Arquivo para a ‘Cognition’ Categoria
Codified: For a Design Philosophy
22
Mar
Vilém Flusser was a Czech, brazilian citizen naturalized, died in 1991, who worked for about 20 years as professor of philosophy, journalist, lecturer and writer in Brazil and then back in his country of birth to the Czech
Republic.
His books are being republished in Brazil, including all his writings, and I began rereading The Coded World – for a philosophy of Design.
His work goes beyond the influences he received from Roland Barthes, Marshall McLuhan, because his philosophy is itself with elements of phenomenology and existentialism.
Rafael Cardoso’s introduction to the book highlights his change of thinking about the modern media he just saw born: “unlike most modern philosophers, who tend to focus their analysis on verbal language or mathematical codes, Flusser part of its gigantic power of reflection to images and artifacts, laying the foundation for a legitimate philosophy of design and communication. “(Flusser, 2017, p.10)
He asked deep questions about the virtual world: “If a tree falls into virtual space, and there is no one online, does it generate a warning message?” Returning to the famous question of the tree falling in the forest, the difference between the material and the immaterial? Can we exchange things for not things? “(Ibid.) And concludes with an even more fundamental question:” What destination should we reserve for the detritus generated by our frantic activity of transforming nature into culture? “(FLUSSER, 2017)
It approaches the paradigm of information, an essential basis for knowledge and education, “the end of history seems to be the end of our collective ability to fight against entropy, against the breakdown of meaning and form. If the basis of what we understand by culture resides in the action of in + form, then is not it paradoxical that the excess of information leads us to the breakdown of meaning? “(Idem)
The importance of the “concept of virtuality is perhaps the best and most elegant proof of how well Flusser was right.” (Ibid.), And can no longer escape this question, use in various forms of information, communication and the arts requires opening of this “black box”, the name of an essay published in the year 1985.
Flusser, unlike apocalyptics, admits that “at least in thesis,” which should become human well-being, becomes a slave to the forces of another “nature” which it helped to artificially generate. ”
Aspects of virtuality and a codified world are uniquely developed by the author and contribute to a more serene debate on new media.
FLUSSER, V. (2013) Shape of Things: A philosophy of Design, Reaktion Books, 2013. (pages and year em Brazilian edition).
Being and essence
14
Mar
Before examining what is the being and the essence in contemporaneity, let us examine
more closely its meaning in Thomas Aquinas, important for understanding the difference between nominalists and realists at the end of the medieval period.
For the medieval philosopher, the essence, which was called quiddity, is the ineffable of what makes existence possible, giving a thing its constitution of Being, which in turn possesses an existence as a possibility of existing in act, once created matter and form give it reality.
Unlike Aristotle, for whom there is a first mover that is god, his ontology starts from this premise, for Thomas Aquinas, the essence of God is his existence, and to attribute something to him would be to deny him, since he lacks nothing, is pure perfection and wholeness, so the effort of attributing to God properties is useless, to Thomas Aquinas he is pure Being.
In it the essence, called the quidity is the ineffable that would make existence possible, so that is where God gives things existence, or prefer a teleological concept, is the first matter / energy / form from where everything originates, could be said in words more modern, the existing nature in itself is an over-nature of its essence of a Being for itself.
By the way, Stephen Hawking passed away today, and said that the intention to create the universe was as important as the creation itself.
The essence (quiddity) not being the ineffable will correspond to names and concepts, whose existence is conceived by the nominalists, even if it admits the experience as a way to “perceive” reality, it will be at the beginning of this very sense-related thought, anyway today the substances, are linked to names, they are signed, and are subject to deconstruction as analyzed by Derridá and in the posts of last week.
For Aquinas there are two substances, where the essence also participates of the two substances, and the only cause of the compound substance, in the being the existence is “…. that first and simple substance par excellence, which is called God (AQUINO, 2004, p.10)
The second substance (abstract things) involves gender and species, essence participates in both. Essence does not partake individually of matter or form, it is found in both, composing in the world of sensible things individuation.
Thomas Aquinas also establishes two types of matter: signified matter, which is a first, particular, concrete, singular substance, of lesser extent, a modern example can be said to say Hydrogen and Oxygen, forming the water, already the matter not signed, which is second substance, universal abstract, of greater extension, a liquid potable, but it is necessary to see a greater complexity, if we are the human being.
“It is evident that the definition of man in general, and that of this man called Socrates, is differentiated only by the signed and the unmarked.” (Ibid., P. an individual as signified as the Man in his own nature, is also the man Sócrates, in his particular nature signified, where signified is nothing more than to place a sign.
AQUINO, S. Tomás, Compêndio de teologia, cap. II -3, p. 77, Col. Pensadores, SãoPaulo: Nova Cultural, 2004.
