Arquivo para October, 2017
Consciousness and information
31
Oct
The EBICC event receives today (October 31) the lecture by Gregory Chaitin,
mathematician and computer scientist who re-presented Gödel’s Incomplete Theoremis considered to be one of the founders of what is today known as Kolmogorov (or Kolmogorov-Chaitin) complexity together with Andrei Kolmogorov and Ray Solomonoff. Today, algorithmic information theory is a common subject in any computer science curriculum.
Abstract:
He make a review applications of the concept of conceptual complexity or algorithmic information in physics, mathematics, biology, and even the human brain, and propose building the universe out of information and computation rather than matter and energy, which would be a world view much friendlier to discussions of mind and consciousness than permitted by traditional materialism.
The foundations of his thinking is showed in the book: Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega (Pantheon Books 2005) (reprinted in UK as Meta Maths: The Quest for Omega, Atlantic Books 2006.
Other and cristhian love
27
Oct
This is the 2000 post, in celebration meant to say what is deeper in my religious sentiment.
The concept of the Other as described by the philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas
can be defined as follows: “The quality of the relations that man hangs with the other depends not only on the sympathy of which he is invested but also on the reciprocal knowledge of the protagonists.”
Using this concept, the whole foundation and religious practice could be reduced to two very simple things: “love your neighbor” and love God, it is what tells a text of the new testament, where the Pharisees knowing that Jesus had already calmed the Sadducees, in Matthew 22: 36-40, they make a new trap for Jesus:
“Master, what is the greatest commandment of the law?
Jesus answered, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your spirit.’
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
And the second, similar to this, is: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’
These two commandments sum up the whole law and the prophets. ”
And I ask how much thing done in the name of Love and that hurts others, that inflates prejudices and disregards people, many non-Christians ask what the true meaning of religious feeling is.
The Other, complexity and education
26
Oct
The preoccupation with identity has brought about modernity and with 
the question of individual freedom it expands, we have already posed last week about the difference between ethics and ethics, which brings with it the question of individuality as subjectivity, subjects and objects are separated from the origin of liberal thought, now entering the twilight.
The modern problem is to make human conviviality “humanized”, based on justice, solidarity and values that include respect for the other, has become one of the greatest challenges of human coexistence today.
Many seem to no longer believe that these values should be observed in social and personal life, politics and economic relations, and what is sadder, even in religious thought where love, charity or compassion should be observed to the Other.
Relation between humans is complex, not simplify its.
There is a desire to transgress any imposed threshold, question more elementary values, and confuse freedom with self-determination, sometimes personal, sometimes in groups.
Ethical education presupposes this process of orientation toward conscious freedom, so dialogue about what is consciousness is not secondary, and consciousness only makes sense if it is awareness of something, so thinking about what is society, politics and religion is essential.
Just as it does not make sense to “oblige” one to respect the other, but it is possible to provide opportunities to make relationships between people more just and supportive, while trying to combat unfair preconceptions, in the hermeneutic circle the philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer explains that we all have preconceptions, which are ultimately the values that govern our lives, questioning them and putting them in discussion is essential.
By means of an ethical pedagogy, the conditions for the common good and mutual respect are created, in the end, for the realization of individuals as ethical subjects, in society the fundamental common good for all, in justice to accept legal norms for everyone and for every one and in religion would be fundamental remembers the “new commandment”: love your neighbor.
The constant of Tsallis, a Brazilian-greek
25
Oct
The expansion of the universe, speculation from the idea of gas expansion,
which gave rise to the Big Bang Theory is now one of the most accepted theories about the creation of the universe.
There is a consequence that has been made from the so-called extensive statistical mechanics, which was published in a recent work by Constantin Tsallis in Springer: Introduction to nonextensive statistical mechanics: approaching a complex world, which generalizes the Boltzmann-Gibbs theory still more fundamental than entropy because it includes current results.
The generalization of Entropy that was reformulated in 1998 by Tsallis is a result of relevance to physics and has often been debated by world physics theory, it more accurately describes the power law behaviors of a wide range of phenomena such as such as the turbulence of fluids to fragments in high energy particle collisions.
Applications range from fluid mechanics to detection and breast cancer to the creation of new materials.
Those interested in details can read Tsallis´ Statistics, Statistical Mechanics for Non-Extensive Systems and Long-Range Interactions, Constantino Tsallis will be at the EBICC starting next week at USP – SP – Brazil.
Constantino Tsallis was born in Greece, grew up in Argentine and also has Brazilian nacionality, it will be a great pride if they recognize the importance of his work for physics.
Deacon and the Biosemiotic
24
Oct
Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerges from Matter is a book by 
Terrence Deacon, an anthropologist and biosemiologist, who addresses the origins of life and the philosophy of mind, with new attempts to respond to how nature has emerged.
The book seeks to explain concepts such as intentionality and normativity in a different purpose from that of phenomenology, but considering them with a more functionalist purpose, calls entenational (in the ontological sense), but grouped and therefore “national”.
The book explores the properties of life, the emergence of consciousness and the relationship between evolutionary and semiotic processes. The book speculates on how properties such as information, value, purpose, meaning, and ultimate directed behavior have arisen from physics and chemistry.
Critics of the book argue that Deacon strongly lured the works of Alicia Juarrero and Evan Thompson without providing complete quotes or references to the author, but an UC Berkeley investigation has cleared Deacon who is a professor there.
In contrast to the arguments presented by Juarrero in Dynamics of Action (1999, MIT Press) and by Thompson in Mind in Life (2007, Belknap Press and Harvard University Press), Deacon explicitly rejects the claims that living or mental phenomena can be explained by dynamic systems approaches.
Instead, Deacon argues that the properties of life or mind only emerge from a higher order reciprocal relationship between self-organized processes.
Terence Deacon will be in São Paulo at the EBICC Cognitive Science event.
And quantum computing
23
Oct
While digital computing works with 0 and 1, quantum computing 
can use a concept of 0 and 1 simultaneously, an effect known by physicists as “interlacing” and when it was enunciated was called “ghosting” by Einstein, Podoslki and Rosen. known by the acronym EPR.
This phenomenon allows the processing of several simultaneous operations, the qbits (quantum bits) may use the following principles of photon processing:
– light particles, light has properties of particles,
– ions trapped or ion trap, area known with spintronics,
– superconducting qubits, processing the speed of light practically, and,
– nitrogen vacancy center, a phenomenon already observed in imperfect diamonds.
Quantum computers will create new applications, such as modeling variations of chemical reactions to discover new drugs, developing new imaging technologies (holograms applied to communication, and developments in batteries and new materials and flexible electronics).
But the most revolutionary application will be the quantum internet, totally using light particles (photons), there is also a proposal that uses light interacting with matter, the future awaits us.
The projects are still under development, but already with many results.
Ethics, State and Values
20
Oct
The concept of ethics and state of previous posts was to warn that the
breakdown of values, contrary to what many authors say, is not a disconnection with reality or even a lack of state presence in modern society, but a inaccurate understanding of the complexity of the modern world and its values.
The Hegelian Eticity, defined as “… the idea of freedom while living well, which in the consciousness of Si has its will and its knowledge” (Hegel, 1997)
Paul Ricoeur (2008) presented justice both as a moral rule and as an institution, as it is in the modern state, but has established a clear distinction between the two: the latter calls the dialogical Si (since it is mediated by an Institution, in the case, the State), and quotes an adage in Latin: “suum cuique tribure – to each one what is his”, but also sees a hierarchical logic where there are predicates qualifying human morality.
The trap set by the Pharisees set up for Jesus to speak against the Roman “law,” when asked if it was right to pay tax fell to the ground, for Jesus had made clear these two distinctions of Justice and said “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and the God what is of God” (Mt 22,21).
In times of systemically corrupt states it is necessary to differentiate horizontal moral law and respect for the Other into distinct planes, and we must keep this plane of respect to the Other stronger, where there is clearly a greater moral law: do not do to the other what you do not like which was made for you, the rule of thumb, in many religions and cultures.
Preserving basic values this fundamental, otherwise we are on the plane of “ethics”.
HEGEL, G.W.F. Encyclopaedia in Philosophical Sciences in Epitome. Trad. A. Mourão, Lisboa: Edições 70, 1997 (portuguese edition).
RICOEUR, P. O Justo 1: Justice as a moral rule and as an institution. Trad. Ivone C. Benedetti. São Paulo: WMF Martins, 2008 (brazilian edition).
State and complexity of culture of the values
19
Oct
There was not the complexity of the contemporary world before the mass 
media and modern digital media, because in addition to the slowness that the process spread, it was also possible to control “culture” and “values”, as defined even today, as these concepts require a new look, at least of greater diversity.
As in other topics we define that complexity is an inheritance of biology, if we think of culture in these terms it is a living tissue where there is the cultivation of cells containing the appropriate nutrients and the propitious conditions of survival of that organism’s life.
We can articulate the complexity with the anthropological concept of Edward B. Tylor (quoted by Roque B. Laraia) as “all that complex that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, customs and all other habits and capabilities acquired by man as a member of society. ”
What is defined as multicultural, inculturation or massification, is almost always based on some prejudice of the original cultures and their real values, I would say that there is some disrespect for the culture of “uncivilized” or “not evolved”
If it is a fact that has been promoted through the means of mass telecommunication, it is also a fact that the world view of diverse cultures allows us a greater respect and understanding of diversity, and that we do not mix or not understand the original culture.
Original culture is a very broad one that gives identity to a people, and any educational process that disregards it is in a way a massification, and a deconstruction of its values, but it is not reduced to the territorial space and this is often questionable , for example, the “pampas gauchos” on the borders of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina generally have a very close culture.
Arab cultures, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, but also those that transcend continental borders such as Islam, Judeo-Christian, Hinduism, Buddhism, are cultures that originate in a complexity that must be taken into account to social values.
The crisis of values is in a way because the Enlightenment ideals of the Modern State overcame the cultural values of the peoples where the “Spirit of Laws” was established and ignored what those peoples already had in their anthropological roots.
.
Complexity and modern state
18
Oct
The state as conceived in modernity, precisely because it did not exist 
before, is not eternal and can undergo profound transformations so that the society holds the control of the power that it transfers by the democratic vote, it is sensible that today we need evolution.
The idealist construct, which is grounded in individual rights, must more and more give way to collective and social rights, some proclaimed in the French revolution as equality and fraternity have never been achieved, this is one of the limits of the Modern State.
But the most sensitive in times of social media, where social networks (which are human) are empowered, is what democracy is, in the sense of legitimately representing the rights of the majority, first because there is the right of minorities, it is necessary to tolerate this coexistence, and secondly, it is more fundamental that in transferring the right we are after the democratic process, deceived by the defenders of “just” and “social” causes, in exchange for their particular interests or lobbies.
This social complexity, that social media only makes their demands and roots nuanced, still requires a respect for the legal limits as we pointed out in the previous post of this blog, the so-called ideologies and discourses of hatred.
The state as conceived by Hegel possesses an ethicity (Hegel’s concept differs from ethics), where it is the “reality in the act of the objective moral idea – moral spirit as a substantial will revealed, clear to itself, which knows itself and thinks and realizes what he knows, and because he knows and because he knows “(p. 257), where there is a” self-conscious ethical substance “which is clearly more an idealistic concept than an apodic truth.
Hence the objective moral idea that Hegel intended to achieve with the State, with many examples in present-day governments, has clearly shown to be an idealist model for concealing human subjectivities which are also ethical rights such as religiosity and culture place of each people or nation concept, for example, rejected by Bush and other xenophobic governments.
The element of subjectivity which for Hegel was the “spirit,” was also the Spirit of the Laws of Montesquieu, it is this self-conscious substantiality, it is actually the “autonomy of the State” that becomes a subject of abstract logical categories and submit to the concrete reality of the existing subjects, people inserted in their cultures.
The modern state is not eternal and needs to be rethought.
