Arquivo para a ‘Information Science’ Categoria
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 spiritual in art, almost forgotten
15
Nov
In addition to Kandinsky, a contemporary recognized as having influence in spiritual art, there are three others almost forgotten: Raymond de Sebonde, author of Natural Theology; Gaudí, creator of the
Mediterranean Gothic, and Salvador Dali, incorrectly seen as paranoid-critic, see this in sequence.
Dali said after a long phase that he himself said he had a psychological and indirect influence of Freud, to integrate into a new phase, where his frame Christus Hypercubus will be a landmark, and may even relate contemporaneousness with Quantum Physics, the fourth dimension of the universe (the Hypercube), and to a certain extent to the tesseract of Charles H. Hilton.
He says in his Anti-matter Manifesto he writes in all letters: “In the surrealist period, I wanted to create the iconography of the inner world and the wonderful world, of my father Freud … Today, the outside world and that of physics transcended the world of psychology, he declair: “My father today is dr. Heisenberg”, so is a Dali post-surrealism as he proclaims himself.
We have already posted something about this before, but we have developed a little more here.
Proclaimed Dali about his work: “I Dali, re-updating Spanish mysticism, I will prove with my work the unity of the universe, showing the spirituality of all substances,” in which the use of substance is not by chance, even of the physical universe, but may also be that which Teilhard Chardin called the “Christocentric universe,” that is, his Noosphere in the most substantial sense of the word, or in the physical sense of the universe.
This dimension, besides being studied in Particle Physics and Astrophysics, appeared in films like “Contact” (1997, direction of Robert Zemeckis) based on the work of the same name of Carl Sagan, and recently the film Interstellar (direction of Christopher Nolan , 2014), and the possibility of the fourth dimension and the universe being immersed in a hypercube is scientific.
Einstein had predicted a relativistic phenomenon Lense-Thirring (homage to Josef Lense and Hans Thirring) that remained for a long time without proof until this effect began to be detected in artificial satellites and since then has been studied as a real possibility, is a effect of a gyroscope due to the gravitational magnetic field.
The Artefacto 2018 event will begin tomorrow in Lisbon, at Palácio da Ceia, among other works, and will present an Ode to Christus Hypercubs by Dr. Jônatas Manzolli from Unicamp, which will feature pianist Helena Marinho from Aveiro and the soloist Beatriz Maia.
What is clarification for Charles H. Hinton
13
Nov
The writing that preceded quantum physics, hermeneutic philosophy and a new spirituality 
(or ancient in the sense of true), brought new and curious reasoning.
When speaking of a greater dimension of space (Higher Space) and greater dimension of Being (Heigher Being): “We have been subject to a limitation of the most absurd character. let us open our eyes and see the facts” (Hinton, 1888), appear simple but need been trained, said about himself: “I worked at the subject without the slightest success. All was mere formalism. But by adopting the simplest means, and by a more thorough knowledge of space, the whole flashed clear.” (idem)
Clear more: “We are conscious of somewhat higher than each individual man when we look at men. In some, this consciousness reaches an extreme pitch, and becomes a religious apprehension. But in none is it otherwise than instinctive. The apprehension is sufficiently definite to be certain. But it is not expressible to us in terms of the reason”.
Part of the physical aspect, the idea that “our apparent isolation as bodies of one another is by no means as necessary to assume as it would seem,” here his intuitive relationship with quantum physics that would only become reality at the beginning of the twentieth century admitting that at that moment it was only a possibility, but it added one more point: “and if we were to examine the matter closely, we should find a natural relationship that explained our consciousness to be limited as it is today” (Hinton, 1888)
Hilton states: “our apparent isolation as bodies of one another is by no means as necessary to assume as it would seem,” we may say we are related to the whole, make a mathematical argument for this. If spatial forms can only be symbolic of four-dimensional forms: and if we do not deal directly with spatial forms, but treat it only by symbols in the plane – as in analytic geometry – we are trying to obtain the perception of the upper space through symbols of symbols, and the task is hopeless “(Hinton, 1888).
He will say in an almost mystical whole, but compatible with the thought of Teilhard Chardin for example, “Instead of an abstraction, what we have to serve is a reality, for even our real things are only shadows. We are part of a great being, in whose service and with the love of whom, the greatest demands of duty are fulfilled. “(Hinton, 1888)
Then it will give the sentence: “The power to see with our bodily eye is limited to the three-dimensional section” (Hilton, 188) and will from there create its vision of the 4th. dimension: the Tesseractus.
Hinton, Charles H. (1888) The new era of thought. London: S. Sonnenschein & Co. (Chap. 7, 9, 10 and 11)
Is it possible to rethink Brazil?
