Arquivo para a ‘Neurociência’ Categoria
Art, the awareness and the divine
14
Apr
Art is an expression of the human soul, “it says the unspeakable, expresses the
inexpressible, translates the untranslatable” it is a phrase attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, without it we cannot humanly express the beautiful and we are not opposed to the destructive and reductive vision of the simple look only what we see.
Humanity has built devices to see and feel further and further away, the James Webb telescope is making us look and study the deepest part of the universe, but an entire universe exists in each human soul and even the most advanced technological device can translate it or imitate her.
This indeed is the great human delusion, the myth of machinic intelligence that surpasses human intelligence, called the singular point, the desire for eternal life transporting human feelings to machines, the human delirium built advanced technologies, which is good, but imagining it as endowed with human soul and emotions is a delusion of those who do not believe that in the mystery of the infinite universe there is a consciousness of a Being and not of rocks and chemical compounds.
The fact that we got confused in the course of history, reducing it to idealist subjectivism, is not worthy of the human journey, not even of science that for Edgar Morin it is necessary to return to the point where we see and admit uncertainty, after all this is one of the quantum principles.
Recently an Integrated Information Theory (ITT) term created by Giulio Tononi, created the idea that it was possible to calculate a “phi” number representing the connectivity of networks, be it the brain, a circuit or the atom, now this idea has advanced and scientists claim that it is possible to calculate this “phi”,
Researcher and cognitive scientist Susan Schneider, told New Scientist. “I believe that mathematics can help us understand the neural basis of consciousness in the brain, and perhaps even machines, but it will inevitably leave something out: the quality of that experience, felt internally.”
For Christians, even the disciples found it hard to believe what they saw after the resurrection of Jesus, they went to the tomb and saw “a gardener”, they walked to Emmaus and did not realize that they were accompanying him and finally Thomas wanted to “touch his wounds” so that to believe.
In John 20:27, Jesus tells him: “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Extend your hand and place it in my side. And be not unbelieving, but faithful”, to those who believe this is a fact.
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.
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.
The question of consciousness
28
Feb
The big issue for artificial intelligence was until
recently autonomy, robots, autonomous machines and now autonomous cars, with all the controversy the project evolves, Germany, for example, already provides a line of autonomous cars for the next decade that will begin.
The new issue is the question of consciousness, it has occupied the minds of philosophers for over a century, and can conceptualize in general terms the ability to take actions and consequences of these actions, which has to do with autonomy, because autonomy It is to analyze the consequences of acts performed by machines, the limits of dangerousness and privacy.
In the context of social or historical consciousness, this was Gadamer’s great debate with Dilthey, to which he attributed a conception of romantic consciousness for the absence of a “historical mediation” from facticity, and asks “how will the task of hermeneutics ”and finds a common ground between Schleiermacher and Hegel” (Gadamer, 2002, Truth and Method, p. 256), with the concepts of reconstruction and integration, and according to him, Dilthey makes the intermediate path between them.
Gadamer explains: “Schleiermacher and Hegel could present the two extreme possibilities of answering this question.
Their answers could be assigned to the concepts of reconstruction and integration. For both Schleiermacher and Hegel, in the beginning there is the awareness of a loss and alienation from tradition, which is what drives hermeneutic reflection” (idem).
However, he will say, each of them will determine the task of hermeneutics differently, and what Gadamer calls reconstruction and integration means the separation of preconceptions and alienation from tradition, and therefore rebuild and integrate.
Schleiermacher’s famous thesis is “What matters is to understand a better author than one would have understood himself,” Gadamer thought about the work of art, but Schleiermacher is stuck with his conception of “history of the spirit” which is his concept.
What Hegel says, according to Gadamer, is the creation of a category by stating that the essence of the historical spirit is not the restitution of the past, but the mediation of thought with the present life, which is the prevalence and idealism of the ideal over the factual questions.
And the origin of consciousness, as it happened, is that Terence Deacon is right in claiming that the mind came from matter, and with it came consciousness, if it is true, it is possible to think that somehow the machine, on the levels of intelligence artificial, you may have “consciousness” and then you will know that it is machine and that we humans are not.
What we relate in the videos of Gadamer and Peter Sloterdijk was to introduce this question, and the question of truth is proposed as the genesis of historical consciousness (Gadamer, 2002, p. 265), so machine consciousness cannot have this level.
GADAMER H. G.(2002) Verdade e Método (Truth and Method), 4th ed., Tr. Flavio P. Meurer. Petrópolis: Vozes (Brazilian edition).
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.
What is artificial intelligence and what ethics is needed
25
Jan
Usually AI has been characterized as “doing the kind of things the mind is capable of doing”
(Boden, 2020, p. 13), but this dimension does not have a single dimension and we can approach “a structured space with different abilities to process information” (idem).
Current development adds “virtual reality avatars and the promising emotional pattern development for robots ‘for personal accompaniment’” (Boden, pg. 14), what has been called personal assistants such as Siri, Cortana and ChatGTP dialog which is open source and already requires special regulation, for example, the City of New York prohibited its use in the initial levels of schooling.
Chatbots have been known for some time, but they are much simpler, ChatGPT (Generative pre-Trained Transformer) is a simple and intuitive tool, which the user uses and trains from the AI concepts of Machine Learning, machine learning and therefore grows in complexity and user interaction capabilities as it is used.
The influence in philosophy is also sensitive, especially in the cognitive areas where attempts are made to explain the human mind, in this field a recent controversy was the fact that a Google engineer stated that the AI platform LAMBDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), was sentient (which is different from conscious), we already published a post and did not develop it here due to the complexity of the topic.
