In their recent book Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic minds without content, Dan Hutto and Erik Myin make two important criticisms of what they call autopoietic enactivism. These two criticisms are that AE harbours tacit representationalists commitments and that it has too liberal a conception of cognition. Taking the latter claim as its main focus, this paper explores the theoretical underpinnings of AE in order to tease out how it might respond to H&M. In so doing it uncovers some reasons which not (...) only appear to warrant H&M’s initial claims but also seem to point to further uneasy tensions within the AE framework. The paper goes beyond H&M by tracing the roots of these criticisms and apparent tensions to phenomenology and the role it plays in AE’s distinctive conception of strong life-mind continuity. It is highlighted that this phenomenological dimension of AE contains certain unexamined anthropomorphic and anthropogenic leanings which do not sit comfortably within its wider commitment to life-mind continuity. In light of this analysis it is suggested that AE will do well to rethink this role or ultimately run the risk of remaining theoretically unstable. The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing theoretical development of AE by highlighting potential internal tensions within its framework which need to be addressed in order for it to continue to evolve as a coherent paradigm. (shrink)

According to enactivism all living systems, from single cell organisms to human beings, are ontologically endowed with some form of teleological and sense-making agency. Furthermore, enactivists maintain that: there is no fixed pregiven world and as a consequence all organisms “bring forth” their own unique “worlds” through processes of sense-making. The first half of the paper takes these two ontological claims as its central focus and aims to clarify and make explicit the arguments and motivations underlying them. Our analysis here (...) highlights three distinct but connected problems for enactivism: these arguments do not and cannot guarantee that there is no pregiven world, instead, they end up generating a contradiction whereby a pregiven world seems to in fact be tacitly presupposed by virtue of a reliance on a tacit epistemic perspectivalism which is also inherently representationalist and as a consequence makes it difficult to satisfactorily account for the ontological plurality of worlds. Taking these considerations on board, the second half of the paper then aims to develop a more robust ontologically grounded enactivism. Drawing from biosemiotic enactivism, science and technology studies and anthropology, the paper aims to present an account which both rejects a pregiven world and coherently accounts for how organisms bring forth ontologically multiple worlds. (shrink)

The aim is to examine the multiple meanings of creativity in creative economy. The meanings which reinforce the individual aspect stress that personal characteristics may unlock the wealth that lies within people. The definitions that reinforce the organizational and social aspects understand creativity as a process, which requires knowledge, networks, and technologies that interconnect novel ideas and contexts. The perspectives which reinforce the political aspect see that creativity took the status of a doctrine to secure collaboration between government and industry. (...) However, these notions of creativity stress its instrumental utility and undermine fantasy, play, or uselessness. (shrink)

This paper elaborates some of the conceptual implications of Derrida’s call for “another thinking of life” in Voyous: Deux essais sur la raison. The paper first argues that Derrida’s deconstruction of the opposition between metaphorical and literal uses of the discourse of life in La vie la mort is radicalized in Voyous when he argues that democracy’s “autoimmunitary suicide” should be the point of departure for rethinking life in general. To understand further these autoimmune-suicidal tendencies, the paper turns to Derrida’s (...) engagement with Aristotle’s conceptual figure of the prime mover in Voyous. The paper argues that Derrida turns to Aristotle because the prime mover illustrates the ways in which the concept of life remains historically and structurally informed by the philosophical value of ipseitocratic sovereignty, which is allergic to the disseminatory, proliferating, and improper qualities that the philosophical tradition has always ascribed to democracy. Autoimmunity thus provides a way for thinking of a democratic life that is not entirely determined by the teleological power of any divinely good life. (shrink)

