Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
The human zoo and antropotécnica
30
Aug
At a conference held on July 17, 1999, dedicated to Heidegger and Lévinas, at the castle of Elmau in
Bavaria, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk addressed controversial issues such as genetic manipulation and launched the idea of an “anthropotech”, provoking strong reactions in Germany and also in Brazil in the space Mais+ of the Folha de São Paulo daily “The new zoo of the man” was cover featured on October 10, 1999.
The philosopher’s ideas had already been presented in a Swiss city of Basel, but now the reaction was the relationship of humanism with the media, a more mediatic interpretation of humanism, which provoked the reaction of the philosopher Habermas and a columnist of the prestigious magazine German Der Spiegel, where a controversy began with the writer Thomas Assheuer who indicated that Sloterdijk “propagates prenatal selection and optional birth: genetic technique as an applied social critic .. traces of fascist rhetoric” was published in the prestigious journal.
On 9 September of the same year Sloterdijk published in Die Zeit, two open letters one addressed to Assheuer and another to Mohr, who attacked him as well, but stating that the mentor of these attacks was Jürgen Habermas, and even more provocatively entitled his article of “Die Kritische Theorie ist tot”, translating The critical theory is dead. The controversy grew and the articles by Manfred Frank and Ernst Tungendhat published on September 27 in Spiegel, made a dossier of Sloterdijk’s book of Sloterdijk.
The Rules for the Human Park was already a book, with a cover in the style of Arno Breker, sculptor of the III Reich, grouping icons of Hitler, Nietzsche and the Superman of the comics, the sheep Dolly and Lara Croft, a heroine of virtual games of computer, the controversy was formed. Sloterdijk’s point of departure was not this, I confess it was my reaction at first reading too.
But his starting point this book was, and his presence at the colloquium dedicated to Heidegger and Lévinas prove this, a phrase of the poet Jean-Paul at the beginning of the book: “books are letters addressed to friends, only longer”, a humanism linked to writing.
Also the reference to Cicero’s humanitas, an opposition to the savagery and brutalities that were the spectacles in the human amphitheater, shows, unlike his detractors, the preoccupation with a current pre-fascism (read yesterday’s post), which was drawing and is now a reality in many parts of the world, and we remember that the “national humanism” of the nineteenth century was precisely where the two world wars of the twentieth century were designed.
What led Heidegger to ask in his Letter on Humanism, and Sloterdijk’s book is a response, if a blind manifestation of anthropocentrism led to three conceptions of tragic confrontations of the twentieth century: “Bolshevism, Fascism and Americanism,” in his reply Sloterdijk affirms that Christianity, Marxism and existentialism were the three humanist alternatives that “avoid the ultimate radicality of the question about the human being” (Sloterdijk 1999: 23).
The separation of man from nature, and the animal which in Heidegger’s view is not + and rationality, in Sloterdijk’s image, Heidegger walks among them like an angry angel in his sword of fire (idem, 25), marking the ontological cleavage between the being of biology and man as the clearing of Being, for whom the Self presents itself as a Being that chooses for its guard, in its search for the “pacification” that two world wars have buried, and now they seem to be on the near horizon now.
Why it is important to read Sloterdijk
29
Aug
I informed in the last post that besides the spheres of Sloterdijk, I have my own sphere, 
borrowed from Teilhard Chardin: the Noosphere. I read Sloterdijk´s Spheres only I that was published in Portuguese, of the others I have comments of the own author and of his readers and interpreters,
An answer I read recently from an interview with him gave me an important synthesis of my closeness to his thinking, when asked about what he expected from the academic world, he said ceremonially, “From the 19th century onwards (let’s think of Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer or Nietzsche), the world of philosophers is divided between those who, like me, seek an alliance with the media of their time (at that time, literature, today the press, radio and television), and those who do not do it, betting on the classic link between university and book publishers as their only cognitive biotope, “among many things I read, this is the coolest.
I do not bet on the media of social networks, blogs like the one I write to ten years, by fad or affirmation of my thinking, but because I think it is important to dialogue with what is now media, I refused some time, for example, to Twitter who is impulsive and angry.
Another point of contact is his view of the comfort zone, in the same interview published in the Folha São Paulo 2003 space Mais+, but which I randomly found on a website to re-read what influenced me at the time, which made me soon buy the book : Rules for the Human Park, published by brazilian Estação Liberdade, at the turn of the millennium, but soon stopped reading.
I only came back years later alerted by a student to the importance of his thinking.
