Arquivo para a ‘Information Science’ Categoria
Cartesian meditations and phenomenology
25
Jun
A small book by Edmund Husserl, which was a compilation of a conference in Paris,
was the booklet Meditations Cartesian, where he makes five contributions and it is from there that gives rise to a consistent formulation of phenomenology.
The path of a Transcendental Ego, unlike idealistic transcendence towards the object, is towards the Other, or other selfs, an overcoming of the status of the transcendent linked to the object, thus describes Husserl: “…. it immediately becomes apparent that the scope of such a theory is much greater than it seems at first, since it also jointly founds a transcendental theory of the objective world […] ”(HUSSERL, 2010, p. 134).
By admitting and relating to the subjectivity of others (another alter ego) both cultural objects and the shared world, it creates an intersubjectivity (HUSSERL, 2010, p. 134-35), now from the transcendental phenomenon “world” a layer of meaning that can be referred to the intersubjective constitution.
The criticism of the experience made by Husserl at the beginning of the Meditations, takes the primacy of the Immanent experience (apoditic of the cogito, attached to logic) while the transcendent experience (the outside world and the others included) does not reduce the transcendental experience towards the object .
Husserl also uses the concept of solipsism which is the idea that there is only the act of thinking and the self, see that in this reasoning the very existence of the object is to put in doubt what is solved by experience, in this case there is a gnosiological solipsism where other beings (human beings and objects) exist only in the mind and not in consciousness.
The phenomenological doctrine is based on the fact that the objective world of science is turned to experience and pre-reflective and pre-scientific thinking because it is linked to subjectivity, to modify this relationship of being in the world, incorporating the world of life (Lebenswelt) from where the need arises for a philosophical anthropology and an epistemology that answers these to this challenge.
As a consequence of this thought, phenomenological ontology emerged as a clear possibility in Husserl’s own project, although he did not initially approve Heidegger’s work.
Another possibility for a philosophical hermeneutics as developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer was also designed there, and the hermeneutic circle was already in project in Heidegger’s thought.
HUSSERL, E. (2010) Meditações cartesianas e conferências de Paris. Tradução de P. M. S. Alves. Lisboa: Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa.
Modern thought and truth
24
Jun
Most of the issues raised in modernity refer to the Cartesian “cogito”, and
that this would separate body from spirit, in fact mind from spirit, however it is unknown that the question is previous and is the meaning of substance.
It can be seen in the Cartesian work that mind and spirit are very connected, it can be said that the mind is submitted to the spirit, it reads in the sixth meditation: “mens cerebro tam intime conjuncta sit” (Adam and Tennery, 1996, VII, p. 437).
The origin of two forms of thought, Karl Popper will say that Parmenides’ statement is ontological “being is and non-being is not” in the sense of does not exist (existential and not logical), and Heraclitus of Ephesus “everything is not is becoming ”seen as“ dialectic ” is also ontological.
For Aristotle the substance meant the support or substrate in which the hylé (Greek conception of matter) was constituted in something giving a form (morphe), Tomás de Aquino will think from there, and add a new component in the notion of substance, besides of these two, namely, the act of being (esse / actus essendi), the act of being from which its ontology comes. This was already in Plato.
The famous notions of act and potency, an example, the seed is in the potency of the tree.
Aristotle had 4 causes: Material cause: what is the thing made of? For example, a house would be bricks. Efficient cause: what do you do with the thing? it would be construction. Formal cause: what gives it shape? The house itself. Final cause: what shaped it? The builder’s intention.
But intentio in Tomás is a subcategory of consciousness, and will return to being a category for Franz Brentano, but changing it as the main category as consciousness directed towards something, thus very different from the everyday use of intention.
What Husserl a student of Brentano will think of Cartesian Meditations, is mainly in the fifth and not in the sixth thesis, where he questions whether Descartes does not suspend judgment, but not the ego.