Na busca da cura do corpo, a oração opera milagres: uma discussão sobre eficácia simbólica, perspectivismo, cura e religião (In the search for the healing of the body, prayer works miracles: a discussion on symbolic efficacy, perspectivism) - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2013v11n31p965 O artigo busca descrever, compreender e interpretar o caso observado de uma jovem portadora de teratoma ovariano maligno, internada em hospital do câncer na cidade de Belém, estado do Pará. A jovem foi desenganada diante do diagnóstico da doença, mas sua (...) mãe agarrou-se na “fé em Deus”, pois “Ele opera milagres”, dizendo que dela retiraram “coisa feia”, cheia de dentes, cabelos e gorduras, que não sabia inteiramente explicar, mas que “Jesus cura”. A mãe, evangélica, mantinha a Bíblia na enfermaria, orando em voz alta diante do leito da menina. Aos poucos, amenizou-se a gravidade do caso, deixando perplexo o saber biomédico, diante do reconhecimento de outras buscas de cura, como através da oração, que levou aquela jovem a sair de alta hospitalar. Esse episódio, observado atentamente pela coautora deste artigo, permite uma discussão que transcende o âmbito da biomedicina, do ponto de vista antropológico, especialmente no campo da chamada “eficácia simbólica”, em que xamanismo e psicanálise podem ser chamados para conferir sentido a esse drama, cujo desfecho mostrou-se favorável para a jovem e sua mãe, até o ponto que foi possível observar. Palavras-chave : Cura. Religião. Eficácia Simbólica.This article aims to describe, understand and interpret the observed case of a young woman with ovarian malignant teratoma, hospitalized in the cancer hospital in the city of Belém, State of Pará, Brazil. The young woman was thought as incurable on the diagnosis of the disease, but her mother clung in “faith in God”, because “He works miracles”, saying that “ugly things”, full of teeth, hair and grease, were removed from her; she also said that she could not understand it all, or full explain it, but she is convinced that “Jesus heals”. The mother, an Evangelical woman, held the Bible in the infirmary, praying out loud in front of the girl’s bed. Gradually it was alleviated the severity of the case, leaving bewildered the biomedical knowledge, on the recognition of other results, such as healing through prayer, which led that young woman to leave the hospital. This episode, closely observed by one of the authors of this article, allows a discussion that transcends the scope of biomedicine, from the anthropological point of view, especially in the field of the so-called “symbolic efficacy” (Lévi-Strauss), in which shamanism and psychoanalysis can be called to give meaning to this drama, whose outcome was favorable to the young woman and to her mother, until the point that it was possible to observe. Keywords : Healing. Religion. Symbolic efficacy. (shrink)

A tecnologia de aprendizado de máquina fez com que as inteligências artificiais aprendessem, de certa forma, por conta própria. Isso fez com que surgisse preocupação e encantamento por uma suposta autonomia dos sistemas automatizados. No entanto, em que pesem os processos de automação, isso não faz com que as máquinas sejam realmente autônomas, ainda que pareçam. Essa aparência de autonomia é sustentada por muito trabalho humano escondido. Por trás do véu tecnológico o que existe é um exército de trabalhadores que (...) sustentam o bom funcionamento dos algoritmos. Esse fenômeno não é uma novidade nem um ponto fora da curva no desenvolvimento tecnológico. Marx, n’_O Capital_, já havia explicado o processo que transforma os trabalhadores em peças da engrenagem e a maquinaria da indústria em sujeito. Marcuse, dando continuidade a essa ideia, argumenta que disso surgiu uma racionalidade tecnológica que submete os seres humanos à lógica das máquinas. Pretende-se com esse artigo apresentar as análises desses filósofos sobre essa relação humano-máquina e oferecer uma perspectiva para superar essa inversão que coloca as pessoas à serviço da tecnologia. (shrink)

