Arquivo para October, 2018
Dasein and reason
17
Oct
Before entering into the concept of being-in-the-world, a provisional translation of Dasein, it is necessary to understand the extent to which ontology distances itself from Cartesian rationalism, at which point it approaches, for those who desire a deeper dive “Cartesian Meditations” (post) since Husserl was Heidegger’s teacher and he kept some concepts.
The two well-known Cartesian categories for something are res extensia and res cogitans, about which Heidegger wrote: “Doubtless this [with regard to God] needs production and preservation, but within the created entities [or only considering these ] … there is something that needs no other entity, in regard to the production and conservation of creatures, for example of man.
These substances are two: the res cogitans and the res extensa “(Heidegger, 2015, p.144). Thus the Cartesian dualism is not only between two finite substances, which are naturally distinct, but between the two finites and the infinite, and Heidegger clarifies immediately after returning to the medieval ontology, sometimes called fundamental or ontotheology by other authors, the question (Heidegger, 2015, 145), that is, “in the affirmations God is or the world is, we preach the being … the word ‘is’ can not indicate the being each time referred to in the same sense (αυυωυúς, unívoce), since between both there is an infinite difference of bein.
If the meaning of ‘is’ was univocal, then the servant would have the same sense of not created or the uncreated would be demoted to a servant “(idem). It solves the quarrel of the universal, between realists and nominalists, “Being does not perform the function of a simple name [the nominalists thought], since in both cases it is understood to be” (ibid.).
Explicit and surpasses scholasticism ” positive sense of the signification of the s’ as an ‘analogical’ meaning to distinguish it from univocal or merely synonymous signification “(ibid.).
The quotes are of Heidegger’s own to indicate the analogy of being as substance, and extending to contemporaneity neither the analog nor digital are to be, belong only to the ontic, or in our designation to the artifacts.
Finally, it underscores the Cartesian ontology that “falls far short of scholasticism” which left the sense of being and the character of the “universality” of that meaning contained in the idea of substantiality “(ibid.), While acknowledging that even medieval ontology questioned very little this sense.
Although Descartes is able to recover in some respects, he notes for his time and is worth even today, we have not even freed ourselves from the crisis of European thought of the last century, “the Cartesian ontology of the world is still today in force in its fundamental principles”, materiality.
Heidegger, M. Ser e Tempo (Being and time), 10a. Brazilian edition, Trad. Revised by Marcia Sá Cavalcante, Bragança Paulista, SP: Editora Universitária São Francisco, 2015.
Paul Allen died
16
Oct
Co-founder with Microsoft’s Bill Gates (photo), was fortunate enough and was in fact the great developer
of Microsoft, Bill Gates had worked before Microsoft only in a version of Basic language, it was he who suggested the purchase of QDOS, developed system by Tim Paterson when he works at Seattle Computer Products, where MS DOS came from, whose sale to IBM is the origin of Microsoft’s millionaire project.
Paul Allen was familiar with Xerox’s Palo Alto MVT system, which was an inspiration for early versions of Windows, and later invested in Explorer in a heavily competitive version with Netscape, which triggered the so-called Web browser war.
Paul Gardner Allen created a foundation with his name in 1988 to run philanthropic projects; between 1990 and 2014 he donated more than $ 500 million to more than 1,500 nonprofit organizations, most of them for technology, arts and culture projects, but also a significant slice of social development (about $ 100 million).
He died in the 65 years old, cancer victim in his hometown of Seattle, where he owned the basketball team.
Scientific vision and ontology
16
Oct
Contemporary science is the fruit of an a priori concept construction, which can be
thought of as that which is prior to experience or perception, in terms of philosophy, this corresponds to two forms of knowledge or argument, when we say in my experience I feel that … it is the argument of perception, when I say I see it this way … it means that I have a world view and I am resorting to it.
In the ontological phenomenology an “a priori” is also admitted, but it does not mean an “a priori construction”, since it must be dissociated from “empiria”, because in fact even if we can not make explicit our world view, it was socially and culturally constructed, which in the hermeneutic circle are the preconceptions, in the sense that they are somehow formulated.
Just as both scientific research and ontology have concepts “a priori” they can converge, but in practice ontology requires a purification, ie, the explanation of which are the prejudices, for example, idealism or culture.
Every scientific investigation makes an a priori that is the “fixation of the sectors of objects” and is only possible from an opening to the being of being, that is, what is the ordinary experience that it has of the world, sometimes difficult to explain and question.
In order for a true scientific question to be asked, it is necessary to determine the region of the entities, often called contextualization, but at most only corresponds to a romantic view of history (read Gadamer), the region means being taken to the horizon of the original experience, the horizon of the fundamental relation of the entity that questions with the questioned world, usually done in reverse.