It challenges the Self of Cartesian anguish, without understanding which path from the immanence of the Self to the transcendence of the Other? Reconfigure psychology through phenomenology. Through the method of phenomenological reduction, the Transcendental Self is reached, as this suspension of Husserl and his followers is a hermeneutic epoché, a place in parentheses.
The whole question of Heidegger (student of Husserl) and Lévinas is directed to this Other and Time.
ADAM, C .; TANNERY, P. (org) Oeuvres de Descartes, Paris: Vrin, 1996. Quoted in Amir d. Aczel: Descartes’ secret notebook, São Paulo: Zahar, 2007.
Conciousness and truth
23
Jun
One of the most common tricks is to say a half-truth, a lie without malice or that
which softens our conscience when we know that we are doing what is wrong, it is not a matter of politics because in many cases it is difficult to say that “good” politician if corrupted.
A well-known phrase from William Shakespeare is “We know what we are, but we still don’t know what we can become”, which is as interesting a phrase as “To be or not to be”, because it means that we can be beyond being current , so there is a becoming, so “not to be and I will be”.
The inner sphere in which we satiate emotional voids, frustrations or anxieties, for example in drink or food, we are filling the void by temporarily satiating, but it will come back.
The relationship with philosophy is broad, since Plato who defined the myth of the cave as passing from the world of shadows, where we see ourselves as projections at the bottom of the cave to a high, authentic sphere and where there is true freedom, and the fear of the half- truths disappear.
True consciousness is neither an awakening nor an enlightenment, but an “unveiling” to remove the veil, and the first step is that consciousness is awareness of something, where I found limits or an unexpected NO, not only a pain, but a obstacle at first insurmountable sight.
Gesltat psychology, with a strong influence of hermeneutics, defines how to be aware of something (awareness) and we find a correspondent in Japanese philosophy, for example, as “satori”, to remove the superficial layers to find the nucleus of something.
The three steps to enter these layers are: to awaken to our deepest zone, in the emotional aspect, our fears, anxieties and concerns, the second requires what happens outside, the context, the people and situations that I invest without results, and the third, much more complex, knows what he feels, what happens outside, but there are prejudices, barriers and something that makes him defend himself and not go beyond certain limits.
Make a change, it is not enough to find the strengths, it is precisely in the weaknesses that your defenses are weakened, and they are articulated with your mistakes and experiences.
Post-truth time or hermeneutics
19
Jun
Hermeneutics is one that allows a worldview and an interpretation of different
facts, it does not mean manipulation of the truth, but exactly the unveiling of what ideologies and non-practical theories hide (there is no phronesis, practical wisdom).
What happens is that the search for the absolute spirit, the establishment of total truths was actually totalitarian, that is, they did not admit a different worldview, the dialog was simply linked to a pre-established truth, so there were truths a priori .
Knowledge for Immanuel Kant begins with experience, and reason would organize this matter according to its own forms, with the existing structures in knowledge, so information would be a way to organize the matter that comes from experience.
Although “a priori” is generally referred to as an adjective of knowledge, it is also used as an adjective to modify nouns, such as truth, so there would be truth a priori, and this is one of the tenets of idealism.
But the truth for centuries has remained veiled, it has always been established by certain forms of power, but this is the time when the truths begin to be revealed, not by journalists and controlled groups that are part of fans, but the armed crowd of photos and cell phones , cameras present in many surveillance places, but the big leap is awareness.
It is no coincidence that this is the great current topic, from philosophical hermeneutics, the question of historical consciousness that is no longer deterministic, romantic or dogmatic to the question of whether intelligent machines can be aware and ultimately “imitate” man .
For Christian culture this can go to another point, a time when the truth is revealed, according to the evangelist Matthew 10: 26-29:
“Do not be afraid of men, because there is nothing covered up that is not revealed, and there is nothing of hidden that is not known. What I say to you in the darkness, say it in the light of day; what you hear at the ear, proclaim it over the roofs! Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul! On the contrary, fear the one who can destroy the soul and the body in hell! ”.
Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who is not a Christian, said that the pandemic put us “all on our knees”, I would say that not everyone still has those who do not admit the mystery beyond our ability to understand and among the religious those who are not yet knees, at least out of compassion for those who suffer.
Scheilemacher’s Hermeneutics to Gadamer
18
Jun
The revival of hermeneutics, it was confined to ancient classical culture as a
strand of classical philosophy, made by Schleiermacher (1768-1834).
For Heidegger, hermeneutics is equivalent to the phenomenology of existence, that is, things that are open to interpretation, must be analyzed according to the possibilities of existing and manifesting in their historical time, but their understanding of history is different from Dilthey.
His work finds its first echo in Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), which separates the idea of interpretation in two fields: explanation of the natural sciences and understanding in the human sciences.
Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) will overcome this dichotomy by creating a philosophical hermeneutics, for Ricoeur to understand a text is to chain a new discourse into the text’s discourse, so the text must be open, that is , subject to the appropriation of a sense.
On the other hand, reflection, for Ricoeur, is meditation on the present signs, so there is no explanation without understanding the world and yourself.
Hans-Georg Gadamer sees in Dilthey’s historical conception a certain idealism, and his hermeneutics like that of Ricoeur, which are philosophical, however he sees it in a circular structure where there is always a pre-understanding, where a fusion of horizons is possible which it will allow a reinterpretation and a new formulation of understanding.
In the hermeneutic circle, inspired by Heidegger, it was thought that “Every interpretation, to produce understanding, must have already understood what it is going to interpret”, but it was Gadamer that systematized it.
In Gadamer the idea of the horizon is: the singular content is apprehended from the totality of a context of meaning, which is pre-apprehended and co-apprehended, where there is a dialogue understood as: Understanding is always apprehension of the stranger and is open the modification of the initial assumptions given the difference produced by the other (the text, the interlocutor).
Understanding the context in the sense of traditions, culture, ethnicities and beliefs are fundamental to understanding how the hermeneutic circle happens.
The experience takes place according to the dialogical exchange within a language and it is always productive, not just reproductive: “the meaning of a text surpasses its author, not occasionally but always”, so the philosophical hermeneutics sees it as present in cultures and languages.
The result of this circle is the production of practical knowledge using a Greek word phronesis (there is no theory x practice) which is not a private but social knowledge, where it minimizes and exacerbates the self-creation of the self and in the social sphere the creation of dogmas removing ethics from its social aestheticization, and preserving the practical wisdom of cultures and beliefs that operate in the processes respecting diversity.
GADAMER, H.G. (1989) Truth and Method, 2nd edn, Sheed and Ward.
From Brentano’s phenomenology to Heidegger’s Ontology
17
Jun
Among Brentano’s contributions, in addition to the intentionality of consciousness,
which is awareness of something or the object, is what some authors (Boris, 1994) call Philosophy of the Present, where the here and now is the only possible experience, breaking with the idea of empiricism that an experiment is only scientific if it can be repeated, and also breaks with the viewer’s neutrality, as he is part of the experiment, which makes him a hermeneutic.
From the intent of his master Brentano, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) will retain the aspect of the experience of “being aware of something”, but will modify the empirical phenomenology, to make it transcendental, not in the still spiritual sense, but of cognitive experiences , will leave aside the empirical view, for that of an immanent objectivity.
Husserl states in Ideias da Fenomenologia (1986) that: “The experiences of knowledge have, this belongs to its essence, an intent, they aim at something, they report in one way or another to an objectivity”, thereby abandoning the idea of the empirical of the Mestre Brentano, and takes up the concept of immanent objectivity as a revision of the Aristotelian and Thomist concepts, as “essence”.
