Arquivo para a ‘Cognition’ Categoria
Being immanent and transcendent
03
May
These philosophy concepts are difficult to understand if we don’t put them into everyday life, rather rudely let’s think like this: what we have inside and defines us as your “I” is internal and immanent to me, what I have external and defines as the beyond me is “transcendent”, the Other and for those who have some belief in the Divine.
Of course, these concepts are not quite like that, the immanent is here that is inseparably present in a being or object in nature, it is inseparable from it and the being cannot be thought without it, for Kantianism, it concerns the concept and precepts of cognitive content.
The transcendent, on the other hand, is that which transcends the physical nature of being and things, corroborating with the immanent of Kantianism, this current defines it as that which is present in the object and outside the subject, something that is external to it and can only be known by “transcendence”, see the cognitive aspect present again.
Returning to the previous post, the categories in-itself, of-itself and for-itself can and are present in this type of immanence/transcendence based on idealism (Kant and later Hegel), which states “in the beginning, self-consciousness is pure for-itself”, thus it is absolute independence, it affirms that its transcendence in relation to everything that is for-Other, thus being is trapped in this binary Without-in-itself and for-itself, as Sartre will detect in his book “Being and Nothingness”.
Thus there is no alter, there is no Other purely outside and beyond being-in-itself, this stops in the sense of the Greek para (as paramedic, parameter, etc.) but a return to in-itself, thus self-consciousness it is linked to the ego and not to any cosmological or divine possibility.
Hegel states: “Self-consciousness is in itself and for itself when and because it is in itself and for itself for an Other; I mean, it’s just like something recognized. (…)” (Hegel, 1992, p. 126)
However, it is possible to define a relationship between immanence and transcendence without dualisms, so the being-in-itself, the one that defines itself internally and with its properties, can have a relationship with everything that is outside, the objects and the Other (which is in a sense plural form).
There is a transcendence outside, which is beyond knowledge, which one can have through the use of language, human relations and contemplative intuition, it is the Being-for-itself that completes and defines being-in-itself (gives it a transcendent identity), establishes a self-relationship with nature and with the Other and finds in divine contemplation a Being for-itself that is an origin of everything and beyond ex-sistence (ex – outside, sistence – strong, eternal ), which is essence for the previous definitions, as it is pure Being.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (2018) [1807]. The phenomenology of spirit. Cambridge Hegel Translations. Translated by Pinkard, Terry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
No time to Being
25
Apr
Neither the pandemic, nor the Home Office, nor the intriguing series
(personally I still prefer to go out and go to the movies) have made men calmer, more serene and happy, everything needs to be accelerated.
The “Aroma of Time: a philosophical essay on the Art of Delay” (2016) is nothing more than a counterpoint to this destructive stigma of our time that culminates in desires to exclude the Other, hatred and violence without borders, in short, an ever-increasing war. cruelest on a dark horizon, there is no time to be, just to have, to satisfy the simplest entertainment, not just games. The essay originally published in Germany in 2007, Byung-Chul updates what is not only an acceleration of time but also a temporal crisis based on a desynchrony not only of reality in a nobler and more poetic sense, whose discontinuity leads to something without direction, order and impossibility of a synthesis or conclusion that allows our lives to last in an “aroma”, as its “delay” should be understood.
He quotes and analyzes “Marcel Proust “In search of lost time” (Proust, 1913) what he calls a “temporal crystal” or his vision of aromatic time: “silent, sonorous, fragrant and clear hours” (in Han, 2016, p. 59 ).
There is a time of temporal anguish, it seems that the time spent slips through the fingers and is lost.
What is substantial and essential in our lives, essence and substance are the main forms of desynchrony in our being, they are referred either to an angelic delirium (false essence) or to a sculptural, decorative and unreal physical form (false substance).
As Byung-Chul deduces: “it presupposes that existence is historical, that each of us has a trajectory. The aroma is that of immanence” (Han, 2016, p. 59).
In philosophy and practice immanence is something that has an end in itself, as opposed to transcendence that something or an end outside and superior to itself.
Such is our lost “aroma” of time, to contemplate experiencing Being-in-time as having an end beyond, as Byung-Chul ends and concludes in his essay the necessary correction: “a large measure of strengthening the contemplative element” (Han, 2016, p. 186).