A análise dos mecanismos de controle do capitalismo é algo extremamente importante para a tradição marxista. Diversos autores preocuparam-se em entender como o capitalismo cria um modo de vida onde as pessoas introjetam certos valores que servem para a manutenção do sistema vigente. O próprio Marx, n’O capital, dissertou sobre o fenômeno do fetichismo. Tal fenômeno seria responsável por criar uma forma de existência onde as relações humanas estariam “enfeitiçadas” e as pessoas assumiriam pra si valores que perpetuariam o capitalismo. (...) Herbert Marcuse também dedicou muito de sua obra para compreender essa introjeção de valores. Para ele, esse processo teria alcançado níveis extremos ao ponto dessa ideologia criada se apresentar como pensamento consensual e único, criando uma única dimensão. O presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar a influência da teoria do fetichismo para a construção do conceito de unidimensionalidade. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetiva analisar a existência de uma possível contradição entre a _morale par provision_ e o sistema filosófico cartesiano. Para tanto, primeiro analisaremos a imbricação entre a teoria metafísica e a teoria moral de Descartes, buscando situar o local da _morale_ em seu edifício filosófico. Neste primeiro momento, também tentaremos engendrar o problema aqui proposto, configurado a partir da pergunta: ao aderir ao uso da opinião em sua _morale_, Descartes não abriria margem para um possível paradoxo entre o (...) desenvolvimento de seu sistema de Filosofia e a sua _morale par provision?_ Depois, apresentaremos o conteúdo da _morale, _analisando separadamente cada uma das três máximas que a compõem. Isto feito, buscaremos evidenciar a natureza racional da moral cartesiana_. _Ao fim do trabalho, pretendemos dissipar o aparente paradoxo ao defender a tese de que o conteúdo das três máximas da _morale par provision_ (moderação, resolução e felicidade) conferem a ela uma natureza racional, o que torna justificado o uso de opiniões, que, mesmo sem possuir um valor de clareza, distinção e evidência, ainda assim são úteis para o desenvolvimento da investigação filosófica, o que coloca a _morale_ na condição de ser um fator imprescindível ao desenvolvimento da filosofia cartesiana. (shrink)

Apresentamos a tradução para o português do artigo de Kisukidi, o qual aborda de maneira inovadora a questão política encontrada no último grande livro do filósofo francês Henri Bergson. Este artigo aponta como a filosofia política que surge em As Duas fontes da moral e da religião é relevante ainda hoje.

Le rapport à l'alténté en général et à autrui en particulier condense un noyau de possibilités multiples qui, selon l'hypothèse esquissée, s'exprìme et s'interprète dans le mode de penser et de vivre le Désir d'avenir. Oscillant entre hétérophagie et hétérophilie, ce type fondamental d'érotisme temporel s'incarne dans des configurations phénoménologiques dont la typologie idéale fait covarier une décision métaphysique avec une attitude éthique . L'analyse des contrastes qui définissent les positions onto-éthiques de Sartre, Merleau-Ponty et Lévinas devient une méthode heuristique (...) pour mettre en évidence la topologie de l'incommensurable et de l'optatif. The relation to alterity in general and to others in particular encapsulates a logical space of multiple possibilities which, according to the author's hypothesis, may be expressed and interpreted in the manner of thinking and living the Desire of future. Oscillating between heterophagia and heterophilia, this fundamental type of temporal eroticism embodies vanous phenomenological configurations whose ideal typology reveals a deep correlation between a metaphysical decision with an ethical attitude . The analysis of mutual contrasts defining Sartre's, Merleau-Ponty s and Lévinas' onto-ethic stances is adopted as a methodological device in order to elucidate a broad topology of incommensurabilia and desiderata. (shrink)

Este texto aborda a migração para a Vila de Serra Grande, distrito do munícipio de Uruçuca, no litoral sul da Bahia, considerando a projeção do Brasil paraíso tropical, assim como a suposta cordialidade inerente ao contato com o povo brasileiro. O território da vila é também abordado a fim de enfatizarmos as relações históricas, políticas, econômicas, culturais e raciais, enfim, as relações de identificações e diferenças, que fazem do Litoral Sul da Bahia um eminente território de riquezas, poderes e conflitos. (...) Trata-se de um estudo-reflexão acerca das expressões e tensões entre branquitude e identidade afro-brasileira num território litorâneo da Mata Atlântica, no sul da Bahia. (shrink)