09
Nov
The political moment says no, but for those who think and can see these 
“temperate zones”, as Priest Antunes called it Rethinking Portugal, which is in the plural because there is “beyond political democracy, social democracy”, and the thinker affirms that “it was a mistake to think of the structures of general, atomized freedom,” says Priest Antunes to rethink Portugal.
Priest Antunes stated that “their formulators and apologists did not see – or saw it too well – that the” natural law “they advocated was, in fact, the right of the stronger, than the” invisible hand “that business would only increase the profits and profits of those already possessed, that the harmony, which they envisioned in the of the “natural laws” of the market of supply and demand, would in reality constitute a terrible disharmony if it were not corrected by the imperative of the common social welfare, that the freedom granted to all, in a great impetus of generosity, worked, in practice, only as the privilege of some “(Antunes, 2011).
For this reason, Priest Antunes explains: “For more than a century and a half, in order that” this freedom of heart could be translated into the effectiveness of the application, many struggles, harsh struggles were fought “, speaking of the struggles in Portugal.
“In the name of justice and equity, in the name of the history that was moving – or should be – in the sense of equality, in the name of the fraternity that we should all unite – especially the weakest and oppressed, the disinherited and those left on account: men, groups, classes and nations, “said Father Antunes about Portugal in the 1970s “To this day. It is today the combination of political democracy and social democracy that is the great concern of the most conscious and most critical, lucid and generous sector of all Humanity “(Antunes, 2011), but in Brazil the project has been postponed, and the moment which is still in wait, and seems delayed. What followed of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal was a moment of openness and lucidity, but with the entry into the European Community all this came to be shaken, with allegations of corruption in the José Sócrates government (2005-2009), and with the crisis financial crisis in 2010-2014, and named Troika intervention.
An European intervention that the Portuguese people called the Troika, composed of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, which managed the financial crisis with many protests by the Portuguese. What can Brazil do with its economic, political and moral crisis? Without the necessary dialogue and openness, financial interventionism will be a disaster, politically if it is repressive it will be hateful, and the social thing almost unthinkable. It is necessary to update discourses, interpretations and authors, almost all dated references of the beginning of the century, who ignore the new media and new thinkers.
What can Brazil do with its economic, political and moral crisis? Without the necessary dialogue and openness, financial interventionism will be a disaster, the politician if he is repressive will be hateful, and the social unthinkable.
Will there be channels for dialogue with society? Is the press free? it seems that Rethinking Brazil at this moment is almost impossible, but we cannot anticipate the facts even if they are easily presumed, it is a political error that can worsen the fragile stage of Brazilian democracy, we would create a pre-truth or a pre-fact.
Violence, power and change
07
Nov
The idea of ’violence’ in Arendt’s discourse has the sense of a means or instrument
of coercion that constitutes resources to the exclusive and sovereign service of a given authority (or entity), in the exercise of a given form of power, in the last instance State, or to whom it delegates power, but can be seen and developed also for daily life.
What was of interest to Hannah Arendt was to understand the mechanisms of violence in the sense of instrumentalising violence to serve certain political ends, and in the paradigmatic cases, whether the revolutionaries or the fascists, as always having a violent option.
The concept of revolution, according to Arendt, is not only related to change but, above all, to the foundation of liberties, and in this sense, it may make little sense when one has nuclear weapons, cyber wars or even targeted propaganda of hatred as violence.
Of course Hannah Arendt did not live to see the modern media, and could not assume a world where the fact could be manipulated in order to modify the truth, the so-called post-truth, but this paradigm already existed and was dealt with in Hans-Georg’s book Gadamer Truth and Method, both were contemporary and suffered strong influences from Heidegger.
It was of no interest to Arendt, any study of the nature or mechanisms that develop the instincts of aggression or the investigation into the possibility of such phenomena having an intrinsic origin to the subject itself or the hypothesis of being merely the result of a process of acculturation areas of war, misery or exclusion.
In speaking of the trivialization of evil, the violence completely instrumentalised, he thought of a situation of war, but the return of social instruments of coercion and repression can and should bring the theme of violence back: discrimination, hatred and instrumental violence.
Even worse if it comes under the seal of part of the population, what happened in fascist regimes: “the diminution of power, whether individual, collective or institutional is always a factor that can lead to violence … very present of the present glorification of violence is caused by the severe frustration of the faculty of action of the modern world ” (Arendt, 2009, 62).
When we think of violence, in the sense of the banalization of Hannah Arendt, we are saying who is “in power” in reality: “we refer to the fact that he was taken over by a certain number of people to act in the name […] without a people or group there is no power “(Arendt, 2009, pp. 60-61).
