Arquivo para a ‘Information ethics’ Categoria
Pause time: can we
26
Nov
There is still a remnant of November and December already appearing on the horizon,
everyone is waiting for something we should always do: pause, wait and meet with friends and family, the question is: do we succeed?
Looking at the world, the dark signs continue, bigger than liquids, because if something were really changed from the solid to the liquid, it would even be desirable because something is moving, but it seems like the sameness, everything is going to look the same.
The protests against Macron and his taxes, is not so different from Portugal or Brazil, the state is huge and weighs on society, who will pay the bills, and the retirees will be the ones who will pay the bill? uncertainties and a single thing really clear: crisis of time.
There are signs of a revival, a word used by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, I would say yes, but just where the heaviest criticism falls: the globalized world, the internet and the “solid” state that is taking a darker, dangers right.
I participated in a 100 year event of Priest Manuel Antunes, this transdisciplinary man, was the theme of a lecture written with a friend in his work Repensar Portugal, said that it was necessary to seek in politics, the “temperate zones” where human nature is more comfortable, but the 2018 sample is from more radicalized regions, in the bad sense of the term.
It is necessary to pause, even when forced and in discomfort, to look at the future so that it is possible to have hope, peace and a closer approach of the peoples, the national radicalism is perverse, Europe sews a possible agreement for the exit of England from the block , the so-called Brexit.
The US ends the end of the year with the dreamed Trump Wall, and Mexicans pushing across the wall, proving that it was not a solution but the announcement of a crisis.
New governments to the right in Brazil and Colombia, the left in Mexico wins after many years of a party monopolizing power, while Nicaragua and Venezuela parade catastrophic left-wing governments, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay are in temperate zones.
Thinking about a more integrated world, climate issue and income distribution has become more difficult, what can be expected is a vigorous reaction of human thought, man has always been able to face the challenges that have appeared, perhaps the retreat is a resumption
The Truth Beyond Practice and Action
22
Nov
The truth of the so-called post truth must be read not from fake news, from
editorial groups that are almost always polarized and full of the “doxa” (private opinion), but from a teleological search for truth beyond cultures, intolerances and ideologies.
The interpretation of how Gadamer sees this issue relating violence / non-violence comes from the lessons given by Heidegger in the 1920s in Aristotle’s Phenomenological Interpretations (Heidegger, 1992), where he penetrates the dialogical structure of Phronesis, which is practical-oriented wisdom in Greek philosophy it is distinguished from
episteme and techné.
I open a parenthesis, because this is important and what is the relationship with a policy increasingly subject to the “practical” direction of action and a certain type of violence, because even the perspective of change can not distance itself from what Jacques Ranciere calls Engagment, I would say being more direct, that there is a lack of prudence and tact with practice.
It lacks a notion of mutuality, a fundamental notion in Gadamer’s thought, which emphasizes the dialogical and
practical trait present in his project of philosophical hermeneutics, which may seem a distancing from praxis in the pure sense of engagment, but it is not, in his own words Gadamer is a practice that turns to itself without realizing its
fundamentals and without understanding it as the fruit of reflection and therefore of theory.
Whether it is the work of art or the field of education, or even the domain of relations with economic questions, engagment can rob the essence of artistic, pedagogical or economic doing, and this does not mean art, education or dehumanized economy.
According to Heidegger’s lectures and the Aristotelian philosophy of rhetoric, in addition to phronesis (practice), there are two other features of ethos: appeals to arete (virtue) and eunoia, that is, good thinking or goodwill that cultivates others to receive it.
Thus the practical action without the necessary acceptance of the others, then enters the Other without the virtue can become hypocrisy or unreliable, without the sympathy of the listener can become a disgusting speech without appeal, even with kind and sweet words.
HEIDEGGER, Martin. Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation. Trad. scored by Michael Baur. In Man and World, 25, p. 355-393, 1992.
Post-truth incompleteness
19
Nov
Before we know what post-truth is, we must know if there is any definition of truth, and this
leads us back to the beginnings of Western civilization, where it was known that the truth was hidden, that is, either for Aristotle or Plato, the At the apex of Greek culture of antiquity, truth was hidden, that is, an aletheia was necessary, a Greek term not to be concealed, manifest, or even more (negation) lethõ (forget), therefore there is only truth about a fact occurred.