Han, Byung-Chul (2016). O aroma do tempo: um ensaio filosófico sobre a Arte da Demora. transl. Miguel Serras Pereira, Lisbon: Relógio d´Água.
Looking at things from above
21
Apr
Miracles or prophecies are not necessary for us to understand that even in
the most earthly realities there are things from above, and they respond to the most earthly realities, without them we cannot find exits and paths to a full, happy and peaceful life.
Without ethical, moral and responsible values, finding safe ways out of conflicts, situations of insecurity or injustice is almost impossible, as one error does not correct another error, and only an action of love and solidarity resolves a conflict of hatred and division.
From division to division, from hate to hate, we walk with an earthly look at our difficulties, it does not mean that we should take our feet off the ground and have rational decisions, it means that without serenity and serious and proactive attitudes we only make what is wrong worse.
It is common even for people of good will to appeal to violence and force, even if the side of justice and solidarity is the right side, acting with recklessness and cruelty takes away the value of this act of force, the greatest act of force is responsibility. act with firmness, education and truth.
If we are troubled, anxious and out of balance, we cannot find the path of wisdom, hear that inner voice of common sense, clarity and truth.
It also serves as well as for questions of justice and right for the true cultural and religious values, the use of authoritarianism, which means in this context false authority that many want to have before the office or position they have, they make the mistake of the authority argument and fall into the easy trap of too much power.
They want to be imbued with a halo of goodness when they invest themselves against simple people, but the grace to raise hearts to higher values and remove them from difficult situations is not achieved.
For Christians, one of the most significant passages after the Passover of Jesus that we recall a little while ago in Christian culture is the episode of Emmaus in which, while Jesus was walking among them and they did not realize it, they were still ruminating on the violent death of the Master, but they were blind and did not understood correctly the victory of the one they crucified.
Jesus asks: “What are you talking about along the way?” They stopped, with sad faces, and one of them, named Cleopas, said to him: “Are you the only pilgrim in Jerusalem who does not know what has happened there these last few days?” (Luke, 24, 15-18) and gave their earthly version of the Passover.
And Jesus (still without being recognized) how to explain the meaning, already reviewed by the prophets: “Wouldn’t the Christ have to suffer all these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24,26).
Gradually their hearts warmed up and in the end they understood that they were walking with the Master and then they asked them to stay with him because the night was coming, but Jesus disappeared.
It is not necessary to have this vision or even to have this faith, it is necessary to listen to the voice from above, of healthy values.
Philosophy and the question of death
21
Mar
Talking about death is both an instigating and terrifying topic, at least for those who believe
that everything concludes in our earthly life cycle, philosophy has always addressed it.
From Socrates and Plato (428-347 BC) to Heidegger (1889-1976) passing through Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), philosophy did not shy away from addressing the theme, Schopenhauer even stated that “death is the muse of philosophy” and Socrates had already said that philosophy is like a “preparation for death”.
In Plato’s Fedón he describes the philosophical life as a “training for death”, there is in it an “ethos” of human life, for which it can be said without exaggeration that it is a “training” and this makes us reflect on the delusions contemporaries of “entertainment until death”.
It can be objected that Plato considered the soul immortal, but Schopenhauer and Heidegger did not, it is true that the latter had a brief foray into Christianity, but later abandoned it, the core of his ontological thinking is what this Being-there, this Dasein is , ex-assistential and human.
Contradicting the fleeting contemporary life, Socrates said that “there is no life well lived that cannot be examined” while Heidegger will affirm that life facing death (we cannot forget that there is the impossibility of existence) is what makes us think outside the world of the “I”, of the alienating voice of society, of the mass media, and of conceiving the world in a utilitarian and transitory way.
Heidegger will use the term “stimmung” which can be translated as “intone”, to compare a tuning instrument, with which he refers to anguish or other animic states (of affective dispositions), using his metaphor as out of tune instruments in the face of life.
Other philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur will remember human “finitude”, to remind him that it is fallible, if Heidegger speaks of Being-towards-death as finitude, Ricoeur characterizes it as an impulse towards life (being against death).
Whatever the approaches, human finitude, life “well lived and examined” is full life.
Ricoeur, P. (2007) Vivant jusqu’à la mort – suivi de Fragments. Paris: Editions Seuil.
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.