In medieval philosophy, the whole discussion of these a priori leads to the quarrel of the universals of Boethius (470-525), who translated Isagoge from Greek into Latin, soon perceived the magnificent program that Porphyry’s questions proclaimed.
At bottom the quarrel is whether there are universals, which would be them, that triggered a struggle between nominalists (everything is name) and realists (they exist independent of the names).
Existential analytics “is before all psychology, anthropology and, above all, biology.” (Heidegger, 2015, pp. 89), although we already say in the previous post Paul Ricoeur affirms that there is in Heidegger (he would say in all ontology) an a priori that is based on anthropology, which we call original for cultural reasons.
Heidegger, M. Ser e tempo, 10a. edição, Trad. Revisada de Marcia Sá Cavalcante, Brasil, Bragança Paulista, SP: Editora Universitária São Francisco, 2015.
Being and the world
15
Oct
Heidegger created a philosophical school by creating a vision of being and of the world, which
returns to an essential basic question which philosophy has escaped: to exist and to be.
But the expression being in the world, with great social and also psychological influence, was quickly consumed in conceptual trivialization because it was apparently obvious.
The expression being in the world, which made and does school in the psychological and social knowledge, is one that easily lends itself to trivialization and impoverishment, perhaps even by its comprehensiveness and apparent obviousness.
The theme is in his treatise on Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) of 1927, whose task was to reinsert the question of the “sense of being”, which was forgotten by traditional Western metaphysics from modernity but also by the ancients .
This happened in modernity because the being has become an ontology of substance, that which visualizes being in general from the primacy of the “thing”, or, in other words, that takes the “thing” as a representation paradigm for all that “is,” a basic presupposition of what objectivist philosophy has translated as all that is object, reducing metaphysics and the view of essence into “superstition.”
Thus, in order to reach the vision of being, it is first necessary to understand what is and what is the being of being that replaces the question of being (for forgotten Heidegger), that is the being of man, dasein (I leave here purposely without translation) .
The entire first section of the work is devoted to the analysis of dasein (daseinanalyse), that is, the development of the strucutre of being in the world, with a fundamental horizon in order to be approached the question being in general.
The ontological structure seen in the analysis of dasein as: occupation, disposition, understanding, discourse, etc can not should not be confused with their ontical or empirical correlates (ahd the practice!) they are: affection, desire, knowledge, language, which in fact are only existencial grounding.
The existencial analytic “is before all psychology, antrhprology and, aborve all, biolocal” (Heidegger, 2015, p. 89) although Paul Ricoeur in Time and Narrative (1984) observes that there is a philophical anthropology “ddue to its ontological openness”.
Heidegger, M. Ser e tempo, 10a. edição, Trad. Revisada de Marcia Sá Cavalcante, Bragança Paulista, SP: Editora Universitária São Francisco, 2015.
What happened to the impossible?
12
Oct
Perhaps it is what we can expect when we are in a situation where there is nowhere to run, there must
be an exit, we resort to physics and philosophy, perhaps theology or some form of mystery accessible to the human being.
A reasoning that we must do in these cases is very simple, if we go by the path that is already known we will have the same answer, but the new one is not necessarily a change of route, it may be, is what we think of Brazilian elections, an eternal return to same.
The new in this case is a new relationship between the political class and society, between rich and poor, and especially outside the dogmatism of every stream of thought, difficult very difficult, resentments are serious and offenses are serious, mutually serious .
I turn to a biblical passage, that of the rich young man who, when he approaches Jesus, says that he would like to gain eternal life and Jesus answers Mk 10, 19-20: “Thou knowest the commandments: thou shalt not kill (sic), thou shalt not commit adultery (opa), you shall not steal (corruption not), you shall not bear false witness (fake news), you shall not harm anyone (blacks, Indians, lgbts), honor your father and your mother. ” young man replies “Master all this I have observed since my youth”, but in proposing that he donate his goods, he goes away.
Hope does not end, exegetes and fundamentalists ignore the following passage, in which even the apostles are frightened imagining themselves rich, and as are the politicians of today, but Jesus adds: Mk 10: 27: “For men this is impossible , but not to God. For God all things are possible. ”
There we now understand, it is all there, not yet not, for both the rich young man and the apostles have a “call” to a change of route, and the final stretch is most important Mk 10: 29-30 ” I say, whoever has left home, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, fields, because of me and the Gospel, will receive a hundred times more now during this life – house, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields, with persecutions – and, in the world to come, eternal life.”
They can win the world, they can win the elections, but at peace with God and with conscience is something else
Possibilities of the impossible
11
Oct
The difficulties of going beyond the “possible” future, within the limits of the worldview and the popular 
imagination, put history in almost insurmountable limits, and a future right there on the corner that everyone wants: greater social balance, respect for nature, security , tolerance at various levels, education (in transformation is important to note) seem almost impossible, the result is an eternal return.