Day-to-day violence is a problem, but instrumentalized is big problema.
ARENDT, H. Sobre a violência (About violence). Trad. André de Macedo Duarte. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2009.
Fight for peace, meekness and justice
02
Nov
The history of mankind is to this day a war story of the Same against the Other,
the book The Expulsion of the Other by Byung-Chul Han is nothing more than the realization of this reality. It is our destiny, a fatality, I think not, when peace has been spoken of most, if war is spoken of, peace can be thought of, the Earth as a human homeland.
The challenges are immense, and fears grow with each new authoritarian government, it is good to say there are also islands of the left and right-wing stronghold that are only “elected” people.
I do not think of resistance or opposition, I still think of transformation, the great setback that happens in all humanity, if it were located it would be easy to have only one reading: we can not go forward, the nostalgists say: “how good was those time” , which ?
To fight for peace must also be for justice and against all sorts of oppression, to magnify simple wisdom and to understand that it takes depth to be simple, a “sophistication” as Leonardo da Vinci said, and to establish a spirit of meekness where it is possible to think.
Not without realizing an excessive dose of authoritarianism is time to ask, what is the exact place of the state in everyday life? its abrupt interference even in the personal life is but a form of authoritarianism? we have cameras and radars every kilometer, it’s not an exaggeration.
Weapons for peace, does not make the slightest sense, more weapons more violence, never the other way around. They remember the biblical beatitudes Mt 5,5: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth,” of course what you see today is power in the hand of rabid and authoritarian, but it is not the end.
The following long verse is practically a warning to justice Mt 5: 6: “Blessed are the hungry and righteous, for they shall be filled,” and further Matthew 5: 9: “those who promote peace, because they will be called children of God “, did humanism die? The fact that everyone, or at least a large part of humanity, has a perception that something needs to be done urgently to overcome the “dangers against humanity” challenges us.
There is an urgent need for global governance, not less urgent income distribution programs. The ecological collapse, and in the big metropolis also the urban demand global measures.
I remember the two beatitudes as a stimulus for those struggling for humanity suffer persecution, injustice and slander. Mt 5,11 “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you, and when they lie, they shall say all manner of evil against you for my sake,” that is Christianity, the rest wickedness
Incomplete verses and power
30
Oct
All incompleteness is human, but it is also the cause of our blindness, we could complete it with
dialogue, attentive listening to the Other, or with the postmodern philosophy that has nothing to drink but is very solid: living in the Other , a post-me.
I see libertarian, literary and biblical verses, all incomplete, by the absence of the Other, or by the simple idealistic division between subjects and objects, here made plural, to give meaning to a verse by Fernando Pessoa (importante portuguese poet):
“I only want to make it of all humanity; even if I have to lose it as mine. More and more like this I think “, also incomplete, but final because at first it is only that many know “Navigate is accurate, live is not necessary “, which was not his, but the motto of many Portuguese navigators.
This poem also needs completeness: “I am increasingly putting the impersonal purpose of magnifying the homeland and contributing to the evolution of humanity. It is the form that in me has taken the mysticism of our Race, “as this is welcome in times of eternal return.
I wanted to make a thought about power, but I cannot but be power, says our Portuguese poet: “Everything I think, All I am Is an immense desert Where I am not”, are verses of “Everything I think” (Fernando Pessoa) being also incomplete.
Complete with my student life, fighting for democracy in an authoritarian country, I said the final verses of this poem of everything I think: “Extension stopped With nothing to be there, Sand sifted I’ll give you the sting of the life I’ve lived.”
Said Faust in his Goethe (it was the character to say): “although I do not cast my being if it solves in nothing”, power of whom? What can you do about my Being?
Time of being
29
Oct
There is a time of not being, we are complaining today of the acceleration, but Chul-Han’s
diagnosis in The burnot Society is not so distant from that made by St. Augustine 14 centuries ago: “What is time? How are the past and the future, since the past is no longer and the future is not yet? “And the present? We barely say “now” and it has already fallen in the past “, this in a time when neither the technology of the press existed, what changed then?
Salvador Dali’s picture gives us an idea about the “persistence of memory” and the right to forgetfulness sanctioned by the European Union court on May 13, 2014 gives the diagnosis of a modern “disease”: hyper connectivity, in a Brazilian slang: we enter the “stack”.
The aid of machines that should give us rest periods in transmitting part of our work to them, and being able to perform long tasks faster should give us rest, but we no longer know how to have the period of contemplation and leisure, it seems to be “a time lost”.
