Arquivo para a ‘Neurociência’ Categoria
Sensibility and public cause
16
Mar
Health is a public cause, almost everyone agrees, but when proposing protective
measures, many people, not seeing the cases explode and the number of infected people growing, do not understand why and make them a joke or disdain, it was like that in countries that later woke up, this is the case of Italy, whose number of deaths exploded yesterday, Spain and Portugal where the movement on the streets disappeared and many products on the market as well.
Italy recorded 368 deaths, an increase of 25% just this Sunday, and the number of infected people went to 3690 this weekend, Spain and Portugal the number of people who decided to stay at home practically paralyzed the country and for this to be as possible, families have stocked up in supermarkets, they have reduced offers, those who have not been prevented may be left without some products.
Several authorities have commented on the effects, there is a real video of a meeting that took place at Incor (Heart Institute), and a fake attributed to Stanford University, it is also false that Cuba sent vaccine to China, a fake and ridiculous fake is that lemon and vitamin C fights the virus.
The politicization of the issue is also of little concern for the population, we must all fight because soon the explosion of the coronavirus will happen in Brazil, what many experts are concerned about is the capacity of the Health System to respond, all over the world and also in Brazil , with protection the curve will be less steep and the system will have a response capacity, the graph above explores with and without protective measures.
The most complete video on the subject, because it also deals with the cultural aspect and behavior in combating a pandemic, is that of the profa. Dr. Claudia Feitosa Santana, from University of São Paulo, Brazil (is possible setting to English):
Infinity and human complexity
03
Mar
Nothing weaker than wanting to arrest the man who makes him a hostage of ideas
or static methods, so there is no thesis and antithesis, but to be and not to be, Husserl stated that “by conceiving ideas, man becomes a new man , who, living in finitude, is oriented towards the pole of infinity ”, but the idea here is the eidos of ancient Greece.
This concept comes from a Proto-Indo-European root “weid”, “see”, origin of the words, εἶδος (eidos) and ἰδέα (idea), according to the “American Heritage Dictionary”, and its pre-Socratic origin is linked the investigation of what things are in essence, and thus the idea of substance appears, as what a thing is independent of its changes in “shape”.
Edmund Husserl foreseeing that the idealistic philosophy that became fixed in forms and that no longer saw the essence would result, affirmed “philosophers, at present, are very fond of criticism instead of studying things from the inside”, it is due to this fact that we fixate on forms and effects without ever referring to the essentials and things.
This is how his phenomenological philosophy was established, it is necessary to return “to the very things”, in a famous expression by Husserl, and his phenomenology is this way back to things, to the world of lived experience or the “lebenswelt” (world-of-life) ) which is the opposite of the world of ideas, from Parmenides, through Plato, to Kant and Hegel.
Phenomenology was born from the social psychology of Franz Brentano recovered the idea of intentionality, coming from the ontological concept of consciousness, which itself highlights the most important point of this experience, that is, the intention clarifies the structure of what is conscious.
What is hidden in every experience, then, is the intention of what is conscious, and if all consciousness only makes sense as awareness of something, psychology deals with what is not conscious.
Human intelligence beyond artificial intelligence.
15
Jul
Until very recently it was believed that a certain type of intelligence was 
preponderating to others, the famous IQ test, for example, determined the intelligence of a person in numbers, which fell a bit into disrepute, then came the phase of emotional intelligence , it exists because we are in time of stress.
With the advances of artificial intelligence, the advances of artificial intelligence and the point of singularity, at which point machines will go beyond Intelligence in man, but what is this intelligence, is little questioned, the specialists give answers ready, but …
Due to conjunctural, social and cultural factors, a type of intelligence is developed that is logic, memory capacity and great talent to deal with mathematics and logic in general, one can find solution of complex problems, say the neuroscientists that she is strongly attached to the right side of the brain.
The second type is motor intelligence, artists and athletes develop great talents with a body expression and notion of space, distance and depth very sharp, can perform complex, graceful and sharp movements, as the name says is related to motor ability.
People with good written and oral ability have a type of intelligence called linguistics, in addition to the expression has a degree of attention and sensitivity to meet the views of others, is visible its usefulness in today’s world.
People with great ability to imagine and draw both in 2D and 3D have a great talent for graphic art, it is space intelligence, just as linguistic intelligence has great sensitivity and creativity, but its universe is itself and the interaction with others is done precisely by his spatial vision.