This point of security, therefore, is not a zone of comfort, explains: “We are thinking how the human being architect the security of its existence. How does he live? How do you prevent future eventualities and catastrophes? How do you defend yourself? How do you integrate into your cultures, understood as communities of struggle? It is a paradigm shift: from philosophy to a general immunology, “that is, we seek a” place “to be sure, there is an analytic of the place, I would say in my analysis, in direct opposition to nihilistic and Kantian pragmatism.
A preview of Sloterdijk can not fail to be noticed in this interview, when predicting fascism in the USA: “From the point of view of media theory, fascism is monothematism in power. If a public opinion is structured in such a way that uniformity increases too much, we have a pre-fascist symptom, “there are several points on the planet with this symptom, and of course we can plunge into a new pre-war fascist era.
We can not fail to see this in positions in Latin America, and in Brazil in particular.
Sloterdijk’s immunology
28
Aug
Sloterdijk’s immunological concept, well before the process of returning to
nationalism that we have plunged in several countries, and even in Latin America, is not only an individualized explanation of living, but now also of society as a whole.
But Sloterdijk started from the individualized life (or biós, from Greek) that was characterized as a success stage of immune systems, ie, the phase in which the relationship with man with nature was learning, the definition of systemic biology, to explain that there can be no way of life that does not worry about the conservation of their immune structures.
“If we quote the metabiological statement that immune systems would be embodiments of injury expectations or expectations of some harm, it is clear that human cultures, insofar as they represent the totality of preventive procedures – or, we can say, traditions – are elaborated with greater sensitivity against immunity than animal and plant species. And not everyone knows that the concept of immunity was originally not a biological concept, but a jurist, which was used as a metaphor in biology.” (Critique of Cynic Reason, 1983).
Plato had a similar system, but made use of images and analogies in the “pastoral” sphere to talk about the formation of the individual, for Sloterdijk this slosh association between teacher and pastor, students and herd, only dissolved with reformed pedagogies of the twentieth century: “At the time, this happened after World War II, in institutions like Summer Hill, where the student came to be thought of as a self-educated herd” (SLOTERDIJK, 1983)
Sloterdijk adds that the pedagogical question of how to educate the human being is superimposed by an evolutionary biological drama: “The second discovery of the need to form the human being as a human being proper – that is, to immunize him with domestication against his own associability – occurred in the nineteenth century when Charles Darwin placed man at the end of the evolutionary series in his theory on species “(Sloterdijk, 1983), stated in his work.
Our point of view is that there is also a spiritual sphere in which man evolves, his spirit evolves, the Noosphere, as described by this Teilhard Chardin.
The use of artificial intelligence for education
31
Jul
According to the report by the British publishing group Pearson, Artificial Intelligence will
positively impact teaching in the coming years, says the text: “Imagine lifelong learning partners fueled by Artificial Intelligence that can accompany and support students throughout their studies – in and out of school – or new forms of assessment that measure learning while it is ongoing, shaping the learning experience in real time. ”
Those who are reluctant and even opposed to AI teaching argue that it automates and individualizes the learning process, and education would not be so, but there are many reasons to advocate this new support tool in class. In favor of using these tools, teachers will be able to evaluate the performance and supervision of each student’s learning in an individualized way, but this means that they will pay more attention to the weaknesses and, using statistical methods, to act and correct them more quickly and weaknesses.
As for the device, in addition to the training that Alexa personal assistants awaken, the learning of each student allows for the accumulation of data to give the teacher a more precise view of the student in the virtual space that helps the student’s intellectual evolution.
The questioning and discussions should be extended until machine learning is already so evolved that its presence in the educational process is irreversible.
Musical painting
25
Jul
It is already possible a musical painting, the idea is to use micro LEDs (diodes sensitive to light) and with the painting put electric charges that when the contact with the hand or some other material produces an electric current and it can be associated with a sound.
Bare Conductive is a small studio in London that makes black conductive and viscous paint, the basic material is carbon, which makes it quite accessible to experiment, as well as being a conductive material.
The study saw how to grow a community of edges around them, without musical instruments and without caring who is the best.
The mind and body, the relationship with mentalism
12
Jul
We have already posed here on structuralism, and what we consider late effects of modernity in
what he called structuralism or deconstruction, which before Derridá are already present in the thought of Alun Munslow, and this in turn has a “deconstructionist” perspective linked to thought by Hayden White and Keith Jenkins, which can be read in Rethinking History.