A interação entre indivíduos depende de uma complexa teia de relações na filosofia de David Hume, que necessitam da maneira como o encadeamento de ideias é feita na mente humana, estando estes assentados sobre os mesmos princípios que fornecem a inclinação do sujeito para asseverar sobre os eventos da matéria. Mais do que ancorar sua teoria da Moral ou da Política sobre os mesmos princípios da crença, a filosofia humeana parece adotar um caminho que se configura por uma via em (...) mão dupla, pois é justamente neste espaço da interação social que o sujeito, ou cada indivíduo de uma sociedade, encontra o alicerce para a fixação da própria crença, aparentemente individual, no fluxo da matéria. Neste sentido, não é apenas a aprendizagem dos costumes que depende da interação social do indivíduo, mas também vemos um grau forte de dependência até mesmo na formação dos termos que são referidos às ideias gerais; sendo importante notar que esta aprendizagem necessita do ponto inicial do reconhecimento do outro para ser efetivada. Desta forma, a nossa pesquisa busca compreender os primeiros fundamentos para esta armação complexa da estrutura cognitiva do sujeito, que precisa tecer para construir os fortes pontos de amarração com o tecido social, fornecendo as linhas de fixação do sujeito com o mundo. (shrink)

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo descrever e investigar a crítica nietzschiana a Teoria do Conhecimento e em que consiste o conhecimento para o filósofo. Com isso, evidenciamos que o método genealógico desenvolvido por Nietzsche viabiliza não somente solapar as posturas dogmáticas em relação ao conhecimento, mas também lançar bases para uma outra concepção de conhecimento onde o caráter perspectivístico da efetividade seja posto em destaque, possibilitando um permanente trabalho de investigação das condições de possibilidade de constituição das instâncias avaliativas (...) através das quais o ser humano se orienta. (shrink)

Neste artigo busca-se iluminar o papel e a resistência das mulheres nativas negro-indígenas do Litoral Sul da Bahia frente à atuação da política ambiental do Estado, posta por meio da criação do PESC – o Parque Estadual da Serra do Conduru –, pelo Decreto Estadual nº 6.227 de 1997, em áreas dos municípios de Ilhéus, Uruçuca e Itacaré. Considerando a historicidade do território e de suas populações tradicionais, almejamos apontar como a importação e a instalação de um modelo de criação (...) de área de proteção ambiental baseado no paradigma euro-estadunidense da conservação da natureza versus presença humana[1], de que fala Diegues, são violentas à existência e às formas de vida e ocupação das populações nativas residentes nesse território, revelando o racismo ambiental e a política de apagamento e morte destinada aos corpos e territórios negro-indígenas do litoral do estado mais negro do país[2]. Neste contexto de luta pelo território de identidade e pela própria identidade, as mulheres negro-indígenas do Litoral Sul da Bahia aparecem como importantes agentes de resistência e defesa da vida e da natureza. (shrink)

En el marco del Paradigma Emergente de la Complejidad, la educación cobra un nuevo significado. Emerge la necesidad de postular nuevas visiones acerca del fenómeno educativo que trasciendan la concepción disciplinar. Ir a la búsqueda de una práctica educativa más sensible, exhaustiva, cuyo eje sea enseñar a investigar, integradora de las ciencias sociales con las humanísticas, fomentadora de un conocimiento autónomo, formadora de ciudadanos provistos de los instrumentos que les permitan interaccionar con el entorno de una manera creativa como constructores (...) de saberes. Reflexionar sobre la educación como camino y como arte, repensar la educación desde y para la Complejidad, se transforman en tareas urgentes para los educadores del Siglo XXI. (shrink)

Many physicians are involved in relationships that create tension between a physician's duty to work in her patients’ best interest at all times and her financial arrangement with a third party, most often a pharmaceutical manufacturer, whose primary goal is maximizing sales or profit. Despite the prevalence of this threat, in the United States and globally, the most common reaction to conflicts of interest in medicine is timid acceptance. There are few calls for conflicts of interest to be banned, and, (...) to our knowledge, no one calls for conflicted practitioners to be reprimanded. Contrast our attitudes in medicine with public attitudes toward financial conflicts among government employees. When enforcement of rules against conflict of interest slackens in the public sector, news organizations investigate and publish their criticism. Yet even when doctors are quoted in the media promoting specific drugs, their personal financial ties to the drug maker are rarely mentioned. Policies for governmental employees are strict, condemnation is strong, and criminal statutes exist (allowing for corruption charges). Yet the evidence that conflict is problematic is, if anything, stronger in medicine than in the public sector. Policies against conflicts of interest in medicine should be at least as strong as those already existing in the public sector. (shrink)

In this commentary, we support a complex, mosaic, and multimodal approach to the evolution of intelligence. Using the arcuate fasciculus as an example of discontinuity in the evolution of neurobiological architectures, we argue that the strict dichotomy of modules versus G, adopted by Burkart et al. in the target article, is insufficient to interpret the available statistical and experimental evidence.

