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Arquivo para a ‘Cognition’ Categoria

Blindness, lucidity and serenity

17 Mar

What can be called blindness in the literature, almost always goes beyond the simple difficulty of visual functions, at least one must be considered, which is that of the cognitive faculties that ultimately develop and adapt thought to visual perceptions.

Thus there is a civilizing blindness, that which does not perceive the obstacles and even chasms that can open up in the contemporary civilizing process, the forces and the dominance of the forces of nature, as Heidegger thought about the techniques, which prevent reflective thinking.

Looking at blindness only as the difficulty of the visual field, the immediate reality is thus the worst of blindness, incapable of contemplating the essence of Being, what is designated by each man during his personal and social life.

Thus, by developing cognitive functions, man can gain lucidity, look with clarity at his own life and that of his society and culture, can lead him beyond this clarity to a life of serenity and peace, even if he is in a social life in conflict.

It is not comfortable or individualized peace, but one that is capable of dealing with contradictions, oppositions and misunderstandings, common in a process of civilizing crisis.

The reality we live in can lead more quickly to a rupture of lucidity and serenity and the further away from them, the more difficult it is to find paths and paths to return to peace.

One of the most enlightening passages of the Christian biblical reading on blindness is the healing of a man blind from birth, who, therefore, did not develop the cognitive apparatus to see and thus would have difficulty perceiving the objects, colors and beings around him, more than having the function of vision, he cognitively understands what he is seeing.

The passage says the Pharisees questioned the healing of the blind man (Jo 9,10-12): “Then they asked him: ‘How were your eyes opened?’ my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’. So I went and washed and began to see.’ They asked him, ‘Where is he?’ He replied, ‘I don’t know.'”

And Jesus’ contemporaries continued in blindness without understanding the healing of the blind man.

 

 

From lucidity to serenity

15 Mar

If clearing (or clarity) is a property of lucidity, lucidity precedes serenity, that is, one can have lucidity without achieving serenity, something very current as a search in modernity.

Heidegger’s “Serenity”, published in 1955, but as a meditation, was made in 1949, on the occasion of the centenary of the death of Conradin Kreutzer, Heidegger’s fellow composer, both born in the city of Messkirch, but at different times.

In this booklet, Heidegger will differentiate reflective (or meditative) thinking from calculating (or machinic) thinking typical of our time, thus comparing the thinking of our time with music, “we limit ourselves to being entertained by a speech. It is not necessary to think while listening to the narration, that is, to meditate (besinnen) on something that, in its essence, on something that, in its essence, concerns each of us directly and continuously” (p. 11)

Thus “The growing absence-of-thoughts is based, therefore, on a process that corrodes the deepest core of contemporary man: “Current Man is ‘on the run’ from thought” (p. 12)

On the other hand, machinic thinking is based on technique (see that the text is from 1955), where “the thought that calculates is not a thought that meditates, it is not a thought that reflects on the meaning that reigns in everything that exists”. ” (p. 13)

Heidegger knows that one of the arguments about reflection is that “pure reflection, persistent meditation, is too ‘elevated’ for common understanding” (p. 14), he says in honoring his fellow musician, that it would be enough to think about what it meant in that time. At the moment his homeland, where Kreutzer’s extraordinary music emerged, I remember a short story by Leon Tostoi who spoke of this dynamic of feelings precisely in a short story called “Sonata a Kreutzer”.

He thus proposes to those present “what does this celebration suggest to us, if we are willing to meditate? in this case, we note that, from the soil of the homeland, a work of art grew (gedieben). (p. 15)

So no high thinking is needed, just a little break, a silence in the soul.

HEIDEGGER, M. Serenidade (Serenity). trans. Translation by Maria Madalena Andrade and Olga Santos. Lisbon: Instituto Piaget, s/d.

 

 

About lucidity

14 Mar

We have already posted about blindness, in some essays (such as the one by José Saramago that became a film by the Brazilian Fernando Meirelles in 2008) and we also made a connection with The plague by Albert Camus, making a relationship with war, 3 things related and analyzed were from our time (the Pandemic, the blindness of the denialist vision and the War), we also posted last week about the clearing.