In his work of maturity The crisis of European sciences Husserl makes the concept of transcendence more alive, within his Lebenswelt (World of Life), the transcendent “the transcendent is the outside world” while the transcendental “is the inner world” of consciousness (HUSSERL, 2008, p. 18), but this dichotomy between outer and inner world will make existentialist philosophers avoid the term consciousness.
Heidegger (1989) Husserl’s pupil was the first to avoid it, since the relationship between man and world has always been pursued by phenomenologists in order to overcome the idealistic phantasm of the subject-object relationship, the intentional and descriptive analysis of consciousness defined the essential relationships of mental acts and the external world, although Husserl matured the issue of phenomenological reduction.
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), via Husserl as an intellectualist and Cartesian, abandons the terms conscience and intentionality, central to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, in the work The Being and Time (1927), not approved by Husserl, the student overcomes the concept awareness and proposes the concept of Dasein, inaugurating the existential phenomenology.
Human “finitude”, temporality and historicity (being in time) will be fundamental in Dasein’s Heideggerian analysis, a theory based on the “destruction” of the subject-object split
BORIS, G. D. J. B. (1993) Noções básicas de fenomenologia. Insight. Psicoterapia (São Paulo). v. 46, pp. 19-25, novembro.
Heidegger, M. (1989) Ser e tempo (Vols. 1-2). Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
HUSSERL, E. (2008) A crise da humanidade europeia e a filosofia. Porto Alegre; EDIPUCRS.
Covid still advances in Brazil
15
Jun
The scourge of the pandemic that could have united Brazil now turns fear into terror, 
rates continue to advance even though the number of deaths remains on a plateau around 1,000 daily deaths, with up and down variations.
The result that gives a sentence now is the contamination rate per thousand inhabitants, and winter arrives in the country next week, cities that opened the trade start to retreat, shows a faltering policy between saving the economy or reducing the number of deaths, and the political struggle.
The polarization that has existed since the elections threatens to return with more radicality, there is no scenario that gives us hope, nor of reducing mortality, which should be a priority, nor of resolving the political crisis that could encourage and lead to a strong policy of social isolation.
Thus, the country is becoming the most critical case and contributes to an international isolation, those who wanted to save the economy have not yet understood that a serious policy to combat the covid would minimize economic results, save lives and perhaps unite a country that is increasingly divided. .
There is no lack of commentators at least malicious, I read from a famous media philosopher that afterwards there will be joy and euphoria, I would like to believe this, but as unemployment alone is already huge.
If there are no sensible minds and interested in saving lives (which also minimizes economic costs) we will navigate in confusing situations and that the data already show, there is no sign that the invite can retreat, we defended in early May the #lockdown, if it comes now it will come as a measure of despair, and without popular support, the 3 months of poor quarantine, exhausted the population’s spirits.
It is not a conflict caused by the media, by the opposition or by ideology, it is a lack of wisdom and wisdom, we put those who are at the forefront of the battle: doctors, nurses and rescuers, in addition to workers in essential services in a difficult situation, tired of us ask: stay at home, have not been heard.
The hope is that the disease itself stationed on the plateau of a thousand daily deaths will start to recede.
Matris in gremio, blood relationship and aorgic
10
Jun
To understand Sloterdijk’s digression 10, it is necessary to understand its 
relationship with the tragedy, and a text that is certainly known to the philosopher is Hörderlin’s interpretation of the Greek tragedy Oedipus King of Sophocles, where he uses the aorgic term for the search for Epic to know who it is, the more it seeks the less conscious consciousness it becomes towards tragedy.
The tragedy is that father Laio, had heard from the oracle at Delphi, that his son would kill him and marry his mother Jocasta, the king hands him over to a poor shepherd to kill him, but the shepherd raises him and then he goes stop at the hands of Polybius, king of Corinth who raised him as a son, but the tragedy is fulfilled and then Oedipus kills King Laius who was his real father and marries Jocasta when he becomes aware of the blind truth, the tragedy has more details, here it is only to understand the aorgic.