They return to the old models of nationalism (that of nation and national culture are important), of economic egoism and mainly of division and political violence, although only verbal.
The main reason is the ignorance that the communicational, sociological and anthropological factors have changed, although this explodes in the streets and demonstrations all the time, the exit of a safety region (of comfort is relative, because the discomfort is general) seems impossible.
This reflects in the set of everyday thoughts, elaborations and speeches, old buzzwords and rhetoric are back, but has nothing changed? I believe it has already changed, but it takes a new “world view,” one beyond good and evil, not with Nietzsche he preached a century and a half ago, he himself told his friend Jacob Burkhardt: “I ask you to read this book (though he says the same things as my Zarathustra, but in a different, very different way”, I think I would say even more today.
Turning now for 14 centuries, St. Augustine was turning Manicheism into an almost unrecognizable, ideological, two-sided Christianity: instrumentalization of the left and right-wing fundamentalist, I believe Jesus would say, “forgive them they do not know what they are doing” , contextualized yes, because the attacks are visceral and literally violent.
A synthesis of all this is possible, perhaps because we reject ideologically a pre-school Marxism in Frankfurt, on the other hand, a pre-Cambrian nationalism, the synthesis may come later as long as there is possibility of reflection, now there is no .
Fighting fires, avoiding a return to gloomy authoritarianism, circumventing fallacies of fake news, trying to establish a dialogue on essential proposals: security, education and health.
Self-criticisms, I think they are impossible for messianic discourses, it is necessary to look at the whole planet and reflect on this “eternal return”.
In my view there are no new models, there is no “new” thinking (no allusion to the yuppie news party) , I do not see new thinking, I do not see any new “clearing”, just old ideological speeches and religions that killed God, which has nothing to do with what they advocate to “arm one another.”
My exit, to return to being, in its being: the man in his persistent existence in this world, the being-in-the-world with its consequences and risks.
The future and our life in 2100
10
Oct
We have written a few posts about Michio Kaku, about some of his speculations about physics,
now we want to give him a jump in the future, different from what the technoprofetas do (the name given by Jean Gabriel Ganascia to the creators of technological myths), Kaku speculates using physics and being optimistic.
He writes: “In 2100 our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshiped and feared. But our tools will not be like magic wands and potions, but computer science, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and, above all, quantum theory, which is the basis of earlier technologies. “(Kaku, 2011)
If positioning as a quantum physicist, the term is inappropriate but would say theoretical, he asks: “But where is all this leading technological change? Where is the final destination of this long journey in science and technology? “.
His answer is surprising. It responds in a sociological way: “the culmination of all these disorders is the formation of a planetary civilization, what physicists call Type I civilization,”
Not surprising to those who connect all Newtonian mechanics with the logic that lasts until our days to the right, economic ideas and theories of the state.
And he goes on: “Unless we succumb to the forces of chaos and madness, the transition to a planetary civilization is inevitable, the end product of the enormous, inexorable force of history and technology beyond any control.”
Futurists already anticipated the office without paper, but the bureaucratic chaos makes the paper still to be spent exorbitantly, the work at home is not yet reality, but it could be.
Also the online shopping cybershoppers, cyberstudents making classrooms obsolete, and many universities would close due to lack of interest from young people.
What we see is proliferating cyberclassrooms and universities still record record numbers of students, professors who successfully give lectures on philosophy, physics and technological gadgets, giant media puzzles try to manipulate people’s heads, but “the lights of Broadway shine still as intensely as before. ”
But technology continues to be fought as one of the “evils of our time,” and according to Kaku the point is: “Whenever there is conflict between modern technology and the desires of our primitive ancestors, these primitive desires gain more and more.” : “This is the cave man principle”.
Kaku tells a story similar to today, watched a movie that changed his life was the “Forbidden Planet,” based on Shakespeare’s play “The Storm” in the movie astronauts find an ancient civilization but millions of years our front.
The discovery of the Chauvet Cave in southern France, where we rediscover primitive man capable of an art and a subjectivity comparable to our time, is nothing more than the idea of this Cave Man who subsists in us and insists on not going to the future.
The book does not end there, his belief in the future is strong and resilient, but one sentence of Schopenhauer translates well his vision: “Each one limit the world’s limits in his vision,” personally he would add but the limits are greater than our vision.
Kaku, M. (2011) Physics of the futuro: how science will shape human Destiny and our daily lives by the year 2100.
Sustainability and economy
09
Oct
Economic Nobel laureates William Nordhaus of Yale University and Paul Romer of New York 
University, though the entire press is talking only about the weather aspect, has the technology side as fundamental, Romer has made important theses in this area.
I leave the comments on William Nordhaus on “Economics and Policy Issues in Climate Change” for economists and ecologists, I can not assess the scope of their work.