For Greek philosophy it was clear that “doxa” or opinion was contrary to episteme, or systematized and organized knowledge, but every episteme implies a method, that is, it comes from that epistemology, or the way to organize and prove certain knowledge.
The issue arose in the context of current politics because some politicians, avoiding names to avoid the doxological polarization (of opinions) started to deny facts, that is, what was registered and proven, and even denied, but this did not it’s new.
Already in her 1967 essay “Truth and Politics,” Hannah Arendt stated that fact-based truth could be substantiated and verified, but politicians insisted on turning back and making speeches based on opinions, so it is not new, and seeing with the media is something else, the monopoly of opinion and that almost always is not based on data.
The fact that there are social network media, networks and groups have always existed only that they were hegemon owners of newspapers and magazines, and now they are not, it starts to have an open confrontation of opinions, that turn into organized twisted, with emotional appeals and doxological.
It is not by chance that populist politicians, who all bordered on or were avowedly fascists, were great orators and capable of provoking fascination in the masses, the fascination today is another, the ability to articulate facts and use images or data that simulate false epistemes.
Brazil was the cases of mensalão, petroleum and other ill-informed people that generated a body of half-truths that inflamed and reached a large part of public opinion, another was little consideration of the cultural and moral values of society, whether religious, whether it be black culture, indigenous culture, or Brazilian regionalities, there were many untruths.
It is so difficult to understand sometimes, that even trying to clarify the facts we are confused, for example, in Portugal there is now a famous case (here) of Tancos, a barracks where a gun truck was stolem the weapons of war, and I needed a Portuguese friend to understand, there is half-truths everywhere and lots of tall people seem involved, and the guns were returned with even an extra box of arms, appear a jokie but ist real fact.
As part of the truth of the facts, there are currents of “opinions” where the term may be inappropriate, currents of divergent or even opposing cultures would be better, without the broad dialogue required the tendency is for cheerleaders to grow and increase number of conflicts, where intolerance prevails the risk of serious conflicts is eminent.
We separate here “opinion” of epistemological, cultural or methodological divergence, since different ways to obtain the truth must be thought apart from the passions, otherwise the possibility of concrete ways to overcome crises are blocked and reason disappears.
Is it possible to rethink Brazil?
09
Nov
The political moment says no, but for those who think and can see these 
“temperate zones”, as Priest Antunes called it Rethinking Portugal, which is in the plural because there is “beyond political democracy, social democracy”, and the thinker affirms that “it was a mistake to think of the structures of general, atomized freedom,” says Priest Antunes to rethink Portugal.
Priest Antunes stated that “their formulators and apologists did not see – or saw it too well – that the” natural law “they advocated was, in fact, the right of the stronger, than the” invisible hand “that business would only increase the profits and profits of those already possessed, that the harmony, which they envisioned in the of the “natural laws” of the market of supply and demand, would in reality constitute a terrible disharmony if it were not corrected by the imperative of the common social welfare, that the freedom granted to all, in a great impetus of generosity, worked, in practice, only as the privilege of some “(Antunes, 2011).
For this reason, Priest Antunes explains: “For more than a century and a half, in order that” this freedom of heart could be translated into the effectiveness of the application, many struggles, harsh struggles were fought “, speaking of the struggles in Portugal.
“In the name of justice and equity, in the name of the history that was moving – or should be – in the sense of equality, in the name of the fraternity that we should all unite – especially the weakest and oppressed, the disinherited and those left on account: men, groups, classes and nations, “said Father Antunes about Portugal in the 1970s “To this day. It is today the combination of political democracy and social democracy that is the great concern of the most conscious and most critical, lucid and generous sector of all Humanity “(Antunes, 2011), but in Brazil the project has been postponed, and the moment which is still in wait, and seems delayed. What followed of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal was a moment of openness and lucidity, but with the entry into the European Community all this came to be shaken, with allegations of corruption in the José Sócrates government (2005-2009), and with the crisis financial crisis in 2010-2014, and named Troika intervention.