The aim of the article is to examine the role of the Yogyakarta Principles in the new era of globalization. The Principles could be assimilated for their modesty and multiple points of entry in the global system. However, they have not necessarily created formal protections for sexual minorities that keep being abused globally because conservative elites share goals and tactics among themselves to repress these minorities.

Open peer commentary on the article “Lived Experience and Cognitive Science Reappraising Enactivism’s Jonasian Turn” by Mario Villalobos & Dave Ward. Upshot: Villalobos and Ward reappraise enactivism’s “Jonasian turn” and discover an untenable anthropomorphism at its core. As a corrective to this, the authors propose a Maturanian-inspired account of experience that could accommodate central enactive insights while avoiding anthropomorphism. In this commentary, I will delve a bit deeper into Villalobos and Ward’s treatment of anthropomorphism. In so doing, I will show (...) that the notion of anthropomorphism trades on an ambiguity that leaves the authors’ own position open to accusations of anthropomorphism and that it needs further justification for why it is at odds with science. I conclude with a few words on why the authors’ assessment of a similar proposal by myself is unfounded. (shrink)

Reconstructing some points of the deduction made by Spinoza in Part III of Ethics, this article proposes to reflect on the affective logic and on two important notions in the context of inter-individual relations: on the one hand, the concept of similarity, more precisely, the notion of “something similar to us” and, on the other hand, the affective imitation. Our proposal is to consider how, if and to what extent the conjunction of these two elements – recognition of the similarity (...) with the other and affective mimesis – acts or interferes in the inter-human affective arrangement and, thus, in the possibility of realizing and sustaining a common life. (shrink)

This article aims to study the origin, nature and development of eschatology and apocalyptic in the post-exilic Judaism over the centuries III and II BC. Its theoretical reference is based on two scientific analyzes about the two phenomena: the historical-critical analysis of Friedrich Dingermann and the analysis from the history of religions made by Johann Maier. As a method of approach is used the deductive method, whereby it is possible, from the main present theories, analyze each one within their own (...) ethos. Besides this one, it used as the procedure method the comparative method, through the intertwining of the studied theories that allows a glimpse at the evolution that the two phenomena experienced in the religious history of Ancient Israel and Judaism. (shrink)

Proprioception has a crucial role in promoting or hindering motor learning. In particular, an intact position sense strongly correlates with the chances of recovery after stroke. A great majority of neurological patients present both motor dysfunctions and impairments in kinesthesia, but traditional robot and virtual reality training techniques focus either in recovering motor functions or in assessing proprioceptive deficits. An open challenge is to implement effective and reliable tests and training protocols for proprioception that go beyond the mere position sense (...) evaluation and exploit the intrinsic bidirectionality of the kinesthetic sense, which refers to both sense of position and sense of movement. Modulated haptic interaction has a leading role in promoting sensorimotor integration and it is a natural way to enhance volitional effort. Therefore, we designed a preliminary clinical study to test a new proprioception-based motor training technique for augmenting kinesthetic awareness via haptic feedback. The feedback was provided by a robotic manipulandum and the test involved 7 chronic hemiparetic subjects over three weeks. The protocol included evaluation sessions, that consisted of a psychometric estimate of the subject’s kinesthetic sensation, and training sessions, in which the subject executed planar reaching movements in the absence of vision and under a minimally assistive haptic guidance made by sequences of graded force pulses. The bidirectional haptic interaction between the subject and the robot was optimally adapted to each participant in order to achieve a uniform task difficulty over the workspace. All the subjects consistently improved in the perceptual scores as a consequence of training. Moreover, they could minimize the level of haptic guidance in time. Results suggest that the proposed method is effective in enhancing kinesthetic acuity, but the level of impairment may affect the ability of subjects to retain their improvement in time. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Extended Synthesis, ecological information, and biosemiotics are complementary approaches whose engagement will help us explain the organism-environment interaction at the cognitive level. The Extended Synthesis, through niche construction theory, can explain the organism-environment interaction at an evolutionary level because niche construction is a process guided by information. We believe that the best account that defines information at this level is the one offered by biosemiotics and, within all kinds of biosemiotic information available, we believe that (...) ecological information is the best candidate for making sense of the organism-environment relation at the cognitive level. This entanglement of biosemiotics, ecological information and the Extended Synthesis is promising for understanding the multidimensional character of the organism-environment reciprocity as well as the relation between evolution, cognition, and meaning. (shrink)