Musical intelligence is one that makes us see through the “sounds”, are people with a great facility to listen to music or sounds in general and identify different patterns and musical notes.
Two types uncommon are intra and interpersonal intelligences, and statistics are the rarest among people and yet the closest to our “being,” intrapersonal intelligence has an enormous facility to understand what people think, feel and desire, while the intra has a strong component of “leadership” because they are people capable of causing great admiration in others, and with special active intelligence mobilize and get to take action and put others to accompany it.
Of course this is as schematic as other classifications, but it is precisely by the scheme that artificial intelligence is thought to be related to this, in fact human intelligence is quite complex while the artificial one is very schematic, even though it is a complex scheme.
The TED by Daniel Levitin has already surpassed 14 million views, and has an interesting point of view of a neuroscientist:
Worldview: soul, feelings and wisdom
12
Jul
One can think of soul as mind, as consciousness (it is only a reflection), or identity,
according to post about Giddens this leads to interiority in a restricted sense.
That is why we call it the Noosphere, the sphere of the mind or the outside, in a sense of vision, feelings and wisdom, being limited to a worldview, which is evolving.
It is not possible to have a broad worldview, without a broad soul, more than a soul-world, a universal soul in the sense not only anthropological, but cosmological.
Feelings have a great appeal in the contemporary world, as functional logics have become much of the engaging of thought, it is possible and easy to manipulate opinions and people through these resources, but they are dangerous without soul and wisdom.
Wisdom is the most critical element of the noosphere, there are those who believe that through feeling and soul can walk quietly, there are therapies and even online courses to produce happiness, well-being and other promises without any wisdom, the result in short term is commendable, but in the long run it will prove ineffective will lack such sustainability.
Wisdom is also critical because many currents of thought and diverse forms of culture can lead to reductionism, and this will bring in the contemporary world a lack of seeing the Other, sometimes there is even intention, but the result is the result of the restricted world .
The teachers of the Law were in the time of Jesus, the Pharisees who knew the scripture, but whose practice was distorted, one of them addresses Jesus to ask how to have the eternal inheritance.
The great spiritual argument of Loving God is a resource of a certain kind of ignorance, but a good Bible reading is enough to realize that it is false, is in Luke 10: 26-27, and Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read? “He replied,” You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your intelligence; and your neighbor as yourself! ”
Jesus immediately binds the heart “feelings” to the soul, because it knows and respects the interiority, from where the soul drinks, and ends by asking for love of neighbor, the Other.
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.
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
Heidegger and the Power
18
Oct
Although speculation can be made on the question of power in the concept of pre-existence
which is a response of Heidegger to rationalism, the being-for-the-end “does not originate first from a posture that sometimes happens, but belongs, in an essential way, to the presence of the presence, which in the disposition (of humor) is revealed in this or that way “(Heidegger, 2015, 327).
It is the idea that this being launched, the presence “exists for its end” (idem), the for it is highlighted because it is in the relation with the concept para-si of Hegel, and through this it would be possible to make the speculation of what is in fact the relation Heidegger sees with power, from the presence.
The path we are going to take is more direct, because Heidegger directly analyzed this question, studying the question of the Will to Power in Nietzsche, and the eternal return that indirectly made the analysis in the eternal state and we want to deepen the concept
The affirmation that in our instincts are always present the ideas of will to power, eternal return (in German Ewige Wiederkehr) and superman (in German übermensch), and the last two are driven by the will to power, therefore its main category.
The entity for Nietzsche is not thought as being, but as wanting inherent to the will, so the being that always wants itself in an unstable and insatiable way is what makes it, a metaphysical entity of wanting and not necessarily of Being.
In Nietzsche it is a “makes who you are” worth and not the Socratic principle “know thyself” which is closer to the ontological being, and Heidegger will propose the “confrontation” which is the revision of the original reasoning of thought Western world, around the essence and its necessity, described as follows: “If a more original consideration of being must become necessary from a historical urgency of Western man, then such thinking can only happen in confrontation with the first beginning of Western thought.
This confrontation takes place fully, “it remains closed in its essence and necessity, while the greatness, that is, the simplicity and purity of the fundamental affective tone of thought and the power of proper saying, refuse for us “(Heidegger, 2015). , pp. 479).
