Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
Gratitude, the question of science and common sense
22
Jan
A person may be grateful without understanding the goals of gratitude, but
they will not understand the goals if they do not know the true motivations of gratitude, that is, remaining in gratitude can be free of knowledge, but have gratitude (make it a habit healthy) requires going beyond the simple gratuitous act, knowing it and cultivating it to work in society.
Thus, it is necessary to separate appreciable common sense from objective knowledge, which is to dissect the object of knowledge that can be done both inductively and intuitively, both paths are valid, so it is not necessary conventional but intentional science.
To talk about science we need to talk about Karl Popper, he also speculated about being things, said about common sense is valid, but upholding the truths of it is something bigger. But objective knowledge, he said, was an eternal pursuit of his life, in his words: “The essays in this book break with a tradition that can be traced back to Aristotle – the tradition of this common sense theory of knowledge.
I am a great admirer of common sense, which I claim is essentially self-critical ”, But to uphold it as truth requires more: “… if I am willing to uphold to the end the essential truth of common sense realism, I regard the common sense theory of knowledge as a subjectivist blunder.
This blunder has dominated Western philosophy, ”as understood by feelings, passions, and even sustaining nonobjective questions.
He goes on: “I have been trying to eradicate it and replace it with an objective theory of knowledge, essentially conjectural. This may be a bold claim, but I do not apologize for it ” (Popper, 1975, p. 07).
Popper’s division into three worlds shows a weakness in his theory by separating knowledge into three worlds: P1 the world of nature (or physical in the sense of physis), the world of minds (World 2) and the world of ideas (World 3), prioritizes the latter.
In a solution to a problem, people can attack or accept the solution found, but not the person who presented it, so it gives a greater value than the world of ideas (World 3) has to Popper, rather than the World of minds (World 2) who developed them.
Gratitude is just the opposite, because the minds that develop solutions to the problem (World 2) are more important than the ideas that drive them (World 3), although subjectivism, which is proper to the subject, may also have weaknesses.
What embraces these three distinct aspects: Nature, Knowledge and Ideas, are ontological aspects, for the three are proper to Being, gratitude is one of these aspects.
In times of a pandemic vaccine, it is good to remember Popper because he said that what can be refuted is scientific, and what we today is an “affirmation” or “denial” about vaccine, both is anti-scientific, the longer tests is need.
Popper, K. (1975) Conhecimento objetivo (Objective Knowledge). Brazil, São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo.
Fear, anguish and change
12
Dec
The philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) invites those who live in fear, to live
in impropriety, or a kind of aporia that means to think without assigning values and meaning, letting circumstances attribute it, it seems an alienation, but it is the alienation of the self.
In a world that is always running, and I warn that this was already a reflection of Nietzsche and also Mario de Andrade’s Paulicéia Desvairada of the 1920s, and now the Monarchy of Fear, which is a reflection of Martha Nussbaum for the USA, but that serves to Brazil and others.
Nothing is more related to fear than Death, but it also arouses anguish, it would be to think about their relation to change, I would say none, unless the hypothesis that Heidegger throws us: impropriety, that is, we cease to attribute meaning and allow others to ascribe it, I would say that it is a resigned dialogic.
Heidegger also wrote that it is in anguish that we experience our fragility.
In it we find unexpectedly the change, where neither the anguish and the fear reach, beyond them therefore, where the hope and the “clearing” are born, lights on the forest.
So the fear exists because there is a real danger, and it means that something is changing, the anguish leads us to think about what is the change and the direction of it.
I suspect that the term impropriety used in the national translation for the word of Heidegger unangemessenheit may have another meaning, since angemessen can be translated as what is reasonable, so I would translate unreasonableness, that is, which is not in a sense as being reasonable, but that in the face of fear and anguish, they arise as having new horizons, from which changes that were previously unthinkable can emerge.
The German poet Hölderlin said that where there is fear there is salvation, it can be said nowadays in a broader way, that is, in science, in politics and because not in spirituality
Digital´s aporetic and maieutic
10
Dec
In the time of the pre-Socratics, philosophy called the sophist had as a presupposition to
create discourses to favor the rulers and this soon led to Greek democracy to languish and a moral relativism, Socrates who lived in the century. IV a.C. proposed a method to address this which was to develop the maieutic, a method of asking which developed the logos.
But the aporetic state that lived was necessary more than to ask, an interlocutor had to abandon its preconceptions and the relativism of the opinions demanded something more than just to ask, something that would make a birth in the new thought, hence the maiuêutica name that was the the art of giving birth, so it was not a matter of “creating” knowledge, but of giving birth.
There is no doubt that the digital medium became twisted of “opinions”, the doxa as the Greeks called them, but can one parturize and inquire in the digital medium? a digital maieutic is possible, the case is not just how twisted (claques in Portugal) are organized, but how they are manipulated by sophisms, now updated as”fake news”.
The sophistry exists in history, never left or will cease to exist, in digital times the problem is the viral process, but the publishing groups through newspapers and TV channels have already done this and there has always been a maieutic that opposed manipulation to the facts.