We blame this acceleration for the machine of efficiency, concentration of capital, and other phenomena that predate the internet, there are many authors of the last century who touch the subject, after all Paulicéia Desvairada (Crazy people of St. Paul) (write in 1922) is a well-known novel of Mario de Andrade of 1922, and the first studies of the information explosion in the area of science date back to the 1940s.
Says Mário de Andrade about the artist in his poem dedicated to this:
My desire is to be a painter – Lionardo.
whose ideal in mercy heats you;
making the open to the world of the wide corolla
illustrious dream that I await in my bosom.
My longing is, bringing to the dark background of life.
The color of the Venetian school,
give shades of pink and gold, for alms.
how much there is of Penedia* or thistle.
When you find the source of the inks
and the exalted brushes with which you paint,
Veronese! your pictures and your friezes.
I will live where misfortunes live;
And I’ll live to color smiles.
on the lips of those who imprecate or who weep.
It may be a hard time to do poetry, or to contemplate, but we cannot let the Self-die because of a Time whose fragility is always gone. * (type of rocks group)
The cure of the blind from birth
26
Oct
In his Essay on Blindness (in brazilian edition of the Companhia das Letras, 2002), José
Saramago gives a very simple lesson on ontology: “Within us there is something that has no name, this is what we are”, social interaction, culture and politics reveals us gradually to others.
In a way we all see a little and we all have “blind spots” and we need the Other.
Among all the biblical miracles, certainly many consider the resurrection of Lazarus as something extraordinary, but I remember many cases of people who have been in a coma for years and come back to life, I consider the case of the most fantastic birth blind (John 9: 6- 7), why?
A person who has never seen does not have the functional cognitive part prepared to discern the worlds, until the 2 years are the sensations of distance and obstacles that are stimulated attached to the movements, until the child walks, until the age of the symbolic constructions where each object of the complex universe of things is identified.
Therefore to cure blindness, is ultimately to reconfigure the symbolic system of a blind, in a democracy means to grope from the “infantile” universe until reaching a symbolic universe of values that must be present in a mature democracy: respect, tolerance and discussions the symbolic universe.
We would say that democracy in Brazil has matured, it has had little space in history to develop, it is at the end of the critical age of adolescence, energetic parents seem to solve problems, but at the same time they distance youth from dialogue.
But there is another passage that is that of the blind Timaeus, who wants to be cured of blindness, is the case of some in Brazilian democracy, and asks Jesus: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Mk 10,49 ) and Jesus heals him and says, “Thy faith hath saved thee.”
The vow of those who have true faith and who want to cure true blindness can decide an election, if we want peace, justice and a country that will make us proud, we can reflect on our own blindness, the difficulty of seeing everything clearly and ask for healing
Blindness and fear
25
Oct
The euphoria of a conservative retreat is short-lived because, despite setbacks, society as a whole,
including the economy, cultural values and even ecology (in a crisis at a good time to the point of announced catastrophes) must give vital signs or of the Danger.
It was the American warning about possibilities of real bombs against democracy, which includes former President Barack Obama, the candidate Hillary Clinton and some Democratic deputies, as here the suspicion of authoritarian and even reprehensible acts give signs.
The result reflected in the economies, the stock markets fell and the dollar rose, little of course, but it is a clear sample that if we are on the wrong track the euphoria soon falls into reality: fear.
In an official note, the FBI clarified that the packages directed to the Clinton and Obama families were identified during “routine mail sorting procedures,” which made the White House try to minimize the facts by saying they were “despicable”, what they saw were facts.
The Time Warner building, for example, in New York City was evacuated (photo) where Democrat deputies are housed, and according to news agencies, the first to receive packages would have been the stock investor, known in Brazil for his manipulations, George Soros .
Such is the obscurantism and blindness that spread fear in the first instance, the discourse may seem to have foundation, but in revealing its true face, blindness follows fear and often leads to terror.
Of course, it is only a symptom, a small but not “despicable” event, as the White House points out.
If not taken seriously, it can trigger a climate of panic in society that follows fear, and repercussions on the “pocket” of the economy that hurts the powerful, is affected.
We all want a secure society, the paths that lead to it are that they are different, without a path guaranteeing rights to all indistinctly, overcoming inequalities and prejudices, generating a lasting “peace”, different from the one proposed by Kant as “eternal pax” the modern society that has witnessed two world wars knows that it is not effectively real.
Byung Chul Han wrote in The Expulsion of the Other (Lisbon: Relógio d´água, 2018, 22): “the fear of each one in itself unconsciously provokes the nostalgia of an enemy … the enemy is, although in a way a provisor of identity “, taken from the text Theorie des Partisan by C. Schmitt, quoting it verbatim.