The Desconstruction and post-structuralism
26
Feb
The deconstruction in the philosophical sense of Jacques Derridá (1930-2004) can only be linked
to the idea of reading text of post-structuralism, and structuralism is linked to Levy Strauss, and poststructuralism uses the basic premises of structuralism itself, besides Derridá one can cite Roland Barthes.
Deconstruction in the sense that Derridá gave to his thought, can not be confused with a concept or a method, is precisely the idea that objectivity (as a method) can not be used to ground the deconstruction, the sense that seems more correct is the of a “strategy” to read texts and to interpret them, for this the strong connection with the matter of the grammar (one of the main works of Derridá is Gramatology).
Derridá then says of his strategy (not concept or method): “What interested me at that moment … what I try to continue now in other ways, is alongside a general economy a sort of general strategy of deconstruction .. to go through the phase of an overthrow [of what he calls the double science] … to accept this need is to recognize that in a classical philosophical opposition we do not treat, with a peaceful coexistence of a vis-a-vis, with a hierarchy of violence. .. to deconstruct the opposition is first, at a certain moment, to overthrow the hierarchy.” (Derridá, 1975, 53-54).
For him the traditional metaphysical thought (I would say the idealist of modernity is more deeply) is the logocentric, which identifies it in pairs: identity and difference (its main argument), reason and sensation, logic and rhetoric, male and female, but without a doubt its main one is speech and writing.
This is central here because it deals with what we consider to be essential in ontology that is presence, but its argument is different from existentialists, although it also deals with the oral (well before modernity) and writing (Gutenberg here). “The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, would be a history of these metaphors and of these metonymies (the different names we use to refer to a stable foundation or foundation from which we can think totality of a structure or even reality in general] “(Derridá, 1995: 231).
In positions Derridá affirms that the difference (different in Portuguese translation which is not unlike other translations) is that one must connect his idea of deconstruction “to a point of rupture with Afhebung and speculative dialectics” (Derridá, 1975, 56). ) in clear opposition to the idea in Hegel’s philosophy that one concept can be reduced to another, but there is a play, the incessant alternation of primacy of one term over the other, thereby producing a situation of constant indecision.
Here he penetrates into the discourse on structuralism: “As opposed to epistemic discourse, structural discourse on myths, mythological discourse must itself be mitomorphic” (Derrida 1971: 230) and on this discourse Levy himself Strauss wrote: “It will be right to consider it [his book] as a myth: in any case, the myth of mythology” (Lévy-Strauss apud Derridá 1971: 242).
Derridá’s emphasis on textuality and writing is not a break with philosophy, but rather a deeper understanding of the linguistic shift beyond games, and the fact that he is so closely linked to literature is the penetration of his reading into department of literature, more specific in the United States, and this orign.is anglo-saxonic thought.
“The game” for Derridá “is always a game of absence and presence, but if we want to think radically, we must think them before the alternative of presence and absence; it is necessary to think of being as presence or absence from the possibility of the game, and not vice versa ” (Derridá, 1971, 248).
The difference is thus in the “inside” and “outside” of the presence, its deconstruction thus seeks to relate to the mythology but to disassemble it, in an ethnocentric perspective, that makes prevalence of the conceptual thought on the mythical, of the logical reasoning on the bricolage , which is made by Lévy-Strauus himself, to think of myth as an original form of thought is to reduce it to episteme.
References:
Derridá, J. Posiçõe. Semiologia e Maerialismo. Tradução de Maria M. C. Barahona. Lisboa: Plátamo, 1975.
___ Margins of Philosophy. Campinas: Papirus, 1991.
___ The write and the difference. São Paulo: Perspectivas, 1971.
___ Gramatology. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1999.
The antropotechnicaland the ascetic non-spiritual
15
Feb
To define his antropotechnical, Sloterdijk will establish the relation of the relations within the
present religions like the most pure antropotécnicos procedures:
“If we reduce these” religions “to their essential characteristics, there are three basic complexes of which each has a clear relation to the anthropothermic dimension. First, on the dogmatic side: an illusionist exercise club, rigidly organized, whose members in the course of time are being impregnated with the conceptions of the milieu. Then from the psycho-technical side: a training roadmap for exploring all the chances in the survival struggle. We observe, finally, the top of the movement; we can see everything, but no “founder of religion”: in front of us is an unscrupulous, radically ironic, flexible on all sides, business-trainer “(Sloterdijk, 2009, 168).
Seeing also Scientology and the Olympic Movement as religions, he uses the concept of habitus, but criticizes the development made by both Pierre Bourdieu and Marx, solving the problem of how the social base or “infrastructure” would be reflected in “Superstructure” or how the general conception of society is able to penetrate the individual in a lasting way, this is his habitus done as an antropotécnico procedure.