Let us return to the method of Socrates, he did not initially know any, did not make his judgments according to tradition, customs, opinions, nor had an episteme, or an elaborate method, just asked, the problem today is that the questions are and modernity has already created “organized” knowledge (in the systematic sense rather than the truth), but we can use this for a new digital maieutic, repelling wrong speeches.
I think it’s not by chance that Artificial Intelligence is evolving, but practical intelligence, phronesis coupled with techné and praxis itself (which is therefore a part of the practice) may help, so Martha Nussbaum’s speech makes a lot of sense.
Many people talk aboutmaintaining “focus” (but it may be wrong) or emotional intelligence, which, disconnected from practical wisdom (phronesis), can fall into paralysis or alienation.
All we have today is not due to the digital world, it affect its, is a means and so it is incorret to see it as the final or initial cause, not even was the industrial revolution that caused it, but the set of values and feelings built in modern society, which is nothing more than a forma of being-in-the-world, a Dasein as Heidegger writed and explained.
Digital resources seem welcome, but we still have the barrier of preconceptions, an elaborate human hermeneutics is necessary
The aporia and the desert
07
Dec
What happens in moments of deep crisis is to return to the safe harbor, 
unfortunately the safe harbor for the masses is what they know: a strong modern state and if not the religious fundamentalism that seems to give back the roots of each people.
There are not few examples in the world, even those who refuse to rediscute the state realize that something is going very wrong: weariness of democracy or even hatred of democracy, it is not so simple, do not get tired or hate what is good , There is something wrong.
Aporia is at this moment more than emptiness, because it means to hear something that comes to mind (the Cartesian cogito that does not go beyond the ego), the alter that is to hear that which is not the Same, aporia is recognition of a fallacy, even if it is a historical step.
Sloterdijk’s diagnosis is hard, we must abandon the depths of our anthropological interpretations: all interpretations of man as “worker” or “communicator” must now be translated into the language of exercise which we have known until then as manifestations of homo faber or homo religiosus , a life of “exercises.”
Of course it is questionable, but his diagnosis has so far, the dualisms: sacred vs. aristocratic common, cognitive cultures knowledge vs. ignorance, military cultures vs. liberal cultics, and goes around now, it is as if for several systems there were only binary dual logic,. Niklas Luhmann went in the same direction and goes so far as to say that his identity is constituted, he allows his internal communication and regulates and at the same time restricts his communication with his environment (Luhmann).
What would be beyond that? The understanding of culture as a rule and not as ancestry, is in fact a new understanding of humanism or even its end some want.
Under culture they understand, from Wittgenstein to Sloterdijk, are the set of all possible behavioral forms within a given society, that is, all forms of life that pass through the sieve of the rule; rule is placed at such a high level of demand that only a life of exercise can achieve it.
So few would be able to fulfill it. Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and even Foucault would all be representatives of a philosophy as a discipline, so philosophy is more than a school subject: it is engaged and characterized by a “vertical tension.”
If Brazilian conservative politics requires a school without a party, it thinks of nothing but a return to a life of exercise: moral, religious, and cultural, because it knows little or nothing about the origin of slogans such as “order and progress,” recalls the positivism of Auguste Comte from which the word “love” was withdrawn, dispensable for dictators.
The necessary aporia is the recognition of a cultural, philosophical and even religious night that the West faces, but also Buddhism and other pacifist Hinduism already show signs of “intolerance” in current cases in regions of India and Myanmar.
Only a “modern aporia” will be able to open a new horizon, old schemes are bankrupt, I am more optimistic than Sloterdijk and others, humanism has not died, there is a humanism of a new kind that must be born: of every man and of every culture, without exclusions.
As it is written in Luke 3,4: “The words of the prophet Isaiah: This is the voice of him that cries in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’”.
Disruption, do you know the most used words?
04
Dec
The year 2018 will be marked by several disruptions, among them the artificial intelligence
that has come to stay, you may think that it is long, but where there is more code is neither on the phone in facebook, but in the car, so it is a disruption.
The second is the use of words in Instagram that have become common and not everyone knows, the hashtag #instagood should be used only for the best photos, but users ended up using it so much that it is the second most used word in Instagram (with number of use of 574.190.28, below just #love that went from 1 billion.
The third one in Instagram is also little known and long: #photooftheday, but if you read it correctly you will see that it is simple: the photo of the day, more than 407 million if it is joined to another word used in the same way # picoftheday would probably be the second .
It will be a bit difficult to know what the word “fashionable” was in 2018, but in Portugal because of a humorous program “Gato Fedorento”, the word “esmiuçar” known to Brazilians, here it came into fashion in 2009, because of excellent mood Ricardo de Araújo Pereira, I promised to read it last year (see my post) and I did not regret it.
There is still no elected word, the initiative in Portugal is from Porto Editora, there are polls on the site www.palavradoano.pt until December 31, so only in the new year will we know.