But the aim here is to make a reading, even if it is almost impossible, of the angle of vision of the mind, there is an aphasia called Wernicke, which is precisely the change in oral and written language, which makes communication without precision because of of some neurological injury.
This is particularly interesting because it means that it is possible, under restricted circumstances, to link the mind to an anthropological process of its development, and to make the “mentalist” process linked in some way to the historical.
Thus the relation of the cerebellum is linked to the muscular and coordination functions, while the brainstem regulates the bodily functions (heart beat, body temperature, etc.) and the temporal lobe: understanding, language, listening, memory learning, but curiously it is there that is linked to the area of oral and written language, called Wernicke. In the areas of superiority are the areas of human development historically posterior, especially in the Frontal Lobe: morality, reasoning, personality and others.
Nagel touches on the dilemma of body and mind, we already speak of the mind of the other, starting from the premise that admits that the other is conscious, and if one does not agree with skepticism, it is known that the relation of consciousness with the mind can only be that which “depends on the body,” or on reality. In order to explain his thinking, he makes the experience of eating a chocolate and asks if with instruments that could measure the sensations inside the brain: “But could you find the taste of chocolate?” (Page 31).
“But people think that believing in a soul is something outdated and unscientific. Everything else in the world is made of physical matter – combinations of different chemical elements? “(Page 32),” scientists have discovered what light is, how plants grow, how they move their muscles – it’s just a matter of until they discover the biological nature of the mind. This is how the physicalists think. “(P.33)
In the realm of the mind, mentalists have been called here. The author explains that an “advanced theory of physicalism [mentalism] is that the mental nature of their mental states consists in relations to the things that cause them and things they cause” (page 36), a return to chance, which contemporary physics itself tried to deny, Heisenberg enunciated and particle physics and astrophysics proved.
The subject is complex, but Nagel’s book is a good introduction to the body-mind problem.
Nagel, Thomas. What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987.
It s it possible to simplify philosophy?
10
Jul
Yes and no, as we posted last week, there is complexity in simplification and not
everything that is simple can be correct, most of the times it is a reductionism. But someone who got it, at least in part, was Thomas Nagel, proposed to address such themes as: the world beyond minds, beyond other minds, the old paradox body and mind, how language is possible, there is the free will, which inequalities are unjust, the nature of death, and the meaning of life.
Without saying authors and names is addressing central problems of philosophy, will also use practical examples, didactic and begins with a question on things that is at the core of the question of much of the philosophy: “Would things look different if fact existed only in his mind … what if it was just a giant dream? … (Nagel, 1987). “It is even possible that you do not have a body or a brain – since your beliefs about it come solely from the data of your senses” (NAGEL,1987).
He then begins to divide the currents of philosophy, “the most radical conclusion to draw from here would be that your mind is the only thing that exists”, this is the solipsistic current.
The second position is whether or not an outer world exists, and if it exists, it may or may not be completely different from the way it seems to you – is there no way to know it? “, this is the position of skepticism . “If you can not be sure that the world is out of your mind, there is now yourself, how can you be sure that you existed before ?, and this refers to the problem of time, memory, information, language and being.
In the end, the author states that it is “impossible to seriously believe that all things in the world around you may not exist in reality” (p.20), this may be so evident that we do not need to substantiate, but there would still be three serious questions :
1) Does it make sense that the inner world is all that exists, but that the outside world guarantees that it is not different from what it thinks?
2) If any of these hypotheses are possible, is there any way to prove to yourself that this hypothesis is not really true?
3) If you can not prove that there is anything outside of your own mind, is it right to continue to believe in the existence of an outside world?
If the external world exists, the problem is whether everything moves as a clock, ie, is predetermined, so-called determinism, or if there is free will and things can be chosen, the author speaks of the choice of people between eat a nice piece of cake or a fruit, and the fact that the sun can not choose not to rise at the beginning of the day, but even in nature the physics of the particles show that there is an indeterminism in nature.
Approach this in chapter 6 hence the question of logic will come in chapter 7. If you think that there are both, you must think that there are other minds as well, and these minds will have experiences and vision of things different from yours, is there a way of seeing that the two are right or the wrong two, right or wrong?
He will approach this in chapter 7, and right and wrong before righteousness, will approach this in chapter 8, and death what is, chapter 9 and the meaning of life, chapter 10.
Nagel, Thomas. What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Why do we need to think?
09
Jul
I dreamed of writing a philosophy book, I will not write it any more, I may make considerations,
such as I shall do here, but upon unexpectedly finding the author Thomas Nagel in: “What does all this mean? An Introduction to Philosophy “in his 5th. edition in portuguese, original en english in 1987 (Oxford University Press) I think he did the trivial: to present fundamental questions in everyday words.
So I’ll just make comments, it’s not a summary, it’s just notes, and maybe it’s interesting to say how I found it, it was even from another work: What’s it like to be a bat? (The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, pp. 435-50, 1974), where it says that this question may make sense, but it does not make sense to ask what it is like to be a toaster, updating to this day what it feels like to be Robot Sophia, people asking this question.
It is not this question that answers directly, but current issues that are in everyday thinking, namely: How we know what it is, what other minds are, the meaning of words, freedom (free will), death and the sense of life.
Philosophy does not seem to deal with this, but only in dialogue with other thinkers, the author explains at the beginning of the book: “Philosophy is different from science and mathematics … it is not based on experimentation or observation, but only on thought . “(p.8).
We all think, it is wrong to think that only philosophers and scientists think, the question of philosophy is; “To question and to understand very common ideas that we use every day without thinking about them” (p.8), and in doing this we are taken “in the wave” wherever it wants to take us, in times of crisis and deep changes this can be fatal .
The author explains, among other things, two questions that I consider essential: “A physicist will ask what atoms are made of or what explains gravity, but a philosopher will ask how we can know that there is anything outside our minds” (p. 9).
This is essential because this is the contemporary idealist question, and idealism is the great philosophy of our time, it is the basis of what is conventionally called modernity.
Nagel, Thomas. What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Unity, complexity and simplicity
04
Jul
Apparently irreconcilable, some say that the paradigm of the contemporary world, complexity is
opposed to simplicity, but let us analyze this interpretation of Edgar Morin’s thinking much better by saying “… part of the phenomena, at the same time, complementary, competing and antagonistic , respects the diverse coherences that unite in dialogical and polylogical and, with this, faces the contradiction by several routes.
Thus, it uses the basic concept of a complex self-organized system “(Morin, 2000, p. 387), which refers to the idea of unity as a key notion. This complexity necessitates new strategies and coherent modes of dialogue to penetrate the mysteries, notes Morin: “(…) necessity, in their coherence and their antagonism, nations of order, disorder and organization obliges us to respect complexity physical, biological, human “(Morin 2000, pp. 180-181).
Understanding the complexity of the culture that involves it: juvenilization, cerebralization, Culturalization, which is explained in one of his basic books The lost paradigm and human nature, whose Portuguese edition is 1973.
Although there are other ideas of complexity, Morin says that the word complexity: “pushes us to explore everything and complex thinking is the thought that, armed with principles of order, laws, algorithms, certainties, clear ideas, patrol in the fog the uncertain , the confused, the Unspeakable “(MORIN, 2000, pp. 180-181).
The idea that complexity can not coexist with simplicity is the incomprehension not only of the dialogic, but of the polylogical one that consolidates and unites the two concepts: “to distinguish and make communicate, instead of isolating and disjoining, to recognize the singular traits, original, historical facts of the phenomenon rather than linking them purely and simply to determinations or general laws, to conceiving of multiplicity-unity … “(MORIN, 2000, p.354).
This alternative of unity in diversity is explained by the author using examples in the biological field, which is in practice the exercise of simplicity, where the diversity of nature composes life.
MORIN, E. Ciência com consciência (Science with conscience). Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand, 2000
News in Google News
02
Jul
After several announcements, finally in the second half of May Google launched its new application,
only now I have been able to take a look at the application that replaces Google Play Nwesstad, now with use of Artificial Intelligence.
The application works on using machine learning to train algorithms that scour complex and recent news stories and divides them into an easy-to-understand format with timelines, local news and stories presented in a sequence according to the evolution of the facts, for example , the start of a football match, its most important bids, the result and the consequences.
This section which are news that the algorithms think important to you have the name For You, follow 3 more sections so divided: The second section is called Manchete, where the latest news and specific topics are presented. Here is a subsection where you can choose to read the news through Full Coverage by Google, where Google splits it into items from a variety of social media sources, letting you know where and when it happened.
The third section shows favorites, such as the top topics the user usually accesses, the AI has great work there, goes to the owner’s favorite sources, saves stories for later readings, and saves searches according to the location of the texts.
And finally the White Play (White Play) which is the addition of the new Google news, which allows the user to access and subscribe services with premium content in news sites.
While a part of the critique continues to duel with the old canned news schemes linked to editorial groups, the world of personalized news evolves