An European intervention that the Portuguese people called the Troika, composed of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, which managed the financial crisis with many protests by the Portuguese. What can Brazil do with its economic, political and moral crisis? Without the necessary dialogue and openness, financial interventionism will be a disaster, politically if it is repressive it will be hateful, and the social thing almost unthinkable. It is necessary to update discourses, interpretations and authors, almost all dated references of the beginning of the century, who ignore the new media and new thinkers.
What can Brazil do with its economic, political and moral crisis? Without the necessary dialogue and openness, financial interventionism will be a disaster, the politician if he is repressive will be hateful, and the social unthinkable.
Will there be channels for dialogue with society? Is the press free? it seems that Rethinking Brazil at this moment is almost impossible, but we cannot anticipate the facts even if they are easily presumed, it is a political error that can worsen the fragile stage of Brazilian democracy, we would create a pre-truth or a pre-fact.
Violence, power and change
07
Nov
The idea of ’violence’ in Arendt’s discourse has the sense of a means or instrument
of coercion that constitutes resources to the exclusive and sovereign service of a given authority (or entity), in the exercise of a given form of power, in the last instance State, or to whom it delegates power, but can be seen and developed also for daily life.
What was of interest to Hannah Arendt was to understand the mechanisms of violence in the sense of instrumentalising violence to serve certain political ends, and in the paradigmatic cases, whether the revolutionaries or the fascists, as always having a violent option.
The concept of revolution, according to Arendt, is not only related to change but, above all, to the foundation of liberties, and in this sense, it may make little sense when one has nuclear weapons, cyber wars or even targeted propaganda of hatred as violence.
Of course Hannah Arendt did not live to see the modern media, and could not assume a world where the fact could be manipulated in order to modify the truth, the so-called post-truth, but this paradigm already existed and was dealt with in Hans-Georg’s book Gadamer Truth and Method, both were contemporary and suffered strong influences from Heidegger.
It was of no interest to Arendt, any study of the nature or mechanisms that develop the instincts of aggression or the investigation into the possibility of such phenomena having an intrinsic origin to the subject itself or the hypothesis of being merely the result of a process of acculturation areas of war, misery or exclusion.
In speaking of the trivialization of evil, the violence completely instrumentalised, he thought of a situation of war, but the return of social instruments of coercion and repression can and should bring the theme of violence back: discrimination, hatred and instrumental violence.
Even worse if it comes under the seal of part of the population, what happened in fascist regimes: “the diminution of power, whether individual, collective or institutional is always a factor that can lead to violence … very present of the present glorification of violence is caused by the severe frustration of the faculty of action of the modern world ” (Arendt, 2009, 62).
When we think of violence, in the sense of the banalization of Hannah Arendt, we are saying who is “in power” in reality: “we refer to the fact that he was taken over by a certain number of people to act in the name […] without a people or group there is no power “(Arendt, 2009, pp. 60-61).
Day-to-day violence is a problem, but instrumentalized is big problema.
ARENDT, H. Sobre a violência (About violence). Trad. André de Macedo Duarte. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2009.
Fight for peace, meekness and justice
02
Nov
The history of mankind is to this day a war story of the Same against the Other,
the book The Expulsion of the Other by Byung-Chul Han is nothing more than the realization of this reality. It is our destiny, a fatality, I think not, when peace has been spoken of most, if war is spoken of, peace can be thought of, the Earth as a human homeland.
The challenges are immense, and fears grow with each new authoritarian government, it is good to say there are also islands of the left and right-wing stronghold that are only “elected” people.
I do not think of resistance or opposition, I still think of transformation, the great setback that happens in all humanity, if it were located it would be easy to have only one reading: we can not go forward, the nostalgists say: “how good was those time” , which ?
To fight for peace must also be for justice and against all sorts of oppression, to magnify simple wisdom and to understand that it takes depth to be simple, a “sophistication” as Leonardo da Vinci said, and to establish a spirit of meekness where it is possible to think.
Not without realizing an excessive dose of authoritarianism is time to ask, what is the exact place of the state in everyday life? its abrupt interference even in the personal life is but a form of authoritarianism? we have cameras and radars every kilometer, it’s not an exaggeration.
Weapons for peace, does not make the slightest sense, more weapons more violence, never the other way around. They remember the biblical beatitudes Mt 5,5: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth,” of course what you see today is power in the hand of rabid and authoritarian, but it is not the end.
