffering in a disastrous year that it was worthless.
Love in Saint Augustine
20
Oct
This was Hannah Arendt’s doctoral thesis with direct influences
from Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, initially his supervisor, who later passed the guidance to Karl Jaspers due to his personal involvement with Arendt, so some understanding of phenomenology and existential ontology is needed.
We ended last week with a reflection on politics and religion precisely from the compilation of Posthumous Works by Arendt herself, and what we want to point out is the possibility of a civilization based on the principles of Love, in the sense of charity (theological virtue) and as Augustine saw it.
Far from being an apology for this elevated form of Love, it sees contradictions and will develop the question of love for God, love for one’s neighbor and oneself, and uses phenomenology to deepen this theme, but it is a hasty conclusion to say that phenomenology opposes or even favors these feelings, which in themselves are rather contradictory, for example, love for one’s neighbor and oneself has different nuances for the vast majority of people.
His conclusion is that it is not possible to form a human society based only on charitable love (always remembering that it is a theological virtue and not simple generosity) and the central point is to analyze Augustine only from a philosophical point of view, since Arendt he had no interest in the theological aspects.
Arendt for dividing his dissertation into three parts is due to a desire to do justice to Augustinian thoughts and theories that run in parallel. Thus, each part “will serve to show three conceptual contexts in which the problem of love plays a decisive role” (this quote is taken from an English translation that Hannah Arendt herself works with and differs from Portuguese).
The first part Arendt will analyze “What do I love, when I love my God?” (Confessions X, 7, 11 apud Arendt p. 25), in the second part she discusses the relationship between the creature and the creator, she titled the chapter “Creature and Creator: the remembered past”, and in the third part she discusses social charity.
In the first part, the author discovers that God is the quintessence of his inner self, God is the essence of his existence, and when he finds God in himself, man finds what he lacked: his eternal essence. Here, love for God can relate to self-love, for man can love himself in the right way by loving his own essence.
In the end, the second part will discuss the relationship with others, how to love them as God’s creation: “[…] man loves the world as God’s creation; in the world the creature loves the world as God loves. This is the realization of a self-denial in which everyone, including yourself, simultaneously regains its God-given importance. This achievement is love of neighbor. ”
In the third part of the dissertation, entitled “Social Life”, which Arendt dedicates to what she calls “social caritas”, the relevance of the neighbor, and the love for neighbor gain new justification, will discuss the adamic principle of sin and will say that this is the principle that will link us to Christ, who comes to redeem us from this sin.
Here the contradiction with Augustine appears: “It is because all men share this past that they must love each other:“ the reason why one must love one’s neighbor is because their neighbor is fundamentally their equal and both share the same sinful past ”, so it is not the foundation of Love, but of sin that makes us equal to others nearby. ”
By choice, man must deny the world and found a new society in Christ. “This defense is the foundation of the new city, the city of God. […] This new social life, which is based on Christ, is defined by mutual love (diligire invicem) ”, there is a work by Augustine dedicated to this:“ city of God ”, and the thesis that is only so philosophical it focuses only on the mundane (or human, as you wish) relationship, it does not see man as having a divine origin and made for Love.
For Arendt what makes us brothers and I can love them in caritas, in true love, and this is expressed in Augustine, according to Arendt, reconciles the isolation generated by the commandment to love God with the commandment that says to love your neighbor, ending the dissertation.
According to Kurt Blumenfeld, a friend of Arendt who had great importance in his involvement with Judaism and politics, the answer to the question was Zionism and a return to Palestine, but emigration there was never part of Arendt’s plans. vita socialis your answer about Love, did not understand caritas.
Arendt, Hannah. (1929) On the concept of love in the thought of Saint Augustine: Attempt at a philosophical interpretation] (PDF) (Doctoral thesis, Department of Philosophy, University of Heidelberg) (in German). Berlin: Springer.
The party and the guests
09
Oct
Babette’s party is an allegory to a divine party, and the mysterious 
cook who humbly works for a long time in a house until she can announce and hold the party, although suspicious guests accept and feel their lives renewed.
What we live in pandemic times is the absence of the party, but the real party to which we have all been invited is that of fraternity for all and a greater balance in the distribution of incomes, in the treatment of different cultures and respect for human dignity. far from being a party.
Who were the guests, primarily those who claim to have these principles and who are not always practiced, that is, they participate more in the parties of wealth, power and their benefits than promote the party that everyone could participate.
The pandemic should be an awareness, deprived of the party, we should think about those who have always been deprived, and not try to promote even in the pandemic our private party where friends participate.
The biblical parable (Mt, 22,1-14) of the wedding feast in which a king calls the guests and they make excuses for not attending, is a good explanation for what happens to those who were invited and who were not and the excluded who are called to the party and they go, we would say one last awareness.
The guests, we would say in biblical terms the elect, were not, so the king sends his servants to go to the squares, at the crossroads of the paths and call as many as they find for the party, but at the party he still notices someone who is not wearing the right clothes (picture is engraved of Jan Luyken).
The biblical allegory is to say that among those who are not invited there are also those who are not worthy to participate in the divine feast
The unexpected and the action
23
Sep
Among many thoughts that impacted me on the almost centenary 
Edgar Morin, his relationship with the unexpected is the most interesting and wise, he said this relationship “makes us prudent”, and he said this referring to science.
The virus took us by surprise, but the arrogance of many media people did not fail to analyze the pre-pandemic, the pandemic itself and the post-pandemic, there are no mysteries in life for them, but what we see is still very mysterious.
Morin says, “as much as it is known that everything that happened and important in world history or in our life was totally unexpected, it continues to act as if nothing unexpected has happened from now on”, and it is very likely that more things unexpected happen if we know some laws of complexity or chaos theory.
It is true indicates the thinker, “complexity needs some strategy”, we would like to have “segments programmed for sequences where the random does not intervene”, but this is a situation that automatic pilotage is not recommended, says the thinker: “simple thinking solves simple problems without thought ”, is not the case.
The complex thought is “to give each one a memo, a brand, to remember: don’t forget that the new can come and, in any case, it will come”, I found what I wanted because my intuition says this, something new is going to happen .
It is at this starting point that Morin points to “a richer, less mutilating action”, which would be, says “the less a thought is mutilating, the less it will mutilate humans”, but many do not think, ignore the future.
Abnormal and simplifying would be if after an absolutely abnormal year in the history of mankind, everything went back to everyday life or the “triviality” that some mutilating thoughts insist on saying, and the term “new normality” is also mutilating, because the question is whether there will be normality after this year.
The possible action that should be thought of by each one in particular, but by everyone as a society is how to minimize losses, how to reorganize life, how to overcome pain or at least bear it, and help those who cannot bear it.
It will take an abnormal fraternity, one that only a few have ever lived, and those who preach them live for real.
MORIN, Edgar. (2008) Preparar-se para o inesperado (prepare for the unexpected). In: MORIN, Edgar. Introdução ao pensamento complexo. Tradução de Dulce Matos. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget, pp.120-122.