In order to actualize and historicise his concept he resorts to the concept of habitus in Aquinas and hexis in Aristotle, which “… describes a seemingly mechanical process under aspects of the inertia of overcoming to explain the incarnation of the spiritual. They identified man as that animal who can do what he owes, if one cared in time with his abilities “(ibid., p. 289).
According to the author in presenting his own theory of cultural development, humanity itself, despite the fact that we find different customs and traditions in each moment of its history, did not follow the conservative identity script, so this question is false, although it is a reference for many contemporary authors.
The conclusion about this unspraced asceticism is training, letting itself operate: letting yourself be informed, letting yourself be entertained, letting yourself be served, letting yourself be cured, letting yourself be transported, and if this is, for the author, the being-there, its counterposition is not general negativity, but it should be the general epoché, letting itself be empty, there can be the being-there-not-being that could complement itself as onto-antropotechnical, light of the social habitus, re-reading the current anthropothermic conditions and capable of criticizing them, would be a total deflated being, a non-being-there that is also being.
SLOTERDIJK, P. Du musst Dein Leben ändern. Über Antropotechnik. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2009.
The crisis and the ashes
14
Feb
The economic, political and social crisis is worldwide, but the Brazilian has more of an ash 
Wednesday than carnival, but it is possible to survive in the crisis.
A suggestive and profound book is the book in partnership with Edgar Morin and Patrick Viveret: How to live in times of crisis? (Bertrand Brasil, 2013), who suggest in the book “I risk the hypothesis that perhaps we have reached a moment of rupture” (page 22), but what rupture?
Ortega y Gasset recalls, “we do not know what happens, and this is exactly what happens”, says this about the difficulty of relating facts, the digital revolution, the resurgence of nations (Armenian, Kurds, Croatians among many others), the great Asian tigers jumps, finally a great range of new relations, and now new tensions and wars in Africa.
The pragmatists, who do not know the complexity, want to be practical, ignore the theory or repeat only a single author, the illusion of a “universal” theory, what we need Morin and Viveret: “the present, the real is not what it seems stable … one must be open to the uncertain, to the unexpected. “(p.25).
But the authors ask: “What then, the good news? An awareness of the breadth, of the complexity, of a new beginning. We are in a period of planetary crisis and we do not know what will come of it; what counts on the possibility of transcending this crisis will be good news “(p.27).
Viveret writes in the chapter “What will we do in our lives,” stating that we should go out of the way to preserve the best “, but paradoxically” maintaining the lucidity that there is the worst “(p.44), does not seem to give a definitive solution, but we can find the best of “traditional societies and civilizations”, and we must know these civilizations.
Emphasize the author that “it is necessary to reappropriate democratically and semantically the words ‘value’ and ‘richness’ whose root reich (in German) refers to the creative power” (pages 60 and 61).
He also recalls Karl Polanyi, in his book “The Great Transformation”, “analyzes the market economies that are legitimate for market societies that are dangerous, that is, the moment when commodification invades the whole social universe . “(P.61). The author gives us as a remedy to leave the infernal pair “excitement / depression,” to move toward another pair: “intensity / serenity” (p.76).
They end the book by saying that it is “necessary to grow in humanity.”
Still about evil
30
Jan
We do not complete our reasoning on evil, two analyzes can still be made, and if we wish to comment
Kant three analyzes: Kant, Paul Ricoeur and Gadamer.
I shall be brief with Kant (1724-1804), although a deeper analysis is required going to Hegel, the central point of his thinking in this question is that evil as to origin is unfathomable, but for him there is the “idealist” clear) of radical evil, and so would be the choice between a good or a bad maxim, from which all others derive.
Paul Ricoeur affirms that Kant explains freedom for evil and evil for freedom, in a tautological reasoning therefore, Ricoeur will look for in source origin, that is, the rescue of the concept of evil must come based on original sources, from them we find the existential origin of evil, and so it is in symbols and myths.
We are interested in putting the technique and technology (study and development of the technique) in question, analyzing the original anthropological steps, so the question that the nomadic groups of 200 thousand years ago of homo sapiens migrate and incursions into new territories in groups is meaningful because it reveals an intension of expansion and “occupation.”
In an embryonic way, this reasoning is also written in Paul Riocuer, the author speaks of the influence in his thinking of Jean Nabert of Spinoza’s lapidary phrase “desire to be and effort to exist”, and that exerted decisive influence in the thought of Ricoeur (RICOEUR, 1995, p.23)
Ricoeur calls his vision of evil as “small ethics” as that which the subject finds himself involved with, is with a mal-being, a bad substance, a bad doing that results from the mistaken use of his freedom, there is still in him a remnant of Manichaeism.
Only then does he go to the symbolic evil (name of his main work on the theme), on a path from the symbolic to the mythological, and from there to the texts, implies the concept of evil linked to culture.