The following long verse is practically a warning to justice Mt 5: 6: “Blessed are the hungry and righteous, for they shall be filled,” and further Matthew 5: 9: “those who promote peace, because they will be called children of God “, did humanism die? The fact that everyone, or at least a large part of humanity, has a perception that something needs to be done urgently to overcome the “dangers against humanity” challenges us.
There is an urgent need for global governance, not less urgent income distribution programs. The ecological collapse, and in the big metropolis also the urban demand global measures.
I remember the two beatitudes as a stimulus for those struggling for humanity suffer persecution, injustice and slander. Mt 5,11 “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you, and when they lie, they shall say all manner of evil against you for my sake,” that is Christianity, the rest wickedness
The cure of the blind from birth
26
Oct
In his Essay on Blindness (in brazilian edition of the Companhia das Letras, 2002), José
Saramago gives a very simple lesson on ontology: “Within us there is something that has no name, this is what we are”, social interaction, culture and politics reveals us gradually to others.
In a way we all see a little and we all have “blind spots” and we need the Other.
Among all the biblical miracles, certainly many consider the resurrection of Lazarus as something extraordinary, but I remember many cases of people who have been in a coma for years and come back to life, I consider the case of the most fantastic birth blind (John 9: 6- 7), why?
A person who has never seen does not have the functional cognitive part prepared to discern the worlds, until the 2 years are the sensations of distance and obstacles that are stimulated attached to the movements, until the child walks, until the age of the symbolic constructions where each object of the complex universe of things is identified.
Therefore to cure blindness, is ultimately to reconfigure the symbolic system of a blind, in a democracy means to grope from the “infantile” universe until reaching a symbolic universe of values that must be present in a mature democracy: respect, tolerance and discussions the symbolic universe.
We would say that democracy in Brazil has matured, it has had little space in history to develop, it is at the end of the critical age of adolescence, energetic parents seem to solve problems, but at the same time they distance youth from dialogue.
But there is another passage that is that of the blind Timaeus, who wants to be cured of blindness, is the case of some in Brazilian democracy, and asks Jesus: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Mk 10,49 ) and Jesus heals him and says, “Thy faith hath saved thee.”
The vow of those who have true faith and who want to cure true blindness can decide an election, if we want peace, justice and a country that will make us proud, we can reflect on our own blindness, the difficulty of seeing everything clearly and ask for healing
Blindness and fear
25
Oct
The euphoria of a conservative retreat is short-lived because, despite setbacks, society as a whole,
including the economy, cultural values and even ecology (in a crisis at a good time to the point of announced catastrophes) must give vital signs or of the Danger.
It was the American warning about possibilities of real bombs against democracy, which includes former President Barack Obama, the candidate Hillary Clinton and some Democratic deputies, as here the suspicion of authoritarian and even reprehensible acts give signs.
The result reflected in the economies, the stock markets fell and the dollar rose, little of course, but it is a clear sample that if we are on the wrong track the euphoria soon falls into reality: fear.
In an official note, the FBI clarified that the packages directed to the Clinton and Obama families were identified during “routine mail sorting procedures,” which made the White House try to minimize the facts by saying they were “despicable”, what they saw were facts.
The Time Warner building, for example, in New York City was evacuated (photo) where Democrat deputies are housed, and according to news agencies, the first to receive packages would have been the stock investor, known in Brazil for his manipulations, George Soros .
Such is the obscurantism and blindness that spread fear in the first instance, the discourse may seem to have foundation, but in revealing its true face, blindness follows fear and often leads to terror.
Of course, it is only a symptom, a small but not “despicable” event, as the White House points out.
If not taken seriously, it can trigger a climate of panic in society that follows fear, and repercussions on the “pocket” of the economy that hurts the powerful, is affected.
We all want a secure society, the paths that lead to it are that they are different, without a path guaranteeing rights to all indistinctly, overcoming inequalities and prejudices, generating a lasting “peace”, different from the one proposed by Kant as “eternal pax” the modern society that has witnessed two world wars knows that it is not effectively real.
Byung Chul Han wrote in The Expulsion of the Other (Lisbon: Relógio d´água, 2018, 22): “the fear of each one in itself unconsciously provokes the nostalgia of an enemy … the enemy is, although in a way a provisor of identity “, taken from the text Theorie des Partisan by C. Schmitt, quoting it verbatim.