However, Sloterdijk reverses this story and resumes Christian Mariology, in his tour 10 Matris in gremio (mother’s lap or lap), where after analyzing the text De humanitae conditionis in miseria by Lotário de Segni (1160-1216) that would later become if Pope Innocence III, who says that the liquid that would feed the child is the same as the menstruation that would be interrupted with pregnancy.
Sloterdijk, even though he does not believe that there are religions (so he does not have this question), will say “there is no doubt that Jesus, even in gremio, must have been provided with a different diet plan” (Sloterdijk, 2016, p. 557), and will use Question 31 from the third book of the Summa Teologica de Aquinas.
Aquinas’ argument is that “not even a better blood would have been enough to generate the body of Christ, because, by mixing with human semen, it becomes generally impure” (idem), and “… the communion of Jesus with on the contrary, the mother should be realized through blood that deserves to be classified as particularly chaste and pure ”, and quotes Tomás:
“… Because, by the action of the Holy Spirit, this blood is collected from the Virgin’s lap and formed into a fetus. That is why it is said that the body of Christ was formed by the most chaste and pure blood of the virgin.” (Aquino, Suma Theológica III, 31, 5, 3, SP: Loyola, 2001-2002).
Before Tomas de Aquinas, John Damasceno, who has already spoken of the Trinitarian pericoresis, will take this blood relationship between Maria and her fetus to the extreme, quoted by Sloterdijk: “Given that pericoresis always implies the primacy of the relationship over the outside place or precisely because the relationship itself founds the place where those who interpenetrate were found, Mary’s body cannot be buried after death in a usual way ”(SLOTERDIJK, 2016, p. 558).
And so the idea was born that Mary was taken to heaven, but it is also the birth 11 centuries before being accepted, the dogma of her Immaculate Conception (which by popular use became Conceição), thus “it is the very matrix of God who miraculously offered the sculptor the material of his sculpture, and to God the material to become a man… ” (Damasceno apud Sloterdijk, 2016, p. 558), which thus pre-announces the aorgic action of Mary with Jesus and God-Father, as a pericoresis in extremis (in the photo, also used by Sloterdijk, Virgin with Overture, late 14th century, Cluny Museum in Paris).
SLOTERDIJK, P. (2014) Bubbles: Spheres Volume I: Microspherology. UK: Semiotext(e).
Brazil: incert future of pandemic
08
Jun
Problems with social isolation, difficulties to take tougher measures, now 
Brazil is plunging into an uncertain future: there is a lack of data, a clear policy and planning.
The official data will now depend on the seriousness of the regional Health Secretariats and the hard work of doctors and hospitals, and the planning of the responsibility of local authorities, at the most general level there is a proposal for a planned opening, but it may be disordered.
The available data indicate an increase during the week that passed over a thousand deaths reaching a peak of 1473, which retreated at the weekend to the level of a thousand deaths.
The curve we have drawn seems to reflect the scenario of instability, although lagged from 7 to 14 days, as deaths are the reflection of infections in the past days, they are the real data, because even if the degree of infection is falling below one , one person infects another, this does not mean that contagion and lethality have reduced, in the Brazilian case it is necessary to understand the internalization of the cases and the regional resources for the fight, as is the case of the Amazon and poor regions.
The pressure of the economic groups to open the market, the political uncertainty and the game of alliances that is made due to this scenario, take the focus of the pandemic and move to the political scenario, a sad picture for the country.
Despite large groups that carry out solidarity actions, the effort of doctors and nurses, the lesson we are drawing from this pandemic as a people is the worst possible, we are not fond of the simple people, not even with many deaths and the fatigue of almost 3 months of pandemic.
Some countries will emerge better from the pandemic as a nation, Brazil will not, we were unable to join forces, to be supportive nationally with the pains of a scourge and inconsistent with our love that we declare to the country, it remains for us to do our part and hope that the virus recedes