Romer won mainly for his work “Increasing Returns and Long Run Growth” because the joint award is justified by the aspect of sustainability, but his work “Endogenous Technological Change” has equal importance.
Just to get an idea, the technology article has more than 27,000 quotations, because the central thesis that technology helps the development, contradicts the fallacy that technology harms the development and helps the concentration of income, against this also worked Elinor Ostrom (the first woman Nobel laureate in economics), Saskia Sassen and even the Marxist Frederic Jamenson.
The definition requires knowledge of the Solow Grow Growth Model (Jones, 1988), which indicates that exogenous technical progress is understood as external influence, as well as endogenous is what has internal influence, ie central, since the analyzes are endogenously.
This happens for reasons not explained in the model, the endogenous innovation techniques of change assign technical progress to systematic efforts by economic agents, an innovation is clearly not a predicted factor in a system.
The model explains, for example, how many companies could start spending resources by improving technology rather than simply increasing amounts of resources and capital, one might think, but the company will lay off, it is not so.
If the additional costs are only relative to technology they can and are generally smaller than the investments in liabilities and personnel, it is not directly justifying the layoffs, what happens is that the innovation disables some functions, but creates new, often in number equal or even higher and with higher salaries for specialization.
To understand these effects there is a work, what I read for this post, written with Luis A. Rivera-Batiz (pdf), titled. “International trade with endogenous technological change”, in which they use two fundamental sectors in the industry: a research and development sector that produces innovations, and another, manufacturing.
Jones C (1998). Introduction to Economic Growth. W.W. Norton, 1998, 1rst Edition, 2002 Second Edition.
This is solid or liquid
08
Oct
It sounds like a joke, not the question that appears in the design of the Solid website, in fact
the question there is: What is Solid? the new Internet project by Tim Berners-Lee and MIT.
After Web 2.0 that included everyone, but lacked validation of data, authorship and thoughts, Web 3.0 emerged from Linked Data in 2009, and this is in the composition of the name Solid: Social Linked Data, although the idea of the acronym is rejoined it circulated through the networks and makes all sense, the main idea is to decentralize the Web, give greater security giving users the possibilities of total control over the use of data, explains an article by Klint Finley in the prestigious magazine Wired .
The main idea is to give individual users full control over the use of their data, but with validation, authorship and data processing through the concept of linked data.
The main startup of this project is Inrupt, according to Wired magazine: “If everything goes as planned, Inrupt will be for Solid what Netscape was for the network beginners (Web): an easy way to enter, the magazine was invited to learn about the project at Berners-Lee’s office, which revealed several concerns.
Despite all the good we have achieved, the cycle of inequality and division, captured by “powerful forces that use for their own interests,” Berners-Lee said, adding: “I have always believed that the network is for everyone. That is why I and others fought hard to protect it “and now a decisive step has been taken.
The Inrupt screen will bring together functions like Whatsapp, google Drive, Spotify and Google Drive, it seems all the same, the difference is that the control will be personal, the individual will define their priorities and strategies and not algorithms of social networks.
It’s also an emerging need because you just have to look at the screen of your cell phone or the computer, personally install few things, and we see a multitude of applications that we do not even use, it’s like a wardrobe full of old clothes waiting for an occasion that does not come.
The SOLID Project is here to stay, even if it’s a newbie and lots of it’s just a promise, it’s easy to see its viability, necessity and potentiality through MIT’s seal.
Between ingenuity, innocence and malice
05
Oct
Naïve (ingenus in Latim) comes from ingenuus, that is, free from birth, the naive does not have malice,
it is a quality, especially for children, but of these we must say innocence, there is no acquisition of knowledge and experience, yet a capacity to discern between evil in day-to-day attitudes, those who vote are not innocent.
Perhaps some naïve, but without excuse to cooperate with what is confessedly hateful, disrespectful to the human being whatever race, belief or party, what can be seen is that general disbelief can lead to attitudes that do not perceive malice and cunning.
It is important to keep from childhood some purity of feeling, a belief in life and in people, but it is dangerous if maturity does not come and cruelty is not perceived.
Words, behavior, and even people’s gaze can say a great deal, it is unacceptable, so that adults, who are the people who vote, do not perceive malice. It is a fact that we have reached a point of social, moral and even affective imbalance, which cannot admit is that this justifies violence of some kind, which offends everyone.
Let’s make an option, which should last 4 years, the structure of the country will be decided now.
Any violation of fundamental rights, of opinion, of coming and going, of civil rules will be unacceptable, and will certainly be opposed by many Brazilians who have fought for democracy.
We also hope that a probable second round will bring more debate on the proposal and what the program of the candidates for the second round is, and we will overcome the confusing stage of debates in this first round of the Brazilian election.
May we still look upon the innocence of a child and wish him the best future.