Now we do the opposite, let’s analyze lucidity and what it means in the history of humanity, starting again with Saramago, let’s look at his Essay on Lucidity, because he makes an interesting game for our development here, an allegory between light and dark.

This relationship is important because Saramago recovers elements from the first essay on blindness (the color white as a symbol, for example, the characters and the tree epidemic), it can be said that it is an extension of the first narrative.

Lucidity speaks of an election where two parties only had about 8% of the votes, with a significant blank vote, contrary to many arguments about this possible depoliticization, Saramago makes a curious counterpoint, he did not experience the current polarization:

“…it is because those blank votes, which came to deal a brutal blow against the democratic abnormality in which our personal and collective life was taking place, did not fall from the clouds or rise from the bowels of the earth, they were in the pocket of eighty-three out of every hundred electors of this city, who, by their own, but not patriotic hand, cast them at the ballot box.”

It was decided to carry out a survey, but the 83% did not manifest themselves until a person decided to send a letter to the leaders, and it was this letter that gave a new direction to the investigation and, no matter how much resistance there was, the government would not give in so easily, it could yourself realize where the problem is.

This upside-down reading of our political scenario, which is not very different from the US and Italy, just to give two examples, is very interesting to understand the political lucidity that seems to go against the grain in contemporary politics.

SARAMAGO, J. “Ensaio sobre a lucidez” (Essay on lucidity), Brazil,SP: Ed.: Companhia das Letras, 2004.

 

 

The forest bordering the clearing

10 Mar

Modern man, victim of ideologies, cultures and religious apostasy lives only with the awareness of individual freedom, without really understanding who is the Other who is not equal, the Korean/German philosopher Byung Chul Han developed this in “The expulsion of the other : Society, perception” (Editora Vozes, Brazil) in which he talks about the adipose emptiness of fullness.

This emptiness has nothing to do with the phenomenological epoché, opening the mind and soul to dialogue and receive the Other, the different, the discourse and the narrative contrary to ours, to later merge the horizons in the “hermeneutic circle”, the emptiness of soul is positive, it elevates us.

Through successive tragedies, the pandemic was the first and will not be the last, and this is not about an apocalyptic discourse, but about the social realization of a civilizing crisis in an increasingly profound and dangerous process, not only in the rulers, but also in personal conscience.

Chul Han goes so far as to say these processes are obscene in “hypervisibility, hypercommunication, hyperproduction, hyperconsumption, which lead to a rapid stagnation of the same. Obscene is the ‘connection of like with like’ (Han, 2022) in short, everything translates into an obscene sameness.

He cites a very illustrative example which is the animation Anomalisa by Charlie Kaufmann (photo), which talks about a speaker Michael who goes to Cincinnati for a lecture and there approaches a person by his voice, Lia is a person who already knows him and came to see his talk and fall in love.

But the hell of the same are the employees of the Hotel, all the same and who want to seduce Michael.

The essay emphasizes erotic love, but this also applies to agapic love, without falling in love and dialoguing with what is different, we live in the hell of the same, in our vicious circle, in an environment full of vices and obscenities, in the worst sense of word.

In the biblical narrative, Moses, who was trying to lead his people to a new path, wanted to stone him and blasphemed against the proposal of a different life (Exodus 17,3-7), even asked for the return of Egyptian slavery (any resemblance to the current politics is no coincidence), and also in chapter 4 of John, Jesus goes to meet the Samaritan woman, a woman and “pagan” and dialogues with her

In the week that women’s day was celebrated, this is important, which is not a biblical detail, but the essence of her message, Jesus, when meeting her, finds her interest strange and says “How come you, being a Jew, ask drink to me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jo 5,9).

The obscenity and sameness of the same not only impoverishes each one, but limits the civilizing process that is enriching the more the different can exist with dignity.

 

HAN, B. C. (2022) A expulsão do outro: sociedade e percepção. (The expulsion of the other: society, perception). Trans. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis: Editora Vozes.