In English I read on websites that fit the perfect “perf” and “lineswoman”, our English line judge would be the referee of American football, I think it can mean women decided or make a decision.
In Brazil, fake news was widely used, besides the electoral uses of # elenão and #mito, nothing more depoliticized, gave in what gave, not even the future government has a clear future ahead.
The evolution of situations of religious fundamentalism throughout the world, and perhaps now also in Brazil, may create a new word, but there is undoubtedly a return to nationalism and religious foundations unprecedented in history, until peaceful Buddhism is affected.
What word was used for this other than fundamentalism? Not yet. What word was used for the return to nationalism, even in Europe? None, so my conclusion in my posts, there is a diagnostic problem, the word would be thought night, then use a Greek word: APORIA.
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.
Truth, beyond theory and practice
21
Nov
The concept of theory came into little credit if it moved away from practice, because
idealism has no other possibility than to consider that it was the practice that determined the truth, or empiricism, because the ideal as knowledge, supreme knowledge of the idea, would have to have some method to discern when a “theory” is valid or not, and only experience could say.
There is a mastery and clarification about the multiplicity of things and, on the other hand, there is a knowledge of a concrete situation as if it were a more adequate orientation.
What Gadamer sought to demonstrate in his Truth and Method, among many other things with the question of historicity and method, was that when it comes to our technical capabilities, and they include our preconceptions and our interpretation of reality, the model of truth is not and should not be unique, and this not significant relativism, but ability to see the horizon posterior to the process interpretation of reality, ie, after the fusion of horizons
In the aspect of our technical capacities, it performs well its function, which is to bring relative security and comfort to some needs that exist and others that were created in the process of fusion of horizons.
When the field in question of our history and language is at stake, our relationship with art and religion, our awareness of death, our self-knowledge, and our choices and responsible actions in the face of our affect us as finite human beings, the model of truth fails.
What the Greeks determine as the spontaneous emergence of an “art” [τέχνε] proper to define the meaning of truth-bearing words [συνβολον], the art of interpreting [ερμηνευτικές τέχνες] has the name “hermeneutics” which represents not only our particular view of an object, but on the contrary our difficulty in determining precisely the meaning of a message,
While the Aufklärung of modernity believed that even the contents of history, which had become alien to us, could also be accessible to us through our rational activities, that is, a theoretical reflection, the idealism the fashion of the “old” Hegelians, the new ones have no reference to historicity, and Gadamer will reflect on Dilthey, who had the merit of abandoning psychologism, without leaving romantic historicism aside.
Thus speaking specifically of art, he argued that in order to properly understand his own works, more important than to grasp the unity between the content of the text and the tradition, is to accept the effort of understanding that only arises where there is the possibility of revising some misunderstanding, or some preconceptions, in other words, the interpretation is of the nature of understanding, since it is part of the possibility almost always of misunderstanding.
For contemporary hermeneutics, with some misunderstandings, Schleiermacher says that the task of understanding a text must also become an effort to understand another individuality, and then there are so many questions about the Other.
Ability to move beyond preconceptions and reinterpret the truth itself is part of the effort to overcome barriers where irrationality and hatred build insurmountable walls, Gadamer make this exemple: “Whoever abandons himself to his particularity is ungebildet (“unformed”) – e.g., if someone gives way to blind anger without measure or sense of proportion”.
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.
The Religion Between Fundamentalism and Pharisaism
10
Nov
It is understandable that many people gain a certain distrust of religion, unfortunately
because of what is practiced as such, it should be religare or re-link itself, not always is.
The logic of Being or onto-logical is linked to that which is, and that which is always is connected to existence, thus to reconnect should be to connect (link) life to what is favorable, although it is also part of life setbacks , losses and tribulations, but could be minor.
Fundamentalism is the interpretation of what a faith proclaims to the letter, without understanding complex aspects of context, conjunctural, social and cultural, I open a family to say that also ideologies can approach these aspects.
The Greeks said that this was the distance between the episteme, a set of knowledge built on a particular subject, which is different and often opposed to “doxa”, the opinion which is only a common personal interpretation, without the necessary foundation.
This problem can be solved with a good hermeneutics, ie dialogue in search of overcoming preconceptions, while the second is more dangerous pharisaicism, one can in the name of what is good and just, be practicing just the opposite, is the subversion of values.
In general it is associated with the search for power, fame and money, or simply to win a dispute, it will never have a hermeneutics and it is out of control many times.
But it is easier to identify it than the “doxa”; one can perceive by the attitudes and often by the word itself the distance between what is said and spoken, speaks of peace and makes war, speaks of the poor and does not He watches them, speaks of God but only to be admired.
In religious terms they are easy to find, the evangelist Mark (Mark 12: 38-19) shows Jesus’ concern: “Beware of the doctors of the Law! They like to walk in bright clothes, to be greeted in the public squares; they love the first seats in the synagogues and the best places at banquets, “but they do not see the Other, because deep down they are concerned only with themselve
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