RICOEUR, P. Da Metafísica à Moral (From Metaphysics to Morals). Translate: Sílvia Menezes. Lisbon – Portugal: Piaget Institute, 1995
Dialogues and Creatives
16
Jan
David Bohm is one of the rare authors to approach the question of creativity in depth,
and his text begins with an absolutely new discourse, at least for those who go through the paths of dialogue and hermeneutics like me, disagreeing with the idea that dialogue is two logos, says the author:
“A deeper meaning for it [the word dialogue] logos means” the word “or rather” the meaning of the word “. And day means “through” – not meaning two or double -. A dialogue can occur with any number of people, not just between two. Even a person alone can have a sense of dialogue with himself if the spirit of dialogue is present. ”
He will say further in the preface: “And the shared meaning thus created, is the” glue “or” cement “that keep people and society together,” is really interesting since it breaks with the almost inherent meaning of the word that is a “dual logos,” a non-opening.
Almost as a conclusion, it calls into question the converse that would be the discussion: “Contrast this with the word” discussion, “which has the same root of percussion and concussion. They have a meaning of breaking things. “I find here a” dialogue “with phenomenology, because it wants to turn things around on their own, makes sense, divides them into parts, not only two but innumerable, a great problem of modernity: fragmentation.
It asserts one of the deepest dualisms of our time, that between science and religion: “Science is supposed to be dedicated to discovering facts and truth, and religion being devoted to another kind of truth and love, but interest and presuppositions “assume the command”. “, of course, does not speak unilaterally, but of both.
Although many claim not to judge people, says the author what we are doing: “It seems that something is happening: it seems that assumptions and opinions work as a computer program in people’s minds. And these programs take over against intentions. It is as if they produce their own intentions, “those who criticize the” logical “world of cyberculture, act day-to-day in only logic such as robots, without any creativity.
If we have a built-in implicit thought situation, the author calls this coherent (I consider it somewhat relative), what we would have over time would be: “in a group that has had dialogue for a long time, so that people have made themselves known to each other – we will have a coherent movement of thought, a coherent movement of communication. ”
It is only the beginning of the book, but it is impossible to speak in creativity without saying something of the dialogue.
Bohm, D. On creativity. Rodgeledge classics edition, 2004.
What we can read in 2018
26
Dec
One of the books in my stack of new reading is Sapiens – a brief history of 
humanity by Yuval Noah Harari, the original English edition is 2015, but the Portuguese edition that comes to Brazil, by the editors of Porto Alegre LP & M in Brazil , it is 2017 with translation by Janaína Marcoantonio, just leaf through until now, but I already feel the weight of the book as from the opening chapter The cognitive revolution, with the topic an insignificant animal, until the Scientific Revolution, with the first topic: the discovery of ignorance.
We have already punctuated in several posts about the discovery of the Chauvet Cave, the book opens The cognitive revolution with a human hand (picture inside) in this cave of 30 thousand years ago, a painting the first chapter that I have already begun to read.
Whoever wants to make a counterpoint, a classic book (my brother pointed out to me) is H.G. Wells’ book, it goes back to the very beginning of the universe. Published in 1922, A Brief History of the World is a panorama about the planet and humanity, from the appearance of living beings, through the origin of peoples, religions, great navigations, wars, Industrial Revolution until the First War World, the book is from 1922, and curiously it is also from LP & M, in brazilian edition.
I’m going to Portugal next year, at least I want to go (yes it’s the money), launched in November the book by Ricardo Araujo Pereira: “Reacctionary with two c´s”, speaks of the conservative wave in Portugal, but I think it should also speak of Europe and around the world, his book “Illness, Suffering and Death Go into a Bar” was a complete success with 40,000 copies sold, this new one should not be different.
A book that I have already read and I will reread is the Byung-Chul Han’s “Society of Tiredness”, in a whole new light, it traces the profile of a society that can not, for more goods, produce a human being greater happiness and speaks of an absence of meaning of life, the end that criticism does not taste is very good, worth reading.
Speaking of the happiness of Augusto Cury, but this time with several authors, the happiest man in history – several authors, I do not know if he will comment other authors or if it will include them in his reflection, but this does not matter, it seems that the already consecrated author has reached maturity in the search for a collective discourse, is already among the most sold in Brazil.
Among these four there is no sequel, but would say so for those most concerned with politics, and they are right, would start with the Portuguese Ricardo Araujo Pereira, and would end with Augusto Cury, for the lazy would end up with Sapiens – a brief history of humanity , because it is dense and great too, it has 448 pages without counting the index.
The lazy reader can still start with the Byung-Chul book which is only 128 pages in small format (this giving almost half A4 in Brazilian edition).
Of course there are many other readings, but if you read 4 books a year, at the end of your life you will be a thinker, living on average 70 years and discounting the 14 of adolescence, although we can read children’s books and for young people, 56 years x 4 books, 224 books and you is a great lecture