 

Social and individual conscience

09 Mar

There is no social conscience, without going through the individual, it is linked to the worldview (cosmovision), here which in the idealist philosophy is seen as two separate beings: the being-in-itself and the being’for-itself, if we look from the ontological point of view, this means how things present themselves to us in our consciousness, there is then the phenomenon (appearance) or not of what exists there in the world (Dasein).

Social consciousness, seen by idealism as for itself, first elaborated by Hegel, but later merged with the existential ontology of Jean Paul Sartre, is seen like this: “it is consciousness that, when confronted with the world, becomes a dynamic process (contrasting with the inertia of the in-itself) and makes the in-itself reveal itself” (CABRAL, 2023).

However, in the Heideggerian cosmovision, the question of being-in-the-world, as the foundation of being-there, ceases to have the meaning of an aesthetic judgment and becomes an ontological-hermeneutic indication, given that it points to the question of the meaning of being of being- there, like all good philosophy, is a question.

What vision we have of the world individually, it is clear that under the influence of our culture and our adherence to philosophies, ideologies and religions, it is not detached from our Being, as an ontological status, and thus precedes the vision of being for itself in the idealist sense, and may have a transcendent sense that we saw in the previous post.

A for-itself beyond the human is the one who encounters the Other, who is not our mirror, but with him we create a fusion of horizons (in the sense of the hermeneutic circle) where we can carry out a dialogue, on which any true religious or cultural sense is based .

It is possible due to some kind of personal isolation, it is not autism it is good to say, not having a social conscience, but it necessarily passes through the conscience of the Other, thus the sociological and also ontological question arises: who is the Other in the individual conscience .

The result of an individual conscience that goes through the perception of the Other is a clear social conscience, without distortions of cultures, philosophies and religions, these seen here as negative, that is, absence of cultures, philosophies or religions dignifiedly understood and elaborated.

CABRAL, João Francisco Pereira. 2023. “Consciência e suas relações com o outro e o ser-em-si, segundo Sartre” in web site: Brasil Escola.

 

 

The electronic narrative

02 Mar

The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence, after a serious crisis towards the end of the millennium, brings a mystifying aspect to the scenario of scientific dissemination and sometimes even to scientific research itself, which sees it beyond the real possibilities or below what it is able.

That is why we pointed out in the previous post the real evolution and sophistication of Machine Learning algorithms and the growth of Deep Learning technology, this is the current rapid evolution, the evolution of electronic assistants (several of them are already on the market such as Siri and Alexa) is still limited and we commented in a post about the LaMBDA machine that it would have “sentient” capability.

Sentient is different from consciousness, because it is the ability of beings to perceive sensations and feelings through the senses, this would mean in the case of machines having something “subjective” (we have already spoken about the limitation of the term and its difference from the soul), although they are capable of of narratives.

This narrative, however complex it may be, is an electronic narrative, an algorithmic one, with the interaction of man and machine through “deep learning”, it is possible that it confuses and even surprises the human being with narratives and elaborations of speeches, however it will depend on always from the human narratives from which they are fed and create an electronic narrative.

I cite an example of the chatGPT that excites the mystifying discourse and creates an alarm in the technophobic discourse and creates speculations even about the transhuman limits of the machine.

A list of films considered extraordinary, exemplifies the limit of electronic storytelling, due to its human power, the list gave the following films: “Citizen Kane” (1941), “The Godfather” (1972), “Back to the Future ” (1985), “Casablanca” (1942), “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001), “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994), ” Psycho” (1960), “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “Pulp Fiction” (1994).

No mention of the Japanese Akira Kurosawa, the German Werner Herzog or the Italian Frederico Felini, just to name a few, about fiction would not leave out of the list Blade Runner – the hunter of androids, well connected to the technologies of “open AI” or the historic Metropolis (from 1927 by the Austrian Fritz Lang).

The electronic narrative has the limitation of what feeds it, which is the human narrative, even if it is made by the wisest human, it will have contextual and historical limitations.