The will to power and the sacred
19
Oct
It is a fact that Nietzsche’s concepts are strong: in our instincts the ideas of the will for power
are always present, while nothing changes we remain in the eternal return (Ewige Wiederkehr) and we imagine a superman (übermensch), however this is a form of emptying, nihilism.
There are other instincts that bind us to the sacred, the idea of serving and respect for the other (which are the limits to our will), and without them any scope of our social relation can fall into what I will call “social nihilism”, or that is, the emptying of social thought.
Limited to the will to power, it is only our instincts that speak, and the attitudes even in politics become emotional, in love in the bad sense, it is possible to fall in love with the Good.
I place Capital well because it should not be confused with the Manichaean good, by imagining that we are fighting against an often symbolic “evil” (read Paul Ricoeur’s The Symbolic of Evil) we return in “eternal return” to our instincts of power and intolerance.
The point that Nietzsche was right about is that such instincts exist, they lead to the false concept of authority as an iron hand, and these lead to totalitarianisms, even in everyday life, that empty the sense of education, of service, what I call of “social nihilism”.
Linked to the sacred this concept is purified, can become generosity, benevolence and even a theological virtue that is “charity”, and without this “social nihilism” is a way. This is what makes even people with good intention fall into the temptation of the blue fly, power for power, even the disciples who walked beside Jesus had this “temptation”, ask Jesus in your kingdom: “let us sit a right and another to your left “(Mc, 10,37).
Jesus will say that they do not know what they are asking, we would say today they do not know what they choose, the idea of a strong power that solves deep social issues, that depend on a new worldview, to leave the eternal return, depends on the mobilization of the popular will and not of a stronger central power.
Is a temptation also for those who defend the social. It was the idea of a strong state, led by leaders with “charisma”, who led the world to a second world war, the networked society, and the network are people, needs to get out of their “social nihilism”.
It know what it takes to go through sacrifices to change, Jesus asked the apostles who wanted to sit beside him: “Can ye drink the cup that I drink?” Mk 10,38.
The great change we need requires a global citizenship, not a return to Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” time, even though the feeling of nation and people is good
Scientific vision and ontology
16
Oct
Contemporary science is the fruit of an a priori concept construction, which can be
thought of as that which is prior to experience or perception, in terms of philosophy, this corresponds to two forms of knowledge or argument, when we say in my experience I feel that … it is the argument of perception, when I say I see it this way … it means that I have a world view and I am resorting to it.
In the ontological phenomenology an “a priori” is also admitted, but it does not mean an “a priori construction”, since it must be dissociated from “empiria”, because in fact even if we can not make explicit our world view, it was socially and culturally constructed, which in the hermeneutic circle are the preconceptions, in the sense that they are somehow formulated.
Just as both scientific research and ontology have concepts “a priori” they can converge, but in practice ontology requires a purification, ie, the explanation of which are the prejudices, for example, idealism or culture.
Every scientific investigation makes an a priori that is the “fixation of the sectors of objects” and is only possible from an opening to the being of being, that is, what is the ordinary experience that it has of the world, sometimes difficult to explain and question.
In order for a true scientific question to be asked, it is necessary to determine the region of the entities, often called contextualization, but at most only corresponds to a romantic view of history (read Gadamer), the region means being taken to the horizon of the original experience, the horizon of the fundamental relation of the entity that questions with the questioned world, usually done in reverse.
In medieval philosophy, the whole discussion of these a priori leads to the quarrel of the universals of Boethius (470-525), who translated Isagoge from Greek into Latin, soon perceived the magnificent program that Porphyry’s questions proclaimed.
At bottom the quarrel is whether there are universals, which would be them, that triggered a struggle between nominalists (everything is name) and realists (they exist independent of the names).
Existential analytics “is before all psychology, anthropology and, above all, biology.” (Heidegger, 2015, pp. 89), although we already say in the previous post Paul Ricoeur affirms that there is in Heidegger (he would say in all ontology) an a priori that is based on anthropology, which we call original for cultural reasons.
Heidegger, M. Ser e tempo, 10a. edição, Trad. Revisada de Marcia Sá Cavalcante, Brasil, Bragança Paulista, SP: Editora Universitária São Francisco, 2015.