It is not by chance that the Nietzschean Brazilian Oswaldo Giacóia Jr wrote “Urgent Heidegger: an introduction to a new thinking” (GIACÓIA Jr, 2013), which is a very precise guide for reading Heidegger, clarifies that Heidegger intends to resume an even more ” originating from that which was experienced in Greece … “(Giacóia Jr, 2013, p. 46), to correspond to the truth of Being as unveiling (alétheia) would still say a return to its essence.
In this context the Being, in a new poesis (the creative and infinite way of thinking the Being), owes above all the will to power that is present in the messianism and mythology of all contemporary thought, source of the authoritarian bases of doing politics and of society.
The eternal return is the most fragile concept, there is no question of historical consciousness or of time, which profoundly differentiates Heidegger’s hermeneutic circle.
GIACOIA JÚNIOR. Oswaldo. Heidegger urgente (Heidegger urgent – Introduction to a new thinking). Brazil, S.P. Três Estrelas, 2013. HEIDEGGER, M. Ser e tempo, 10a. edição, Trad. Revisada de Marcia Sá Cavalcante, Bragança Paulista, SP: Editora Universitária São Francisco, 2015.
Truths, tautologies and beliefs
05
Sep
I was astonished that Noam Chomsky said: “people do not believe in facts anymore,” the crises 
(not unique, because there are political, ideological and even humanitarian crises) although all with an economic outline, the deep root of them is for a rejection of own culture.
Some will say identity, although it should not be left aside, the discourses I see in this line border on psychologism, the correct philosophical concept must be seen with the question of relation, while psychology sees as personality problems, behaviors and mental functions, then for me it’s something else. In the sociological case it has in the idea of self-conception, aspects of social representation as a single person, or in quantitative terms what differs it from others in cultural, gender, nationality, now online identity or something that is formative of one’s own identity.
Although culture comes as a sociological aspect, it is reductive because culture is more comprehensive than aspects of identity and nationalities, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn have found at least 167 different definitions for the term “culture”, which shows the breadth of the term . We have a narrow definition, but incorporate essential elements: all that complex that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, customs and all other habits and capacities acquired by man as a member of society ” Edward B. Tylor, for our theme as it involves knowledge, beliefs and truth.
Systems that ignore beliefs are not true, but tautological, even admitting an intersection between beliefs and knowledge, because they ignore that there is knowledge linked to beliefs (figure below).
Systems that admit that in every culture there are beliefs, can differentiate the knowledge present in different cultures and that have a core of distinct knowledge, but in both there may be truth, it is a dialogical and relational knowledge.
The art, morality, and customs that are within these cultures may have no relation to truth, but each has a different nucleus of knowledge (x and y in the figure) that relates to truth, facts and attitudes help to maintain this true relationships.
Quantum physics: origin, paradox and spirituality
16
Aug
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) was the pioneer physicist responsible for creating a quantum model for the atom, his studies were essential for the
evolution of the area of quantum mechanics with theories related to atoms, cosmic rays and subatomic particles.
In 1927 Heisenberg proposed the “Principle of Uncertainty,” also called the “Heisenberg Principle,” with which he said that it was impossible to measure the speed and precision of the position of a particle. In 1932 Heisenberg received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the creation of quantum mechanics.
Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) was an Austrian physicist who created an equation that became known as Schrödinger’s equation, from which he can perceive the changes of the quantum states in a physical system, made it wider than just subparticles.
Famous is his imaginary experiment called Schrodinger’s Cat, a cat is placed in a box with a poison pot together. By quantum physics, he would be alive and dead at the same time.
In 1933, Erwin Schrodinger received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his findings on atomic theory.
Deepak Chopra is an Indian physician who, an ayurveda professor, who does an alternative medicine relating body and mind, Amit Goswami, Indian physicist, parapsychology scholar, has a line of thought called “quantum mysticism”, and the Austrian physicist Tritjof Capra is known for his work “The Tao of Physics”.
But I would add three thinkers who have their thinking related to quantum physics and who I think are more solid in the quantum physics and spirituality relationship: Basarab Nicolescu (1942-), theoretical physicist who has a book Transdisciplinarity: theory and practice (2008), Thomas Francis Banchoff 1938) who had a long dialogue with Salvador Dali about his mystical intuitions, especially about his picture Christus Hypercubus, and, far from the idea of the Cosmic Christ of Teilhard Chardin, which unites theology, anthropology, physics and communication.
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.