 

Being, consciousness and clearing

03 Feb

The clearing of Being was an important theme in Heidegger’s ontological resumption, it is inseparable from the phenomenological methodology which his teacher Husserl was the main modern developer, but it remains an aporia, as stated in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectics of Enlightenment, if there is in fact a self-destruction of enlightenment in modernity and why this happened.

Therefore, it is not simply a matter of resuming the Being, but as this can happen from the phenomenological method, then two questions must be raised: placing our preconceptions in parentheses as a result of enlightenment, which is called by Husserl the epoché phenomenological, and the question of the intentionality of consciousness, in it the Being is unveiled, there reside most of our problems and dissatisfaction.

Contemporary culture (or what’s left of it, as Dalrymple says, we’ve already posted here) goes against the grain in this sense, what some authors call an excess of positivity, that logic described even as “mystery”, affirmation of desires and needs, summarizing life seen as utility only and not as essence or fullness.

In this way, we must make an “emptiness”, a silence in the soul so that we have the fullness of the being, remove the immediate desires and needs in order to be able to understand in fact the true needs and nourishment of the Being that lead to joy and fullness, the simple impulse leads to temporary compulsions and as such satisfy only the immediate need, what is proper to the Being remains hidden.

It is possible with these two measures: to make a void (epoché) by putting in parentheses what our preconceptions are, re-elaborating them in a hermeneutic circle that actually allows a new “concept”, after the fusion of horizons.

This is why ontology says that the Being remains hidden, it is beyond what is immediate and apparent, it should not be sought “Outside”, but “Inside”, true interiority is needed, without manipulations and barriers, many thinkers, mystics and spiritualities manage to this, and reach a fullness, even if temporary, will be food for a true asceticism.

For Christian philosophy and theology, it is not possible to reach true fullness without announcing and living its values, says the reading (Mt 5:14): “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. Nobody lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl, but on a lamp, where it shines for everyone in the house”, but this must be done with respect and fraternity and never with proselytism and judgments.

 

 

Human consciousness and machinic sentience

27 Jan

Consciousness involves human spiritual aspects (in the idealist philosophy called subjectivity) and that which makes man have a true ascesis that elevates his character, his attitudes and his morals in a progressive learning scale, where the error is admitted, but corrected in a humane way .

Sentience is the fact that we have a conscious perception of our feelings, it is the ability of beings (humans, because we do not believe that even a sophisticated machine can have this asceticism), and in beings it begins to feel sensations and feelings consciously.

The less we manage to be aware of our feelings, the less we have sentience and the less ability to understand our feelings, the attempt to translate sensations (types of laughter, happiness, sadness, etc. to the machine), will always be subject to algorithms, even that are very sophisticated, and that is why I call it machinic sentience, since machinic consciousness is described in different ways by different authors.

The picture representation in XVII century, um dos primeiros estudos foi do matemático inglês Robert Fludd (1574–1637).

True human consciousness is thus that which allows us to reach levels of asceticism in different ways: altruism, putting ourselves in the other’s shoes, living a just life and appreciating justice, in short, a true spirituality that elevates us as humans, and is also that which is within reach of those who suffer from human injustice and barbarism.

For Christians, what makes us achieve true asceticism is described in the so-called beatitudes (Mt 5,1-12) which speak of the poor, the afflicted, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for justice, those who have the capacity of forgiving and deceitful with the clarity of the desire for peace: “Blessed are those who promote peace, for they will be called children of God”, so in all circumstances that one lives in dark days, it is necessary to promote peace.

The contours of intolerance and violence, not only in the war in Ukraine, but in almost the entire planet should worry those who defend peace.

 

 

Artificial intelligence and its ethical limits

24 Jan

In a society in which all ethical limits have already been exceeded, even that of no longer preying on our fundamental good for life, the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, even with countless ethical agreements in which large companies have participated (Amazon, HP, IBM, Google , etc.), for example, in order not to produce smart weapons, we have seen the indiscriminate use of drones in the Ukraine-Russia war, in which the powers and their companies are involved.