The topic has already begun to be discussed in the Federal Chamber of Brazil and is about to be discussed in the Federal Senate, through bill Law Project PL 20/21, which, among other things, establishes a legal framework for the development and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by government, companies, various entities and individuals, renowned jurists and specialists in the area are being heard.
Another worrying area that should be taken care of is the use of AI in the creation of “artificial life”, “which develops computational models of the different characteristics of living organisms”, in this area the development of genetic algorithms (GA) stands out. (Boden, 2020, p. 15).
BODEN, Margaret A. (2020) Inteligência Artificial: uma brevíssima introdução (Artificial Intelligence: a very brief introduction). Brazil, SP: Ed. UNESP.
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.
Empathy and spirituality
13
Jan
We did not point out in the previous post that phronesis is not
a moral virtue, but an intellectual virtue in Aristotle’s theory, so empathy can be according to the feeling of the phronesis, a better component according to the feeling of the phronesis, the best example to explain this is that of akrasia, or the feeling and phronosis of a psychopath.
Although akrasia can be projected literally because it “has no command over itself”, it is described in Plato’s speech in Protagoras, in fact it is a situation of psychopathy where he is aware of a certain actions, but does not have exactly the same a normal person’s feeling towards someone.
Something that is wrong in this counter-argument to explain phronesis is that the desire to alleviate the pain of the other in the face of suffering must be somehow protected, however it does not prevent the psychopath from cultivating some feeling for the other person’s situation and makes of attitudes in the sense of their habits and that are not defined in terms of such we have already said that this comes from thoughts become actions), if we include people who have knowledge or mercy for the suffering of others, then it can be explained.
So it is, therefore, the moral or ethical attitude, although it is, but some attitude of spiritual virtue, that is, the practice of resistance is also only in an action that is not oriented towards a. willingness to act in a moral way that can provide the means to discern about suffering along with Empathy, so one has to expand on that of moral attitudes by Aristotle.
To people who cannot be basic, but can also be able to offer in basic moral virtues, and people who can be basic, but can also be complementary, but can offer a moral virtue, many people who are basic, but who can complement the lack of a virtue. attitude your action, and this is impossible without some exercise in complete to become a habit to feel the Suffering of Others, this exercise that becomes a habit is called here Spirituality.
The phronesis cannot be exercised without basic moral virtues and thus cannot be initiated without empathy, it can be admitted that a psychopath even has empathy, many are charismatic and can influence many people, but he will lack a basic moral virtue that complements your action, and this is impossible without some an exercise to become a habit the full empathic attitude of feeling the suffering of others, this exercise that becomes a habit is called here Spirituality.
While it is not a habit, it can be an exercise in asceticism, a simulation or simply a disguise that at some point will be unveiled.
It is good to point out that there can be asceticism (elevation of the spirit partially) without true spirituality, I call it using Peter Sloterdijk’s term of “despiritualized asceticism”, that is, without a deep root that leads to the broad knowledge of what pain is. of the Other, if we want to give a name to an empathetic phronesis.
Spirituality is, therefore, an exercise that leads to an asceticism, but what is asceticism does not depend only on the belief of each one, but what during life becomes habit and character, those who do not have it can practice it for a long time. a few days, or even a few years, but without deep root it will soon leave it, like losing weight, dieting, diets and other attempts at habits that are not always maintained, to make them life they must integrate our character, our personality.
Walking towards a troubled future
13
Jul
Lectures and motivational books have been growing since 
the beginning of the 21st century, it doesn’t matter much the message, the important thing is to lead people to an action force that is performance.
Traditional religions lose adherents to churches that change the discourse of sin for self-help and the desire for recognition and success, political polarization does not leave this aside, a good politician must demonstrate his “deeds” and not his exemption, balance and honesty.
Far from disdaining technological evolution, it is important and can help in a co-immunological resumption, one in which we discover mutuality, the “exam” as described by Byung Chul Han only seeks performance and it can include disrespect and fake- News.
The repressive and disciplinary society of the 20th century described by Michel Foucault (Watch and Punish) loses space to a new form of coercive organization: neuronal violence, fanpages fill up, lives exhibiting performances and even exhibiting violence, which is worrisome.
Interiority, which is different from subjectivity, which is what is proper to the subject, is that internal space that we need to cultivate to make our lives more balanced, with more positive thoughts and actions and that collaborate with mutualism, the feeling of responsibility for the other, the social conscience, finally, the community (the immunological society).
Chul Han points out that subjectivity, already present in discourses of current thinkers, such as “post-industrial society” (Bell, 1999), “control society” (Deleuze, 1992), “cognitive capitalism” or “material economy” (Negri and Lazzarato, 2001, Gorz, 2005) and “biopolitics” (Foucault, 2008) were forms of expression of this subjectivity, however without resorting to interiority.
Society is pushed towards an excess of positivity as Chul Han calls it in his Society of Tiredness, the coercive disciplinary concept (“you shall”) imposed from outside, brought into the scene a new statement (“we can”), which, in its most immanent aspects, “refers to a false freedom by imposing on individuals the imperatives of performance and self-satisfaction.
The author’s analysis starts from the film Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010) to explain his thesis, the imposition of performance and performance through self-overcoming is incorporated by the protagonist who is taken to the last consequences.
Today’s society of tiredness is nothing more than the unilateral absolutization of “positive power” and cognitive enhancement (neuro-enhancement) may not pose any moral problem, but it will lead to an even greater moral problem in the normativity of the performance society.
Han, Byung Chul. (2015) THE BURNOUT SOCIETY. Translated by ERIK BUTLER stanford briefs. An lmprint of Stanford University Press. Stanford, California.