What is the body? How was it culturally constructed, conceived, and cultivated before and after the advent of rationalism and modern science? This interdisciplinary study elaborates a cultural genealogy of the body and its legacies to modernity by tracing its crucial redefinition from a live anatomical entity to disembodied, mechanical and virtual analogs. The study ranges from Baroque, pre-Cartesian interpretations of body and embodiment, to the Cartesian elaboration of ontological difference and mind-body dualism, and it concludes with the parodic and (...) violent aftermath of this legacy to the French Enlightenment. It engages work by philosophical authors such as Montaigne, Descartes and La Mettrie, as well as literary works by d'Urfé, Corneille and the Marquis de Sade. The examination of sexuality and the emergence of sexual difference as a dominant mode of embodiment are central to the book's overall design. The work is informed by philosophical accounts of the body (Nietzsche, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty), by feminist theory (Butler, Irigaray, Bordo), as well as by literary and cultural historians (Scarry, Stewart, Bynum, etc.) and historians of science (Canguilhem, Pagel, and Temkin), among others. It will appeal to scholars of literature, philosophy, French studies, critical theory, feminist theory, cultural historians and historians of science and technology. Dalia Judovitz is Professor of French, Emory University. She is also author of Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit and Subjectivity and Representation in Decartes: The Origins of Modernity. (shrink)

This study explores Honoré de Balzac’s iconic representation of artistic creativity in The Unknown Masterpiece by focusing on an unexamined aspect of his text, namely the seminal role played by critical reception and consumption in artistic production. This influential tale is examined in terms of its artistic and philosophical contributions to reenvisioning creativity by modern and postmodern critics and thinkers. Challenging the ideology of the artist as creative genius, this analysis targets the processes, labor and materials of artistic production and (...) its relations to critical consumption. At issue is the expressive potential of the art work in its creative capacities to bring about the new, to happen and make things happen. (shrink)

Reseña del libro: Amparo de Jesús Zárate Cuello y Orietta Ivonne Beltrán Casas. Del diagnóstico preimplantatorio al niño medicamento en Colombia: una mirada en torno a la eugenesia positiva. Legislación comparada con el ordenamiento jurídico español. Bogotá: Editorial Neogranadina, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18359/9789585103122.

The article argues that a close examination of the development of Schelling’s thought reveals that, already in the 1800 System of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling had abandoned his earlier understanding of the relationship between the infinite and finite—as elaborated in his philosophy of nature—and began to articulate a more Platonic understanding of the absolute. It thus challenges the widespread interpretation of Schelling’s development, and contests the commonly accepted views of Schelling’s relationship to romanticism.

Spoken language consists of a linear sequence of units, from which the existence of particular underlying hierarchical processing mechanisms is inferred. Uddén et al. use graph theory to provide a framework for describing the possible structural relationships that may underlie a linear output sequence. Being more explicit in defining different structures can help identifying and testing for such structures in AGL experiments, as well as help showing how behavioral and neuroimaging data reveals signatures of hierarchical processing in humans.

DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO WERNECK, Luzia Maria de Jesus. O espiritismo tropicalizado e o tratamento espiritual : um estudo de caso em Santa Luzia – MG. 2011. 137 folhas. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.