The evolution of AI took a leap with the internet, the ease of information that runs through the veins of electronic networks (these are networks) and encourages electronic media (which are only means available to men) is as abundant as it is impactful, overnight for the day, illustrious strangers become influencers and gain notoriety, among them fortune tellers, prophets, politicians and artists not always with a lot of morals and ethics.

This should be as or more worrying than the development of AI (artificial intelligence), but the use of “media” by these influencers is indeed very worrying, and it is not just about fake news, but all kinds of barbarism ranging from from vocabulary to political impact, this is where our readings of Dalrymple and Zizek from previous weeks are inserted, more linked to cultural and political aspects, which are undoubtedly more delicate.

As the subject is also delicate, now in the intellectual sense of knowing its potentialities and dangers not yet clearly analyzed, such as, for example, the use of genetic algorithms (GA) pointed out by Margaret A. Boden, in her book “artificial intelligence: a very brief introduction ” (Editora Unesp, 2020).

It explores, among many other things, with the clarity of an expert in the field, the problem of cyborgs and transhumans, as suggested by Kurzweil, who was preparing his own body to become a transhuman.

Unlike cyborgs, the medical implants of various prostheses are already clearly possible, for the transhuman, “instead of considering prostheses as useful accessories for the human body, they will be considered as parts of the (trans-)human body” (Boden, 2020, p. 206), where human strength and beauty could go beyond genetic limits and this would become “natural” characteristics.

Just like Jean Gabriel Ganascia (the Frenchman who wrote The Myth of Singularity), Margaret Boden also does not believe in the overtaking of the machine above human intelligence, this is the point of singularity, and so also the “transcendent” human consciousness, as we discussed, is not subjected to an “intuitive implausibility” of post-singularity (p. 207).

Undoubtedly, the machine will be able to perform incredible tasks and at a speed never dreamed of by man, in fact it already does, but “transcendence” is not this.

 

BODEN, Margaret A. (2020) Inteligência Artificial: uma brevíssima introdução (Artificial Intelligence: a very brief introduction). Brazil, SP: Ed. UNESP.

 

 

What did they do with the culture?

06 Dec

Theodore Dalrymple, is the pseudonym of the English psychoanalyst Anthony Daniels, who worked in English prisons with highly dangerous criminals, and saw in them not only aspects of poverty and exclusion, but also the development of a culture of tolerance for acts of arrogance, theft and immoralities.

In a book of 26 essays he describes how the cultural media spread this culture (picture inside).

He wrote in one of his works: “For the sentimentalist, there is no criminal, but only an environment that did not give him what he owed”, and so those who said aloud that they suffered a lot in trivial situations of life, that many people go through and this does not mean that they fall into delinquency, of course this does not mean that re-education is not necessary, but preventive education is better than medicine.

It is not an exclusive sector of society, or just an ideological issue as many authors point out, but a matter of cultural influence, especially radio, television and cinema, when everyone starts to justify violence, hatred and cruelty , I remember phrases from the movie Joker that were repeated in a cult tone, for example, “cold, sarcastic and heartless. That’s what I became and I thank society”, the question is which society he chooses: efficiency or solidarity.

I don’t want to give popularity or play the role of the cultural industry that I condemn, and it is the true producer of strange values ​​and without a humanistic perspective, as the psychoanalyst points out in his books, values ​​penetrate society through the selective publishing culture that is highly permissive in values ​​and customs.

True solidarity does not just condemn, there are cases where condemnation is necessary to repress violence and hatred, but education, gives dignity and rebuilds people who have succumbed to a society of efficiency and arrogance, I remember here another successful book, which I read up to the tenth page: “The Subtle art of turning on the f**k” (in English the word also starts with f), yes it is true that there is in the book a cry against perfectionism and the culture of the extremely efficient in photos and texts in the “ media” of social networks, but it is important to remember that the author is American and there this is a general culture and not just in the media.

If last week we posted about the “paths” and the “paths”, we now want to emphasize the micro-culture, the day-to-day with more empathy, more respect and less hate, and if possible more polite.

There is no way to find ways of solidarity and peace in society if the vast majority chose to fight with weapons equal to those that the haters fight.

 

DARLRYMPLE, Theodore (2O07) Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses,