Arquivo para 2020
The pandemic plateau remains
06
Jul
The data observed in the last week of deaths by the corona virus, which are reliable
data, since the curve of infected people depends on testing, which is done by companies and is still low, indicate that the plateau remains and the pandemic is internalized in the Brazil (see graph), we have already stressed the importance of making the logarithm to better visualize the slope of the curve, which is exponential.
What the policy would be for this moment is to continue maintaining social isolation, personal hygiene, and social distancing habits, in addition to precautions in relation to municipal policies.
Any prospect of a peak, at least the data indicates, seems meaningless, the number of infections remains around a thousand daily deaths, and a #lockdown is no longer viable, as the virus has already spread and regional isolation does not mean pandemic control.
We will navigate through uncertainties, already tired of a long period of isolation and with an open and close policy that does not have much effective results, except to contain a greater contagion, without meaning any effective result of controlling the pandemic at the federation level.
The economic costs that would be great in the case of a #lockdown period, will now be higher because both the commerce and the services that effectively need face-to-face contact would not be justified to keep them disabled, and few services are non-essential.
The plan is to continue the so-called “social isolation”, whose more certain name in the Brazilian case we have already said, is “social distance” which is compatible with some open services.
The essential is therefore to maintain personal care and hope that the curve falls “naturally”.
Innocence, naivety and ignorance
03
Jul
In many situations we stumble on these three concepts as synonyms or close ones,
they are not, a child is innocence and does not know many subjects, but he is not ignorant, for his naivete he must be protected both by his parents and by any person of good character.
An adult can also be innocent in a certain situation because he was not part of or did not know a serious situation, he is not ignorant, but innocent even though some harm may have occurred due to his ingenuity in not realizing the seriousness or the consequences of an act.
Ignorance is militant, that is, even seeing and understanding the seriousness of a given situation, a conscious voluntary action commits or allows a serious act to be carried out, and some or many people or even serious situations can occur.
The pandemic exposed these three realities and one cannot fail to notice a disease with the severity of taking lives and whose defense is complex due to the lack of knowledge about the action and control of the coronavirus implies making decisions in defense of life that mitigate the number of deaths.
Just as it exposes the naivety of many people who do not take care of hygiene and prevention to minimize the contagion, exposing innocent people, but it is ignorance that worries most and can cause even more serious situations if it is not possible to stop neglect. Ignorance was used in history to manipulate innocent populations and often managed to lead many naive people to catastrophic situations, striking innocents and often leading to death and despair, this happened in wars and pandemics, the Spanish flu in the 1918s and 1919 killed 50 million people, an absurd number for the population at the time.
The biblical revelation in which the apostle Matthew (Mt 11.25) states that it was his father’s pleasure to reveal himself to the little ones and to hide the divine truths from the “wise and understanding”, must be understood in the context of belief in God.
God eternal knowledge and not about knowledge and temporal truths, because the following text is very clear (Mt 11: 26-27): “Yes, Father, because that was your pleasure. Verything was delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son, except the Father, and no one knows the Father, except the Son and the one to whom the Son wants to reveal him.
Using this passage to justify or defend ignorance is bad faith, in both senses, in the religious and in the moral sense.
It is not a cIt is not a crisis of thought alone
02
Jul
The crisis may seem like something too intellectual, thinking would be far from
the concrete reality of science, and thus from ordinary life, but its extension reaches the everyday science from statistics to medicine, from bibliometrics to biology and this can affect confidence in science and in In the spiritual field there is an immense openness to quackery and the manipulation of good faith.
This criticism questioned, for example, the fact-value dichotomy, emphasizing the social construction of facts, and can be traced back to the works of philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Edmund Husserl, with their rejection of science as a metaphysical substitute.
Stephen Toulmin was very articulate in his criticism of the Cartesian idea of rationality (1958), while the essence of the scientific method has been the subject of writings (and disputes) by authors such as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos.
The essence of the scientific method has been the subject of writings (and disputes) by authors such as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos, the echo of these disputes reaching the world of physics as the debate about string theories and their physical reality.
An interesting literature on the current crisis was the work of Derek of Solla Price “Little Science, Big Science” of 1963, he states that there is a point of saturation and senility, which was the result of the exponential growth he experienced in the 20th century.
Another more interesting work is the book by Jerome Ravetz “Scientific knowledge and its social problems”, which offers a critique of the myths of objectivity (it is our main object of this blog), and which asks about the solution of practical problems, that is , social.
In a recent work he recently argued Ravetz (2016) that “Applying a” scientific “methodology to science governance tasks leads directly to corruption, as any system can be at stake”, in another article, Ravetz (2011) defines the issue in terms of the “maturation of the structural contradictions of modern European society”.
The pandemic showed the inefficiency of both the medical field where “specialists” defend medicines that have not been proven effective and generate collateral problems, such as hydroxychloroquine and others (according to the magazine Veja (in section Saude), 69 medicines are tested: 18 are anticancer, 14 immunosuppressants, 13 antihypertensive drugs, 12 antiparasitic drugs and 12 anti-inflammatory drugs, and statistical treatment also hide the real results, as are the analyzes of the evolution of the pandemic in Brazil
References:
De Solla Price, D. J. (1963). Little science big science. Columbia University Press.
Ravetz, J. R. (1971). Scientific knowledge and its social problems. Oxford University Press.
Ravetz, J. (2008). Faith and reason in the mathematics of the credit crunch. The Oxford Magazine. Eight Week, Michaelmas term 14–16, Available online at http://www. pantaneto.co.uk/issue35/ravetz.htm.
Ravetz, J. R. (2011). Postnormal Science and the maturing of the structural contradictions of modern European science. Futures, 43, 142–148.
Ravetz, J. R. (2016). How should we treat science’s growing pains? The Guardian 8 June 2016.
Toulmin, S. E. (1958) The Uses of Argument, UK: Cambridge University Press.
The development of science and the epistemic crisis
01
Jul
Several ideas and news spread among the peoples and become dogmas 
and legends since the origin of humanity, however it was the organization of knowledge that organized the episteme, the doxa its a single opinion.
The first great scientific question raised by Boethius in the seventh century, was whether or not there are universal or just private categories, this question gave rise to a dispute between nominalists like Duns Scotto and William Ockham who argued that “names” were universal, and realistic. like Thomas Aquinas, who said the real be.
Roger Bacon (1220-1292) defended experimentation as a source of knowledge, and together with Duns Scotto and William de Ockham they create the empiricist basis of thought, and so knowledge does not depend only on faith, but also our senses.
With his philosophical operation called “methodical doubt”, René Descartes ended up instituting a philosophical paradigm that was identified as conceptual pragmatism, and John Locke, representative of the empiricist current, and René Descartes, founder of the Cartesian method, converged in their theories when they stated that the valid knowledge comes from experience and the senses, as they are innate to the soul.
Kant’s idealism will create 12 categories separated into 4 groups, that of Quantity (Unit, Plurality and wholeness), Quality (Reality, Denial and Limitation), the relationship (Substance, Causality and Community), Modality (Possibility, Existence and Necessity), and in them the phenomena fill the empty forms.
Thus, the phenomena can only be considered within the categories, differently from the phenomenology that directs consciousness to the thing itself, that is, it returns to the beings, and this will open a new possibility for metaphysics.
Despite strong signs of a crisis in thought, mathematics changes with the emergence of non-Euclidean geometries, the fourth dimension, physics with the uncertainty principle where the theory of relativity and quantum physics came from, the logical paradoxes presented in Vienna circle and mainly a crisis in humanist thought, showed an early 20th century in crisis, but two wars and the cold war were not avoided.
The fall of the Berlin wall, an apparent end to the ideological struggle, has given rise to new crises now in the world of culture, the war in Iran, Afghanistan and the permanent one in many Arab countries have now shown an East vs. West tension.
The pandemic should solidarize the peoples, in fact it created a more serious ideological polarization, the danger of totalitarian regimes emerging with greater force, it is necessary to have hope and fight for a more solidary world and a humanism worthy of the name
Ignoramus et ignorabimus
30
Jun
The phrase of the German physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond in his work meant
that in his Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens meaning that in scientific knowledge there was ignorance and the Latin translation is ignored and we will ignore.
The first big reaction would come from David Hibert in 1930 when he said: “We need to know and we will know”, said at an annual meeting of the Society of German Scientists and Doctors, but at a round table at a Conference on Epistemology, Kurt Gödel provisionally announced his incompleteness theorem, which showed that elementary axiomatic systems are self-contradictory and contain logical propositions that are impossible to prove or disprove.
At a conference of mathematicians in Paris in 1900 he had announced the famous 23 problems that mathematics was supposed to solve, including the famous incompleteness theorem that would prove that a mathematical system is either complete or open.
However, the biggest problem was closing the questions around mathematical theorems and axioms, and the next big debate is the difference between human and social systems on the one hand, and systems of nature, physical or mathematical on the other.
So if we say that 2 plus 2 is four and this is accurate, it means that we are in the field of mathematics, just as geometric figures can be perfect, no “natural” system is exactly perfect, planets are not exactly round, light and waves Electromagnetic waves do not walk in a straight line in the universe and neither is any natural surface perfectly flat.
What we ignore means that our system of interpretation is limited to certain models and metaphors that do not correspond exactly to nature, and on the social level not only is man extremely complex but the nature that is where the set of human relationships takes place is still more complex, since it is the sum of individual complexities.
The epitaph on the grave of David Hilbert is his famous phrase:
“Wir müssen wissen.
Wir werden wissen ”. (photo above)
Covid 19 in Brazil and the plateau
29
Jun
The analysis based on the number of infected cases is not feasible because
testing in Brazil is still small, done by companies or hospitals but only in cases where there is a suspicion of the need for hospitalization, and the estimate that 5% of deaths would correspond to the number of infected is not true because the isolation measures are different in several regions.
The plateau that started from the middle to the end of May has lengthened because the regions with the highest number of infected people were widening and in the case of Brazil going inland, called the epicenter, the name would be inappropriate if there was isolation, thus the contamination spread.
In addition to there being no isolation from the regions where infections started, which has been done in many countries since China where it started and the Wuhan region was epicenter, in this case the name is justified, both local measures and isolation regions were hard to contain the spread.
The second question is how to look at the graph and the numbers, the graph that at the beginning was an exponential and although it is necessary to look at making a logarithmic scale of the curve to see the degree of slope (for example, at the beginning, the number doubled every day and then every other day, etc.), now that the curve no longer has an exponential behavior, it is necessary to make the logarithm.
Looking at the logarithmic scale of the curve, the plateau is clearly perceived (graph above) and the numbers are rotating slightly above the thousand daily cases of death, the degree of infection as already said is not necessary, and thus it is perceived the plateau that has been going on for a month.
The reason was the initial analysis done here, with no isolation from the regions, the virus spread to more inland regions and the new “epicenter” is the interior of the country, and so it should continue into the month of July, either because of the ineffectiveness of isolation policies , or for the winter period
Hermeneutics and spirituality
26
Jun
The fundamental reason for hermeneutics is from the beginning to resolve the
question of the relationship between people and objects, whether they are real or immaterial (virtual is something else), and as these relate to our mental world, I say subjective by idealists, but linked to them.
If originally the idea of intersubjectivity arises, through dialogue and proximity to idealism, what contemporary philosophy will recover is being-for-Outrem, or Empathy, and here it is not a question of cordial or generous relations, but what comes of philosophical hermeneutics, such as the merging of horizons, and in this empathy can be put as having something “spiritual”.
Not by chance Edith Stein, one of Husserl’s disciples, who was even his secretary, had empathy before her religious life (she became a Carmelite sister, even though she was Jewish), but it is not difficult to make a connection between the two moments in Stein’s life.
Edith Stein will reflect that what she calls “the pure me” (or what I prefer the deepest of me) is in line with the Outrem, in three singular ways analyzed by the author: the experience in the field of pure investigation, which is always reports to the two poles of consciousness: subjective (noesis) and objective (noema), in the second it differentiates the phenomenological approach from the empathic act from other approaches made in the empirical field (genetic, psychological, moral, ethical, etc.) and the third despite ability to learn from the experience of others what constitutes the self.
The “I” always recognizes the flow of ipseidade (which is proper, correlated to hecceidade, principle of Duns Scotto) and this leads to otherness (differentiates it from the other). However, if this relationship is seen within the hermeneutic phenomenology, epoché (putting concepts in parentheses) differs from the Cartesian code because it is not about the ego, as it is intuitively possible to understand emphatically the experience of the Other, but not in an original way , and this means Identity.
We would have difficulties to affirm a unity of the Self, of its individuality, if the relations that are called “intersubjective” (I don’t like the name for its idealistic origin), because we cannot identify where the freedom and responsibility of each individual begins and ends.
To look at the other as conscience (which always has the intention directed towards something) means to become aware of me in that aspect towards which conscience is directed, unlike finding the “middle ground”, “the truth”, what happens later Heidegger and Gadamer called it a fusion of horizons, so the dialogue presupposes a philosophical hermeneutics, in the sense of diving into the horizon of others and rediscovering oneself, requiring an epoché.
It is interesting that in the biblical readings Jesus asks the disciples who he was for them*, and they gradually discover him and never fully, Jesus also looks and analyzes each one to form a community with them, some see a unilateral relationship, but it is dialogics.
*Mt 16, 13-14: Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do men say that I am the Son of Man?” They replied, “Some say it is John the Baptist; others that is Elias; still others, that is Jeremiah or one of the prophets”.
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.
